The Scourge of God

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

"Right face!" Martin Thurston shouted, as the Portlander knights loomed up again out of the dust to the northward; he'd learned their trumpet calls today. "Hold hard, the fighting Sixth! Prepare to receive cavalry!"

The battalion turned front and snapped its shields up as the Boisean tubae screamed, a motion like the bristling of a hawk's feathers.

"Oooo-rah!" the long guttural shout went up, as the soldiers of the Republic braced for contact. "USA! USA!"

"Haro! Portland! Holy Mary for Portland!" answered them from behind the couched lances and painted shields.

Even then, the war cry irritated him. They were fighting for their respective rulers, not for the putative mother of a hypothetical God. Though he supposed Sandra, the bitch! just didn't compare as a battle shout.

Centurions stalked between the ranks, and the optios in the rear braced their brass-tipped staffs against men's backs, firming the line and giving that little extra sense of solidity in the chaos and whirling terror that were a foot-soldier's view of combat. Pila jutted out between the locked shields, and the first rank knelt to brace the butts against the hard gritty soil.

Seconds later the lances struck, slamming through the hard plywood and sheet-steel with huge crack! sounds, bowling men over or punching through their body armor. Shafts cracked across, pinwheeling up in fragments through the mist of powdered soil. More pila arched forward over the front rank's heads, and men pushed forward to take the place of the fallen, punching at the metal-clad heads of the horses with the bosses and steel-rimmed edges of their great curved shields, stabbing with their swords, trying to swarm the horsemen under now that they were halted. Men and horses alike were armored animals who cursed and struggled and bled and screamed, killed and died, blind with sweat and blood and the dirt churned up by the hooves and boots all the long day, voices croaking with thirst.

The knights' long blades and spiked war-hammers slammed down, and the destriers reared and struck with feet like milling clubs; the ugly crunching sounds when they struck the bodies of men were audible even through the huge scrap-metal-and-riot blur of noise. Here and there a mount went down, or a man, with a pila-point sticking from a joint in the armor or from the horses' vulnerable bellies. Martin watched as a dismounted knight swung his longsword in both hands, and three Boise troopers struck in trained unison, one to block the blade, the other two stabbing with the flickering speed of a shrike snapping its beak forward, probing for the weak points in the armor. Steel sparked on steel, and then the plumed helmet wavered and went down…

The oliphants shrieked again, a higher note than the brass horns the Boise men used, and the men-at-arms backed their horses and turned, cantering out of catapult range and then walking their mounts; infantry couldn't force horsemen to fight if they didn't want to. When they were a thousand yards away they turned and waited; he could see ambulances coming forward for their wounded, and Remounts. Goddamn them, they've still got fresh destriers ready! They must have been breeding and training them ever since the Change; it'd cost a fortune.

Boise's light horse were trying to re-form their tattered screen between his flank and the Portlander lancers. His head swiveled eastward, ahead. There his men had been steadily chewing their way through the Portland Protective Association's infantry, like a saw through hard wood… but they'd had to halt while he refused the flank to take the attack of the heavy horse.

Now the enemy foot were backing, breaking contact, still with a disciplined bristle of spears over the kite-shaped shields; blocks of crossbowmen were between them, retreating by files. The men at the head of each rank of six fired their weapons and then turned and walked backwards to the end of the column, pumping the cocking lever set into the forestocks of their crossbows as they went. The man behind them shot and then followed, reloading as well… Thurston's men crouched behind their heavy shields against the continuous flickering ripple of bolts; the sound was a steady thock-thock-thock; mostly the big shields stopped the short heavy missiles. Mostly, but a steady trickle were falling limp or screaming or staggering backwards towards the medics, and the Portlanders were too far away now for his men to reply with thrown pila.

He looked southward, to the section of the allied line on his left: the pikes of the Pendleton city militia wavered as they advanced, and he suspected that the glaives of the Registered Refugee Regiment at their backs had a good deal to do with the fact that they were still moving forward. A trio of six-pound iron balls blurred into them from the enemy catapults, bouncing forward at knee-height, and a whole six-man file went down screaming, their eighteen-foot weapons collapsing like hay undercut by a mowing machine.

A heavy tung-tung-tung-tung sound came through the screams, as one of his own batteries replied with globes of napalm, the burning fuses drawing black smoke-trails through the air and then blossoming into blurred flowers of yellow gold as they landed and shattered. The pump teams behind the field pieces worked like maniacs to drive water through the armored hoses to the hydraulic jacks built into the frames, and the throwing arms bent back against the resistance of the heavy springs.

