When Darius was done with the half of the company to the right side of the dirt packed trail leading to the farm, he crossed over and started marching down the left. He made it half a dozen paces before he stopped, fuming as he assessed Falon’s side of the road.
“Suck it in, lard-bottom,” he growled slapping a nearby Swan Warrior on the backside before looking up to give her a cold nod.
Suppressing a surge of pride, Falon carefully returned his nod; the men weren’t the only ones learning how to fight. While they were practicing standing and moving in formation, she had been just as busy learning how to get them into formation and direct them.
Well…between raiding the local farms and exchanging food for script, of course.
Falon jerked out of her considerations to realize her Sergeant was staring at her with barely suppressed impatience.
Falon cleared her throat.
“Forward march,” Falon ordered in a clear and carrying voice.
“You heard the Lieutenant, you lazy dogs,” Darius snarled, even as the men started moving forward, “to the farm!”
The men slowly began to cluster together as they marched forward.
“By the Horns, mind your spacing, Second File!” he yelled turning to his right, “there’s no need to bunch up like you’re so in love with your long-lost neighbors that you need to give them a hug.”
“Sorry, Training Master!” shouted the men of the file, rapidly spacing themselves back out.
Ignoring the winter squash—essentially the only crop not yet harvested yet—being trampled under their feet, Falon peered at the house, barn, and surviving outbuildings. Reluctantly, she decided that whatever his other faults, the farmer had a decent little operation going on here.
Then a man sat up abruptly and started sliding down the roof of the barn, and from almost a hundred yards away it was clear to all that he was giving sound to the hue and cry.
Falon smirked at the thought of taking Gearalt and his poachers unawares.
However, the smile was jerked off her face as raggedly dressed men started running out of the house. Another batch came around from the other side of the barn, spilling pumpkins and winter squash out of their arms as they went.
“Stags!” she could hear the closest ones cried, causing the men in front of her to stir and sending a ripple up and down the line. “It’s the same ones what broke our lines. They’ve found us!”
Falon bolted upright in her saddle and she looked over at Darius with widened eyes. “Ravens!” she exclaimed with disbelief.
“Those are the bandits what stole my seed corn and honey preserve,” shouted the farmer, sounding thirsty for blood. Falon did her best to ignore him before she did something he’d regret.
“Century,” Darius shouted not allowing surprise to slow him down for so much as a single exclamation, like Falon had, “draw your blades or level your spears!”
“Ye mean these really aren’t Gearalt’s band?” one of her men cried with a voice that made it clear he wanted someone to correct him.
“Mind yer steel and keep yer strokes short, sure, and to the point,” Aonghus declared, his last word sounding a lot more like ‘pint’ than ‘point,’ and emphasizing his words with a stream of spittle. After that, he loudly spat out his tobacco plug.
Then men around him chuckled nervously, although a pair of clowns started making jokes about ‘sure strokes’ with their ‘points.’
“’Ware the Swan Banner and form up, churls,” shouted another poorly-dressed Raven almost twice the size of the rest of his companions, carrying a scythe in one hand and a wood chopping axe in the other, “run an thou’re as good as dead! Saw thou not what they did after the battle?! Mind thy neighbor, mind thy neighbor!”
“Sound off readiness by files,” Darius ordered harshly.
“File One at the ready, Sergeant Darius,” a file leader shouted.
“File Three ready,” echoed another.
“File Seven!”
“File Eleven!”
One by one, the men Darius had broken up into Files of between eight and ten warriors each sounded off. Why he had only chosen odd numbers for the files wasn’t exactly clear to the young Lieutenant, as there was no 2nd or 4th or 6th file in their formation.
When the files had finished sounding off, Darius turned to face her across the back of the men.
“All Swans are ready for combat, Lieutenant,” he shouted.
By now, there were fewer than twenty yards separating the two forces. Falon ran a weather eye across the poorly armed, poorly equipped—with ragged clothes and farm equipment turned to use as weapons—and estimated there were only around twenty five to thirty of the Ravens. They were militia, by her guess, and even a girl who had only known war for a short time could be fairly certain that if it walked, talked, and dressed like a poor farmer then it probably was a farmer—drafted by his lord into mandatory militia service, no doubt.
