A Meeting at Corvallis (41 page)

The triple impact staggered him back; a spearman who tried to pursue lost the top right quarter of his shield to a two-handed swing from a Lochaber ax that sliced it the way a knife would a hard-boiled egg, and ducked back cursing.

And here we are, back where we started,
he thought.

The noise of combat died down for an instant, as warriors stood and panted and glared at each other in one of those odd little momentary truces that broke out spontaneously in this kind of fighting; perhaps it was because nobody could keep up the effort needed for hand-to-hand combat for long without rest. Wounded on both sides crawled back behind the front lines, or hobbled or were dragged or carried by their comrades. Dead men lay sprawled, their blood making the asphalt slick underfoot. Nigel Loring controlled his breathing with an effort, dragging air down into the bottom of his lungs, holding it for an instant until they'd had a chance to get all the oxygen out of it. He didn't let himself bend over and wheeze—that was less efficient, and besides, it showed weakness. He'd been in his early forties when the Change occurred, and he was fifty-three now; most of the men facing him were two decades younger or more. No matter how fit you kept yourself, a little endurance drained away every year.

But age and treachery beat youth and strength,
he told himself, snatching a mouthful of water from a canteen someone was passing around.
Until they don't, at least.

He could hear officers and noncoms among the Protectorate spearmen shouting at them to get back at it, see them rearranging their lines and occasionally shoving men into place, or holding a spearshaft horizontally and straightening a line by pushing it against men's backs. That was another difference from war before the Change. Then battlefields had been empty, lonely places swept by fire. You were alone, or with a small knot of your comrades; usually the fallen didn't see the man who killed them, and you rarely had more than a fleeting glimpse of the target.

Now when you fought you did it shoulder-to-shoulder with your comrades, under your leaders' eyes, and close enough to see who you were killing—with spear and sword, close enough to look him in the eyes and smell his sweat and the garlic on his breath and see that flare of disbelief when he felt the bite of the steel.

Changes the whole mental dynamic,
he thought with professional interest.
Though some things—

The spearmen had been spitting on their hands and hefting their weapons, while the Mackenzies around him growled or cursed and tightened their grips on their own polearms. Then they froze, their heads turning to the east, Nigel's right and their left. Eyes went wide in shock, and the next yells were alarm and dismay, not war shouts.

—stay the same. Surprise, for instance, is a wonderful thing if you're not on the receiving end. Bless you, my fiancée!

Piotr Stavarov could hear his men shouting
Haro! Haro, Portland!
as they walked towards the Mackenzies and their green horn-and-moons banner; and cries of
Molalla!
as well—most of the levy for this central column came from that barony.

This won't be too difficult. The Bearkiller A-listers are real fighters, but these kilties are just peasants in fancy dress.

The spearmen were in a compact block facing their Mackenzie equivalents; as he watched their weapons came down with a uniform snap and the big shields came up, the men crouching slightly. The rear ranks brought their own up, to present an overlapping surface like a snake's scales. To their right the crossbowmen spread out, their weapons spanned and ready…

He heard Sir Ernaldo take a sharp breath as the fifty Mackenzie archers on the far right stood and raised their bows. He gave the man a sharp glance, but the flat, narrow-eyed olive face was impassive.

“That's long range,” Piotr said. “Just a little under three hundred yards, I'd say.”

“About that, my lord,” Ernaldo said.

The front rank of his crossbowmen stopped and knelt just then; the second rank stood behind them. Both leveled their weapons just as the kilted warriors loosed their arrows. Faint and far he could hear the rushing sleet sound of the shafts, and then the deeper
tunnggg
sound of the crossbows firing back. The arrowheads twinkled as they paused at the top of their arc and plunged downward. Longbowmen threw up their arms and collapsed as the short, heavy bolts thrown by the spring-steel bows struck—and a few got up again, their brigandines proof against glancing hits at extreme range. More of those struck stayed down, still or screaming and thrashing. Half a second later the first arrow-fall hit his men, slowing the rhythm of their reloading—you had to drop the front of the crossbow to the ground, put your foot in the stirrup bolted to the forestock, and fix the crank's hook to the string and its mount over the butt before you could spin the handle and pull the heavy draw back to catch in the trigger mechanism.

Three more sleeting ripples fell on the crossbowmen before they were ready to fire again; they took their losses stolidly, closed ranks and kept shooting while the spearmen tramped forward. The archers had to keep their aim on the force that could hurt them from a distance, leaving no spare shafts to slow the advance to contact of the spearmen.

“Yes,” Piotr murmured. “Excellent. Most excellent.”

“My lord!” Ernaldo said sharply, grabbing at his armored arm and pointing.

Piotr bit back a curse as his head pivoted left; you had little peripheral vision with your helmet and mail coif on. More archers were appearing from the woods to the left of the road, seeming to spring from nowhere. One minute a fringe of brush and saplings stood still and empty; the next it writhed and sprouted armed Mackenzies, along with birds and a deer fleeing the sudden movement. His heart lurched, and then steadied as he studied the saw-toothed line the kilted warriors made.

“How many? A hundred? That many could have fooled the scouts; they're good at camouflage, from all I hear.”

“Yes, my lord; about a hundred. Probably ninety-nine, they use a nine-man squad. Shall I sound the retreat? Our foot are going to be in range soon and the numbers are nearly equal now. We don't have any missile infantry on that side of the action, either. They can take the spearmen in defilade.”

Piotr stared at him incredulously. “Retreat from a force smaller than our own? Knights and men-at-arms of the Association retreat from half-trained peons? And retreat when better than a third of them are
women
? Of course not! They think they can shoot at the spearmen in safety…but I have more than enough lancers to overrun them. Sound the advance.”

