Lord of Mountains

CHAPTER TEN

THE HIGH KING’S HOST

HORSE HEAVEN HILLS

(FORMERLY SOUTH-CENTRAL WASHINGTON)

HIGH KINGDOM OF MONTIVAL

(FORMERLY WESTERN NORTH AMERICA)

NOVEMBER 1ST, CHANGE YEAR 25/2023 AD

Frederick Thurston lowered his binoculars as the last of the screening cavalry drifted back, shifting balance as the horse made the beginning of a motion under him and squinting into the rising sun.

“Extended order,” he said. “Deploy them now.”

“Sir-” one of the battalion commanders said.

He grinned, feeling a tautly controlled fear that came out as exhilaration.

“Matt, this is either going to work, or it isn’t. If it doesn’t work, we’re all going to die, the officers at least. If it does work, we want to win as big as possible.”

“Yessir.”

“To your units, gentlemen. The God, Goddess, spirit, philosophical consolation or lucky rabbit’s foot of your choice be with you. Major Woburn, with me-your battalion hasn’t shown up yet.”

“I expect they’ll be here shortly, sir,” Dave Woburn said calmly. “And ready for action.”

That brought a chuckle from all of them as they dispersed, since Woburn’s battalion was on the other side. The signalers set their lips to the mouthpieces of their coiled brass tubae and then brayed a complex set of commands; the battalion and company signalers took it up and relayed it, with one long sustained note at the end that meant execute.

Fred turned in the saddle to watch. The understrength brigade he commanded was cobbled together out of prisoners who’d come over to him, and of those who’d slipped across the lines to join on their own initiative because they couldn’t stomach Martin’s growing tyranny or the spreading knowledge of what he’d done.

I’m not worried about their determination.

Both options involved taking really deadly risks for yourself and your relations, potentially fatal decisions that had to be made in cold blood with full knowledge of the implications. And Rudi could weed out infiltrators, though he didn’t have the time to do it all that often.

What concerns me is their organization. They’re all first-rate trained troops and they’re willing, but men need to practice working together, just like anything else.

So far they were doing it smooth. The columns opened out like a fan into a formation two deep, the rear rank staggered so that each man in it faced the gap in the line before him. Every soldier held his big oval scutum out in his left hand for a moment, and his pila by the middle in his right; there was a shuffling ripple as they moved until the spear points touched the shields.

It was an orderly formation…but not one that could fight a stand-up battle. This was how you arranged men for a skirmish, or a pursuit, to cover the maximum possible front. In normal battle order it would take nine battalions and a couple in reserve to cover this much with sufficient depth to give the array depth and punch and staying-power. Call it three full-strength brigades in a two-up-one-back formation…

That much was probably coming at him. This particular segment of the Horse Heaven Hills was close country, ripples running southeast to northwest, covered in sere bunchgrass and occasional sage, olive-green and brown. Nowhere too steep for infantry in formation, but he wouldn’t want to use much cavalry here, and artillery would be cramped. Passable for infantry, and one which would give them relative advantage against any other arms.

Well, bless you, Rudi. You really caught the terrain at a glance. Dad always did say an eye for ground was an essential talent.

Another glance over his shoulder, and the nearest balloon was snapping out details of approaching enemy forces.

Three brigades coming at us, right enough. It’s inconvenient, the way you can read our strength easily from the banners…Maybe we should rethink that, after the war. If we win, we won’t need such a big standing army anyway, we can put more into irrigation and roads…

It was time. His father had told him that pre-battle speeches had gone out of fashion in the centuries before the Change, but they’d made a comeback since, along with much else, and now it was a skill that a commander had to master. The men needed to see that their leader was there with them and hear him-not just the words, but the confidence behind them.

He turned his horse and rode along the ranks at a slow canter, waving his hand to the cheers; then back again, stopping at intervals so that everyone could hear what he said. There wasn’t much background noise, either. A distant brabble; the fighting had started closer to the Columbia, but far enough away that you just heard a rumbling burr. The wind whistled a little, and there was a thuttering, ripping sound as it made the banners and flags dance.

“All right, men,” he said. “We’re not here because we want to fight our brothers. We’re here to keep them from fighting for the Prophet and the CUT. If we have to fight them, we will; I’m not going to ask you to commit suicide. There are reinforcements we can fall back on-they’re waiting behind us. I am telling you to take a risk. Anyone here have a problem with that?”

The answer was a wordless growl, and then a thudding hammer as men beat the shafts of their spears on the metal bosses of their shields, the umbo. When three thousand men did that, it struck you in the face like a huge diffuse blow as much as a sound in your ears.

“Sound execute special orders,” he rapped out.

The tubae sounded again. Every man in his line laid down his shield with the face to the ground and the back and its handgrip uppermost, then went down on his left knee and planted his three pilae point-down at his right side-the two heavy short-range ones with the iron ball just ahead of the handgrip, and the lighter long-range javelin as well.

