The Legacy of Gird (65 page)

He had thought he did not care, until he knew it was certain. Now, in a silence he realized was more than normal, he lay face down in Alyanya's flowers and had leisure to consider if he meant in truth what he had said so often. I would give my life, he'd said. I will risk, he'd said. I could be killed as easy as you, he'd said to frightened yeomen.

But that had been
risk
; the spear might thrust in his gut, or not. The sword might slice another's neck. So far it always had been someone else, and he knew now he'd half-expected it always would be.

Now . . .
certainly
die? Never enjoy that peace? Never sit with his grandchildren around him, telling his tales of the old days?

He was suspended again, this time in the vast caverns of his own mind: cold, darkness, fear beneath him, and nothing at all above. If he fell
now
nothing would slow his fall; he would not land in Alyanya's flowers. His own mind—he knew it was that, and no gods' gift of vision—painted all too vividly a picture of the land after his fall. No peace, but the ravages of the magelords, the scavenging of brigands. More dead bodies bloated in the fields for crows to pick clean; babies and children and young and old: he saw all their faces. Innocent beasts, cows and horses and sheep, lame and wounded, wandering prey for folokai and wolves. And he saw his own death then, the death of an old man, bald and feeble, when he could no longer forage from his hideout in distant caves: he fell to folokai, and the crows followed.

Death either way, then.
It should be easy,
he told himself fiercely,
to buy that peace with an early death.
It was not easy. On his tongue he tasted the ale he would not drink, the roast he would not eat, and in his hands he felt the warm bodies of the children—o, most bitter!—he would never hold.
It is not easy!
he screamed silently into silence. His own mind replied tartly that nothing was easy, nor ever had been—and he opened his eyes and blinked against the snowy petals.

It was not easy, but he had done other things that were not easy. He had seen his mother die, and Mali that he loved, and his daughter near death at his feet. He had seen the best friend of his youth trampled under the lords' horses; he had seen wells poisoned and fields burnt barren. He took a deep breath, holding all these things in his mind, all the pain he could remember, all the love he'd had for family and beasts and trees and land—love that no one else ever knew, because he could not speak it. He tossed it high, with his hope for life. And felt it taken, a vast weight he had not known he carried.

The petals vanished, though he could feel their softness yet, and their perfume eased his breathing. He was all alone on the hilltop, though he heard someone crashing through the bushes on the upward trail.

"Gird! Marshal-general!" One of the newer yeomen, to whom that title came naturally. Gird took a breath, and hoped his face did not show all that had happened.

"What?" he called back, hearing in his voice a curious combination of irritation and joy.

"They're coming! They're already out of the wood!"

Gird swung to look north, and they certainly were. Horsemen first, the low sun winking on polished armor and bit chains, gleaming on the horses themselves, gilding the colors of banners and streamers and bright clothing. Some of those were surely magelords. Behind them, shadowy in the dust already beginning to rise at the edge of the wood, were the foot soldiers, rank after rank. His mouth dried. How many hundreds did they have? He had thought he had more—one thousand, two thousands, three. . . . The horsemen halted just far enough out on the meadow to let the infantry deploy behind them. Gird searched the wood on the far slope for the archers they would surely have sense enough to send out in a flanking movement. His own archers were supposed to be up on the end of the ridge, guarding against archers getting into his rear. He hoped they were alert. He had no fear of the horses or foot soldiers getting back there; the ridge behind him to the south was safe as a wall.

Below him, he heard his own army coming into order. He started down the hill, hoping the enemy had not spotted him atop the hill. He put his hand up to his hair, thankful that he hadn't put on his salvaged helmet yet.

At the foot of the hill, the gray carthorse stood as if it were waiting for him. Someone had found a saddle for it, and a bridle. Even so, the horse had positioned itself beside a rock. Gird climbed on, wondering even as he did why he found it so natural that the horse was making itself useful. Cob came running up with his helmet, and offered a sword. Gird shook his head. He hadn't learned to use a sword yet, and a battle was no time to try something new. The horse was new enough.