“There’s too many of them!” shrieked a Raven-man fumbling, and dropping his pitchfork before leaning down to scoop it all up.
Falon felt like she should have laughed but her mouth was suddenly too dry. She had woken up that morning certain that she would have to deal with nothing worse than rousting a few farmers, and here she was about to go into battle once again.
“Stand thee, dog,” cried the large man she was taking for their battle leader.
“We’re going to have roast bird tonight—Raven bird,” called out someone in her battle line.
“Yeah, ye should have run back to whatever hovel ye came from,” sneered another.
“Silence in the ranks,” Darius shouted, and then the line in front of him started to bow forward as the men started to act more like hunting dogs with the scent than a group of trained warriors. “Keep the line straight and slow your advance, Ivor, or so help me I don’t care how many of these black birds you kill, it’ll be the knotted rope!”
Sir Orisin came jogging up beside her.
“I am uncertain if I can, in good conscience, raise hand against mine countrymen,” he said, placing a hand on her stirruped heel and speaking in a low voice.
“Your conscience won’t let you fight bandits raiding a farm?” she said with disbelief at the interruption.
The Raven Knight turned red in the face and mumbled something she couldn’t make out.
“Whatever your honor demands,” Falon said irritably waving him back with the wagon. She had what looked like a brewing battle to fight!
Sir Orisin looked unhappy and opened his mouth, but she just waved him away.
“Go, go,” she said turning back toward the Raven Militias, “we can deal with bandits.”
Looking shamed and angry about it, the Knight bowed and withdrew, no longer looking like someone who didn’t want to fight his countrymen.
Falon turned back to the bandits just in time to see a commotion in their ranks
“Pastor Nix,” the large Raven in the front and middle of their line called out, “your undergarments, if you please!”
A large and powerfully built but, yet for all of that, still quite fat woman came running out of the group of warriors, shedding clothes as she went.
Falon merely stared, unable to believe her eyes as all around her, the men in her half of the company snorted and chortled and missed a step as the woman tore off her sweat-stained white undershirt until she was bare as the day she had been born—at least, bare from the waist up.
The woman then handed her shirt to the large man, who promptly put it on the end of his scythe. Lifting his weapon and waving its now shirt-covered top from side to side, Falon was left wondering what pagan craziness had infected these people. Then the Raven Leader spoke.
“Pax. Pax! We want a truce,” he bellowed.
“The only truce we’ll give you is the peace of the grave, you Birdbrain, chicken thieves!” one of Falon’s men shouted. “Raid our farms, will ye, ya bandit?!”
“Silence in the ranks,” Falon snapped in a loud, carryin
g voice as she spurred Cloud Breaker toward wherever the voice was coming from.
“Chicken thieves!” a Raven cried with outrage and started shaking his fist in return. Mindful of her recent orders, men up and down Falon’s battle line started shaking their fists and clanging weapons together, signaling disdain for the Ravens and a readiness to fight as they drowned out the rest of the Raven’s words with a horrible racket.
After Cloud stopped whinnying and prancing she heard the tail end of Darius saying, “—deader than a horseshoe!”
Falon raised her hand once she was behind where she thought a particularly loudmouthed trouble maker was situated.
“Coming through,” she shouted, pushing Cloud Breaker slowly through the line—if the loud mouth was jostled slightly and had to dodge to the side, she really didn’t care. Well, not so long as he wasn’t actually hurt.
“Why should we negotiate anything other than your surrender?” Falon scoffed loudly. “We don’t negotiate with bandits and road raiders.”
Behind her, her men gave an angry growl of approval. By now they were less than twenty yards away and within an easy charge of closing with the enemy.
The Ravens started shouting.
“If it won’t cost us life or limb, that’s on the table,” the Raven Leader shouted so as to be heard over the top of his men. This caused a deathly silence to spread among the ravens as one by one they slowly fell silent.
