The Rose Sea

by S. M. Stirling

  Karah lowered her bow and forced her jaw closed "That… that was a miracle, wasn't it?" she husked.

  Bren handed her his canteen, wiping his own lips on the back of his hand. "That it was," he said quietly. "Without any pikes to stop them, they'd have cut us into dog fodder if they hadn't stopped and milled around. A miracle."

  They looked at each other. There had been far too much of that since they left Derkin… but under the circumstances, it would be unwise to complain.

  "Thank you." That was the lancer commander, riding up and flipping back the three-bar visor of his plumed helmet "You got those donkeysuckers all bunched up for us. Oh—Captain Sir Juwis Keldewll, IInd Olmya Lancers. Your servant, sir."

  "First Captain Sir Bren Morkaarin, XIXth Foot," Bren replied. "What the bloody hell is going on here, Sir Juwis? We just got in—delayed at sea."

  Sweat dripped from the point of the lancer officer's brown beard, and blood splashed his inlaid armor and the war hammer in his hand; any other time he might have resented the tone from a mere infantry officer, but not now.

  "Eat me for an orca if I know," he said, pointing north with the weapon and flicking brains off it at the same time.

  "We were in the middle of a murthering great battle, and winning it, until an hour ago. That should be our left wing, and I was covering it—until we got orders to pursue, and then messed up in this tutti-putti." That was army slang for rough ground; there were villages and groves all about. "The Tseldenes were moving back faster and faster, and then they weren't, if you know what I mean."

  He rose in the stirrups to look past Bren. "Where are the rest of your troops? We could certainly use some infantry right about now."

  "You're looking at them," Bren said. "We had a shipwreck. Now, collect your people and fall in to my left—we'll go straight north. From the looks of things, we'll pick up stragglers enough as we go."

  Something in Bren's face stilled the question the lancer might have asked. He saluted, clanking a gauntlet against breastplate. "Our horses are blown," he warned. "This damned heat."

  They looked it, standing with their noses down and foam dribbling from their mouths and streaking their necks.

  "Water them," Bren said. "Five minutes, no more."

  "Shall we scout?" Karah asked.

  Bren shook his head. "Not now. I want you with me. We'll find out what's ahead soon enough."

  Karah fought back a smile, even then. She cocked an eye at the sixty or so lancers, noting with approval that they seemed ready to lead their horses, and that many were emptying their own canteens into their helmets for the beasts to drink.

  "I wouldn't count on those for much in the way of galloping," she said, pitying the horses. They were warm-blooded-crosses between draught breeds and light saddle types;—and lacked the endurance of true blood mounts.

  "We'll all do what we have to today," Bren said "Forward."

  What a monumental cock-up, Bren thought, as the fugitives halted wheezing in front of his line. He'd rallied hundreds already, running or just scattered and lost.

  He recognized this lot; they were from his own regiment. "Ensign Fulin?"

  The bloodied bandage around her head didn't seem to have affected her sight. "Three, am I glad to see you, sir! When the Sea Mare vanished in that storm, we thought you were all dead."

  "So did I, for a while. Where's the regiment?"

  "The colors are with Lord Colonel Gonstad, and the Father, Mother and Child together don't know where he is," the junior officer said. "He had us going forward at the quickstep, we lost dozens from heatstroke, more than our battle casualties—'til our right was hanging in air and we couldn't see a damned thing. Then the Tseldenes hit us, horse and foot and guns, we were split up by some houses, and I haven't seen him since. Sir."

  "All right," Bren said grimly. "Fall your people in, over there on the right."

  He nodded eastward. There were about three hundred with him now, a block of pikes in the center and musketeers on the flanks, with the lancers and a few odd dragoons covering his left, the westward extremity. He even had a light gun, a six-pounder. It was all very ragged, dribs and drabs, but he thought they'd fight. He knew the six score of the XIXth in front of him would; they raised a tired cheer as they poured by to deploy. From the sounds right ahead, they'd have to fight, and soon.

