The Tears of the Sun tc-5

by S. M. Stirling

  They swept to a stop, and before the hooves had stopped moving Ritva come out of the saddle in a showy vault-dismount and went to one knee before him, bowing with hand to heart for a moment, and then extending a dispatch.

  Some of the others snorted a little at the showiness. He didn’t mind; such things kept hearts strong, and battles were won in the heart as much as on the field.

  “Rise, and give me the report verbally, sister,” he said.

  She’d been sent for more than carrying an envelope; not least, to give an account that even the most birth-proud Associate lords would listen to carefully. He handed the document to Mathilda and then finished the sandwich with one last large bite, relishing the salty smoky tang of the cured meat and the sharp onion with it. He did not think he would die this day, but even with the Sword of the Lady there was no such thing as certainty.

  Mathilda opened it and began to read it quickly while Ritva stepped up to the map.

  “The Grand Constable’s rearguard are making a stand here,” she said. “Four Yakima infantry regiments and about three thousand horse, a thousand lancers and the rest light cavalry. The rest of the expeditionary force have broken contact and should be here ”-she tapped the map to the northward, where the Horse Heaven Hills turned higher and sharper before they fell away to the Yakima Valley-“any minute now. They’ve got what’s left of the baggage train, mostly field ambulances and the wounded… the ones who haven’t been wounded in the last hour or two. We burned the rest of the wagons two days ago. A lot of the troops haven’t eaten in twenty-four hours.”

  “Lord Chancellor,” Rudi said.

  Ignatius nodded, turning and giving orders in a low voice. Messengers knelt to listen to him, lean men and a few women in leather, Church couriers, many of them of the Order of the Shield. Clerks were writing as he spoke; the orders were folded, stamped and on their way while Ritva was still speaking.

  “Enemy forces?” Rudi asked.

  “Mostly light cavalry, their vanguard, trying to pin us. About ten thousand men. That’s not counting their casualties, they’ve been pushing it hard and paying the butcher’s bill.”

  Someone whistled softly; ten thousand was a stunning number for the mere lead element. Ritva went on: “But the Hir i Dunedain says there’s at least one brigade of Boise troops only about two hours by bicycle behind them and he strongly suspects more within striking distance.”

  Her finger traced an arc farther east, converging on the force that had been delaying and harassing the advance of the CUT and Boise.

  “Ah,” Rudi said. “Time and force and space. If that rearguard is not pulled out before the enemy are there in force enough to invest it, they are lost.”

  “The Hir i Dunedain thinks you have very little time, Your Majesty.”

  “Ritva Havel, if Alleyne Loring-Larsson says that, I will believe it as I would sky-tall letters of fire, written in Ogham by Lug’s spear. For now they hold, though?”

  “Yes, my liege. The infantry are standing off the horse-archers but the Grand Constable says she doesn’t have enough cavalry left to rock them back on their heels long enough for the infantry to break contact. She had to keep this many to cork the bottle while the rest of her force got away.”

  “A hard choice the Grand Constable had, but she made the right one,” Rudi said. “Best to risk some than lose all.”

  His hand caressed the crystal hilt of the Sword. Time and force and space… maps and symbols moved before his eyes.

  Decision formed. “Matti, you’ll be in charge of the Protector’s Guard. We’ll take all of them. Edain, mount up the High King’s Archers, the lot of them also. And… Viscount Chenoweth.”

  “Your Majesty?”

  “Your menie?”

  The eldest son of Conrad Odell nodded; a squire was behind him with a sheet of paper, but he didn’t need it.

  “One thousand six hundred, and ready to move immediately.”

  “Leave the spearmen; just the lancers and mounted crossbows.”

  “A thousand then, Your Majesty.”

  “Get them here. Fast.”

  He bowed his head, turned, and was in the saddle within three paces. Ignatius was already handing a note to his own aides.

  “The ambulances will be moving by the time you leave, Your Majesty,” he said.

  “Good.” Good man, he thought. “My lords, ladies. I suggest you go prepare a welcome for our guests.”

  Edain was near, leading a horse. It was a mare, seventeen hands of night-black sleekness, deep-chested, arch-necked. She was middle-aged for a horse, especially a warm-blood-but the more closely you looked the less like an ordinary warm-blood of the destrier breed she looked, and even experienced horsemen would have taken a decade or so off her total if they were asked.

