by Brian Daley
Gil relaxed a bit. “Of course I’m coming,” he said, “Got a more important reason for winning now.”
“So do we both,” the Prince said.
* * * *
They rode out in the morning sun with Reacher at their side and Bonesteel, Dunstan and a host of men behind. There were banners and flags in abundance: the snarling scarlet tiger of Coramonde, Springbuck’s proud stag’s head, Bonesteel’s token, a nine-pointed green star on a field of white, and Reacher’s, a raised fist holding a broken chain, picked out in silver on black. On the breast of Gil MacDonald’s armor, the Lady Duskwind had caused to be put a device for him, a saber like that of the shoulder patch he’d worn in the 32d cavalry.
They were a mixed group. Troops of fleet, light dragoons flanked to either side and spaced along the formation, swift security against a sudden attack. Their riding harness creaked and their bits jingled as they paced the column. Imperceivable in the distance, prowler-cavalry scouted their way.
There were squadrons from the forces of Freegate, independent-looking men with gleaming lances, each with an emblem of his choosing limned on his shield and designs on his armor and his mount’s furnishings as if he were an approved knight, since they did not hold this prerogative to be limited to a designated few in the Free City.
A brigade of staunch foot was included, with two battalions of pikemen much used in war, who wore ghastly death’s heads on their chests and backs, enameled on their byrnies. And the fearsome Kisst-Haa led five of his scaly kin, their fangs and green hides shimmering in the early glow, their eyes like amber lanterns. They’d been frequent visitors to the fields of war and had offered up many enemies on the altars of battle. But although they were loyal to Reacher and went out to fight for the same cause all men there served, the downfall of Yardiff Bey, still men shied away from them, giving wide berth. But they were inured to this, and ignored the unwarranted suspicion.
The Horseblooded rode at the rear of the array, mixing and mingling in the antithesis of rigid military order. But no one doubted their vigor in the use of arms in contention; all had seen them at practice. Their voices were lifted in sweet singing as they came, hair flying behind them, but their scimitars were keen and their spearheads caught the sun and threw it back in fragments. With them was Andre deCourteney, more content to listen to their songs and laughter on the route than to match the discipline of the regular soldiery.
The wearying march across the Keel of Heaven took longer than had the headlong flight out of Erub in the opposite direction. Springbuck, looking at the Wolf-Brother, knew that he must regret that the Kings of Freegate had never fortified their mountain passes. But it had been a matter of pride that the two countries had no wish to put walls, gates and suspicion in the pathway between them.
Just beyond the merestone, after passing once again into Coramonde, they were met by three of the loyalist guerrillas who’d been recruited by the growing underground infrastructure, over which the Prince had, as yet, exerted no direct control. They had a puzzling aspect for him, even as they put themselves at his disposal.
They were common enough, men to turn the soil or fell trees, yet they had the watchful, confident air of frontier sentinels, an aura of new pride. For all that they were tense in the presence of conventional fighting men, Gil knew their look. He wondered if these guerrillas would be willing to lay down their arms and go back to peasant life after the war was over. The Prince planned to use his status as Ku-Mor-Mai to solidify his position of authority in Coramonde, to correct injustices and relieve local tyrannies; but still the American doubted if these men would accept any man’s absolute authority again.
The expedition pushed on its way harder against the news, recently come, of a great corps wending from Earthfast to the Hightower.
They crossed the Blackflood at Barren Ford, and to Gil’s mind came the lines of Walt Whitman: A line in long array where they wind betwixt green islands. They take a serpentine course, their arms flash in the sun—hark to the musical clank.
They’d borne their guidons to within hours’ march of the Hightower when a prowler returned with word that a large armed body was moving toward the Keep and would arrive there at approximately the same time as they.
The Prince stepped up their pace immediately to forced-march speed. Aware that this would be strenuous on his infantry, he still pressed on; arriving late with fresh men would be useless, while coming in time, even if fatigued, might yet save the day.