Frederick nodded. Right. That looks as peaceful as possible when you can get everything back and ready to use in a second or so.

A scatter of skirmishers came over the nearest ridges, trotting forward in loose groups, fast agile men with coyote-skins down their backs like cloaks, the heads mounted over their steel caps. They wore only light mail vests over their uniforms, and carried crossbows or bundles of short javelins rather than the heavy six-foot throwing spears of the line infantry. They halted at the odd spectacle before them, wavered, then fell back at a shouted command; they were tasked with giving the front-line commanders last minute intelligence in nearly real time, and with fighting only as needed to do that.

A stir behind him drew his eye; two coaches, halting amid the ambulances. He cursed in sudden recognition and heeled his horse over.

“Goddammit, I gave specific orders-” he began, then recognized the woman on horseback beside the coaches. “Virginia, what the hell is going on here? I thought you were watching them!”

His wife was in her early twenties, like him; she was in a less flamboyant version of her usual Powder River Rancher’s garb, jeans and boots and Stetson. There was a light mail shirt under the sheepskin jacket, though, as well as her usual saber at belt, bow and shield at her saddlebow. Her narrow face was troubled.

“Honey, I just couldn’t stop her! Short of layin’ hands on her or havin’ the guards do it. I’ll fight for your Mom, but I ain’t having a fist-fight with her.”

The door of the coach opened, and his mother stepped down. He’d wondered sometimes if there was truth to the old saw that men sought women for wives who reminded them of their mothers. Right now Cecile Thurston was looking grimly determined in a way that Virginia would need decades to achieve, but there was a certain likeness in coloring and build and basic strength. She was in the sweater, jacket, jeans and riding boots that well-to-do womenfolk in Boise’s territories usually wore when they traveled in the cool season; and she looked older than her forty-seven years. As she had since his father died.

Since Martin murdered him.

His young sisters Jaine and Shawonda were with her, also dressed for travel-and not in the Protectorate styles they’d been affecting while stashed with the High Queen as his mother traveled and repeated her story to new audiences. His gaze swiveled to the other carriage. The woman who opened its door had been more than beautiful and was still very good-looking, her long blond hair up in a Psyche knot under her broad-brimmed hat. She was also pregnant enough to definitely show.

“Juliet,” he said flatly to his sister-in-law. “I’m glad you didn’t bring…your son.”

Then he blinked in surprise. The man with her was…

Rimpoche Tsewang Dorje stepped forward. He was ancient or ageless, his ruddy-brown face wrinkled and seamed like the Tibetan hills that had given him birth so many years ago. As usual except in deep freezing cold he wore only sandals and the shoulder-baring saffron robe. His body had a scrawny stripped-down look as ageless as his face.

He met Fred’s eyes and smiled; they’d become good friends while the Quest overwintered in Chenrezi Monastery on its way east, hiding and healing from wounds suffered in brushes with the CUT. The monk had arrived a while ago with twenty-five hundred horsemen from the Valley of the Sun, escorting Fred’s mother and sisters and Juliet after they’d been rescued by the Dúnedain. There hadn’t been much time to talk since, though he’d heard the Rimpoche had been spending a lot of time with Juliet.

Who, Freya knows, could use some spiritual guidance!

“Young man,” the monk said. “You are angry that these women endanger themselves; but have you not marched out this day to wager your life?”

“I’m a soldier,” he said shortly.

Uh-oh, he thought. We spent months in Chenrezi Monastery and I never once won an argument with this guy. Never even really had an argument, somehow. The only way not to end up agreeing with him is not to have the discussion at all and even then you start arguing with yourself.

“Have you ordered your men to kneel and ground their spears in order to prepare for the clash of arms?” Dorje asked mildly.

“No,” Fred said. “I’m…hoping there won’t be a fight. Here, at least.”

“These ladies can aid your purpose, which is to prevent men from killing. Any fool can kill; it takes wisdom to prevent it, and there is never enough wisdom. As for the risk, they cannot be harmed any more than you can.”

“Rimpoche, that’s my mother you’re talking about! And my sisters. And…well, it’s my duty to protect Juliet too. I’m her children’s uncle.”

The abbot smiled, gentle and implacable. “This is part of your trial. If you have courage it shall certainly be tested; because in all this universe no quality lies latent forever. Do not shrink from your own test, and do not seek to deny theirs to others. Without trial, there is no growth.”

Fred took a deep breath. “Major Woburn!” His new-minted follower came up. “A platoon for guard, please, to accompany the ladies. Cap their spears.”

That meant putting a small wooden ball on the tip; it was more a symbol than anything else, since it could be flicked off in an instant, but symbols were important.

His mother smiled in a lopsided way. “I’m not going to let everything, Larry…everything your father…worked for be torn down, Fred.”