  The firing rose to a crescendo as the band he'd rallied came around a curve in the road and up to the small manor. It was a lacy openwork building, all arches and slender columns and windows, white stone and tile in the Tseldene style; some nobleman's country seat, surrounded by gardens and greenswards. Furniture and farm wagons barricaded most of the entrances, and from the thick scatter of Tseldenes lying in front of them, the Tykissians inside had been giving a good account of themselves. Their prospects didn't look good, though: the huge hairy shapes of two mammoths loomed over the pomegranate trees and pergolas, and they were dragging big bronze guns on wheels higher than a man—battering pieces, fit to knock down castle walls. All around were the better parts of two regiments of the enemy, say three thousand men; mostly polearms, with some arquebuses, and cavalry. Not well ordered, but they looked full of fight and hungry for blood.

  A party of enemy riders was waiting halfway between the Tseldene positions and the barricaded manor, high officers from the brilliance of their armor. A white cloth drooped from the lance one held. Another party was advancing down the chipped and battered rose-marble steps of the building, carrying a furled flag. Bren recognized the figure in three-quarter armor beside the standard bearer.

  "Scouts, Father Solmin, with me!" he snapped. "Ddrad, Sir Juwis, bring the troops forward at the quickstep, in line."

  He clapped his heels to the mount, suddenly conscious that he was advancing with only three riders at his back—and none of them had been a soldier a month before. Well, it's a parley, he thought. Besides, there weren't all that many he'd rather have with him than those three, come to think of it.

  "Lord Colonel Gonstad," he said, drawing rein in front of the two XIXth officers and the standard bearer, forcing them to stop. Twenty yards still separated the Tykissians from the Tseldene officers. Gonstad didn't have any of his fancy aides with him, only another of the XIXth's captains. "And Captain Tagog."

  "Morkaarin!" Gonstad blurted. "You're dead!" His face turned pale under the peaked helmet.

  "Not quite, sir," Bren said. "Why are you taking the regiment's banner to a parley, my lord?"

  Gonstad shook his head violently, seemed to gather himself. "Ah—ah, as you can see, this position is hopeless."

  Bren looked around. From the smoke, the main action was only a few thousand yards north—and they were going at it hammer-and-tongs. The XIXth seemed to be covering the main army's flank.

  "You're going to surrender?" he asked incredulously. "To Tseldenes?"

  Tagog's face grew bleaker; she was a scarred professional of forty years, discipline bred in her bones. Suddenly Bren knew the truth. Again he saw the faint red mist across his eyes, but this time he didn't hold it back. It swelled through him, stronger than brandy, hotter than the southron sun.

  "With a safe-conduct for yourself, while the troops go to the altar!" he said to the colonel, his voice gone flat and deadly. "You faithless pig."

  Gonstad gestured with his commander's baton. "I order you to silence, Morkaarin," he said. "And consider yourself under arrest."

  "Consider yourself halfway to being wormshit," Bren said, and pulled the wheel-lock pistol from his boot. Gonstad was still gaping when it went off, the muzzle not a foot from his face.

  "Three!" blurted Tagog, wiping at the blood spattered across her face. "I've wanted to do that for years."

  Bren stooped in the saddle, across the kicking body of the ex-colonel. He seized the staff of the regiment's banner; even then, he kissed the fringe reverently before he planted the end of the staff on one boot toe and shook the heavy silk free.

  "Nineteenth!" he roared, spurring out in front of the mano
r and raising his sword. The flag fluttered behind him from the staff in his other hand.

  Soldiers moved in there, hundreds of them, moved and stirred and called his name. He heard more and more taking it up.

  "To me!" he shouted again.

  No sense in sticking in there and waiting for those siege guns to kill you. The Tseldenes had barely started to move as the troops he'd rallied on the way came around the bend in the road and deployed at the run.

  "To me, Nineteenth! For your blood. For the flag and your honor, for the Emperor—for Tykis! Charge!"

  Howling like wolves, they poured out.

  "No," Willek whispered.

  "Yes!" Brigadier Multin said exultantly.

  The crystal before them was cloudy; flickers and bubbles ran through the image, as the priest-acolytes sweated and chanted and threw pinches of powder into the air to fight through the interference of the enemy war-wizards. But it remained, and it was unmistakable.

