The House of the Stag

by Kage Baker

Half an hour later Gard stood with the other captains around the table in the blue pavilion, and the little golden fish seemed to float as the wind gusted against the walls.

  “Here,” said the Duke, pointing at the map. “It’s an easy march; six miles downriver. I want to be there by nightfall, setting up camp. The mountains come close in here, and Penterkar Ridge reaches out to the river to block his way. We’ll come up the ridge from behind and make camp on the height. I mean to engage him here, below, with our backs to the ridge.”

  Gard studied the map. The enemy must come up the plain, following the river, to get to Deliantiba; he must follow the road up over the Penterkar Ridge, and so he must march into a box, closed in on one side by the river and on the other by the descending hills, with an army blocking his path over the ridge.

  “My troops here, forming the center,” said Duke Chrysantine, pushing the counters into place. “Mr. Firechain, your men to my left; Mr. Goldsmith, your men to my right. Sunrise Company form the left flank, here where the hill curves around. We’ll station the artillery on the hillside above you, son.”

  “And the plan is to close the pincer once they’ve been softened up with rocket fire?” said the archduke.

  “If it please the gods. Mr. Bullion, your company form the right flank here, on the riverbank. You’ve done remarkably well with them, but they’re untried and unknown in combat. They need simply stand fast and kill when Sunrise Company drives the enemy toward them.”

  Gard nodded, without comment.

  “Then we mop up the field, walk back up the hill, and eat dinner whilst enjoying the lovely view,” said Pentire in satisfaction.

  “If it please the gods,” said the duke.

  The top of Penterkar Ridge offered a fine view indeed, of the long plain to the west and the battlefield and wide river below. Gard looked out on it all as the Disgraces made their camp, some distance down from the main body of the army.

  “Stuck by the river again,” said Redeye. “They want to make sure we don’t run, eh?”

  “Can you swim?”

  “Not in my bloody armor.” Redeye peered out into the twilight. “I don’t see any campfires out there, nor any dust clouds. So if they arrive tomorrow, they’ll have been marching a long, hot time across that plain. That’s something, anyway.”

  “Are you worried?”

  Redeye spat. “No. That’s a death trap, down there. They can’t outflank us, can they? All they can do is crowd forward into the meat grinder, with the ladies over there raining down bombs on them.” He nodded across at where the artillery division was setting up positions on the hill to the south. “Plus they’ll have the sun in their eyes, if they attack in the morning.”

  “Let’s hope they do, then.”

  “Going to pull out any mage tricks?”

  “I shouldn’t have to, if it’s as easy as all that,” said Gard. “And I’d rather not draw attention to myself. You never know who might be watching.”

  Redeye scowled over his shoulder, in the general direction of the mountain, and made a rude gesture.

  On the morning of the second day they had been at Penterkar, the dust cloud was spotted, and shortly thereafter the glint of the sun on shields and lances. Salting’s army came on up the road.

  The morning mist had burned off the river before they were in clear sight, dissipated into a hot bright haze that no wind freshened. Duke Chrysantine’s army took their positions, sweating, swatting away little flies, and their banners hung limp.

  “Good,” said the duke, pacing before his lines. “They’re marching into the sun. Tell your men, hold position until they come within range. A nice wheezing, panting, limping army they’ll be by then.” He turned to address Gard. “You make certain your boys understand that, eh? No half-breed berserkers running out ahead of time. Unless you can get the werewolf to do some howling and slavering,” the duke added, as an afterthought. “That would be a nice touch.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” said Gard.

  “Good man,” said the duke, and walked away.

  Gard paced back to where the Disgraces were, with their backs to the hill and the river to their right. “We hold position until they’re in range.”

  “Right,” said Redeye, leaning on his spear. “You hear that, Disgraces? Let them wear themselves out coming to us.”

  “I always like that maneuver where some of us go running out and fire off a few spears and then run back,” argued Stedrakh. “There’s always some string of fools who’ll bite on that one. Chase us back into range and get chopped to bits by our side. I’ve never seen it not work.”

  “Orders are, hold position,” said Redeye. “And we’ll obey orders.”