“I should have known,” he said resignedly. “All right. But only if you’re mounted.”

He paused to point at Virginia. “And you keep back here with some remounts. I’m counting on you to pull them out if things go bad.”

She wasn’t happy, but she nodded and gave him a smile and a thumbs-up gesture. Those arrangements would give them some chance to get out if it went into the pot. Eager hands brought horses forward and adjusted the girths. Heads were turned as they threaded their way forward. There wasn’t any sound-he’d have been shocked if they broke discipline that way-but Cecile smiled and nodded to the men, and Janice and Shawonda waved.

Juliet’s face might have been carved from bleached ivory, but the Rimpoche trotted unconcerned at her saddlebow. He had a knack of being unobtrusive in plain sight when he wanted to be, which wasn’t all that easy for a Tibetan in Montival. Fred sent a glance to his mother that told her that he was surprised to see Juliet here, risking her own precious sleek skin. Cecile shrugged with an unreadable expression that wasn’t quite a smile. Her attitude towards her daughter-in-law wasn’t quite one of unmitigated contempt.

And I never thought Juliet was a coward. Other things, but not that.

His stomach was in a knot and he could taste acid at the back of his throat; but this would make success more likely; if Lawrence Thurston had been the stern hard father of the nation who’d kept the dream alive through the terrible years of hunger and plague and fear in a universe come loose from its moorings, Cecile had been the mother. And Juliet had a special status. Everyone knew that she’d been a lot of the political brains behind Martin’s rise.

It also raised the risks of failure. Counting Virginia, nearly everything he had of kin was riding with him right now, in sight of Odin and artillery.

He grasped the valknut that hung around his throat above his armor; he’d come to follow that path, and learned more of it in Norrheim, on the shores of the Atlantic. Heard the High One speak himself, through the seeress He possessed, and claim one Frederick Thurston as His own. The Lord of the Ravens had his own purposes in the world, and to be one of His favorites was a double-edged sword. He didn’t spare Himself…and wouldn’t spare you either.

Memory flitted through him, memories of things seen with the eye of the soul in a place very far away: upward across a bridge sparkling with color, beneath gigantic stars, towards roofs thatched with spears of glittering gold where auroras crackled. A path that could only be walked unflinching, the way a man locked shields with his oath-brothers and paced towards a line of spear points and glaring eyes.

Father of Victories, I am Your man. You gave an eye for wisdom and sacrificed Yourself unto Yourself. I am ready to fight on this battlefield, either with steel or with craft, and You are God of both. Aid me now that I may aid my folk and those who look to me and the King to whom I have plighted faith, and I will pay the price-be it what it may. I myself am the sacrifice I offer to You.

Steel stiffened him; a memory of his father, nodding as he surveyed some task everyone thought was impossible and calmly settling down to it.

“Let’s go,” he said, and walked his horse forward.

The Eagle standard and flag of the Republic went with him; the squad Woburn had peeled off trotted easily, keeping pace with the horses at a slow jog despite the weight of steel and wood and leather on their bodies. A thunder sounded ahead, a familiar boom-huff-huff-boom sound. His mouth tightened; he knew that all too well, and it was a lot less comforting coming at you than it was when you were part of it. Thousands of men walking in step and marking it not with drums but by slamming the inside of their curved scutum with the shaft of their spears at every step, each pace the long yard of Boise’s army. It was as if he could smell their approach, a rank scent of oiled leather and sweat and steel.

A great deal depended on which battalion came over that hill…

He squinted into the sun. It seemed to ripple and sparkle along the crest ahead of him; pila-points, the sharpened metal catching the sun behind and throwing it forward in eye-hurting blinks.

And did they hesitate just an instant when they saw who was ahead? I think so. I’m betting a whole lot that’s so.

Dave Woburn was walking beside Fred’s horse, shield slung and swagger stick in his hand. He missed a step, then half-skipped to make it up.

“That’s the Sixteenth, sir!” he blurted. “My boys!”

There was hope in his voice, and a tightly contained hurt. Fred nodded to himself. It couldn’t be easy, the thought of fighting the unit you’d sweated blood to train and lead, that was home and family to you. It would be like striking at your own flesh with your sword.

And it’s just now occurred to me that I’m walking towards this man’s own troops and that if he turned me over to them there’s almost nothing my brother…the man who used to be my brother…wouldn’t give him in reward. Well, I decided to trust him. Rudi vouched for him…and if I can’t pick who to trust, I’m not fit to command anything anyway.

Something similar seemed to have passed through the defector’s mind.

“Ah…thank you, sir,” he said. “I just hope…They’re good soldiers, sir. The Sixteenth isn’t supposed to be a fancy elite unit, but I’d match them against any other outfit in Army in a straight-up slugging match.”

“Major Woburn?”