When the infantry found it difficult to keep up, Springbuck ordered each mounted man to take his turn carrying a footman on the croup of his horse, and it sped their progress well. He dispatched couriers to Freegate with news of this latest turn of events.
They were a short distance from the Hightower when tidings came that the army from Earthfast had settled siege on the Keep. Springbuck left his troops to rest in preparation for the conflict, while he rode forward with Bonesteel, Reacher and Gil to assess the situation.
Skirting the supply and baggage trains in their encampments, the four came to a hill overlooking the Hightower, a fortress rearing blank walls of lusterless, rust-colored stone and a pylon-like central donjon for which it had been named, a stronghold never breeched. Banners of war flew at the ramparts and men in flashing armor stood in the crenels of the hornwork.
Deployed on the field were units of Strongblade’s army. Ominous siege engines, mangonels, catapults, a ram and the framework for a belfrois were off to the rear of the battlefield. Rather than readying for an assault, the besiegers were drawn up for open combat, as if the castle didn’t stand between them and their opponents.
Several furtive countryfolk stood near, come to see the peculiar ritual of war and steal what they could from the dead. The four dismounted; no pickets had been stationed at the rear of the field, since the enemy was confined to the Hightower. Gil sneered, thinking what that would cost the invading army.
The peasants, startled by their arrival, shifted around uneasily but didn’t leave. “Have there been words exchanged here yet?” asked the Prince.
Scowling, not meeting Springbuck’s masked stare, one of them muttered, “Oh, my Lord, it is just some minutes now since a herald and standard-bearer were at the gates of the Hightower, and though we could not make out what it was that they put forth, we know that the Duke has promised to drive them out of his lands, be they as many as the leaves of the trees.”
Bonesteel swore, an unusual lapse in him. “This is insane. The might of the Hightowers is their impregnable fortress. Properly garrisoned, it could carry even against this force. But that stupid walrus Bulf is going to try to throw the invaders out by meeting them outside, or so the enemy commander believes by the disposition of his troops. If that happens, he’ll vanquish Hightower here and now. What can they be thinking of there in the Keep?”
There was no one with an answer. Springbuck gave instructions as to how they’d make their presence felt, even as the long drawbridge slowly lowered over the broad foss. With a prodigious thundering, rank on rank of knights came out to assume formations on the green field. Their metal glittered and their pennons snapped smartly in the breeze.
Caparisoned horses dug impatiently at the ground with shining hooves. The warriors of the Hightower presented a courageous sight but were plainly—fatally—outnumbered. Fewer than one hundred fifty, they were about to go against more than four times their number in horse alone, not counting rows of husky foot, clusters of waiting archers and whatever reserves were held aside.
“Bulf’s pride fits him like a noose, set to haul them all high,” Springbuck said bitterly.
Chapter Twenty-Four
A lost battle is a battle one thinks one has lost.
—Ferdinand Foch, “Principles de Guerre”
A gust of trumpetry sounded from the castle, paired with the booming of a herald.
“By mandate of Bulf Hightower, Duke by inheritance of this Commandery, return to us our Lady and be you gone from these and all his lands,
you who have come here, or suffer the harsh justice of the Hightower.”
There was no counterstatement, only the snorting of the horses and the brush of the restless breeze. A new voice sounded.
“Ye disregard my forewarning,” said the man at the lead of the defender’s ranks, Bulf himself. “Accept ye must my retribution!”
He gestured to his men. Without trumpet or drum, they dropped their visors with a single clank, seemed to hang for a moment as on the brink of an abyss, then stepped their horses off at a walk. That sedate step wasn’t held long, becoming a trot as they readied long lances and got intervals established, spacing themselves and aligning with the superior force facing them. As Bulf’s point came parallel to the ground, those behind dropped in compliance. The entire group broke into a gallop.
Now their foe surged forward, on a course slightly uphill and so to some disadvantage, but in numbers that compensated for this and so at speed.