  “My lady Epona,” Rudi said to her, blowing into her nose in the kiss of the horse-kind. “Are you ready to dance with me this day?”

  “Sure, and she’d stamp you into mush if you didn’t,” Edain said, grinning at him. “For didn’t she travel all the way to the Sunrise lands with you and back.”

  “Riding in a horsecar on the rails most of the way back,” Rudi said lightly.

  And glad I was of it. The strain was showing on her. Now she looks splendid.

  He swung into the saddle.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  “They’re charging again,” Alleyne Loring said. “Here.”

  Rudi took the heavy binoculars in one hand. Their picture was uncannily sharp, some art of the ancient world that prevented the picture that leapt to his eyes from wobbling and the magnification made little of the near two thousand yards’ distance.

  The Yakima infantry were deployed in a triangular formation on a low swale. It was the best position around, chosen with a good eye for ground; the eastern side was shielded by a steeper section of rising earth, almost like a bank. Rain or no, dust hung over them where hooves and wheels and thousands of hobnailed boots had torn the thin bunchgrass, and he hoped they’d had a chance to fill their water wagons. He could taste the dry papery flavor of it on his lips now, along with the salt of sweat. This was better fighting weather than high summer, though.

  The formation on the rise bristled with pikes; the front four ranks had theirs down into the prepare to receive cavalry position, the front row on one knee and bracing each butt against a boot, the next three at shoulder or chest or waist height, a forest of sharp points. Behind them the next three stood with the weapons upright, and behind them was a double rank with glaives ready to stop any breakthrough.

  It took strength to hold the sixteen-foot weapons like that. And a cold considered courage to spit on your hands and brace the pike and stand under arrows and bolts, closing up the holes as men fell silent or screaming and the earth shook under the charging hooves. The crossbows were interspersed between the blocks of pikes, three deep-prone and kneeling and standing. The silent menace was less showy, but just as real. So was that of the springalds and scorpions that were spaced along the lines.

  “Cavalry in the center for now,” Rudi noted. “Now that is a position I would not care to assault, Alleyne.”

  “They have been, though, Sire.”

  He nodded agreement without taking the binoculars from his eyes. You could see the bodies of men and horses scattered back from each side of the triangle, out several hundred yards but thicker as you approached up to a wavering line at fifty yards or so, then a thinner scattering and a few right under the pike points. Some lying still, others still moving. He could see one man crawling away, legs motionless and a bolt standing in his back.

  War, he thought. Not a pretty sight nor a pretty thing, for all that we dress it.

  The enemy were going to try again, though. He could see them dispersed across miles around; most where in clumps around trains of packhorses.

  “Filling their quivers. Rancher levies from the far interior, I make them for the most part, but not altogether savages.”

  Alleyne nodded. “Sire
. Ah, there they go.”

  The horsemen from over the mountains moved towards the ranks on the hill. It was like watching water spatter on a pane of glass, but running backward so that the clots and streams flowed together, building around banners that bore odd spiky sigils-the brands of their Ranchers-or the rayed sun of the Church Universal and Triumphant, gold on scarlet.

  Rudi looked over his shoulder. The solid block of the Protector’s Guard waited, black armor and bright lance heads, the Lidless Eye on every shield and pennant, five hundred strong. The chivalry of Odell was about as numerous, but in armor bright or dark, each vassal lord with his men. Their lances swayed overhead, a forest of steel. He waved, and three horses trotted up the slope to pull up beside him.

  “Now, my King?” Erard Renfrew said.

  “Not quite yet, my lord Viscount,” Rudi said. “Timing is all. But better to labor to restrain the stallion than prod the mule. Edain, when we go we’re going in straight.”

  The clansman looked a little unhappy, but he couldn’t be at the High King’s side in a horseman’s fight, and the best way he could safeguard Rudi would be to get the fight won, and as quickly as possible.

  Rudi held out his left fist, then extended the little finger on that hand. “You like this, and the Odell crossbowmen with you. Turn the enemy back towards the lances. My lord Alleyne, you and your Rangers will screen our right.”

  The fair man in black nodded. “You’re depending on… the Grand Constable to do the right thing,” he said neutrally.

  Ah, put the feud aside, man. Yes, she wished your Astrid dead these fifteen years and more, but she had no part in her end. The which was like something from her Histories, and just exactly as she would have wished, poor lady.

  “She has so far. Now to your places, all of you.”