The man looked up; he was older than Fred, but not so very much. Fred went on:

“My father once said to me that a good officer has to love his troops and love the Army. But the Army exists not for its own sake but to serve the State by winning victories, so we have to be ready to destroy the thing we love.”

“That’s hard, sir.”

“He was a hard man, but for good reasons. And let’s hope we don’t have to do that. Because the best possible thing for those men over there and for the country would be if we can talk them ’round…oh, hell.”

He felt his stomach sink. “Sir?” Woburn said.

“Fred?” his mother enquired.

“The biter is bit. I just realized what I have to do, and charging with my sword in hand would be a hell of a lot easier.”

And a certain Person is answering me, I think. I said I’d give anything…and the first thing He asks is a part of my pride and a type of courage that’s a lot rarer than what you need for straightforward fighting. Maybe He is trying to tell me something.

At Woburn’s look he went on: “If I try to talk to them, it’s political-can’t help but be. Someone might well think that’s dirty pool and justifies throwing a spear even under a truce flag. You, not so much. You, with Mom and the others, not so much at all.”

His mother shot him a surprised glance. “You have learned a lot over the last few years, dear.”

“It’s the company I keep, Mom.” He looked at his sisters. “I’ll be right behind you.”

“You’re right, sir. I know my second-in-command…Jack Simmons…and my battalion sergeant major, Dan Lindquist. They’re not going to offer violence to your ladies. And I think…I really think they may listen.”

Shawonda was the elder sister; she moistened her lips and nodded firmly. Her face was still round and unfortunately acne-spotted, but you could see the woman through the girl more now.

“He was our dad too, Fred. And they’re a lot less likely to throw spears at two mothers and some kids.”

There was no answer to that except a stray thought that Shawonda was a teenager now, and not young for her age-hanging out with Matti had probably been an education, too.

“I remember Dan Lindquist,” Cecile Thurston said thoughtfully. “Your father rescued him and his family on that mission to Lewiston, during the plague year. A good man, very solid. Quiet and not ambitious, he refused a commission, but nobody’s fool. His wife’s a doctor.”

Fred motioned and the white flag of parley went up. Then he reined in; he was close enough to see details-the stiff plowboy face of a ranker under the beetling brow and cheek-guards of his helmet, a mended strap in a sword belt, the distinctive thin scarring lines in the facing of a shield that marked where blades had struck. Well within pila-cast now, and there were batteries of field artillery moving up, keeping pace with the marching battalions even if they hadn’t yet been turned around to put the business-ends forward.

The Sixteenth’s tubae signaled the halt. It came with a crashing unison and deep shout of hoo-rah! The troops were in march-to-contact order, their packs left behind, shields advanced with some of the weight taken on the leather strap around the neck but most held by the left hand on the central grip; two of the pila were held there too. The third was over the shoulder, ready to raise into the casting position at the word of command, or to snap down to present a hedge of points if cavalry approached.

Fred could see Woburn striding forward briskly, then pausing to salute the unit banner. The command party around the flag could probably see who he was by then and that the ones following him on horseback were unarmed women.

The effort of will to keep motionless made sweat break out on his face, like dew on a mask carved from teak. He could smell the rankness of it, and a sudden stab of nausea made him swallow and clench his teeth; he couldn’t even spit to clear his mouth, someone might take it wrong…

Every eye in the Sixteenth was on the scene around the banner and the signalers. Voices were raised, and there was a ripple as the sideways crests of the officer’s helmets tossed. Cecile was closer now, pointing to one man after another-

Using their names or their parents’. Their wife’s name, too, and their kids’, probably. Reminding them how Dad saved them, gave them a life and a chance at a home.

One of the company commanders shook his head again and again; he and his sergeant backed away, hands on the hilts of their swords, then started to turn and stalk back towards their command. Two other officers grabbed the company commander by his arms and held him despite his heaving struggles; the Sixteenth’s senior noncom stepped close to the sergeant and said something. It looked like he was whispering at point-blank range. The man stopped frozen in mid-stride, cast a quick look at his officer, and then slowly, slowly unbuckled his sword belt and held it out. Woburn’s second-in-command stepped over, flipped the captive officer’s helmet off and cold-cocked him with a single brutally efficient punch behind the ear; the two who’d been holding him laid him down with brisk speed but no unnecessary roughness.

Woburn nodded. Fred’s mother and sisters and sister-in-law rode their horses down the front rank, calling out:

“Don’t do it! Don’t kill your neighbors and your brothers!”

Juliet’s voice, a little higher and more desperate: “Martin isn’t worth it, he killed his father, he tried to kill me! Martin killed the President!”

There was a stir down the ranks, incipient panic. Woburn looked over his shoulder, and Fred nodded. The major nodded back and snapped a command.

The tubae brayed: attention to orders!

