"Good to have you back," Ned said, saluted with his bright hook, then turned his horse and rode away, Elman spurring after him.
"Sam…" Howell held his big charger still, Petersen just mounted beside him. "Don't do anything stupid. We've got ten thousand swords on these hills — we don't need yours."
"And won't have it, if I have the choice."
"I hold you to that," Howell said, "on your honor."
"On my honor."
Sam walked back into his tent, past a smiling Corporal Fass, on guard — a tent, now he was alone in it, no warmer than the evening. 'On my honor,’ he'd said. Certainly the least of his concerns — to strike or be struck at with sharpened steel. It would be... such a relief to have only that to consider, and not his thousands of soldiers here, not the hundreds of thousands of men and women in North Map-Mexico, waiting to hear whether they would live free and at peace — or in a desperate resistance of several generations against the Kipchak tumans.
And would be such a relief, also, not to have to consider Rachel — and those hundreds of thousands more — waiting along the river for him to win their war, or lose it.
Sam sat on a camp-stool, spread Charmian's map on the cot, and bent in yellow lamplight to study neat notes inked at its edges, fine lines drawn curving with hills' slopes and rises.
"Corporal."
"Sir?"
"If they carry up stew, please bring me a bowl."
"Yes, sir. I can go back to the kettles and get it."
"No. But if they bring it up to the lines, I'll have some."
"Yes, sir."
Sam leaned closer, saw the pen's crosshatching of indicated forest thicken to the west, showing awkward country… then much more awkward. And if the Khan did flank to the right, instead, taking the chance of being trapped against the river? The country east was a little more open… bore thinner forest. But the snow had drifted that much deeper there — slow traveling when he'd come that way, and by tomorrow, even more difficult. It didn't seem a likely line of attack, with all their nice maneuvers slowed to lumbering.
Also, the east flank offered no surprise. The army, camped higher, would see the Kipchaks coming miles away, and all the better as they came over snow, in daylight or moonlight.
Charmian's fine map made the Khan's choice for any flanking clear. 'She'll go under,' Howell had said. 'If her people go under, she'll go under with them.'
And so, of course, she would. How old was Charmian? Twenty-eight? No, certainly thirty, at least. There was gray in her hair — as in all their hair. They were all dyed a beginning gray by blunders, however rare, grim enough to stain anything.
... This was a time, if Margaret were here, that she'd nudge the vodka flask out of sight. Wasted effort. There wasn't vodka enough on earth to drown this difficulty.
Did fine Warm-time Caesar, did fine Napoleon or Lee dream of leaving their tents before battle, of walking away into the night, free of any expectations? So their armies and their people and the future would no longer know of them at all, leaving only a fading mystery to their puzzled, aging soldiers.
Howell had done a very good job, settled like the banner's scorpion on several rough hills, claws and stinger poised and ready. But was there another way than flanking to shift this ten-thousand-soldier scorpion, send it scuttling sideways, then back... and back, until the Kipchak boot came finally down?
Assault to the front. Possible, though not Toghrul's style at all — which, as Ned had said, argued for it. And would have made some sense if he still had a whole army, instead of only half. Here — with, probably, neither force withholding reserves — to lose in a frontal assault would be to lose utterly. It seemed unlikely Toghrul would accept that gamble. Seemed unlikely….
Sam folded Charmian's map — really fine paper, imperial stuff — stood, and tucked it into his belt's wide pouch. To arm, or not yet? ... Not yet.
He turned down the lamp's wick, unslung his sword, and lay down on the cot with the weapon beside him. The cot seemed more comfortable than Island's feather bed had been. Probably spoiled for comfort, by soldiering...
Sam dreamed of Rachel, tall, dark-eyed, her father in her face. They were in her solar tower. Sergeant Burke was there with them, sitting reading a copybook, tracing the words with his finger, moving his lips as he read. Sam was explaining to Rachel the difference between the Ancient American Civil War — Red-Badge of Courage — and the wars he'd fought in North Map-Mexico. "In those ancient battles," he said to her, "few screams were heard, because of the noise of tremendous bangs of black powder. Cannon. Muskets. So those were the noises heard during their battles. Very few screams, until the fighting was over."