The enemy catapults were already moving back, though-he could see their crews trotting beside the wheels of the field pieces. They'd hitched their teams, and were stopping only when the auxiliary pumps attached to the axles had cocked the mechanisms. Then they'd let the trail fall from the limber, slap a bolt or ball into the groove and fire and snatch it up again to make another bound backwards. A four-foot javelin from one of them went over his head with a malignant whirrrt, making him duck involuntarily. There was an appalling wet smack behind him; he turned and saw that the bolt had pinned the body of his dead horse to the ground.

Hooves thudded behind him. The messenger from his cavalry commander had a crudely splinted left arm, and her dark olive skin was muddy with pain and the exhaustion that grooved her face. She saluted smartly, though:

"Sir! Colonel Jacobson reports that he regretfully cannot slow any further charges by the Portlander lances. Sir…" Her voice changed. "Sir, they just have too much weight of metal for us to stop them. Not face-to-face without room to maneuver."

Thurston nodded. "Get that arm seen to, Sergeant Gonzalez," he said. "No return message."

Then he looked up at the sun. It was three o'clock at least…

And I am not going to try to pursue in the dark, with the cavalry we probably have left.

Another pair of horsemen approached…

No, goddammit, it's Estrellita Peters and her spawn, come to waste time I don't have!

They were both in breastplates and helmets, at least, and there were a dozen of their slave-guardsmen around them. The boy was pale but determined, gulping at his first exposure to the atmosphere of a battlefield-a cross between a construction site, an open sewer, and a neglected butcher's shop on a really hot day, seasoned with men sobbing or shrieking or calling for their mommas as their ruins were dragged back to the aid stations. The Bossman's consort was as calm with edged steel whickering through the air as she'd been in her own parlor greeting her guests. At least she wasn't trying to play General

…

"We are forcing them back, Senor Presidente!" she said.

Thurston nodded curtly. And paying far too much of a butcher's bill for it, he thought; the loss of every man hurt, and from his own ever-loyal Sixth doubly.

"We'll hold the field," he said, his voice a grim bark. "And they'll leave your territory. Now, if you'll pardon me-"

The boy spoke, and there was a disturbing flash in his brown eyes: "The Prophet has foretold victory!"

Thurston nodded curtly again. And I could do the same, he thought; for a wonder Estrellita showed some tact, and pulled the boy aside.

Martin went on: "Courier! Get south and find out what's the hell's happening on our left flank! And tell the Corwinite commander"- damned if I'll be polite at this late date! -"that unless he can turn their flank soon, a general pursuit is out of the question."

Then to his signalers: "Sound the advance!"

The tubae brayed like mules in agony, a long sustained note that meant get ready and then three sharp blats. With a unison that shook the earth the battalions stepped off, moving forward at a steady jog-trot, shields up and pila cocked back to throw. Astonishingly they began to sing as well, a raucous marching chant timed to the pounding beat of the advance:

"Yanks to the charge! cried Thurston

The foe begins to yield!

Strike-for hearth and nation

Strike-for the Eagle shield!-"

"By God, with men like these, I'll whip the Earth!" Thurston said, and drew his own blade.

It would come to that for the commanders, before the sun set.

"Plant the swine feathers!" Chuck Barstow Mackenzie rasped.

His voice was hoarse with the dust, raw with shouting. The signal blatted out, and the mass of kilted archers stopped their jog-trot to the rear. Each of them turned, jammed the shovel end of the weapon into the ground, backheeled it to plant it, and then took a few steps backwards as they reached over their shoulders for arrows-they were down to the quivers on their backs now, no time for spares to be brought forward. Westward the dimly seen ridge they'd abandoned suddenly quivered and sparkled; the sun was behind the Clan's warriors now, and it broke off the edged metal of the blades there, and on arrowheads.

"Let the gray geese fly- shoot! "

The yew bows bent and spat; this was close range, barely fifty yards. You could only just see an arrow from a heavy bow as a flicker through the air that close, and it was only a half second later that the first struck. Men and horses went down; and this time they reined around and fled, back below the swell of ground that would put them out of sight. Only a few kept coming towards the Mackenzie line, a handful of them screaming out:

"Cut! Cut! Cut!"

They galloped along the Mackenzie front, lofting arrows towards their foes and dying as picked shots stepped out of the Clan's ranks to take careful aim.

Chuck dismissed them from his mind. The ones who'd sensibly dodged back behind the protection of the ridgeline were the ones he was worried about; there were a lot more of them:

"Dropping shafts!" he shouted, and the bows went up.

Arrows glittered as they arched up and over the rise, discouraging any of the enemy from lingering. Off to the southward men were fighting and dying too-the Warm Springs tribes and the Bearkiller A-listers against the Sword of the Prophet and the Cutter irregulars as they lapped around the flank like a rising tide creeping up a beach, a bit higher with each wave.