  The main Tykissian host held its formation, a half-dozen squares, but weakened by the groves and irrigation canals that hindered its interlocking fire. Around the squares the southrons raged in numbers double the most pessimistic estimate; the smoke of battle drifted over the defenders like fog banks, heaviest where the great bronze guns of the enemy mowed hideous paths through the tight-packed ranks of the Imperial infantry. Their lighter fieldpieces replied; arquebus answered musket, and charge after Tseldene charge halted dying before the iron order of the northern pikes. Far to the west, a blue shimmering field of magic marked where the Tseldene Yentror rode his war mammoth and watched the invaders brought to bay and destroyed before his eyes.

  What the crystal showed was the left flank of the Tykissian army. The flank Willek had thought broken beyond recall, when it pursued into the jaws of the Tseldene trap.

  It had rallied; she saw regimental banners in the crystal, serried ranks, Tseldene cavalry turning to meet them and held at pikepoint while measured volleys tore them to shreds. And at the front, the banner of the XIXth Foot. Beneath it, a stocky tow-haired officer riding with a face like iron, and the soldiers cheering him.

  She had seen him before. Seen that image before. In a blood-mirror, above her quarters in Derkin, not a month ago. And Morkaarin was supposed to be dead!

  "Grand Admiral," the brigadier said, pulling at her vambrace. "Grand Admiral, we have to attack now. There's only a few thousand who've rallied, we have to attack now while the enemy are thrown off-balance!"

  "Yes," she said numbly. Remembering the rest of that vision; the executioner's sword rising…

  "Attack. Forward in square of brigades, and the lancers stand by to charge."

  "That's a real retreat this time, by the Three," Bren said Ahead of him the Tseldenes were ravelling away from his advance, caught in the angle of an L between the troops he'd rallied and the massive blocks of the main Tykissian force. Those blocks were moving now, ponderous and sure, crushing the southrons caught between their walls. As he watched, one rank of infantry swung open like a great door and a column of lancers trotted out. They paused to dress their lines and then advanced, walk-trot-canter-gallop and the points came down like a cresting wave, glittering in the harsh sun. Never as steady as northern troops, the enemy infantry gave way before them, crumbling like sugar-sand before the tide. The disciplined Tykissian foot came on to an inhuman hammer of drums, marching over the bodies of the dead, splitting like a stream about the huge abandoned enemy cannon and forming again beyond.

  One last assault headed towards Bren. Trying to split us off from the main force, he decided. A Tseldene general gestured with his feathered wand from a hilltop, and a reserve force came to their feet and loped forward.

  "Advance!" Bren called.

  Drummers and bugle boys passed it down the line; not far away he saw a pikesoldier spit on his palms and lower the long polearm. The pikes flowed forward, a six-deep line of two-foot steel blades on sixteen-foot shafts. Ahead came the Tseldenes, a sea of shouting brown faces and gaudy enamelled armor and broad-bladed spears. Cannon thumped out grapeshot into their ranks, and the measured crash of volleys. There was a scraping metal-on-stone sound as they struck the line of pikes; a brief grunting scrimmage, a wild thrashing where the musketeers fought on the edges of the pike phalanx with sword and clubbed musket.

  It was like a wave smashing on rock, but it was the rock that advanced, howling and stabbing.

  "Press 'em," Bren said "Press 'em hard!"

  The long line of his force swung north and then east, trapping thousands of the enemy against the squares. Packed too tightly to use their weapons; he could see riders in the mass of footmen lashing out with their swords against their own men as they tried to force their way out of the closing trap. Mammoths surged above the crowd, their trunks curled up and trumpeting shrilly. One panicked and bolted. Even then, he found a half-instant to pity those in its path. More and more Tseldenes were streaming out of the narrowing opening and running west, west toward An Tiram. Tykissian cavalry pursued them, cavalry and buckskin-clad figures armed with javelin and tomahawk—tall, swift warriors who yelped and howled as they ran, the levies of Old Tykis.

  "Now we've won?" Karah asked beside him.