Rachel agreed it was probably so, but Burke said, "Sir."
Sam said, "What?" both in the dream and waking.
"Sir…." Corporal Fass. "Lady to see you, sir. Told her you were asleep."
"Alright... alright." Sam rolled off the cot, turned the lamp's wick up.
"I've brought stew," the Boston girl said, the shoulders of her blue coat dusted with snow, " — and news. Wasn't that kind?"
"Very kind." Sam took the bowl from her. "Please… sit." Standing to one side of the hanging lamp, he dipped a horn spoon into the steaming Brunswick, took a sip.
Patience settled onto the cot, her scimitar across her lap, and smiled up at him. She seemed as she always seemed, rested, lively, interested. "You don't think I might have poisoned it?"
"I don't care," Sam said, and took another spoonful.
"Poor old Louis, in Map-McAllen, would have wanted me to poison it. Boston would have said, 'Well done.' "
"If the Khan wins, you won't need the poison." The stew was very hot. Some solder must have run from back of the hill, run through the dark with the yoked buckets slopping.
"If the Khan wins," Patience thoughtful, "I do think he will fall in love with me. He can't be used to someone as pretty and clever."
"Probably not." Sam blew on his spoonful. "You said, 'stew — and news.' "
"Yes, and you're the first to hear it. I came to you first of all. A Mailman flew here just a little while ago; he must have hunted the camp like a night-jar to find me — I heard him calling. A really nasty thing; I asked his name, and he said, 'Fuck you.' Webster hates him and tried to bite, but still, he's the first to ever bring me news "
The Brunswick had cooled enough to eat. "And that is?"
"The battle north — on the river ice?"
"Yes. Won, thank Lady Weather."
"And will you thank her that there the Queen was killed? The nasty Mailman brought the note — news down from Baton Rouge by pigeon, then up from Map-McAllen to here."
"… Killed?"
"Yes, killed. Her ship broke, and the Kipchaks swarmed over."
... Then, sitting puzzled on the cot, Patience reached up to take the stew bowl from him, and said, "Weeping.... How does that feel to do?"
CHAPTER 26
As clouds sailed over a setting semi-moon, the regiment called Dear-to-the-Wind filtered through trees and frozen underbrush. Stocky men in fur cloaks, felt trousers, and felt boots, they managed fairly quietly through deep snow, carrying strung bows. The bow-staves were short and curved as yataghan blades were curved, both, some said, to honor that same crescent moon that rode through Great Sky above them.
... Lieutenant Francisco Doyle, always insubordinate, didn't hesitate to lean close to his colonel and whisper in her ear. "Get back out of here, ma'am. Get up the hill."
It was not a suggestion most would have cared to make to Colonel Loomis. Charmian shrugged him away and ignored it. One of the Kipchaks, scouting, stepping shuffling through a drift, was coming close to the evergreen overhang where she and Doyle stood in darkness.
Doyle, really a brave young man, was considering another whisper when his colonel strode suddenly out into the snow, her moon-shadow stretching lean and swift beside her. She flicked her rapier's bright blade to set the startled tribesman's half-drawn bow aside, then thrust him
through the throat.
The man convulsed, dropped his bow, and clawed at the blade's razor edges, arching back and back to get a breath for screaming. But the blade point stayed in him. The colonel, as if dancing, accompanied him as he lurched away, still slicing frantic fingers along the steel.
Their shadows pranced over the snow while the bowman managed a sound at last, a soft squealing that ended as he fell, in liquid fart and stink.
Arrows — one, then another, whistled past into the woods, and Doyle saw hundreds of Kipchaks now coming on foot through the trees downslope, kicking through the snow in ragged ranks. Some shooting as they came, but most with yataghans out, steel flashing in moonlight. There were no war cries, yet, or shouted orders.
A second rank of many more hundreds was emerging from the trees behind them.
