Dream of battled fields no more,
Days of danger, nights of waking . . .
Sir Walter Scott,
The Lady of the Lake
The archers stopped about ten paces out, taking maul-hammers from their backs. Sharpened stakes were pounded into the ground at a forward cant as defense against cavalry. Lengthy pavise shields, protection from enemy missiles, were held by assistants while the archers shook out their quivers, arranging their arrows at their feet.
The Sisters of the Line were armed with slightly lighter bows; few had the height and length of arm to pull the heavyweights some men preferred. The range was extreme. The archers began lofting long flight arrows in high arcs, saving their livery shafts for closer combat. Gil could hear bowstrings snapping on leather bracers up and down the line, and the whizz of pile-headed arrows. They flew beyond the wall of enemy shields, but he couldn’t tell how much effect they had. The shooting went on for a minute, then bowmen emerged from the Occhlon ranks, set themselves up in much the same way and returned fire. The Southwastelanders’ bows were giant recurve weapons, over six feet long, but simple “self” bows, not composite; they lacked the range of the Crescent Landers’. Moreover, the Occhlon used a pinch-draw in their release, less effective than the northern two- and three-fingered draws. Only a few of their shots found their way among the Crescent Landers. Gil raised his shield whenever he saw a salvo coming, but no shaft dropped near him.
As the Trustee had hoped, the uneven archery duel tweaked the Southwastelanders to move. A sally of fleet horsemen swept up the river bank, their places in the ranks taken immediately by reserves. Some of the southerners wore mottled armor with bizarre patterns of decoration. Swan had told Gil that there were warriors among the enemy who fashioned their panoply from skins of the huge snakes and lizards of their desert.
Lord Blacktarget and his men swept their swords out. Their war-horses, hearing the sound, danced and reared in anticipation. The men of Veganá rode out to meet the foe before the Occhlon could get in among the stakes and take a toll of archers. The two sides hit with scores of individual collisions. A dust cloud went up in the hazy light while cries and chants mixed with the horns and cymbals. Gil expected to see the Trustee rush reinforcements in, but it didn’t happen. The ruler of Glyffa regarded this as an early probe and held back from committing herself. The Occhlon pressed hard, but Gil heard a thousand throats hollering Veganá! above the melee. The attempt to roll up the Trustee’s right flank faltered, reduced to maddened charge and countercharge over short distances, with swords, maces and axes in sharp opposition at close quarters.
Off to the left an attack was launched against Swan’s command, but because the land dipped and rose that way, Gil couldn’t see clearly. He began to appreciate the importance of gonfalons and banners. Everyone in the armies—himself included—depended on the battle flags to tell if their side was moving forward, making a stand or being driven back. The Trustee told him to go tell a particular cavalry unit to stand ready. He spurred away, trying to keep some speed and still not gallop over massed soldiers in his way. He found the correct outfit and relayed the order. The Sisters of the Line were already in their files, nervously adjusting helmets, lances and shields.
Finding his way back, he went along the seam of the two armies on the right flank, where men of Veganá marked time next to Glyffan women. Gil was amazed again at their youth. They called to him for news but he couldn’t stop. He knew, though, that in their place he’d have ripped a bypasser out of the saddle and clubbed the latest reports out of him.
The leader of the reserve element came up and awaited orders to move. The Trustee instructed her to go in either direction when the next probe came, but to wait toward the left flank. Then she ordered Gil to see how things were going on the Veganán flank.
He barrel-rode off again, cutting deeply behind his own lines. The front might shift down there, and he was a messenger, not a grunt. The arrow showers had stopped nearer the river, the sides being too intermingled.
The fighting had overflowed into the river. The clay bank and bed were too treacherous to maneuver on with a horse; men were clashing on foot, the river running around their legs, muddy-red. Then he spotted Lord Blacktarget.
The general had dismounted and waded out chest-deep, holding the extreme end of his flank himself. A rope around his waist ran back and slightly upstream, belayed by two husky squires. He was jubilant, sure that the battle would go his way. He’d called for his piper, who stood on the river bank blowing a lusty war-song. Lord Blacktarget would occasionally bellow a snatch of the lyrics, waiting for the next adversary.