His cohorts had formed; he rode past them, checking with each marshal. The faces blurred in his eyes; his mouth found the right names by some instinct, but only Rahi's stood out distinctly. She gave him her broad smile, and the gray horse bobbed its head. Rahi's cohort laughed. He wanted to tell her, and no one else, what the god had told him, but he could not. That kind of knowledge had to be borne alone. He noticed, without really thinking about it, that over half of his yeomen had managed to find a blue shirt to wear; it was beginning to look like a uniform.

For a time it seemed that the enemy might simply stand on the far side of the field and stare at them, but after a time they moved forward. On the north, the broad-topped wooded ridge sloped directly into the meadow, but on the south, Gird's side, three distinct low hills lay between the sharp southern ridge and the more level grass, with the sluggish creek running east to west along it.

Gird had done what he could in the limited time he had to make this ground as favorable as possible. He had archers on the north face of all three hills, as well as the blunt end of the southern ridge. He had had pits dug, in the mucky ground near the creek, lightly covered with wattle and strewn with grass. This would, he hoped, make both cavalry and foot charges harder, and prevent easy flanking of his troop. His main force was arrayed before and between the two more eastern hills; the western hill seemed undefended, but in addition to archers had several natural hazards. Against the lords' reputed magicks, he had no defense but Arranha's comment that a mage could not counter what he did not expect. He hoped they would not expect the small, doomed, but very eager group that he had left well hidden on the south face of that north slope, directly in the enemy's rear, with orders to stay hidden until the lords were busy with their magic elsewhere.

Now the king's army moved; for the first time, Gird saw the royal standard that he had heard about, a great banner that barely moved in the morning breeze, then suddenly floated out, showing its device. Gird had been told it was a seadragon; by himself he would have thought it was a snake with a fish's tail. Each of the lords with the king had his own banner, his or her own colors repeated in the uniforms of the soldiers—and, if the gnomes were right, his or her own separate battle plan. That was supposed to be another advantage to his side. They looked pretty enough, like the models the gnomes had shown him: one hundred all in yellow and green, then two hundreds in blue and gold, then a block of orange, and a block of green and blue. Gird assumed that the lords were in the rear, those mounted figures in brilliant colors that seemed to glow with their own light. Even as he watched, he saw bright-striped tents go up, servants hanging on the lines. Smoke rose from cookfires newly lit. For some reason, that show of confidence infuriated Gird.
Win it before you celebrate it,
he told them silently.

The cavalry screen drew aside on either flank, and the foot soldiers advanced. Most of them still carried sword and shield; some units had pikes; a few had long spears. Gird frowned; those could cause him a lot of trouble. But watching them advance, he realized that they were not accustomed to that extra length. Evidently someone had decided to make a weapon that would outreach his pikes, but the men carrying them had not had enough drill. Behind the swordsmen and pikemen came the archers. Over the winter, Gird had tried many versions of a shield that would stop arrows but be light enough to carry, and easily dropped when both arms were needed for the pike. Nothing worked perfectly. His foremost cohorts had small wooden shields that might protect their faces from arrows near their utmost range, but most trusted to their stolen—no, salvaged—helmets and bits of body armor.

The first enemy flights of arrows went up; Gird's marshals shouted their warnings, and all but the stupidest looked down. The enemy made a rush forward, discovering a moment too late the pits Gird's army had dug. These were not deep enough or large enough to keep the enemy back, but they slowed the rush just as the archers, following it, came within range of Gird's archers.

More angry than hurt, the enemy foot soldiers floundered through the mud, hauled themselves out of the pits and flung themselves on at Gird's unmoving cohorts. The enemy lines were no longer lines, and behind them their own archers were falling to Gird's. They did not care; they looked, to Gird on his old gray horse, like any young men who have made fools of themselves in public. Their officers, bellowing at them from the rear, didn't seem to have much effect; a second and third line staggered into the pits, tried to jump across and failed, and fought their way out, to storm up the gentle slope toward Gird's cohorts.

The marshals watched Gird; he watched the straggling but furious advance. Those few seconds seemed to stretch endlessly, as if he had time to notice the expression on every face, whether the oncoming eyes were blue or grey or brown. Then the first ones reached the mark he had placed, and he dropped his hand, with the long blue streamer that served as their banner.