Colonel Loomis, wiping her blade, paced across the hillside a little higher, with Doyle hurrying behind, arrows flirting past them through moonlight and shadow. As they went, a thousand of her men and women — waiting buried or half-buried in fallen-branch rambles, in clearing drifts, on snowy slopes — stirred slightly, so she could mark their places as she passed.
At the line's west, anchor end, more than half around the hill, Colonel Loomis stopped and looked back across the moonlit breast of the slope. To Doyle, she seemed — in a shifting wind that blew snow-powder swirling — a copybook witch, so tall, angle-faced, and fierce, her long black hair sailing free… her sword's sharp, slender yard the brightest part of her.
She stood waiting and watching, until soon the first screams were heard with the snap of light crossbows, the harder twang of the tribesmen's weapons. Then, like anticipated music, the clash of steel rang through the night, and Kipchak war horns sounded their deep, bellowing notes.
... Sam spurred Difficult up the main-ridge rise, through wet snowflakes barely visible in the dimness before dawn. His trumpeter, Kenneth, followed, and six horse archers, at Howell's insistence, paced along. Arrows nocked to the strings of their odd longbows, they trotted guard in shifting order beside, before, and behind him. To the west, the uneven voices of battle sounded, softened by falling snow.
Both regiments of heavy cavalry were standing dismounted, each trooper by his horse, in long ghost rows along the ridges, their armor dimly lit to gleaming here and there by wind-blown torches. Two thousand big men — with a number of big women — waited in silence, but for the stamping of impatient chargers.
Sam found Howell, torch-lit, beneath the scorpion banner — and stayed mounted so the people near enough could see him.
"It's slippery, Sam." Howell looked up at him, squinting snowflakes away from his good eye. "Falling footing."
Sam leaned from the saddle to answer. "Footing enough for down-slope charges. If men and horses fall then, they fall into the enemy."
"True."
"Where's Carlo?"
"Down the line."
"He knows to move without your order?"
A nod. "If the Kipchaks get through."
"Right. If the Light Infantry breaks on our left flank, Howell, they'll fall back up these slopes. If that happens, if you see it's happening — "
"Charge as they clear."
"No. If Charmian's people start breaking, start backing up the ridges, you and Carlo are to take both regiments — at the charge — down those slopes and into the Kipchaks. That's my order, and that's what you will do."
"We'd be riding our own people down!"
"Yes, Howell, you would. You'd have to go over them to strike the Kipchaks as soon as possible, as hard as possible, to give Phil time to pull out of the center and march his people west."
"Dear Jesus..."
"Howell, am I right in this — or wrong?"
"... You're right."
"Then be sure Carlo also understands that order."
Howell nodded, and they both listened to the battle sounds, west. No cheering, of course, from their people, only shouted commands, shouts of warning. The Kipchaks were noisier fighters, calling battle cries, war horns sounding their mournful notes.... Still, there was in that dull, shifting roar, a sort of music to commanders, and they heard in it no advantage yet, either way.
"Holding," Howell said.
"And probably will." Sam reached down, shook Howell's hand, and found reassurance in that grinding grip.
... Beside being a painful trotter, and uncertain in response, Difficult almost always lunged out a start — did so now, only touched by the spurs, so Sam had a moment's vision of being dumped into the snow in front of his soldiers, the battle's loss beginning with that comic humiliation. But he found his balance, settled the beast smartly between the ears with the butt of his quirt, and managed to ride along ranks of cavalry... then down the far-western slopes in a reasonable way, with Kenneth following. Three of the horse archers rode before them, three behind.
As if they'd entered a different country deep in the draw, dawn-light darkened almost to night again, and the battle's sound grew louder, so that screams of dying men and women, grunts of effort for savage blows, and officers' shouted orders all became individual under countless strokes of steel on steel.
Sam rode to angle across the hillsides, and soon, high in a rise's deep shadow, he looked down and saw a roiling motion beneath him, as if the dark forest below the hillsides had come alive, writhing like one of the great far-southern serpents, coiling up and up to reach the dawn's light. The noise rose terrific with clashing steel, shouts, the Kipchaks' yelping battle cries. Sam could hear the tribesmen's bowstrings twang — and as if hearing made fact, one of his flanking guards grunted and fell, white fletching at the side of his chest.