"Get ready to-" he began.

The impact was like a punch in the chest, or a blow from a hammer. He grunted and took a step backwards. Then the pain started, and he looked down to see the arrow standing in his chest; it had broken the rivets between two of the little metal plates inside his brigandine, just over the left branch of the Horns that cradled the Crescent Moon.

He grunted again, and this time there was a hot wetness in his mouth when he did; it leaked out between his teeth, and he could feel a gurgling as he sank to his knees and tried to take a breath. The pain got worse, pulsing out in waves from the cold center where the iron had pierced rib and lung. He blinked; Rowan was holding him, and Oak was there, bending over him with a look of astonished fury.

Why's the boy mad at me? he thought for an instant.

Then he forced the black wings back from the corners of his eyes for a second.

Important, he thought.

That was hard. His mind was like a movie in the old days, but one all put together from bits and pieces; Dad holding him up on his shoulders as he came home from his mail route, his mother, children, grandchildren, the look on Judy's face the first time he called the Goddess down to her, the overwhelming need to scream. A long slow breath was the hardest thing he'd ever done, ignoring the blood pouring into his ravaged lung for the sake of air in the good one. Things were beginning to fade, graying around the edges, and he felt himself falling as if the ground beneath his back was a hole into infinity.

"Get-them-out!" he said distinctly, coughing blood across the faces of son and foster son. Then: "Judy-"

Oak Barstow stood, his face contorted like something carved from blood-spattered wood, and his arms went wide as he emptied his lungs in one long wailing shriek. Faces turned towards him, shocked and pale.

"Retreat!" he called. "In good order!"

The archers turned and trotted away, leaving the irregular rank of the swine feathers. The bicycles were near, now; the Clan's force threw their legs over the bars, set feet to pedals and turned northeast, following the dust of the ambulances and stores-wagons as they pumped away in a column three ranks across.

Rowan brought up his father's horse, blinking in astonishment at the face, willing the still form to rise and speak, to give an order, to say something.

"Get going," Oak grated, cuffing him sharply across the back of his helmet, and heaving the body over the saddle with one lift and wrench. "Now!"

That last charge was a mistake, Eric Larsson thought.

Men in the russet-brown armor of the Sword and the patchwork harness of the CUT's Rancher levies swarmed around him. Blades flickered, rippling in the dying sun as the melee boiled around the stalled Bearkiller wedge.

There's too fucking many of them and they do n 't give up for shit.

He smashed the broken stump of his lance over a man's head and swept the backsword out. Images strobed across his vision, targets and threats, everything else blurred. The sword lashed down on the junction of a man's neck and shoulder. Leather armor parted under the steel and the edge drove halfway to the man's breastbone; muscle and gristle locked around it. He wrenched it back with desperate strength and caught a shete on his shield in the same motion, the curved bullhide booming under the stroke as the horses circled and chopped with hooves and teeth, wild-eyed and as battle-mad as their riders. Something else hit his thigh, but the armor stopped it, and he stabbed into a familiar soft heavy resistance and heard an earsplitting shriek.

He wrenched his mount about and let that motion drag the steel free. Time to go… he looked for his signaler.

"Hakkaa Paalle!"

He didn't know if the war-shout of the Bearkillers came from his own throat or someone else's. A blow came at him out of the corner of his eye, and he whipped the shield around desperately. It was a man with a shaven head, leaking blood from a palm-sized graze where his helmet had been knocked off, his yellow goat-beard bound with golden rings and blue eyes glaring in a face inhuman with a rage beyond all bearing. A stylized wolf's head was painted across his lacquered hide breastplate, some Eastern Rancher's sigil.

"Cut!" he screamed, and struck with a war-pick whose haft was gripped in both hands, the horse moving beneath him as if it were part of his own body. "Cut!"

The long steel beak struck Eric's shield; the awkward angle of it hammered his arm back against him, and the spike punched through, through the shield and the armored gauntlet beneath and into flesh. He'd been wounded before, but the pain was enormous, a cold wash of astonishment that paralyzed him while the man wrenched the weapon free and stood in the stirrups for the killing blow. For a confused moment he saw something, a horse and a shield and a shining spear.

St. Michael- he thought. Warrior saint, aid "Hakkaa Paalle!"

This time he knew it wasn't him yelling; all he was capable of shouting right now was Jesus, that hurts! And thankful it wasn't Mother, help!

Bright metal speared across the side of the goat-bearded man's throat from behind; it carried the Outfit's banner, but the shaft below and the head above were an entirely practical lance. That was young Mike Havel Jr.; he recoiled desperately, bringing up the shaft of the banner to block the counterstrike of the war-pick. It worked, a little; the blunt back end of the terrible weapon smashed into the wood and bounced into the mail-shirt on the young man's side.