  Bren came to himself with a start, as if from a trance. The godlike clarity left him, and he was only a man on a horse, on a field that smelled of gunpowder and blood and shit. He looked around; the front line was trotting away northwestward, leaving only the dead and the groaning, writhing wounded in their wake.

  He looked over at the girl. Her mouth was a grim line as she looked around; he liked her the better for that.

  "The only thing worse than a battle won is a battle lost," he said. She smiled at him. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Amourgin's eyebrow raise; well, he hadn't claimed to have invented it.

  A squadron of dragoons pulled up beside him and the XIXth's banner. The light cavalry's green uniforms were stained and torn, and there was blood on their sabers.

  "You're Sir Morkaarin?" their officer asked, swinging the blade up to salute.

  Bren returned the gesture. "I am."

  "The Grand Admirals—the Grand Constable's—compliments, and please to attend her. At once."

  Bren clamped down on a snarl; he nodded with a jerk. "Ddrad, Ensign Fulin—color party, please."

  "Godsall," Karah blurted, as they rode east through a thinning mist of powder smoke.

  Bodies lay two-deep in places amid the trampled crops and through grove and orchard, thick scatterings elsewhere; the cries of the wounded and the injured horses were a throbbing backdrop to the fading sounds of battle. Claw-wings and vultures circled lower and lower. The ground where the Tykissian squares had stood at bay was still marked by squares… of the fallen, and less regular mounds of bright-clothed southrons fringed every one.

  She gagged a little. "I didn't think there could be this many dead people all in one spot."

  "There shouldn't be," Bren said grimly. "We must have suffered ten, twenty percent losses. Three alone know what the enemy lost."

  "A soldiers' battle," the dragoon commander said tactfully.

  "That's a euphemism for the generals fucked up" Bren answered shortly.

  News of what had happened must have crossed the battlefield swiftly. As they passed the reserves and the units too badly battered to join in the pursuit, more cheers went up as well as helmets on the ends of pikes and muskets and swords. There was an edge of hysteria to the acclaim, as if they knew how close the whole army had come to disaster.

  "Bren! Bren!"

  He raised a hand.

  "Bren! Bren! Bren!"

  It only died down as he approached Willek. Officers smiled at him, including many who'd barely have acknowledged his existence a month ago. Bren hid a cold pleasure; now Willek would have to offer honors and promotion to a man she'd hated enough to have set upon by hired bravos. And the Emperor herself was there, in an open carriage, looking tired and strained.

  Well, I did a soldier's work today, Br
en thought. No more than my deserts, and I'll see that the rest of the XIXth gets what it deserves, too.

  "Grand Admiral," he said, dismounting and bowing. He went briefly to one knee in the Emperor's direction. "Reporting for duty."

  Willek looked strange. White around the mouth and eyes, with two burning spots on her cheeks, left hand clenched hard enough on her sword hilt for the nails to turn red. She began to speak, then swallowed and cleared her throat before trying again.

  "Arrest him."

  Silence fell around the command group and its clustered flags. Willek turned to find a hundred pairs of eyes staring at her incredulously. Bren realized his mouth was open in astonishment, and closed it with an effort of will. He drew himself up and crossed his arms on his chest to keep his hand away from his sword.

  Her lips worked, and she shouted.

  "Arrest him!"

  The captain of her personal guard half-drew his sword. There was a stir from the Life Guards around the Emperor's coach; Bren remembered that that unit had been cut heavily on Willek's orders. Their faces and stance remained still as marble, but there was the slightest tremor in the rigid line of their halberds. In the background the troops were still chanting his name.

  "Lord Grand Admiral," Bren said, pitching his voice to carry without seeming to shout. "If you would arrest me, I demand to know the charge."

  "Desertion. Treason. Captain, you have your orders."

  Whatever had been harrowing Willek seemed to have relaxed its grip; she looked determined now, no more. He met her eyes; whatever her other faults, nobody could say the Grand Admiral was a coward.

  The guard captain did draw his sword. He turned to the row of bodyguards and opened his mouth to bark an order. At the same instant, the Life Guards around the carriage moved—as one, they thumped the butts of their halberds against the roadbed, a sound full of menace.