His two-handed broadsword whirled and chopped, throwing back every opponent. Further downstream, Gil could see corpses of men and horses being whisked away in the current. The Occhlon had lost an ambitious gambit, trying to outflank through the river itself. As he watched, Blacktarget lost his footing and was yanked up again by the two squires.
The river bank was in the firm control of Veganá again, so the general had himself hauled in. Dripping and wounded, he accepted his wineskin from an aide and drank deeply, while his injuries were being bound. His pink skull gleamed with sweat and muddy water.
In response to the Trustee’s inquiry, he leaned on his broadsword and studied the front “This may have been the feint, or may be a feint-in-deception. We will hold here against any attack, but I will retain my reserves. Tell her Veganá needs no succor.” Forgetting Gil completely, he called for his horse. The piper struck up another song.
The Trustee heard the reply while monitoring her worrisome left flank. “Needs no succor, eh?” she repeated, as her aides muttered among themselves. “That was not his claim a fortnight ago. He hates subordinating himself to me, but if he holds his end of things I am content.” She peered more closely to the left. “The Southwastelanders do not like it there, by the water with Blacktarget; he is secure. Send the first reserve element to Swan.” It wasn’t Gil’s turn yet, so another rider galloped off.
The sky had become overcast. Gil looked down to the center where Andre should be and saw the heavy cavalry was no longer there, replaced by a new unit. He asked one of the aides about it.
“There was a quick, impudent sally while you were gone,” she said. She disapproved of his inquisitiveness, but knew he was somehow favored by the Trustee. “Andre deCourteney was hurt, taken back in one of the wagons, his contingent replaced.” Gil fought the impulse to rein around and go see how the wizard was, unsure that he could even find him.
More commanders were coming up now, as units were rotated in gradual attrition. The Trustee still hesitated to group her main strength. Gil viewed the fitful migrations of the banners, forward in conquest or backward in disarray. This wasn’t his kind of military action, chafing on an open field while slow, sometimes hours-long maneuvers took shape. He’d served in an army of tactical radios, air observers, choppers, artillery and personnel carriers. Operations had been mobile, fast-breaking. Sitting on a horse marking time had worn his patience out quickly.
He noticed the Trustee was unoccupied. “Any word on Andre?” he asked. Aides glowered.
“None,” she said, having forgotten her son in the absorptions of the day. “If you would do me a service, go rear and inquire.” Her mind reverted at once to the battle.
He threaded his way back through waiting soldiers, cavalry who stood in their stirrups and infantry who held one another on their shoulders, craning for a view. Further to the rear, those waiting were more relaxed, passing time. At the very edge of the plain the chirurgeons had set up their crude field operations in an open tent with wooden slabs on which they performed desperate surgery. A constant flow of wounded was the engagement’s yield.
Gil spotted Ferrian. Answering to his name, the Horseblooded didn’t stop his work. He carried men and women groaning and screaming their pain to where they must wait until they could be attended to. Gil finally halted him by grabbing his shoulder over an empty sleeve. There was a vacant look in the brawny Horseblooded’s eyes. He motioned to the wounded, “So many, so very many.”
Gil shook him. “Forget that. Where’s deCourteney?”
The left hand pointed; Gil released him.
The wizard was sitting beside a water barrel, rewrapping his wounded side more to his liking. Seeing Gil, he achieved a wan grin. “I shall live, it seems,” he conceded. Gil heard sounds of the wounded being treated with measures nearly as sanguinary as the battle itself. He avoided looking into the tent.
“Where’s your horse?”
“Appropriated as soon as ever I fell. Ferrian was first to my side, and carried me to safety.”
“Ferrian better be cool. He’s losing his grip.”
Andre stood up angrily. “Do you know what he has dealt with today? Then go, behind the tent.”
Training his eyes to the ground, he did as Andre bid him, unwillingly. In the area behind the tent were rows of the dead, butchered and savaged in a hundred ways, darkening the earth with blood. To the side was a pile of what he thought at first to be wood, or discarded armor. Closer, he saw they were human limbs, blackening as they lay, arms and legs and hands and feet too ruined to salvage. White bone poked from bloated flesh; clouds of big, shiny black flies covered the piles. The steamy reek drove him back.