Another dismounted to him, as the four still mounted bent their longbows, shooting down into shadow. Kipchak arrows hummed around them, and the escort's sergeant, a man named McGee, rode to crack Difficult across the hindquarters with his bow-stave. The charger leaped forward and bounded across the slope like a deer, Sam only a bundle hanging on.
He'd found nothing more unusual in battle than laughter. On campaign, of course, and even in maneuver under threat. But rarely in the heart of slaughter. Now, Sam was treated to that sound as he saw, in dawn's light, Charmian Loomis — with two officers, and blood down her side — leaning on the staff of a battle pennant and laughing at him amid a flickering sleet of arrows.
"Never saw a man so eager!" she called to him. "Damn near flew down the line!"
Sam wrestled Difficult to a skidding halt, swung down — and resisted temptation to draw and take off the animal's head. McGee'd followed, and Sam tossed him the charger's reins as the other bowmen rode up.
"And what are you doing on the line?" He had to shout. "You're the fucking commander here!"
"Came down to listen to the fighting."
"You get your ass up on the ridge!" And to the officers standing by, both crouching a little as if arrow flights were pressing them down: "Get her out of here!"
Charmian grinned. "Listen...." An arrow passed almost between them, a slight disturbance in the air.
"Your wound — "
"I've had worse." Still smiling, a happy woman in battle. "Listen, something's wrong with the fighting here." Supporting herself a little on her rapier's springing blade, she turned, slightly stiffly, to look back down the slope. The light was good enough, now, for Sam to see clearly the tide of Kipchaks coming against the supple, almost silent formations of Light Infantry all along this hillside and another beyond it. The dismounted tribesmen attacking in a surf of slaughter... then slowly, slowly easing back down the slopes to gather and come again.
Between these advances and withdrawals, men and women fought stranded on the snow in sudden knots, wrestling at knife-point, slashing with swords and yataghans. But Sam saw it was the short Kipchak bows that were hurting his people most. The Light Infantry crossbowmen were overmatched.
"See?" Charmian pointed with her rapier's blade. "We need to keep close!" As if to prove it, an arrow came whisking past her throat, touched he
r long hair like a lover fleeting past. "And we can keep close, and hold them. They hit us and hit us hard — "
"But they're not pushing your people back."
"Right. There's no weight to this attack."
A surprising smacking sound, and the younger officer — Sam hadn't known his name — pitched down into the snow with an arrow in the side of his neck, just beneath his helmet's edge. The officer grunted, kicked at the snow, and died.
"Oh… Bobby." Charmian bent to stroke the dead man's back, then straightened. "They're coming at us as if they meant it — "
" — But with no army coming behind them." Now, listening, Sam could hear a fragility in the Kipchaks' shouts and war cries, their lowing battle horns. Two thousand men, perhaps more, attacking along the slopes. But not with ten thousand coming behind them…. Mistake… mistake. I've made a very bad mistake.
He turned and shouted to his trumpeter. "Kenneth! Ride to the center! Tell Phil Butler they're coming at him after all! — And he's to refuse! Refuse and fall back slowly, in order!"
"Comin' at him... to refuse an' fall back slow, in order."
"Ride! Ride!"
As the trumpeter spurred away, Sam pointed at the bowman sergeant. "McGee — to General Voss and Colonel Flores! The Khan's main attack is to the center! They're to withdraw cavalry formations as his people come in — we'll let them push us back.
Light Infantry will then attack his right flank from here. All cavalry — all cavalry to move east now, into position to attack his left flank as it exposes!"
"Voss an' Flores." The sergeant already reining his horse away. "Comin' at the center — we're lettin' 'em push in so their flanks get bare — then Lights hit his right, Cav goes east, gets set to hit his left!" And he was off, his horse spurning snow across the slope.
As the man rode, Sam gripped Charmian by an arm he hoped unwounded, and tugged her up-hill. "Come on — come on! Get out of this! And put your fucking helmet on!"
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