“Apelles, you give every appearance of being guilty of what in a priest is an even worse sin than lust. You are ambitious. You wish to rise in the service of God and do your duty to Him, yet you will not do your duty to others who have claims on you. And do not insult me by saying your duty to God comes before all others. To honor Maev and the child she may bear you is also a duty set you by God.”
It was told of Polycarp that in his youth he had been a zealous persecutor of the worshippers of Yatar, able to ferret out any secrets and strip away any lies or disguises.
“My lord,” Apelles said, and to his surprise his voice was steady, “it was the thought of a child that made us swear before Hestia. We neither of us wished Maev’s child to bear the name bastard.”
“Then—she is carrying your child?”
“She was not when we parted.”
“Christ has blessed you, then. There is still time to pray for guidance and perhaps even to find it.”
“Guidance?” Apelles was not feigning bewilderment.
“Toward what you truly wish, for yourself and for Maev.”
“Even if I truly wish to become a highpriest rather than to marry her?”
Polycarp frowned. “Were you listening when I spoke of the sin of ambition in a priest?”
“I was, but I did not hear you say what it is to be ambitious. Is it ambitious to wish to serve God where one may do it best? And if one has it in oneself to make a good highpriest or bishop, does one serve God best in a lower position?”
“It is vanity to think one has that ability.”
“Is it vanity to think that one may have that ability? And if I do, should I deny God any service I may give Him?”
“It is—” began Polycarp. Then the archbishop laughed softly. “Stop, my son. I believe you could talk the Devil into giving up hell without a contract.”
“Forgive me, my lord. I meant no disrespect—”
“I saw none. Yanulf was right. You sometimes do not think before you act, but you will not wittingly harm anyone. It is well to know that the Chancellor of Drantos is a good judge of men.”
“My lord, I am grateful—for your mercy and for Yanulf’s trust in me.”
“God has found good servants in far worse than you. There is one further matter before I dismiss you. Have you made a testament in Maev’s favor?”
“I did not think—”
“Do so before the battle.”
“Yet I have heard that Phrados is no captain. Certainly no match for either Ganton or Publius.”
“God will give us victory over this servant of the Devil, but He does not promise who shall be alive to enjoy it. Find parchment and pen. I will witness what you write.”
Apelles’ hands were steady enough as he wrote out his will, but afterward he felt very ready to pray. He and Polycarp had just knelt when they heard the sound of Roman horns and Tamaerthan drums. A large force of cavalry was moving out.
A messenger dashed in. “My Lord Archbishop! Lord Gengrich’s men and the Rustengans have been sighted. The Tamaerthan Hussars and a cohort of the Fourth are going south to escort them.”
“Yatar and Christ be praised! Let us continue our prayers.”
* * *
Matthias stifled a sneeze. The incense and herbs in the braziers were losing their fight against the smells of the camp. Unwashed humanity. Campfires—too few for such a host, because too many draft animals had died to allow for large wood-gathering parties. Cooking meat. Kitchen middens. And over it all, the reek of rotting human corpses. Eight of them hung in chains on a gibbet high above the camp where all could see them.
Best pay attention to Phrados or I’ll be the ninth.
“—has gone too far north without giving me his allegiance. Therefore he will not give it. Therefore he has betrayed the gods and must die.”
“Let Gengrich die,” shouted the twelve Defenders standing six on either side of Phrados.
“Let Gengrich die,” shouted everyone in the room. “Let Gengrich die. Let—”
“Cease!” shouted a Defender, crashing the butt of his spear against the floor. Phrados rose from his stool and advanced on the men standing before him. Although he was half a head shorter than the least of them, none of them met his eyes as he walked along their line.
“Tyras,” Phrados said, stopping before the tall headman of a southern town whose earthquake-shattered ruins must already be yielding to the forest. “You did not shout as loudly as the others.”
“I feel as strongly as you or they, Prophet.” He licked his lips. “Yet—forgive me—”
“I will not forgive you if you seem to hide your thoughts. I may forgive those thoughts.” Phrados raised a hand; four Defenders raised spears or swords.