  Gard surveyed the boys. They were pale, watching the enemy advance.

  Redeye glanced back at them. “Look at them, sweating buckets out there. I’m looking forward to helping myself to some of that fancy gear, though, I can tell you that. Cheller and Dalbeck know what I’m talking about, don’t you, lads?”

  “Yes, sir, Sergeant,” said Dalbeck, trying to sound bold and confident. “Looting’s the best part. We strip the bodies and sack the baggage train. Everybody gets rich!”

  “Or at least better off,” said Arkholoth. “Hallock, Nyren, you make sure to grab yourself a good helmet each. Never know what you’ll find on a dead man. It’s a right treasure hunt.”

  “And remember!” Cheller held up the tail of the banner and spread it out. “Remember this place. Remember what we really are. Don’t be afraid of anything. We’re brothers!”

  Bettimer glanced at the banner and looked away, trembling. Gard watched him. The boy settled his gear about him, took a tight grip on his spear, and fixed his gaze on the advancing enemy.

  The banners of Skalkin Salting were red, bearing on them the image of a golden ship. The armies of Salting were well armed, bearing a front line of identical shields and lance tips that glittered in the sunlight. Gard, following Bettimer’s gaze, looked on them and felt uneasy. The shields were like an advancing wall, no random collection of mismatched bucklers.

  He went out of himself, soared up, saw the whole of the advancing army, and was relieved. The enemy forces were smaller, only perhaps two-thirds of the troops Chrysantine had assembled. Over on the hill above Sunrise Company, the women were readying their charges, and as Gard watched one girl set the butt of her mortar’s lance into the earth, braced it there, and loaded in the rocket. He saw the spark—

  Fhut, and with a hiss the rocket soared up, trailing its plume of smoke, and dropped toward the advancing line of men. It burst, scattering its load of shot and hot shards just short of the line; the shields went up and fended off the shrapnel, and an officer screamed for the men to stop.

  The line stopped. Someone in Sunrise Company fired an arrow. It arched and fell by the smoldering debris of the rocket. The enemy remained where they were, just out of range.

  “Was that supposed to be a warning shot?” Redeye squinted up at the artillery positions.

  “What are they going to do now?” said Bettimer in a shaky voice. No one answered him, but in a moment it became plain what the enemy intended. One of their officers shouted a command. In perfect unison the ranks sat down behind their shields, each in the rectangle of shade narrowly provided. They pulled out their canteens and drank, put the canteens away, and relaxed.

  Redeye guffawed in disbelief. “That’s balls for you!” All across the duke’s lines, the same thing was being said, in greater or lesser degrees of obscenity, with some shouts of protest too. Gard squinted up at the sun, his uneasiness returning. The enemy was resting now, contented in the shade, while his men stood sweating under the sun.

  “I could run out there and nail a couple of them,” said Stedrakh. “They’re sitting down!”

  “We hold our position,” said Gard. Thrang held up his little round buckler, making a tiny circle of shade for himself, and glared at Gard.

  Sunrise Company began to jeer, and the taunting swept acro
ss and the other divisions took it up, a roar of insults, invective like a wave boiling out into the pitiless sunlight. The enemy sat placidly, ignoring them. After a half hour or so Chrysantine’s men had shouted their throats raw. The sun rose higher. Flies swarmed and bit.

  As the shadows grew shorter, Salting’s troops merely tilted their shields.

  “The sun’s not going to be in their eyes when they charge now, is it?” said Bettimer sadly.

  “They can’t keep this up all day,” said Cheller.

  “If they do, the sun’ll be in our eyes by the time they move their asses,” said Toktar.

  “We have to do something!” said Dalbeck.

  “We will hold our position,” said Gard.

  “We will hold because you ordered it,” said Grattur.

  “Not because some red fool orders it,” said Engrattur.

  The wind shifted. It blew cool across the river; the white line of haze on the horizon deepened and perhaps rolled a little closer. The sun passed its zenith and began its descent.

  In the end, Sunrise Company broke first, with a screaming charge leading the left flank out, and Gard groaned and could hear the groans coming from the older fighters. “Flaming little hotheaded idiot,” muttered Redeye, but the majority of Chrysantine’s men cheered, desperate to join battle at last.