The knight sighed and crossed himself, and spoke to the trumpeter. Piotr grinned at the scene bisected by the nasal bar of his helmet.

The kilties got overconfident,
he thought.
I have them pinned here out in the open, and without protection they're easy meat for a charge. Father will be pleased—and more pleased that the credit goes to the Stavarovs of Barony Chehalis, not to my lord Renfrew, Count of Odell.

Juniper Mackenzie gripped the rope between locked boots and in her gloved hands and stepped off the branch of the tree, letting Earth pull her homeward. The downward swoop took seconds, leaving her palms tingling-warm beneath the leather when she landed. Cynthia Carson was steadying the rope and waited tensely for the word; her face was a Gorgon mask of black and gold and scarlet behind the gauze mask of the war cloak, painted with the wolf-head emblem of her totem. Most of the younger Clan warriors painted their faces before a fight these days, despite Sam's grumbles that it reminded him too much of football hooligans back home….

“They're moving,” Juniper said grimly. “Pass the word to be ready.”

“We're ready, Lady of the Clan,” Cynthia Carson. “Ready and eager.”

She looked it; Cynthia was a tall, fair woman of twenty-eight who'd lost father and brother to the Protector's men in skirmish and raid over the years since the Change, and her blue eyes were as cold and grim as any wolf's. She followed Juniper forward, with the signaler and banner-bearer. All around them the First Levy were rising and shedding their war cloaks, taking their bows in their hands but waiting on one knee until the signal came. Juniper pressed forward to the edge of the woods, using her own bow to press brush aside, ignoring the body of the Protectorate scout who lay with his horse, both bristling with feathered shafts.

There they are…

A hundred lancers were a terrifying sight, and they looked a lot more imposing from ground level than from fifty feet up. Big men on big horses, steel and tossing plumes and blazons and the twinkling sharp-honed menace of the lanceheads above the colorful flutter of pennants. The long block of horsemen walked out from the roadway and aimed itself at the hundred bowman who'd come out of the woods to lure them. Then the curled brass trumpets screamed and a long ripple went through the men-at-arms as they lifted the butts of their lances free of the scabbards and brought them to rest on the toes of their right boots, slanting slightly forward. In the same instant the horses took their first pace, stepping high, heads tossing beneath the spiked steel chamfrons. The big kite-shaped shields came to the front as the riders pulled on the leather
guige
straps that hung around their necks and slid their left arms into the loops.

All the shields carried the Lidless Eye; most also had their own or their liege-lords' blazons quartered with it, the heraldry of knight and baron and their vassals and paid men. There was an arrogant splendor to the sight, one that roused hate and grudging respect at the same time. There was no fear in those young men, even though they knew they might be going to the Dread Lord in the next handful of minutes. They'd been told they were the lords of human kind, and they believed it.

Well, like them I might be heading for the Summerlands today,
she told herself.
And I've got less to worry about when I set to discussing my deeds with the Guides. Wait. Breathe in, breathe out. Ground and center, ground and center.

Even across double bowshot the beginnings of a trot from four hundred hooves could be felt through the earth, a thuttering through the soles of her feet. The lancers would try to hit a hand gallop just at extreme bowshot, to get them through the killing ground as fast as possible. Against a hundred archers, it would work. Against eight hundred…

She filled her lungs and then shouted, her singer's voice filling the tense, waiting stillness of the woods: “At them, Mackenzies!”

With the word she dashed forward, the banner-bearer and signaler beside her. The Horns-and-Moon flag of the Clan went up, a breeze from the south streaming the green-and-silver silk out ahead of her, and the horn made its dunting
huuuu-huuuu-huuuu
. Seven hundred archers followed her, sprinting forward into their three-deep harrow formation, a staggered row that left each a clear shot to the front. As they halted a shaft went to the cord of every bow, and every cord was drawn to the ear. Behind them the bagpipers set up their catamount screeching, and the Lambeg drums sounded with a
boom-boom-boom
that rumbled like thunder through the trees.

The lancers were at full gallop now, but their line checked and wavered as they saw the trap sprung. Beside her she could hear Cynthia chanting under her breath.

And the words ran up and down the line, louder and louder:

“On! On!” Piotr shouted, and thumped the trumpeter riding beside him with the flat of his shield to get the man's attention. They were at the point of a blunt wedge now, centered on the flag. “On!
Charge!
”

The trumpet sounded, without even a preliminary blat or squeak despite the ghastly surprise ahead. The lancers booted their horses back into a full gallop after that moment's involuntary check, realizing from years in the saddle that no matter how deadly the peril ahead was, stopping would be worse.

You
couldn't
stop a charging destrier quickly.

Doubly so with another man-at-arms galloping boot-to-boot on either side and another right behind you; there was just too much mass and momentum involved. Trying to do a full-stop in a tight formation of a hundred lances was asking for a disaster of collisions and fallen mounts and men crushed under ton-weights of rolling barded horse. It would take the better part of a hundred yards to halt the formation safely, and more time to turn around without blocking and fouling each other; at best they'd be stalled for a full minute under the deadly steel-and-cedarwood hail of the arrows. If they could just cover that two hundred yards ahead, the lightly armed archers would be helpless before their ironclad violence at close range. Piotr braced his feet in the stirrups and brought his shield up, covering the whole left side of his body between neck and knee; his lance jutted out over the chamfron spike that pounded up and down with the destrier's speed. Clods of earth flew head-high as the steel-shod hooves tore open the damp sod, the pennants fluttered with a snapping crackle, and a great shout went up: