There were a lot of them. This was a sizable force, twice ours, I estimated. I looked for the archers. That blue-fletched arrow through Turko’s messenger told me what I would see, and I did.
Bowmen of Loh.
There they were, running to form their shooting blocks. Tall, redheaded men, and each with a great Lohvian longbow and a quiver of the shafts fletched with the feathers of the king korf, they were the most renowned of the archers of Paz. Layco Jhansi’s pact with the Racters served him well, for hiring mercenaries of this quality took more than mere money. They demanded certain guarantees before they hired on. Jhansi had clearly given those guarantees; the right to plunder after the victories was only one.
A rapid survey of the situation convinced me that we could win the coming fight if we acted decisively and rapidly. I shinned down to the deck and yelled for Captain Hardolf.
“Majister?”
“Signal the fleet. We are taking off.”
“Do what?” yelped Seg.
“Majister!” bellowed Nath na Kochwold. “My lads are disembarking now, ready for the fight—”
“Your Kerchuri will be shot to pieces, Nath.”
“My chodku and your Valkan Archers will afford cover—”
“We can’t run away,” said Seg. “Turko—”
“Turko arranged to meet us here, on the Plain of Marndor, and sent a messenger to tell us to hurry somewhere else. Clearly, he has been driven back.”
“In that case we blatter this lot and so relieve him.”
The devil of it was, Seg was right. I was growing faint-hearted in these latter days, me, Dray Prescot. Yet the thought of sending this force of fine lads and girls to fight and die repelled me.
In any event, our hands were forced; for Jhansi’s men simply put in a thundering great cavalry charge straight at us. Clearly, they hoped to topple us in this first onslaught and so win outright.
Rushing out from the ships and forming up as we were, Jhansi could do it. He could hit us before we were formed.
“Get some vollers aloft!” I bellowed. “Attack from the air. Break out the flutduins! Bratch!”
I grabbed Nath na Kochwold. I actually gripped his arm.
“Nath! Keep your Kerchuri close. Shields well up. We’ll put you in when their first onslaught is blunted.”
“But—”
“Do it!”
“Quidang!”
Targon the Tapster and Naghan ti Lodkwara came up to report 1ESW formed and ready to go and get stuck in — as they phrased it.
I said, “Good. You may have to bear the brunt at the beginning.”
“As will we, majister!” roared Clardo the Clis, scarred, plug-ugly, his yellow uniform brilliant.
“Aye, majister,” agreed Drill the Eye in his fiery way, squat and with a bowman’s shoulders, his yellow uniform a match for Clardo’s.
Clardo the Clis commanded the churgurs and Drill the Eye the archers of the First Regiment of the Emperor’s Yellow Jackets. They were not to be outdone by their comradely rivals of 1ESW.
Fakal the Oivon, swarthy, was with them, a little in the background as ever. Larghos the Sko-handed, that long-featured hyrpaktun from Gremivoh, was not with us, having gone to command the staff-slingers of 3EYJ.
Marion stepped up, scarlet, ready to burst out with Zair knew what kinds of rhetorical promises.
Quickly, I said, “Marion, I want your girls near me in this fight. See to it.”
She jumped, lost some of her color, said: “Quidang!”
Targon leered a laugh. “I’m not too happy about leaving you with a bunch of lassies—”
Marion, again, started to speak, and Seg butted in.
“I’ll take the Valkan Archers and play on ’em a bit, warm ’em up. Mind you hit ’em good!”
“Oh, aye!”
The way everyone wanted to interpose their bodies between me and the incoming shafts, the charging lance!
“This should prove interesting, Seg. I trust you’ll show these Bowmen of Loh what shafts fletched with the feathers of the Valkan zim korf can do.”
“As Erthyr is my witness.”
Trumpets pealed. Everyone ran off to their posts. Korero closed up at my back and nothing was going to shift him from there. Volodu the Lungs spat and wiped the mouthpiece of his battered lump of a trumpet. Cleitar the Standard shook out my battle flag, the flag fighting men call Old Superb. Ortyg the Tresh lifted the Union Flag of Vallia. Well, we were ready as we would be...