Falon stared at him in disbelief. “You want to discuss terms?” she could believe her ears.
“Yes! Terms!” the dirty peasant called back, as if he’d just learned a new word and found it very much to his liking.
Falon also took note of his pronounced Old Blood accent as she hesitated before lifting her fist and circling her horse in front of her men.
“Company, halt!” Falon ordered, continuing to hold her clenched fist in the air as she circled her horse one more time before smoothly swinging down for a dismount while Cloud Breaker was still turning. All the mornings and evenings spent sneaking out to ride Phantom her father’s heavy warhorse were paying off with a superior level of horsewomanship that not only didn’t automatically embarrass her, but actually helped reinforce her new guise as a boy, and a Squire.
The men came to a halt and Darius joined her. Orisin the Raven Knight, accompanied by the farmer who owned this place, were not far behind.
“Why have you stopped,” the farmer cried, “you must crush them!”
Falon looked at him coldly, “Must I?” she rebuked him.
The farmer glared at her spitefully but was wise enough to hold his tongue.
“I am a Squire and a Lieutenant, neither of which answer to small-hold famers,” she said stiffly.
The farmer had the good sense to turn pale, before lowering his head pig headedly. “But they’ve robbed me and taken my seed—” he started explosively.
Falon cut him off, placing a hand on the hilt of her imperial-style sword.
“Fair warning,” Falon said levelly, “if the next words out of your mouth involve the words ‘seed’ and ‘corn’ while your wife and daughter are in enemy hands, I’m fully prepared to turn you over to the Ravens before we attack. First, final, and fair warning has just been given.”
The farmer gobbled at her in a strangled voice that produced strange noises but nothing much in the way of identifiable words. Falon had to work hard to suppress a smile, he even sound more like a capon than a cockerel, when making chicken noises. Maybe he really was right about not being related to own daughter, as looking beneath the dirt and seeing a large, purple mark on the left side of his face, she wondered that any woman would willingly take him.
Ugly looks and an uglier disposition, it must be the farm, she decided spitefully. It was the only explanation that fit why a woman would have wed him.
“Any negotiate with yon peasants would doubtless be assisted by the presence of a fellow countryman,” Sir Orisin interrupted, breaking her train of thought.
Falon turned to look at him and saw that he looked quite serious.
Ignoring the Knight, Darius cleared his throat. “The men still need to be blooded and we can take these chicken rustlers in any kind of fight they want to put up,” the Imperial Sergeant said confidently. “I doubt we’d even lose a man, if you put me or the Knight in front of what passes for their leader.”
Falon bit her lip.
“It’s that certain?” she asked just for clarification
“There’s no need to slaughter them,” Sir Orisin said urgently, “they are prepared to surrender!”
“We’ll squash them flat, Lieutenant! Why, the day our corn-fed warrior boys can’t take a bunch of squash rustlers is the day I resign as your Sergeant,” Darius declared in an overly loud voice, causing the men in the battle line now behind them to growl hungrily and start banging their weapons again.
The Ravens groaned and visibly wavered, with only a few cuffs and a lot of yelling by their leader keeping them in line.
Sir Orisin’s eyes shot daggers at the Imperial while, for his part, Darius seemed completely calm and collected as he awaited Falon’s orders.
“They are bandits,” Falon said slowly, the noise behind her only reluctantly slowing down, “thieves, in other words, and possibly worse.”
“An object lesson,” Darius said pointedly, “and they’re only prepared to surrender if we’ll spare their life and limb.”
“It hurts nothing to speak with them,” Sir Orisin spoke urgently, “it allows thou to pay service to the customs of war, and if thou dost deign to spare them thou can always turn thy company on them later, Squire Rankin.”
Falon’s eyes slitted, knowing that he must be pointing out her status as a Squire for a reason. More was required of a gentleman, after all, than from a commoner. Maybe she did need to speak with them after all.
“I don’t know all the requirements of a Kingdom Squire,” Darius cut in, “but the longer we wait, the less of them we’ll bag—or the harder they’ll fight.”