He caught shaky balance with one hand on a tent post and fought his compulsion to retch until his stomach inverted. Andre pulled him away. He was breathing harder, heart racing. “I’m clearing out of here; let’s go.” When Gil had remounted, the wizard climbed up on Jeb’s croup. Gil caught a last look at Ferrian, assisting a stumbling lancer who was pressing her intestines back in and crying like a lost child. The American kicked hard. With a peevish snort, Jeb Stuart bolted away.
“Why don’t you and your mother use magic?” he called, as they cantered along. The wind of their passage took away much of the reply.
“Too close . . . preparation . . . on their side too.”
It began to drizzle. Gil reined in to find he’d drifted too far left. There was intense fighting along the foot of the slopes. He could see Swan’s banner, with her white-winged namesake. He decided things were going to go the way they were going to go, no matter where Gilbert A. MacDonald was, and wanted to see if the High Constable was all right. Andre made no objection.
Others were going that way. The two rode past a detachment of infantry with Angorman at its head, and swapped news.
The assault on Lord Blacktarget had indeed been a feint, the light sally at Swan a screen for the advance of a larger force. The whole left flank could be rolled back if it wasn’t stopped. Angorman was bringing up his sword-and-shield men to protect the archers. Gil hurried on.
The Sisters of the Line must have repelled the attack and gained ground; there were trampled Occhlon corpses at the rear of their position. It was Gil’s first sight of them close up. They weren’t unusual, just men who were dead. They were a taller race than the Veganáns, with slightly darker skin and hair. These wore armor of cuir bouli, faced and shaped with metal. Their weapons looked light, slender swords both curved and straight, and shorter lances. But, Gil remembered, there were supposed to be more heavily armed and armored Southwastelanders somewhere.
He worked forward, Andre clinging to him, past groups of archers and strings of pikewomen crouching behind mantlets. Dust swirled thickly; they heard the ringing of swords and yells of combatants. A captain rode by, not noticing they weren’t part of her unit. “Up! Up to the line and ’ware. Their knights come against us now. We broke their last onset, but another will come soon.”
The wounded were being dragged away from a point in the line where it had thinned. Swan was there, dismounted for a rest. She’d taken off her helmet, and an aide dashed a bucket of water on her face, cooling her in her stifling armor.
She waved wearily. “How goes the day?” Gil told her as much as he knew. She listened, again turning her head to hold her birthmark away. “Those clanking ironclads will be down on us again,” she admitted. “I had never dealt with plate armor before. It seems rather clumsy. We shall stop them.”
Gil, who’d seen knights of Coramonde in full career, wasn’t so sure. He couldn’t see many of them, though; maybe two hundred had drawn up on a rise a quarter-mile away and formed a wedge, probably to be followed by the more numerous heavy cavalry.
“And what of your pikewomen?” Andre asked.
She motioned rearward with a thumb. “There. I thought they stood no chance against those behemoths in plate.”
“How long are their pikes?”
“Ten, or perhaps eleven feet.”
“Mmm, not good, but perhaps sufficient. I advise you to bring them up in support, High Constable. Let the enemy through your center, stop the knights with pikewomen and try carving them up from their flanks.”
She ordered the infantry up, then looked to Gil. “What do you think, Seeker?”
He shrugged. “Ask me tonight.” He was still in turmoil, angry at what he’d seen and heard through the morning.
“I will. They say fighting on the river bank has gotten sharper, but the men of Veganá are happy for that. I believe the day will be decided here.”
Angorman arrived and dispersed his swordsmen among the pikewomen, placing himself at the head of their formation. Someone shouted; the enemy knights were moving out at a trot. Swan mounted at once, and Gil let Andre down.
That vicious something that had been hovering at the outer circle of his thoughts began to take form. Seeing the charge, Gil felt his pulse hammer. It was as if the Occhlon advance was the final affront, obscene provocation. Ignoring Andre’s call, he fell in at the end of Swan’s riders, wanting to see what would happen.
They moved forward at a walk, then a canter. A horn winded. Dressed and aligned, they broke into the charge, Swan in the van. The High Constable of Region Blue hunkered down behind spear and shield and met her antagonist, who led the Occhlon. She downed him at first impact, her point skillfully catching his helmet on its crest, bursting its retaining laces and carrying him backward off his horse. He landed with a clang.