Flutduins lifted away. Their riders glittered in the shafts of light from Zim and Genodras. Vollers swept up into the air. We might be outnumbered two to one; we had air support and that would tip the balance.
If it did not — an exit and a quietus for us all.
What came to be known as the Battle of Marndor thus began in a most messy and ill-disciplined fashion.
Jhansi, too, had an air component. He had hired mercenaries riding fluttrells, those awkward birds with the ridiculous headvane that can so unsettle a flyer upon their backs. These swept up in a cloud to meet our own flyers.
Our soldiers tumbled out of our ships, formed their ranks, slanted their weapons. The vollers swept aloft and turned, keeping formation, lining out to rain fire and destruction down upon the heads of the enemy.
Our aerial cavalry might be airborne and surging forward into action; our ground cavalry was in an altogether different state. We had employed properly equipped vessels to transport the saddle animals, ships with stalls and pens and as much comfort as we could contrive. The gale had thoroughly upset the animals. They were refractory, unwilling to leave their pens, kicking and squealing. Only a few burs’ time in which to quiet down would have made the difference. As it was, we were going to have to fight this battle with precious little ground cavalry.
I was almost in a mind to order the cage-ships aloft again and get them out of the way. But Jiktar Mophrey, commanding the totrix heavies, pleaded for a chance, and so I relented and he went back to his ships cursing and yelling and waving his riding crop in a veritable fury of determination to get into action.
Here, again, even in this fraught moment, I could review the anomalous situation that here in our army, which was so short of animals, my guards possessed two animals each man — and yet that seemed necessary. The guards performed work astride their zorcas which they could not riding nikvoves.
The commanders of the guards had sized up the situation and seen that this day they’d have to fight as infantry. This they could do supremely well. I stood to watch them form and march out, rank on rank, gleaming, magnificent, marching as one.
“That’s where I should be,” I said, fretfully, to Korero.
“Maybe. And maybe a commander should be where he can direct the battle.”
Sharp, Korero, the golden Kildoi. His two massive shields slanted over me, borne indifferently in any of his four hands or his hand tail. If a shaft winged in past that defense, it was more likely to hit Korero than me, and chafe though I might, this was decreed — by Korero the Shield.
“When I blow,” said Volodu, “they’ll hear me better here.”
Grumpily, I agreed. But I made a compact with myself that when the time came, I’d be up there with the lads, charging home. When I did, my small retinue would be in there with me, hollering and whooping with the best.
The first headlong onslaught of Jhansi’s cavalry was checked, as it should have been checked, by our own dustrectium. Then I saw his Bowmen of Loh moving up. They marched solidly, compact, rank on rank. I estimated he had close to five hundred archers there, a full regiment.
Seg had to reduce them to give us the chance to strike back. His Valkan Archers, elated at their success over the charging cavalry, licked their lips and settled down to serious shooting.
The contest was not to be decided by archery alone. From the air our vollers swooped down. Archers shot. Varters twanged and rocks hurtled down. Fire pots spat and sizzled.
Well, as you know I have fought on battlefields t
hat were lost. I have been routed from the field. But, to the honor of Vallia, we had been in the habit of winning our battles recently. This one was going to be closely run.
The massed blocks of Bowmen of Loh did not relish the aerial attack. Many of them shot upwards. Superb archers though they truly are, even Bowmen of Loh have difficulty giving a true account of their prowess against swiftly darting targets swirling bewilderingly above them. When Seg’s Valkan Archers loosed into the blocks, we could all see the gruesome results.
The massed ranks of Bowmen swayed. In only moments they were broken. In a rush, they routed off.
We all cheered, unrecking of the horror going on as men fled in blind panic from that field of blood.
Dismayed though Jhansi must have been at the sight of the flower of his infantry thus summarily dismissed, he did not waver. A second great cavalry charge roared in.
This was treated as harshly as the first.
His aerial cavalry had all been seen off, the fluttrells stumbling against the sky to escape. Now our flutduins came winging back, sharp bright points to inflict more grievous wounds on the forces below.
“He still has his infantry,” said Korero.
“Aye. He must pay well. They stand firmly enough.”