  The cheering did not last long. Salting’s men were on their feet in an instant, big shields up, and they deflected the flight of spears and cast their own. Men dropped in Sunrise Company, and then the armies were locked together, swords out, fighting hand to hand but still mostly out of range of the artillery. Gard heard the duke roaring orders, and a detachment of archers ran forward and sent flight after flight off at Salting’s troops. The rear guard weathered the rain of arrows with their shields up, taking little damage.

  “Messenger!” cried Dalbeck, for a runner in Chrysantine’s livery was struggling along behind Goldsmith’s company lines, screaming, “Hold! Hold! Duke says hold! Pincer!”

  “Too fucking late for that,” said Redeye, but across the field they could see Firechain’s platoons racing forward to fill the position Sunrise Company had vacated.

  Before ever they got there, the shield wall parted. From the midst of Salting’s forces a surge broke through, armored men running with their shields up, across and around the remnants of Sunrise Company, only the outer edges engaging with swords to cut a way through, as the main body struck straight uphill for the artillery. The women let off a barrage of rockets into their faces, causing a horrendous moment of carnage in the front line of the oncoming men; but those behind them kept coming up, over the bodies of the slain.

  Firechain’s men started uphill after them, but, again, too late. The enemy took the artillery positions. Gard winced at the screaming as the women died up there.

  There was no holding now. The duke’s forces came forward in a mass, and Goldsmith’s company came too, and they collided in their haste to get to where the remnants of Sunrise Company were being hacked into yet bloodier shreds. Peering through the dust, Gard saw the red banner raised on the hill above the artillery, and saw the rockets being trained on the duke’s center.

  “That’s done it,” said Redeye, drawing his sword. “Well, this was a good body.”

  “Little brother will get us out of this,” said Grattur.

  “He’s clever that way,” said Engrattur.

  “Remember!” Cheller waved his banner desperately. “Remember where we’re going! We’ll all meet there!”

  Gard glanced over his shoulder at Bettimer, who had drawn his sword. He was weeping, praying to the gods of the Children of the Sun. “Can you swim?” Gard demanded of him. “What?”

  “Can you swim?”

  “Yes—”

  “Throw off your coat and helmet,” said Gard, pulling his silver amulet up through his breastplate. “Get across the river. Run to Deliantiba and tell them what’s happening here.”

  The boy skinned out of his armor. Gard took off the amulet and stood in his true form, and a moan of approval went up from the Disgraces. He handed the amulet to Bettimer, who put it on wonderingly and stood as like any Child of the Sun in appearance as might be.

  “You have your life. Go and live it, if you can,” said Gard. He turned, hearing behind him the splash as Bettimer slipped away into the river. Redeye tore off his amulet too, and Arkholoth and Stedrakh followed his example.

  “Let them fear us now!” said Grattur.

  “Hotheads, we are coming to eat your livers!” said Engrattur.

  “Kill as many as you can,” said Gard, drawing his sword. And then the duke’s trumpets sounded a retreat.

  Gard peered through the smoke and flame, unbelieving, and saw men in the duke’s livery scrambling back, up toward Penterkar Ridge. Goldsmith’s men were following them. The Disgraces were about to be cut off.

  “Fuck. Retreat!” said Redeye, and Gard led them sidelong, running back down the right side of the field toward the ridge. The oncoming tide of the enemy caught them two-thirds of the way there.

  They turned as one man and stood. Gard snarled, Grattur and Engrattur on either side of him bared their teeth and roared, and the enemy who faced them drew back in astonishment. Gard went out of himself and began to kill. It was an ecstasy.

  At some point he found himself on the hill in the ruin of the camps, with an arrow in his breastplate. It hadn’t penetrated far enough to wound much, but it was scratching him and it hurt. He pulled it out and looked around. There was no sign of the starry banner; the young boys had died like mayflies in the climb up the hill, all but Dalbeck, who was streaming blood but still fighting. Grattur had lost a hand and was clutching at the stump, as Engrattur stood over him, holding a swordsman at bay with a spear.