Tyras swallowed again, then the words poured out. “Should we not wait to see how Gengrich is received by the other starmen? If they give him only a traitor’s welcome, he may yet be forced to turn to us with all his men.”
“You would stay the smiting of a traitor to the gods?”
“I would not be so quick to condemn the Lord Gengrich as a traitor to gods he was not born to worship, Prophet. I think—”
“You have thought too much, Tyras, and known too little of God’s truth. Gengrich has been condemned. So have you.”
Before Tyras could take another breath, a hand signal brought four of the Defenders around him. Two grasped his hands and held them behind his back, while a third cut his throat. As his body thudded to the floor, the last Defender thrust his spear into Tyras’ chest. The smell of blood joined the other smells in the room.
From first to last, Phrados had not raised his voice above a conversational tone.
“So perish traitors to the gods,” shouted Matthias.
“So perish traitors to the gods,” the others shouted. One or two voices sounded unsteady to Matthias; he did not dare look to see who the waverers might be. When Phrados dismissed them, Matthias walked as steadily as the others, and never looked back.
The Prophet is mad. Tyras was not the first condemned to death on a whim, but he was the first of Phrados’ old followers from the south. Sooner or later we will all die.
Prayer and meditation had once been Matthias’ answer to all doubts, but it had been many days since they did any good.
By the time Matthias passed the scaffolding, Tyras’ body had joined the other eight.
13
Alex Boyd lowered his binoculars. “Here they come. Still think it’s just scouts?”
“We’d be seeing the infantry if the main body’d come up,” Gengrich said.
“Pretty heavy for scouts,” Boyd said. “Some of those patrols we sent out last night, they might have found the infantry but not got a message back.”
“You’re a pessimist, Alex.”
“Yeah. I’m also still alive.”
Exactly what that proved Gengrich wasn’t sure, but he was willing to admit it proved something. All of the mercs who’d started north from Castle Zyphron were still alive, but over two hundred of the local troops and several hundred dependents weren’t. They’d have lost more if the Rustengan infantry hadn’t been pretty much out of the fighting. The Rustengans had medics to spare and space in their wagons for the sick and wounded, and as long as their own people didn’t need it they were generous.
The Rustengans had lived close enough to the Romans to get Roman notions of camp sanitation, which meant no plagues and not too many fevers. We still lost too many, Gengrich thought. Old folks and kids dead of fever. People who lost their draft animals and couldn’t keep up. And we can’t slow down, not with Phrados and his horde dogging us.
They would have lost a lot more if Gengrich hadn’t used ammunition at a prodigal rate. No point in saving it. When we reach Captain Galloway we get new supplies. We don’t reach him, we’re dead.
“More coming,” Boyd said.
“Yeah.” Gengrich lifted his binoculars. Two groups of cavalry, both about eight hundred strong. The leading group was a mob, but t
he second group kept good formation behind blue and silver banners. Most of its lancers wore broad-brimmed helmets and back-and-breasts instead of fur jackets or leather jerkins.
“That second looks like some city’s regulars,” said Boyd.
“Yeah. Alan!”
An arm waved from a stand of scrub oak in the center of the position. The oaks looked natural enough among the native chaparral, but they’d never evolved on this planet. Lord knows how those trees got here. Acorns scattered by the Shalnuksis? Planted by some pig farmer a thousand years ago?
“When that second outfit gets in range, start with the banner-bearers!”
Another wave. MacAllister was perched where he could see without being seen and snipe in all directions, with a hundred rounds to snipe with. That was one-sixth of the remaining ammo and some people weren’t too happy about that, but nuts to that; if they wanted a bigger ammo allowance let ’em learn how to use it like Alan—
“Heads up!” said Boyd. He signaled to the horse-holders to bring their mounts forward. By the time they’d mounted the first outfit was in good shooting range. MacAllister squeezed off six rounds, picking off six horses at intervals in the first line. Gengrich waved his thanks, then signaled to the other mercs. By the time they’d each used up their six, there were more gaps than horses in the first line. The second and third lines bunched up just beyond bowshot. They were ragged enough that you really couldn’t call them lines anymore.