“Not masichieri, I’ll warrant.”
“No. Volodu, do you blow ‘Phalanx Advance’?”
All Volodu did in answer was to put his battered trumpet to his lips and fairly blow a call that pierced shrillingly through all the hubbub.
Instantly the trumpets of the Kerchuri took up the call. Each of the six Jodhris forming the Kerchuri blew the advance, and each of the six Relianches forming a Jodhri echoed that thrilling impulse forward. The phalanx moved. It was not a full Phalanx, a Kerchuri only, yet it shook the ground. The helmets all came down, the shields slanted at the regulation angle. The pikes snouted forward in a bristle of death. The phalanx moved.
On the flanks the Hakkodin with their halberds and two-handed swords guarded any attempt to penetrate the formation. The chodku of archers covered the brumbytes with a sleeting umbrella of shafts.
Alongside the phalanx the heavy infantry, the churgurs, sword and shield men, advanced in their ponderous and yet deceptively swift gait. The whole force advanced.
It was not over yet.
Jhansi had more men than did we. He fought them well, but he could not handle the air.
When the phalanx hit his infantry it was as though a maddened bull burst through a flimsy garden fence.
Splinters of his infantry spun away. The plain was covered with running men throwing away sword and shield, spear and bow. The phalanx stormed after them.
Over the solid files waved the battle flags, and the pike heads gleamed and glittered in the radiance of the suns.
We had lost our spearmen in the gale. We followed up the wreck of Jhansi’s army for a space, and then the recall blew. We had no light infantry, kreutzin, to chase and harry the rout, no cavalry to make sure no further stand was made.
We scarcely needed them.
From the air, from voller and flutduin, the ruin below was harassed, pursued, given no rest.
We could let them get on with that until the Suns of Scorpio sank beneath the horizon.
Now we could get our breath back and take stock. Now would come the grim reckoning.
Deflated, drained, I turned away from that dying scene.
Thus ended the Battle of Marndor.
Chapter fifteen
In the Fletcher’s Tower of the Falnagur
Turko the Khamorro picked me up, twirled me around, and slammed me down on the mat.
He stood back, hands on hips, and laughed hugely.
“You’re getting soft, Dray Prescot! Your muscles are turning to water! Your resolution leaks away like the snows in spring!”
I pushed up, breathing hard, and glared.
“You are right, Turko, damned right. I am grown soft in these latter days. But, my friend—”
And I started after him.
A supreme example of perfection in musculature, Turko. He had a damned handsome face, too, bright and merry, knowing with a way that mocked and cut me down to size. The Khamorros, from the land of Herrell way down south in Havilfar, are famed and feared. It is whispered that they know secrets by which they may break and crush a man’s bones. They so do.
No Khamorro is frightened to go up against a man wielding a weapon. In matters of the martial arts they reign supreme, alongside the Martial Monks of Djanduin and one or two other coteries of people who understand the Disciplines and the way of the hand’s edge. They are supreme in all of Havilfar, with the Martial Monks. I remain convinced from my own personal knowledge that the Disciplines of the Krozairs of Zy give the Krozairs the edge. But very very few folk of Havilfar or of the other eastward lands of the grouping called Paz visit or know of the existence of the inner sea of Turismond, the Eye of the World.
So in the salle of the palace Turko and I tried a few falls. And it was as it usually was — in the end Turko was flat and, glaring up with that mocking laughter in his face, cried out: “Very well, Dray. I bare the throat. Perhaps you are not so decrepit, after all.”
There was no answer to that. So I said, “Let us go up to your Fletcher’s Tower and have a wet. Seg will be waiting.”
We toweled down after standing for long enough under the showers. With robes slung casually about us we left the salle and crossed to the Fletcher’s Tower. This had once been called the Jade Tower before Seg, when he was kov here, renamed it. We were in what Turko called his palace. This was, in truth, the castle-fortress of the Falnagur, which dominated the capital city of Falanriel.
“I own I’m surprised you didn’t give the Fletcher’s Tower a new name, Turko.”
“Names outside Herrelldrin mean little, Dray. And, you will no doubt take the first opportunity to mock me, I sometimes wear a sword—”
I was truly astounded.