His cohorts moved. One step, two: cautious, controlled, their formations precise, he thought smugly, as any gnome's. Where the king's soldiers had expected last year's sharpened wood stakes, they met instead the steel pike heads that Marrakai gold had bought. The first died quickly, almost easily, a flick of the pike it seemed, from where Gird sat on the gray horse. He knew better, from having been there himself. Then the ragged lines caught up with each other, and the slaughter began.

Pikes outreach swords, but swordsmen and axemen can form a shield wall hard for pikes to breach, if all are brave. Whether it was courage, or the kind of magicks Gird had seen at work at Blackbone Hill, the soldiers of the king were brave. At first Gird's cohorts advanced, step by step, down that gentle slope, pushing the king's men back into the trampled mud and treacherous pits. Then the king's cavalry swept east, toward Gird's right flank, and back down the near side of the creek, avoiding the pits he'd dug at that end of the meadow.

This was not what he'd hoped they would do. He had hoped they'd be seduced by the apparent gap on his left flank, between that and the westmost hill. It should have looked like an easy way to get right round behind him. But apparently they'd been looking for something more quick than easy. And if he didn't do something—quickly—they'd be on attacking his flank with only the archers uphill to hinder them.

The gray horse seemed to understand this almost as quickly as Gird; he was picking his way neatly but rapidly across the gap between the center and the eastmost hill without jolting his rider at all. Gird looked around him. There—that cluster of bright colors up under the trees must be the lords and the king. So far they'd done nothing magical, but he had no doubt they would. And there, across the creek and coming his way, were the enemy cavalry.

Gird bellowed loud enough that the gray horse flattened his ears; the nearest cohort marshals turned, and caught his signal, then saw the rushing horses. He would have wheeled the gray horse around, but the gray horse leaped onward, straight at the oncoming cavalry. Gird hauled on the reins, to no avail.

"I know I said it would be nice to slow them down, but we can't—one horse—one rider—" Was this to be his destined death, charging uselessly an entire wing of cavalry? But they were almost on them; Gird shrugged, and swung the pole his blue banner was tied to.

Pole and rag took one horse in the face; Gird nearly lost the pole, and his seat, but managed to keep both, and duck a swipe from a curved blade. The gray horse swerved under him; he grabbed for mane and hung on. All around were horses, most of them swerving aside and one frankly running backwards before it slipped and fell, rolling on its rider.

Then they were in the clear, Gird with his banner and the gray horse with a disgustingly smug cock to its ears.

"I want to go back," Gird said between his teeth, as if the horse were a recalcitrant child. It shook its head, blew a long rattling snort, and picked up an easy lope back toward the battle. He saw a dozen or more horses down, some with arrows in them. He saw the back of the enemy cavalry, trying to charge again and again into two of his cohorts of pikes. The armor on the horses, heavy padded canvas, would have protected them from sword-strokes of other mounted fighters—not from pikemen on foot. Gird wondered if they realized that, or simply never thought of it. He felt the gray horse tense under him, and braced himself for whatever it might do.

What it did was outflank the enemy cavalry, working its way up and over the knee of the eastmost hill without putting a hoof wrong, and return Gird to his observation post on the central hill. From here he could see that that particular cavalry sortie would be thrown back without much danger. His own center was not advancing now, holding place to support the right flank under pressure, but that did not concern him. More worrying, some of that bright-clad group of nobles who had been back under the trees were moving forward. Several of them, clustered together, raised their arms.

He had not expected the well to spout water, the year before, and he did not expect the storm that gathered like a boil atop the ridge behind him, and spat lightning into the trees. Wind rushed irrationally
down
the slope, bringing fire and smoke with it. Shrill screams rose from both sides, louder from Gird's camp followers, who found themselves caught between a forest fire and a battle. Then the wind stilled, as suddenly as it had started, and Gird saw that the little group of mages had fallen to the ground. Behind him, the fires still burned, but less fiercely, and the new wind direction took the smoke and flame upslope, away from him.