Eric let the ruined shield slide off his arm, but the jarring sent fresh waves up it and into his gut and balls, like a tooth being drilled but all over his body; the sword slipped from nerveless fingers. Then his own son Billy was there, an arrow drawn to the ear as he galloped past, perfect form with the recurve a single smooth C.

Thunk.

The bodkin punched into the side of the man with the war-pick, so deeply that the gray feathers were all that showed. Billy Larsson brought his horse up in a rearing halt; the beast pivoted like a cow pony despite the weight of an armored rider, and he snaked out the bow to catch at the reins of Eric's horse.

"The Mackenzies are out!" he shouted. "Let's go!"

"Sound retreat!" Eric snarled.

It was necessary. He still didn't like it.

Eric Larsson watched as the bodies were lifted onto the railcar. It was nearly dark, but flames underlit pillars of foul-tasting black smoke with flickering red where pyramids of boxed supplies had been torched to keep them out of enemy hands. A dozen Mackenzies were fitting their bicycles into the slots in the light-alloy car's surfaces, ready to pedal it up to speed, faster than anything a horse could do and far more enduring.

Others were already underway, stretching off towards the northeast along the rusty steel rails until they were moving dots against the flare of sunset. The CORA men and the bulk of the Bearkillers were a column of dust to the southwest, pulling back towards Bend and the passes of the Cascades.

"Mind if I hitch a ride?" Eric said, cradling the mass of bandages that was his left hand against his chest.

Every time he took a step, it was as if invisible cords inside the arm were stretched out and scraped with knives, all the way up his shoulder and into his chest. He knew a flicker of pride at the steadiness of his voice, but he certainly wasn't in any shape to get out of here on horseback.

Or anything else that requires more than lying on my back and whimpering.

The man overseeing the loading looked up; it was Chuck Barstow's foster son Oak. Smears of dried blood across his face looked black in the fading light, leaving his blue eyes like jewels of turquoise set in jet.

"Sure, and you're welcome, a hundred thousand welcomes," he said. "We'd none of us have made it out if you hadn't held them until we broke contact."

Eric waved the others forward; Billy was there, nothing but scrapes and bruises, memories of horror warring with the exhilaration of realizing By God, I'm alive! on his face. He was helping Mike Jr. along; the boy still had the broken shaft and the blood-clotted Bearkiller banner clutched to his chest. Getting onto the railcar without fainting occupied his next few moments. Then he realized whose body he was next to.

"Oh, shit," he said, looking down at Chuck Barstow's still face, relaxed into an inhuman calm beneath the blood; someone had closed his eyes. "I didn't realize-"

"He died well," Oak said, his voice harsh despite the musical lilt. "And he'll have company beyond the Western Gate before the last thread of this is woven!"

Chuck Barstow stood and breathed. For a long moment the sheer wonder of that was enough; and the air was like all the Willamette springs he'd ever loved, and warm scented summer nights amid the fields and the long wistful mornings of Indian Summer and a crisp autumn evening with the leaves blowing yellow about his feet thrown in. He was naked, but the feel of the grass on his bare feet was like a caress, and the forest floor was thick with white fawn lily and blue camas. Douglas fir towered over him, as majestic as redwoods, dropping their deep resinous scent into the still dim air. There was a thrill to it all, an eagerness for the day that he'd lost long ago bit by bit without even noticing it.

Motion drew his eyes. There was a meadow ahead, hints of color and greenness amid a sunlight whose brightness was almost painful. Two figures came out of it, shadows at first, and then a woman and a wolf-the great beast was chest-high on her, and she walked with a hand resting on its ruff. The animal cocked head and ears and dangled a tongue like a red flag across bone-white fangs, its amber eyes amused.

The woman was Judy; as he remembered her from that first meeting, solid in her festival robe and three-colored belt, and beautiful. His own eyes went wide with alarm.

"No," she said, smiling at him, that smile that had made him feel like a boy on his first date for thirty years of marriage. "Time's different here. You came first, but I've been waiting."

He nodded. Somehow that made sense. The wolf made an impatient wurrrff sound and jerked its nose towards the meadow where light shimmered on flowers of gold. Judy extended her hand.

"Breakfast's ready," she said, and grinned as his stomach rumbled. "And Aoife's eager to see you again-you wouldn't believe the argument we had over who got to meet you first. Fortunately Liath talked some sense into her."

He took the infinitely familiar hand and grinned back at her. "Will there be gardens?" he said.

She nodded as she turned to lead him into the brightness.

"There's everything."