The whole second outfit was still coming on too. The orderly formations were just at the rear of the first mob, and didn’t so much cut off the mob’s retreat as push it forward. By the time the archers had a good target the second outfit had turned the first one into a kind of shield.
“Anybody from that front outfit lives through this, he’s going to be mighty pissed at the guys behind,” Gengrich said.
Boyd nodded agreement. “Yeah, but let’s make sure we’re around to be invited to the party.”
He’s got a point. Gengrich’s archers were no longer very well equipped to take on massed cavalry. The caltrops were long gone, the stakes running short, and today there hadn’t been time to drive them anyway. Better get the archers in with the pike squares. A lot of the archers had started off the march on horseback and turned into infantry when their mounts died. If they got cut to pieces in their first fight as infantry, they wouldn’t have any morale worth mentioning by the time they joined up with the captain.
“First Company, rally on the oaks! Second and Third Company, rally to the pikes on the left and right!” One nice thing about fighting on a medieval planet: most of your men could be in range of your voice when you had to give an order in a hurry. Of course there was a legend of a battle lost because some lord had a cold, but better than busted or jammed radios any day!
The archers were moving now. The enemy didn’t have any horse archers in range, so Gengrich’s archers had it all their way. They could move by platoons and stop to shoot every few yards. Arrows fell into the leading enemy formation. Can’t call it a formation. Just a mob. They’d break if that second outfit wasn’t pushing them on.
“Snipers, take out officers in the second group. Leave that first outfit to the archers,” Gengrich shouted. He heard the orders passed down the line. Banners began to fall. There were still twelve hundred and more horsemen coming at him.
The mercs were coming in toward the oaks. They fired as they ran. Joe Green was fumbling a fresh magazine into place as he moved; had the son of a bitch shot himself dry already? The archers on the left were almost safe behind the pikes; the oaks hid what was going on to the right. More banners were in range now. MacAllister took out three, wham, wham, wham, three shots, and Gengrich and Boyd threw in four rounds apiece before putting their heads down and their spurs in. When he reached his new position among the oak trees he could spare time to see how much time they’d bought.
Maybe enough. The Rustengan infantry had moved into position. The Rustengan militiamen were hungry and they weren’t used to fighting in the open. On the other hand, they’d fight. They were all that stood between their families and Phrados.
MacAllister shot off half a magazine right over Gengrich’s head and suddenly there were a lot fewer banners out front. It didn’t help enough. That first outfit was still taking most of the fire, and they were going down but they weren’t breaking. Maybe it was guts, maybe it was fear of Phrados or the guys behind them. . . .
A couple of hundred men and horses down now; Gengrich tried to shut his eyes and ears against how they looked and sounded. Horses wouldn’t step on corpses or wounded, but there was plenty of bare ground and that second outfit looked to be good riders even if their mounts were a little thin-flanked.
A wave of mounted men from both attacking groups broke over a platoon of archers; Gengrich saw men using their bows like clubs as they went down. Beyond the horsemen he saw the pikes dipping. Arrows soared from inside the pikes.
A second wave, mostly from the second outfit. This time it broke against a platoon of archers helped by star weapons. More arrows flew from the oaks. The southern bow wasn’t the Tamaerthan longbow, but at a hundred yards it would punch through any armor these characters were wearing.
The survivors of the platoon moved toward the oaks. They hadn’t broken; they still had their bows and some of them had stopped to pick up enemy swords and helmets. Gengrich counted them; he’d passed twenty when he saw one carrying an H&K and two more with a limping figure between them.
“Larry!”