Silence fell, the rattle and murmur that had preceded it suddenly conspicuous by their absence. Woburn’s voice lifted:

“We’re sitting this one out, boys. Battalion-”

The order echoed down the ranks: “Company-”

“Platoon-”

“About face!”

A unified grinding crash, as the infinitely familiar sounds played on the men’s nervous systems-something comfortingly familiar, as well.

“Battalion, take knee and ground arms!”

They obeyed. Fred looked over his shoulder and raised his hand in signal. The prearranged shout started then:

“Sit it out! Sit it out! Sit it out! SIT IT OUT!”

The Sixteenth was startled by the crash of sound behind them, but only for an instant. Then they started shouting too, deafeningly loud in their denser formation. Behind them to the east the follow-up battalion was coming to a ragged halt. To either side the forward march had slowed to a crawl as well. As he watched, one unit broke ranks, a platoon turning and taking a knee, another trying to march forward through them, an officer pushing at men with his swagger stick until a spearshaft knocked it out of his hand and then decked him.

Woburn came trotting back with the Sixteenth’s command party at his heels.

“It worked, sir!”

Fred grinned at him and returned his salute with a snap. “So it did, Major. Let’s get this organized, but I think-”

He looked around at what would not become a battlefield. Not far away the crew of a field-piece were carefully extracting part of the control gearing for their weapon, and then the gunner equally carefully put it on the trail and started to hit it with a hammer.

“-I think we just took about one-quarter of the other side’s pieces off the board. Let’s get the sit-down strike organized.”

“Ah-”

That was Lundquist, the Sixteenth’s senior non-commissioned man, a tough-looking stocky man in his late thirties.

“Ah, sir, what if the high command orders in troops to put down this, ah, disorder?”

He pointed with a pila; the brigade command post was decamping to the rear, fast and in fairly good order. Individuals and clumps were following as the formations shook and writhed, sorting themselves.

Martin had the higher levels sewn up, Fred thought, nodding. He just didn’t realize that men aren’t chesspieces. What was it Rudi said? Every helmet’s got a head under it, and the head can think.

“That,” he said cheerfully, “would be a very foolish thing to do, sergeant-major.” Then, louder: “Courier! And major, we have work to do.”

The women rode up. His mother leaned across and touched his face.

“Your father would be proud, Fred. So proud.”

“Yes!” Rudi said, reading the dispatch, grinning like a wolf as he crumpled it in one armored fist. “Yes, by the Gods of my people, yes!”

Then he spent a second quieting his horse; the beast had sensed his tension, even through the heavy knight’s saddle.

“Fred succeeded, then?” Ignatius said.

“Better than I’d hoped,” Rudi replied.

He turned his head. “Courier to Knight-Brother Commander Cyril. Rally behind the Corvallans and place yourself at Brigadier Jones’ disposal. In clear, and verbal.”

Two riders dashed off westward. Rudi turned back to Ignatius and went on:

“That’s less than three thousand men on our side out of the fight and upward of nine or ten thousand of theirs-a sixth of their total foot strength and over a quarter of the regular line infantry and field artillery Boise brought onto this ground today. There’s our remaining disadvantage of numbers gone at a stroke, and without a man slain! They’re all taking a knee and chanting Sit It Out!”

His grin turned to the particular slightly smug smile a man uses at the discomfiture of an enemy, and Ignatius shared it with him in a moment of pure communion. Rudi went on:

“And probably Martin Thurston, or the portion of him that’s still a soldier, doesn’t know whether to shit or go blind, the spalpeen. He thought he’d punch through there, which just on the numbers he should have done, but now it’s locked down-and he can’t shift those men elsewhere against those they would have fought, either, or strike at them without risking his army falling apart altogether. Those men are as much out of the fight as if they were dead. I’ve his face in the midden on that spot, and a boot on his neck holding him there, may he have joy of the fresh steaming dung. Human beings aren’t numbers on a list and a ruler should remember it.”

“Will you go there, Your Majesty?” Ignatius asked. “To consolidate the gain?”

“By the Threefold Morrigú, no! They’re not joining in to fight for me, not yet-though afterwards they may find they have little choice, and then I’ll introduce myself to smooth things along. What they’re saying this moment is that they won’t fight their own and feel no overwhelming loyalty to Martin Thurston. The which suits me down to the buckles of my shoon, not to mention to the cockles of my heart, for now. That’ll be a delicate dynamic there; I won’t risk upsetting it with my alien, magical and all-too-monarchical presence.”

There was a golden circlet on the helmet Sandra’s artisans had made to go with this suit of armor; as well as a spray of raven feathers on either side, and the round curve of the visor was drawn down to a beak-like point at the bottom and the whole scored with niello patterns to suggest black feathers. When he had the visor down, he looked remarkably like a raven, which was appropriate enough since that was the totem of his sept and the form the Mother had taken to claim him. A raven with a crown, which didn’t look as odd as one might think.