The two sides rammed into each other while Swan stopped to recover her own balance. Gil raced by, all restraint gone, hunting an opponent, calling out, “Nice lick!” She shouted something, but he didn’t catch it.
He sported an enemy on a roan charger. They bore in on each other by unspoken consent. The man crouched behind his triangular shield. Jeb’s mane was stiff as a flag in Gil’s face. He knew he should have been scared, but wasn’t. The new thing on the rim of his awareness was overriding fear with volcanic anger.
As trained, they came in on each other’s left side, shield to shield, lances held loosely until the last instant. The American kept his point more or less aligned, knowing he’d have to target in the last moment before meeting. The drizzle had made the lance slippery. Jeb, more experienced than his rider, gathered himself for collision just before it happened. The two men clamped knees to their horses’ sides, clutched their weapons and threw all their weight forward. The Occhlon let go a battle cry that the American, in his emotional transport, never heard.
Their spears transversed into shields. Gil’s skidded; the Occhlon’s didn’t. The jolt was like being clothes-lined, blind-sided and body-blocked at the same time. The man felt Gil going and gave his point a clever twist, to kill him right then. Jeb did a kind of change-step, and Gil almost found his balance. Then he toppled sideways and backward as the Southwastelander came around to finish him.
The fall released that thing that had waited in the American. He ignored the pain of the fall and came up in a fit of virulence so vivid he felt he could murder with his will alone. He’d dropped his shield and lance, and took no notice of Jeb, who stood waiting for him. He drew the Browning, raised it in sidelong stance and shot the Occhlon. It gave him an awful elation he’d never known before.
There were outcries all around him. Horses screamed, panic-stricken from the shot and smell. The heavy knights had cut a swath through the Sisters of the Line, and he was surrounded by foemen. It suited him well. He emptied the Browning a shot at a time, with a feral care that he kill as many as he could. He barely noticed the autoloader’s buck, greeting its explosions, a form of malign homecoming.
Swan came up, having lost her spear, to engage an Occhlon with sword and shield. She slashed, striking sparks from the other’s blade, their horses whistling angrily and battering one another. Her shield was dented and her sword notched, and it seemed the knight would win. Gil hardly noticed it was the High Constable in jeopardy when he smoked her opponent He was in a separate world of misted ebullition.
Angorman dashed up with swordsmen and pikewomen at his heels, the trap ruined by Gil’s madness. The Saint-Commander made do as best he could, bringing the fight out to them. A knight charged; Angorman dodged to one side, chopping with Red Pilgrim. The Occhlon’s leg was severed, and the chausse that covered it. The leg toppled to one side of his horse, the knight to the other. Angorman was already busy with his next antagonist.
Swan’s banner went forward. Assorted elements under her scrambled to fill the gap and close up after the cavalry. The Occhlon had been stopped by the countercharge and the terror effect of the Browning. Now they drew back. Gil ran after them, forgetting Jeb. He’d reloaded, and began howling, firing as he went.
Glyffan cavalry pounded past him. Swan might not know exactly what had happened, but she’d seen the opening and knew how to use that. Enemy archers and infantry had followed in the wake of the knights. Now they were milling around. The Sisters of the Line came down on them like harpies, driving them back into each other in a rain of sword strokes.
Some Southwasteland halberdiers made a stand. The High Constable dismounted with a troop of her riders and, with swords and parrying daggers, slipped in among the flashing polearms. Several of them fell, but once the Glyffans were past the halberd heads, the Occhlons were defenseless. Many dropped their weapons and fled. The remnant was quickly overrun.
Gil ran to join, dropping his empty pistol. He’d nearly forgotten what the conflict was about, but wanted passionately to be part of it. But as he ran he felt an ebbing. It became more difficult to think. He slowed to a walk, then stopped. The rain dripped from his face.
His sense of equilibrium waffled. He caught his balance with a sidestep. It seemed extremely hot and bright, as if the sun were out, filling the sky. His legs gave, and he found himself sitting on the ground. Then he keeled over. In his state, it was a relief.