  “And mine’s by you,” Mathilda said.

  Their hands touched in their gauntlets. Below the plainsmen were moving to the attack, slowly, which was wise. You saved the speed for when it was needed. Then there was a stir, an eddy, and they were in motion towards the point of the triangle on the hill, spreading around it in a swirling mass, and even across the distance you could hear the hooves.

  And the chorus of yelping war cries, Cut! Cut! Cut!

  The artillery spat at them, bolts and round shot; there were blackened patches on the grass, but no globes of fire went out. Then the little horizontal flicker of the crossbow bolts, and the ripple in the dun mass of the horsemen as each rose in the saddle to draw his bow…

  Mathilda extended a hand. “Huon, lance.”

  The lad was there, and the long ash-wood shaft slapped into her gauntlet.

  “Now,” Rudi said. He slipped his arm into the loops of his shield and drew the Sword.

  Shock ran through the world.

  And over his voice, the high call of the oliphants. Behind him a rising thutter of hooves, as the lancers crested the rise a thousand strong.

  “Morrigu!” he screamed.

  “Artos and Montival!”

  “Very neat timing,” he gasped a half hour later, and forced his breathing to slow.

  The ground beneath them was actually muddy with blood; he’d heard of that in songs, but never seen it before, and the smell was rank and metallic. Men were stabbing downward with their lances to give the mercystroke, mostly to wounded horses. Tiphaine d’Ath reined in across from him, limned by the morning sun; her mount snorted at Epona, then tossed its barded head aside, eyes rolling beyond the brow ridges of the steel peytral that warded its head as the big mare ignored him.

  Rudi raised his voice a little to carry as he leaned over and extended his hand.

  “Well done, and very well done, Grand Constable. I gave you a task, and you did it. Very well done indeed.”

  They gripped forearms for a moment. “The main column, Your Majesty?” she asked. “I had Lord Rigobert in command of it while I held the rear.”

  “Safe and back to our lines by now, eating barley bannock and bean soup by the field kitchens.”

  A very slight sigh. Don’t be overwhelming me with shouts of joy, now, he thought. Another man came up beside her, the commander of the Yakima foot.

  “Brigadier Wheedon, an impressive display of courage and cool discipline from your troops. Get your men on their bicycles and moving right now. Directly west will do, it’s not steep.”

  “My wounded, ah, your lordship High King?”

  “I’ve brought up a column of field ambulances. But waste no time. Abandon any gear that can’t follow quickly; goods we can replace more easily than brave men. Move!”

  “Yessir!” he said, and went off at a run.

  Rudi looked at the tattered ranks of the knights behind the Grand Constable. One man had a helm with half an ostrich-feather plume, the rest sheared away; he recognized the olive face of the Count Palantine of the Eastermark when the visor was raised and the splintered shield’s heraldic symbols: Or, a tree vert with a wolf passant sable, on a tree brun.

  “My lord Count Felipe,” he called. “Well-met. There’s news from Walla Walla via the heliograph net. Your good lady is a notable war-captain; they beat off another assault there from the enemy yesterday, and inflicted heavy loss.”

  The man beamed. Rudi turned to the others. “Colonel Vogeler, Lord Alleyne, Rick, you’ll screen the heavy horse. They’ll be at us before we’re back. Make them bunch and we’ll punch at them again; or if they don’t, we’ll keep withdrawing.”

  Three Bears was grinning beneath his black-and-white war paint; he’d stopped with three strings of scalps, and they dripped onto the hide of his horse.

  “Damned if we didn’t finish off every third one, Strong Raven,” he said.

  “Damned if they won’t come on again anyway,” Rudi said grimly.

  He glanced around for Matti, and his heart lurched when he saw her destrier standing empty-saddled, but then he realized Huon Liu was holding it. She was on foot, and a man knelt before her. It was Conrad’s youngest son.

  “… arise, Sir Ogier!” she finished.

  He did, managing a tired smile. Rudi leaned, and Epona pivoted. Nobody was left on the rise the pikemen had held, nobody but the dead. Far above a glider turned, the near-noon sun flashing from its polished canopy, a brightness among the black wings of the carrion birds.

  And eastward-

  He gasped, and then shook his head as the others looked at him. His hand clasped the hilt of the Sword.

  “He is coming,” he heard himself say. “The Prophet. Sethaz is coming.”

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