It isn’t an overall effect to appeal to a bunch of wavering Boiseans raised to revere the name Republic, though. They’re old-fashioned there.

Aloud: “Let Fred and his ladies handle it; they speak the language. Literally and metaphorically.”

“We did better than we knew, rescuing him when his father was murdered,” Ignatius said thoughtfully.

“Threefold return,” Rudi said.

“Bread upon the waters.”

“Same thing. And the Dúnedain likewise when they plucked his mother and sisters and Juliet out of Boise’s citadel. You might call that a light blow set against the clash of armies, but it was a shrewd blow right at the fracture point, so to say. The way a granite block can be split with one tap, if you strike it exactly so.”

His face went grim again. “We’ve enough to do with the ones here, though.”

The Boise troops to the east of him were coming on with a smoothness like a sheet of oil; the rising swell of land he and his command group occupied gave him a disconcertingly good view. The contingent facing them were Corvallans, pike and crossbows much like the Bearkiller foot-the two realms were neighbors down there in the Willamette, and despite friction had been close allies with each other and the Clan since the early years after the Change. As he watched the command rang out; pikepoints down! and each block turned into a bristling hedgehog. Field artillery was already firing on both sides, the blurred arcing streaks of bolts loosed at extreme range.

Where they struck men went down, usually with a rag-doll finality; the four-pound bolts made absolutely nothing of any shield or armor a man could wear, tearing off limbs or killing by shock alone or ripping out hearts and spines and lungs. The pike formations rippled slightly as rear-rank men stepped forward to take the place of the fallen and helpers dragged away bodies and the wounded. Across the shallow dry vale that separated the armies the same occurred, but on the move as the Boise battalions came on at a stolid jog-trot.

And as each right foot hit the ground, the pila went boom into the shield. Boom-chuff-chuff-boom, like a force of nature more than anything human, or some great fabled machine of the ancient world.

There was a tooth-grating brang as one of the four-foot bolts struck the shield of a springald in front of him, rocking the weapon and sending bits of the missile flipping up end-over-end into the air like jackstraws that soared half a hundred yards. Closer, and the roundshot began to fly, striking and skipping and bouncing along the hard earth to snap legs and smash bone to splinters. The defenders had the advantage there, but the Boisean artillerists were working hard, leapfrogging half-batteries forward to keep up so they could support their foot with half the throwers at least.

Two twelve-pound shot struck a team just as it was wheeling a scorpion to the front, and the sound the horses made ripped right across the front. Rudi barred his teeth. Down in the ranks, the stink of fear would be heavy now. And the smell of blood and smashed-open bodies; like hog-slaughtering in the autumn if someone was clumsy with the hammer and knife, except that there was no hearthmistress on hand with a bowl of oatmeal to catch the blood for puddings and sausage, and pigs didn’t scream for their mothers in human speech.

Crowded in shoulder to shoulder, the forest of points and shafts out ahead, the massive presence behind your back, no room to dodge so you let your eyes blur out of focus because watching it come for you made it worse. Chanting and shouting to shut down your mind, the white noise in your head pierced only by the conditioned reflex of training and the knowledge that your brother and your cousin and the neighbor whose sister bore your babe were there with you, ready to tell others what you’d done.

So spit on your hands and brace the pike, work the lever and listen to the loading cadence, bite back the fear and the angry outrage that all these strangers are trying to kill the one precious irreplaceable you…think of whatever helps. Think of your friends, of what you’ll do when you march home from the war, of a baby held up under a tree on a summer’s day or the sweat and ache of the harvest or a wagon frame taking shape under your hands, of a beloved face smiling at you from the pillow by candlelight while cold rain falls outside. Or think of nothing at all but what you must do; and do it.

Tubae brayed across the enemy front, and the whole array coming to the attack rippled and shifted; sections sank back, others forward, until it was like the points of a portcullis rather than a walking wall, all without a pause and across a rolling hillside.

“Oh, Anwyn’s Hounds take it, I want those men on my side,” Rudi cried involuntarily, with the reflex of a warrior born and trained.

Ignatius nodded in a similar professional appreciation. “They’ve learned about fighting pike-and-shot formations in the past couple of years,” he said.

That the temptation of trying to rush the crossbowmen is a trap, and it’s better to swallow the losses of doing it head-on against the points of the pikes instead, Rudi thought.

The monk crossed himself and spoke more gently: “Kyrie eleison. Kriste eleison. Mary pierced with sorrows, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our deaths.”

Shouts and bugle-calls ran down the Corvallan ranks: “Set sights for two hundred yards! Prepare for push of pike!”