It was the first time Gil had seen knights of Coramonde in full career. The men from the Hightower resolved themselves into three waves in V formation. While the first two charged straight ahead, the third turned aside and began circling around the high wooded mound that broke into the open ground to the southeast.
This Hightower’s about to get himself whomped, thought Gil.
“I don’t fathom this talk of a Lady,” the Prince was saying. “I warrant that’s what drew Bulf out, though. Unless I miss my guess, that’s a flanking sally that’s peeled from his third rank and circled around. Can’t see from here, but if that avenue isn’t well plugged and waiting, my guessing’s for fools.”
“A desperate move indeed from Hightower,” said Bonesteel.
Gil wondered how anything could stand against these men in iron with their invincible armor, cruel weapons and incredible momentum. Now the enemy launched a second wave, leaving another hundred fifty in reserve. The cavaliers of the Hightower met three times their number with the concussion of an earthquake.
There was clanging and screeching of clashing, tearing metal; lance points met locked shields and horses shrilled. Men and animals fell dead and wounded to sounds of splintering wood. Gil felt as well as heard the terrible collision.
He looked beside him and saw that Bonesteel and Reacher were gone. The time to move had come and nearly gone again.
The ground was littered with men, horses and scraps of armor after the first exchange. Now came the melee, with each man laying about him at his antagonists. Broadswords, maces, axes and martelles-de-fer, the huge war-hammers with their deadly pick heads, all rose and fell and swung in a hurricane of steel. They rained merciless damage on the panoply that had looked so impervious moments before.
Shields were soon battered, uselessly crumpled, and thrown aside so the knights could snatch another weapon to hand in their stead. Helmets crested with badges of the Hightower and other regions were cloven in two or dashed in, their contents destroyed. Whole limbs were severed, still encased in sheared-off armor. More than forty men lay dead or dying from that first impact, many with snapped lances sprouting from their breastplates like lethal flowers.
Through flying dust and whirling steel it was apparent that there was little hope for Bulf, short of relief from the allies.
The defenders rallied around their Duke, who set to with sword and axe and did fighting man’s work with good effect. His men formed a ring of death with him at its leading edge and his standard at its center. He could be seen to peer about anxiously for his flanking sally. Gil let his own eyes rove the field.
He caught Springbuck and pointed to the colorful tent on a rise at the opposite end of the greensward. There, caftan streaming in the wind, hood thrown back to reveal the lurid mask, Ibn-al-Yed stood with arms folded on his chest, watching the extermination of his master’s enemies. Over him flew his scorpion banner, black on crimson.
Then Bonesteel was back from preparations to turn the battle.
The Prince gave rapid orders: the bulk of the Horseblooded to go to Bulf’s aid with Bonesteel and himself, the rest of the Wild Riders to assault the entrenchments and siege machinery, while the Wolf-Brother, with the men of Freegate and Kisst-Haa’s reptile-men, reinforced the flanking body, which must have encountered heavy resistance. The pikemen would keep the enemy from bringing up reserves and the dragoons were to harry those reserves or sweep into the foe’s camp as needed.
But before they did, Gil was to take the squad of prowler-cavalry to capture Ibn-al-Yed before he knew that events were against him.
* * * *
Minutes later, Bulf’s nephew Sordo, Rolph’s son, beleaguered and outnumbered in an ambush to the southeast in hindrance of his flanking sally, was shocked to see tailed and scaly monsters throw themselves into the fray on his side, snatching knights from the saddle, bowling over their horses and chopping men and mounts in two with titanic broadswords. They also caused damage with their spiked and flanged caudal armor. In among them darted a small, muscular man impossible to hit, tearing men from their saddle and silencing them with cestus or clawed glove.
Moments later, grim-faced men in mail fell on the ambushers from the rear and, singing a low, rhythmic chant among themselves, began slaying.