Joe Green sprinted out from the trees. He’d covered half the distance to his buddy Larry Brentano when the third wave came up the slope. Green went to one knee, snapped up his rifle, and let fly on full rock and roll. Gengrich, Boyd, and MacAllister slammed rounds into the cavalry as if there was no tomorrow and no shortages.
There were just too many men and horses. Even some of the riderless mounts were part of the mass that poured over Green before it melted away under the arrows and bullets. Gengrich used every obscenity he knew, then gaped as the last few archers picked their way through the shambles, still carrying Brentano.
“I good as tripped over my own feet, Arnie,” he said. “Busted an ankle, twisted my wrist. Did Joe . . . ? Oh hell,” as Gengrich’s expression answered him.
And still more of the blue-bannered bastards! Gengrich cursed the bad luck that had disabled their last onager three days back. The massed cavalry would have been a sweet target for a barrel holding ten pounds of black powder and ten pounds more of scrap iron and small stones.
“Hey, Corp!” shouted MacAllister. “Somebody new’s joined the fight!” From his perch in the tree he was the only one who could see over the heads of the attackers.
“Let ’em come,” Gengrich shouted. “There’s enough party for everybody.” For about one more attack, that is, and after that we’ll be out of bullets and damned low on arrows, and thank God Erika and Helena and Chrissie are back behind the Rustengans and Schultzy’s Diana is looking after them—
“Hey! That’s a Tamaerthan banner! Our friends have arrived!”
Gengrich slung his rifle with steady hands; this was one fight where he’d been too busy to get the shakes. Then he breathed a silent prayer of thanks.
* * *
Gengrich and his men were spectators for the rest of the battle. A few minutes after the Tamaerthans hit the enemy from the rear, a cohort of Romans rode through the Rustengan line and took them in front. After that Gengrich’s men were in more danger of being trampled by their allies’ horses than of being overrun by their enemies.
Gengrich and Boyd watched the Romans mopping up the last of the blue banners.
“They do fight,” Alex Boyd said. “Wonder why?”
“Phrados has those Defender goon squads in their homes?” Gengrich mused.
“Or they got no homes at all. Yeah.”
“Listen,” Gengrich said. “M-16s I’d swear.”
“Schultzy’s got an H&K .308—”
“Yeah. Ca
ptain Galloway sent those troops.” Gengrich wanted to shout.
“Maybe it’s himself.”
“Either way, he cares. We don’t forget that.”
The fight was nearly over, but knots of enemy fought on. They were badly outclassed, caught between Roman legionaries with their horse archery and Rick Galloway-trained Tamaerthans. When the survivors finally broke and rode for their lives, they left more than a thousand behind.
* * *
“Okay, Alex, what’s the butcher’s bill?”
“Green KIA. Brentano will be out of action for a week anyway. Thirty-four locals KIA. Twenty-seven wounded, and three missing.”
“Not as bad as it might be.”
“Nope. And this chap wants to see you.”
Boyd indicated a young Tamaerthan nobleman cantering toward him. If the guy had been astride a choppered Harley and wearing a leather jacket instead of a mail coat, he’d have been a dead ringer for Panzer Klewicki, back on the Southwest Side. Was Panzer still riding, or had he busted his neck?
And did it matter, if you were never going to find out? For a moment Gengrich felt desperately homesick for Earth.
“Lord Gengrich?” The Tamaerthan reined in.
“The same. Who do I have the honor of thanking for his timely arrival?”
“Teuthras, son of Kevin, of Clan Mac Clallan. Coronel of the first Tamaerthan Hussars and cousin to Tylara, Eqetassa of Chelm,” he added.
“We are grateful. I do not doubt that we would have prevailed in the end, but with your help we have smitten our enemies far harder.”
“Indeed. They were a worthy foe. Have all of Phrados’ men fought so well?”
“These were the best. Although I do not know if all of the others had orders to press home their attack.”
“We can talk more of this later. I have orders from the Lord Captain General to welcome your return to his service. He has sent the Lords Bisso and Beazeley with new strength for your star weapons, firepowder bombs, medicines, and strong waters.
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