The pikemen began to stamp, running slowly in place, a thunder of hobnailed boots and rattling armor. The long honed blades at the end of the sixteen-foot weapons glimmered as they moved. Between each pike-phalanx was a triple line of crossbowmen, standing and kneeling. The formations moved, like grass swaying a little at this distance, as each set the aperture sight on their weapon by turning a knob over the locking bridge. A little circle near your eye, the blade at the front, bring it down onto the target…it’s just a target, not a young man missing his mother and wishing he were back in a cold shed mucking out half-frozen manure instead…

Rudi murmured to himself what the officers and sergeants would be repeating as they paced behind the lines with their half-pikes or stood sweating in the line:

“Steady, steady…open your eyes, Sally, they won’t go away ’cause you don’t look at them! Pick your man, everyone pick your man, no firing into the blue…pick your man, aim low, Jesus love us Miguel are you trying to poke of those fucking gliders in the ass or what? Get that thing level…”

Fire-shot was arching back and forth now, trailing smoke. The artillery were working with desperate speed, trying to take each other out before formations could be broken. The screams where the flame landed were loud enough to hear, like needles of sound through the thunder and brabble.

“Volley fire by ranks at two hundred yards. Don’t forget to adjust your sights between rounds. Front rank, make ready. Present! Aim! In volley…fire!”

There was a huge blurred unmusical sound of vibrating string and steel as thousands of crossbows released, then an instant later something like bucketfuls of pebbles tossed hard on sheet iron and logs. Men stumbled all along the Boise front as the short heavy bolts punched into their big shields. Others dropped as the bolts went through or slipped between, their pyramid-shaped heads smashing into meat and bone.

“Reload, load in nine times! Second rank, make ready…present…aim…in volley fire! Reload in nine times! Third rank, make ready…present…aim…in volley fire! Reload in nine times! First rank, make ready…present…aim…in volley fire!-”

The front of the Boise formations was eroding like sand hit by steady rain, but it closed up as it advanced. The shields of the rear files went up, a big sloping roof presented to the front, and the men were shouting in cadence as they picked up the pace to a slow pounding run:

“Hooo-rah! Hooo-rah! Hooo-rah!-”

Rudi made his teeth unclench and his fist unknot on the reins. Here I am, High King and commander of the host, and I’m more helpless than the least of those stretcher-bearers.

A pair of them went by, the wet canvas dripping beneath its burden.

At least they’re acting, not sitting on a horse making an example!

The Corvallan bugles blared, and officers shouted:

“Pikes will advance to contact! By the left-at the double-quick-charge!

The pike-hedges charged at a controlled pace, stepping off in unison from their jog in place into instant motion despite the weight of the long weapons and their own armor. At the same instant, tubae snarled and men shouted in the enemy ranks, harder to hear. The order was instantly clear to see, though; every single man in the front rank of the enemy pivoted on his left heel and threw one of the heavy six-foot javelins he carried.

A cloud of them rose and fell, seeming to accelerate as they sleeted down into the pikemen. Then the second rank threw, and the first again, and the third, and the second, and the first, in a continuous stuttering ripple until all of them had launched their three spears. Whole clumps fell across the front of the Corvallans, and here and there pikes crossed as files tangled. The rest continued, stamping over the bodies of the dead and the ones who screamed and writhed with whetted iron in their flesh, or picked themselves up and staggered forward again when the heavy spears bounced or slid from the hard overlapping plates of their armor, but sheer momentum knocked them down.

Then a uniform crashing bark of:

“U-S-A! U-S-A!” from the Boiseans.

Hands snapped down to the short broad-bladed stabbing swords hung at their right hips and flipped them out, held angled up to thrust or hack down towards an ankle. They tucked their shoulders into their shields and charged towards the advancing bristle of pikes.

The sound of impact was muffled but enormous when that many armored forms ran into each other, and it went on for seconds before it settled down into a roaring blurr. The Boiseans took the points of the pikes on their shields, shoving with their comrades pushing at their backs or lofting more pila overhead into the mass. Men pushed, grunting and heaving, hacking at the pikepoints and trying to cut them free of the shafts, the swordblades clanging and showering sparks as they struck the long lappets that protected the wood behind the heads. Here and there the Boisean line buckled where three or four pikes pushed against a single shield; more held overarm smashed forward in two-handed stabs into faces and shoulders and chests with all the wielder’s weight behind them. In other spots the Boiseans bashed and shoved and slid their way to closer quarters, swords busy.

And the crossbows shot, and shot, and shot; the rear ranks of the Boiseans threw volley after volley of pila, and Rudi could see light two-wheel wagons coming up behind them and men passing out bundled spears. The artillery on both sides was arching its loads over the heads of the locked scrimmage in front, landing in the rear ranks with splashing fire or the snapping impact of heavy iron.

He nodded grimly, measuring distances with his eyes. The two forces had simply run into each other and were locked like a pair of elk bulls in the mating season. Horns together, muscles rigid-nothing moving, but huge forces balanced in tension threatening to buckle through at any instant.