More maneuverable but less protected than the knights, the men of Freegate ran a risk in going against them. Their swords lifted in time with their chant and their eyes were as hungry as those of hunting hawks. They caused death all around, though many of them fell, too. Their wrath wasn’t abated or their thirst for battle slaked until they’d driven such of the ambushers as survived from the field.
With them came Andre deCourteney, proving himself as strong a warrior and difficult to face in arms as any man there. It was known then that Andre was a man to reckon with apart from potent wizardry. This was a thing the men of the allied armies could understand and like him for, as was his intention.
Sordo had collected his wits and sent a wedge against the archers firing at him in support of the trap. A four-to-one match that had promised massacre turned to victory before his eyes.
A few of the enemy, finding their swords useless against reptilian savagery and not wishing to face rows of the swords of Freegate, made their way clear by sheer determination and fear and fled, but these weren’t many, and Sordo found himself thanking the small man and the plump magician, whom he recognized. Then they all hurried in the direction of the main engagement.
* * * *
Bulf, too, was astounded at the sudden turn of battle, Horseblooded were abruptly weaving agile horses through the melee, seizing enemy knights with catch-poles and lariats and dragging them from their mounts. The Wild Riders threw knives, axes, maces, short javelins and other weapons of distance with small effect on the men in plate.
They, too, had to take the risk of closing with the ponderous, powerful knights. Still, they were in numbers and no newcomers to battle on horseback; their swords were busy. They also used their bows, firing the arrows they used in war which, by a trick of carving, whistled and screamed eerily as they flew, but to small effect.
The officer in charge of Ibn-al-Yed’s reserve elements, seeing all of this, decided not to wait to be ordered into combat. He called for a sounding of the war horn and went to his comrades’ assistance, or at least tried to.
The doughty infantry of Bonesteel were forming ranks to prevent that. Kneeling and standing, they established their bristling barrier from one side of the field to the other, and it took both battalions of pikemen to do it.
Ibn-al-Yed’s men charged them now, and many foot would have broken at the sight of them in full career, but these wearing death’s heads on their byrnies were the hardened core of Bonesteel’s own infantry, tempered by many encounters into veterans immovable as fire-blackened tree stumps. Their fifteen-foot pikes wavered not a finger width. This was their profession.
And so it was the knights who broke and drew up short at the points of those waiting polearms, save three foolhardy younger men who plunged to their deaths.
Entrenched engineers and siege artisans, meanwhile, were horrified as a horde of galloping madmen overran their comfortable positions as wolves fly at the fold.
Waving weapons and voicing ululating war cries, leaping their mounts over obstacles, the Horseblooded took a high redoubt in moments. Here, too, they fired their weird, unnerving arrows, and with several charges put the archers to their heels. The ground was presently littered with bodies stabbed or hacked by their sharp points and edges.
Bulf had recognized the Prince’s stag’s head emblem, as Springbuck and Bonesteel fought their way toward him through the surging enemy. The son of Surehand wore no armor, but had a shield with his insignia on it. Even among the gaudy Horseblooded, his Alebowrenian plumes stood out. Handling Fireheel with his knees, he engaged two knights, one after the other, and downed them both. Bar’s edge was a cutting plane that had no trouble negotiating thick plate.
Springbuck turned from his second adversary after sheering through passegarde, pauldron and shoulder, just in time to see Bulf go against the commander of the enemy troops, an accomplished fighter who wore armor of ancient design that he considered a bringer of good luck in war.
Blow for blow they hailed on each other, giving no attention to defense. Over and over they went together until, by dint of belling sword stroke, Hightower pressed his opponent hard to stay ahorse. Bulf hammered his enemy’s blade aside and turned his shield with axe blows, ramming his point home where gorget met helmet.
Blood spurted, and a proud captain became a corpse, his good-luck piece having failed him for the first and last time.
But as Bulf made to turn and find a new match, filled with pride in his victory, another knight came on him from behind and drove his lance into Bulf’s horse with a will.