  Hearing growling and a wet screaming to his left, Gard turned and saw Thrang with his teeth in a soldier’s throat. Gard ran forward, engaged and beheaded Engrattur’s man, and shouted, “Run. Get away up the ridge. Enough of us have died for these fools.”

  “We’ll stay with you,” said Grattur, weeping.

  “I said run!”

  “Good thinking,” said Redeye, appearing out of nowhere and crouching to throw a twist of cord around Grattur’s stump of a wrist. “Come on, lads.”

  “Run!” Gard shouted to Dalbeck, and the boy turned to obey, just as a rocket came sailing out of the smoke and burst in front of him. It blew away much of his face and he dropped on his back, trying to scream, but what was left of his mouth filled with blood and he only made choking noises. Gard ended it quickly for him and looked around. Thrang had killed his man but two more were advancing on him, and he was crouched low, growling, defending—his tent, where he kept the celadon cup.

  Gard bounded toward Thrang and killed the two men, overhand and backhand, and sliced open the roof of the tent. He reached in, grabbed the sack with the cup, and threw it to the old demon. “Get out of here!” he shouted, and felt something strike his helmet. It dropped him to his knees. Everything went green.

  Someone had grabbed him, he was being pulled along stumbling, a claw was raking his arm. He was between Stedrakh and Engrattur. They ran straight into a knot of the enemy trying to cut off their escape, and Gard roused himself enough to grab an enemy’s sword and cut him down with it. He heard Engrattur cry out in pain to one side of him. Stedrakh was on the other side, raking a way through with his claw. Arkholoth sprinted past them, ramming a spear through someone else who popped up to block their retreat, but he took three arrows in his back, all at once. He staggered but kept running.

  Another moment of clearheadedness: their feet were tangling in something blue. Blue, with little golden fish. Duke Chrysantine’s tent fabric. Gard fell and heard the arrow before he felt it go through his hand. He found his feet and wrenched the hand free, with the arrow still protruding from it. Redeye was beside him, snapping the shaft and pulling it out. Redeye grunted as an arrow creased his cheek, but pulled Gard after him into the roiling smoke.

&nbs
p; It must have been a long while later. They were in the bottom of a valley, crouched in a thicket of willows along a streambed. Someone was whimpering. The sky was gray, it was getting cold. Fog sat right down on the mountaintops, erasing the upper half of the world. Someone was holding a split helmet in front of him.

  “… lucky to be alive,” Stedrakh was saying. “Your skull must be made of stone.”

  Gard put up his hand in wonder—he had a bandage tied around it, a blue one with gold fish—and felt the back of his head. A long, stinging line ran down his scalp.

  “… like fucking Andib the Axeman. How’s Arkholoth?”

  “How are you, Arkholoth?”

  Arkholoth was murmuring to himself. He looked up at them in surprise. “My boys went away,” he said indistinctly.

  “So they did,” Redeye told him.

  “Where’s Thrang?”

  “Haven’t seen him.”

  Gard pulled himself upright and attempted to speak, but his mouth seemed glued shut. He leaned over to the creek and cupped his palm in the water, and managed to get enough to swill out his mouth. Someone dipped up a helmet and held it for him. He looked up at Engrattur, who was holding a wad of banner to his left eye.

  “Thank you,” Gard said, and drank. He leaned back against a willow trunk and watched idly as Redeye and Stedrakh moved back and forth, tearing up more bits of banner to bind wounds.

  “… need to move on soon, because we’re not far enough away.”

  “What I say is, we’d be better off going back and surrendering. We might spend a few weeks in a prison, but all we have to do is swear to serve this Salting bastard. That’s how it works. They never like to waste mercenaries, if they can use them,” said Stedrakh. “And we’d be fed and get our wounds seen to.”

  Arkholoth slumped where he sat. Gard watched the green light spiraling forth, floating up against the pale sky.

  “… wouldn’t trust those bastards any farther than I could spit,” Redeye was saying.

  “We should ask him.” That was Grattur.

  Redeye came close and leaned down to look into Gard’s eyes. He raised his voice a little when he spoke. “What do you think, sir? Should we go back and surrender?”