And this is the most expensive type of fight there is, he thought. Equal forces of good soldiers head-to-head, neither willing to take a step back, hammering away and in spare moments pouring down some water and cursing the idiot who got them into this.

As if to echo the thought, Brigadier Peter Jones rode up. He was in three-quarter armor himself, with the visor of his sallet raised like Rudi’s, looking like a very large billed cap; beneath it his face was lined and grizzled, that of a tough-fibered fit man in his fifties. His command staff were behind him, and a standard-bearer with a flag that showed an orange beaver’s head on brown, its vaguely anthropomorphic face locked in a scowl. Usually Corvallans took a squad of young women in sweaters and short skirts along on campaign, who performed arcane ritual acrobatics and chants before action started; it was some legacy of Oregon State University, a brotherhood of learning which had formed the seed-crystal of survival there. They’d skipped that this time-the girls were cross-trained as nurses or clerks or whatnot, of course, and would be busy anyway.

“Sir. Ah, Your Majesty,” Jones said.

Rudi suppressed an impulse to say, Ah, and it’s still Rudi, Pete.

The man was an old friend of the family; Juniper Mackenzie had met him the day after Rudi was conceived, when he’d been a very junior officer in the newly-founded military of Corvallis, and he’d been a frequent visitor at Dun Juniper all Rudi’s life. But the situation required a certain formality.

Jones went on: “We’re holding them for now. But if they put in further reserves, I’m going to need reinforcements myself. Most of my men are already in the line and it’s too damned early in the day to be fully committed.”

From the look in his tired blue eyes he wasn’t expecting the help he needed; every senior commander knew how stretched they were. There was a certain brute arithmetic to war, all things being equal, and no prize at all for coming in second. Rudi nodded to him and returned his salute; Corvallis used the old American style…like Boise.

Nothing wrong with that. Boise is not the enemy; the CUT and its agents are.

“You’ll have reinforcements,” Rudi said. “I’m stationing the Queen of Angels Commonwealth contingent behind you here, and they’re to be under your command. That should do to plug any holes, and you’ve got the Bearkillers south of you.”

Jones’ face split in a grin of pleasure for a moment. The Commonwealth wasn’t the largest contingent in the motley alliance that made up Montival’s host, but it was high-quality. And it included the Knight-Brothers of Mt. Angel, who were also not numerous but universally respected…or feared.

“I’m glad you can spare them, Your Majesty!” he said.

Rudi held up the crumpled dispatch. “Around ten thousand of Boise’s troops have decided they don’t want any part of this battle and are sittin’ it out,” he said.

Jones swore in amazement, and Rudi raised a cautionary hand: “So are our three thousand Boiseans…but that was by design and the advantage is heavily to us. The sit-down means I can strip that part of our line naked at acceptable risk.”

The Corvallan commander swore again, delightedly and fluently, then:

“Lady Juniper’s Luck! Or High King Artos’, now.”

“It evens the odds, no more. I’ll not take more of your time. Hold them for me, Peter. Just hold them.”

Jones saluted and wheeled his horse about. Rudi cast another glance at the jammed mass below, then over his shoulder at the nearest observation balloon; messages were flickering up and down the line of them. Ignatius closed in at his side as they turned their horses north, along the roadway that paralleled the Montivalan position for most of its length.

“Ah,” he said, grinning. “Now it’s my compatriots, Your Majesty.”

A force was approaching from the east, out of the stop-zones where his all-too-scanty reserves were deployed, the foot marching beneath the banners of their guilds and confraternities. A column of horsemen in full armor led them, visors up but lances in rest and shields on their arms. The gear was much like that used by Association men-at-arms, but colored a plain medium brown, and all the long teardrop shields the same with a black raven and cross-the emblem of the Order of the Shield of St. Benedict. They were singing and riding at a slow walk to keep pace with the infantry and spare their chargers; Rudi recognized the tune as a Christian hymn much used around Yule-“Good King Wenceslas,” he thought-but the words weren’t familiar:

“Praise the Maker all ye Saints

He with glory girt you

He who skies and meadows paints

Fashioned all your virtues

Praise Him peasants, heroes, kings!

Herald of perfection

Brothers, praise Him for He brings

All to resurrection!”

“I like to see men go to a fight in good spirits,” Rudi said. “We’re all going to need spirit like that before the day’s over.”

“I think many in your host have it, Your Majesty,” Ignatius said soberly. “They fight for love-of people and family, a cause close to the heart, a dear familiar place-and that is stronger than hate.”

He signed the air before him with the cross, and the bearded monk leading the approaching force with the banner hanging from the crosspiece of his staff gravely returned it, then smiled like a delighted child.

“They’re all going to need it,” Rudi said. “It’s their battle, more than mine. And they must win it for me, and for us all, down to the lowliest crofter with a pike or most junior squire at his lord’s heel.”