“A true gentleman honors a proper peace flag!” the Raven Knight said hotly.
“A peasant waving around a woman’s undergarment atop his scythe is what you consider ‘proper’ around these parts?” Darius asked with exquisite politeness in his voice, causing Orisin to purple.
“I’ll speak with them,” Falon cut them off.
“Thou has my thanks, Lieutenant,” Orisin said obviously fighting to reign in his temper, “thy justice and mercy are a benefit to thy class and station.”
“I’ll keep the men in line,” Darius shrugged, clearly not looking to argue the matter once the decision had been reached.
“You can’t do this—” screamed the farmer, his words cut off when the Raven Knight’s powerful backhand sent him sprawling.
“Mind thy tongue around thy betters, knave,” Sir Orisin scowled down at the fallen farmer thunderously.
“I only agreed to talk to them,” Falon interrupted, “I might still turn right around and slaughter them in job lots.”
Sir Orisin blinked at her. “That is what I was thanking thee for,” he said, a dim lack of comprehension on his face.
Falon stared at him before shaking it off. The things men—and especially gentlemen—considered proper and important seemed to escape her, especially when it came to war.
“Alright, we’ll talk,” Falon called out.
A wave of relief swept the Raven force, meanwhile behind her a great chorus of boos and jeers sprang up, causing Darius to snarl and quickly return discipline to the ranks.
Handing the reins to the nearest man in line, Falon turned back to face the Ravens. With her back now to the men she took a deep breath and strode out to meet the veritable giant that was the Raven battle leader.
She heard the sound of heavily shod feed following her.
“I thought that having a Knight Raven along might help more than it hurts thy cause,” Sir Orisin explained as he approached.
Falon thought about it and then shrugged
. “This is my first parley,” she said truthfully, “I suppose I can use all the help I can get.”
Sir Orisin nodded and she closed her eyes, taking a deep breath to steel her courage before continuing.
“But remember that there’s only one Officer in command of this War-Band,” she said, trying to sound tough and not liking the way her voice started to squeak towards the end. Fighting was one thing, but acting casual under a belted Knight’s scrutiny and knowing any foul-up could get people who trusted her to lead them killed was more than a little unsettling.
She cleared the knot which had been forming in her throat.
“Of course,” Sir Orisin replied courteously, and she realized he must have mistaken her clearing her throat as some kind of demand for acknowledgement.
Second later they were in the edge of the squash patch and standing right before the overly large peasant.
More than a full head taller than her, Falon figured she gave up at least a foot to the overgrown scythe wielder.
“It’s good to see thee, Sir Knight,” the Raven militiaman said with a respectful nod, “what can I do to stay your hand and halt your fury?”
This time it was Sir Orisin who cleared his throat, embarrassedly, and gestured to her. “Lieutenant Rankin is a Squire of mine acquaintance and the commander of this War Company,” Orisin said.
The large man blinked his eyes several times and looked down at her. He quickly wiped the surprise and disbelief off his face in favor.
“Your Pardon, Lieutenant,” he said humbly, “my men are lost see and all we want is to go home. Tell us what we must do to keep our heads.”
Falon gulped, realizing that this was it. People—men—would live and die by what she said here. This time she wasn’t just following orders, being given no choice but to fight. Now…it was all on her, and the weight of this realization was crushing.
“Granted,” she said as she firmed her jaw. “The owner of this small-hold says you’ve stolen his food and taken his wife and daughter,” Falon said stiffly. This was not the time to go easy just because of pleading words and a hangdog expression, “One wonders what would have happened to them if my forces hadn’t come along,” she paused letting this sink in before sucking in a deep breath, “my much larger, and better trained forces,” she boasted. She wasn’t sure if this was the right thing to do, but the men she had seen always seemed to be boasting about their sword, or horse, or whatever they could measure against each other with a quick glance. It seemed to follow then that Captains and Lieutenants would boast about the quality of their men.
The Painting (Rise of the Witch Guard Book 2) Page 16