“You do what?”
“Oh, aye, I do.”
I shook my head.
“Ice should freeze in a Herrelldrin Hell.”
“Things have changed for me since you made me the Kov of Falinur.”
“For the better, I am convinced, once we’ve got Jhansi off our necks.”
“I wish I’d been with you at that little dust-up. Are you really going to call it the Battle of Marndor?”
“For myself, I wouldn’t bother. But it was a fight. Men were killed. There was bravery. The men deserve it.”
“Medals, you mean?”
“Why not? It was worth a bob to be worn with pride upon the chest.”
“Agreed.”
Turko had, as we suspected, been driven in with his army wing, and had sent to change the meeting place. The results of that were lying in hospital. The trouble was that now that Jhansi, with his confounded pact with the Racters to his north, could hire mercenaries from overseas, he could bring much greater forces to bear. The frontier between Vennar to the west and Falinur to the east ran north and south in a virtually indefensible line. Jhansi could pick his place to hit, hit and run. Turko had been doing very well in clearing out Falinur. Now all that work looked as though it had gone for nothing.
The battlemented fortress of the Falnagur had been taken in a furious onslaught, a coup de main, and now Turko could lord it in his own provincial capital. As we went through into the inner ward and up through narrow winding stairs, I recalled visiting Seg here. Times change, times change. Then Seg’s wife Thelda could do nothing but prate about Queen Lushfymi of Lome. Now Thelda was happily married to Lol Polisto, the old emperor was dead, and Queen Lush was actively trying to marry my son Drak.
As to where Thelda might be now — well, tsleetha-tsleethi, as they say, softly-softly. That information might unsettle Seg. But, no! Of course not. Seg had thought Thelda dead and gone to the Ice Floes of Sicce. That she was alive and happy with Lol Polisto had brought him a kind of peace, for in Milsi Seg had found the perfect partner.
Kapt Erndor joined us as we went into the private snug.
“Hai, Erndor!” I said, shaking hands. “I am right glad to see you.”
“Lahal, strom. We are in a pickle here, as you can see. But, now that you are here—”
“Kov Seg and I bring few regiments.”
“I was not, strom, referring to regiments.”
I’d guessed he wasn’t. But these old Freedom Fighters of Valka, who take such pride in calling me strom instead of majister, they take a lot of beating. They are so hard, so gritty. Kapt Erndor, now, who had fought shoulder to shoulder with me when we cleared out Valka, he could roll between two millstones and grind them to powder.
For all that, Valkans are a lighthearted lot of rascals, ever ready to sing a song and drown a sorrow, to take their jug and wave it in the air as they yodel, as to brandish their swords...
Seg called out: “I’ve poured. It’s a real Jholaix.”
“By Morro the Muscle!” exclaimed Turko. “What it is to be married to a lady of a wine family of Jholaix.”
Seg looked up as we went in. He was just finishing pouring the wine. Milsi and he had brought cases of the superb vintage after their second marriage in Jholaix. That had all gone off well, and Milsi’s family had welcomed Seg. That there might be other reasons for that could be gone into later. Right now, Seg’s and Milsi’s bounty waited to be tasted.
“Superb!” pronounced Erndor, and his grim face cracked into a broad smile.
“And the news is bad,” said Seg. He’d just returned from a private reconnaissance of the lands of which he had once been kov. What he told us made us frown.
“You are only confirming what I already know, Seg.” Turko sipped carefully. “But I am glad you can verify what I say. I know I must sound depressing.”
“Not depressing, Turko,” I said, sharply. “Realistic. You’ve done extraordinarily well up here in Falinur. But for that damned pact—”
“Well, can’t we sabotage that?”
Seg was looking around this room. Once he had lived here with Thelda. I said nothing, could say nothing; I just trusted he was himself.
Turko’s ideas of decoration had changed the room. There was a single bow upon the wall, a single sword, a single spear. Pelts covered much of the masonry. Of pictures, Turko possessed a collection of action poses of people throwing each other about. Of statues he had a few silver ones, most of bronze, and these, too, were of men and women wrestling.
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