by David Weber
Now, as awareness flowed back into him, he knew that they would face the reverse of the same ordeal, but he didn't have to do that yet, and so he lay there a moment longer, allowing his newly awakened senses to report back to him. The air about him was chill, much closer to the cool, almost cold temperatures the demon-jester preferred than to the temperature at which the humans' quarters were normally kept. He shivered slightly, but the nip of the chill was insufficient to pierce the sensation of well-being and rest which suffused him. It was as if the sense of vigor and health the cleansing vapor always left in its wake had been doubled and redoubled while he slept. As if he could leap tall fortress walls in full armor or fly like the storm winds of Heaven itself.
He inhaled deeply, savoring the sensation of pressure and strength in his chest, then sat up smoothly in his "coffin" (the Physician had called it a "stasis bed," but it still looked like a coffin to Sir George) and looked around.
Other men were sitting up in their own stasis beds. Sir Richard, Sir Anthony, Sir Bryan, and Rolf Grayhame were all within ten yards of him, but even as his eyes swept over them, his sense of euphoria vanished.
The stasis beds on either side of his own were still closed, still filled with the gray mist... and with Matilda and Edward.
-IV-
"There was no reason to awaken them at this time," the demon-jester said. There was no more expression in his voice than ever, nor did his body language give any hint of his feelings, and Sir George wondered if the small creature was properly grateful for the two dragon-men who towered behind him, one at each shoulder. Despite all that had happened, despite the example of young Denmore, despite the punishment Sir George himself had endured, he wasn't at all certain he could have kept his hands from the demon-jester's throat had those guards not been present.
"We do not require their services; we require those of yourself and your warriors," the demon-jester continued. "Their presence would only have distracted you when you ought to be preparing for and concentrating upon the battle you are here to fight. All of your attention should be upon that task."
"Our ability to concentrate will be hampered by our concern over the safety of our... mates," Sir George got out through gritted teeth.
"Your mates and young are completely safe... so long as you fight well and achieve victory," the demon-jester told him. "Nothing can harm them in their stasis beds, and if you bring us the victory we require, they will be awakened and restored to you as your justly earned reward. If you do not fight well, of course, there will be no reason for us to awaken them."
Sir George stared at the purple-furred face with a hatred more bottomless than he had ever imagined he could feel, yet there was nothing at all that he could do... except for the thing his commander—his master—demanded of him as the price for the return of his love.
"Very well, Commander," he managed to say in a voice he scarcely recognized. "In that case, let us prepare to do just that."
* * *
Sir George looked down as if from a great height, floating disembodied above the plain of deep purple grass, as the huge, six-limbed creatures lumbered forward. Each of them stood at least nine feet tall, with two legs and four massive arms, all covered in long, coarse hair. The hair's base color ranged from a dull ocher through rust to an almost painfully bright red, but each creature's pelt was also marked with a mottled black or brown pattern of spots and rings.
There were two armies of the creatures, moving towards one another in an awkward-looking, hunched lope that managed to cover ground with surprising speed. None wore any armor, although the patches of leathery skin he could see here and there, peeping through the coarse hair, looked tough enough to stand for armor if it had to. For weapons, most of them carried a pair of two-handed axes which dwarfed even those of the wart-faces. Others carried maces, flails, or long pikelike spears, and a very few, perhaps five percent of the total, carried quivers of long darts, like javelins.
As the two armies neared one another, the warriors with the darts began to hurl them, and the disembodied baron tried to purse nonexistent lips in a whistle of astonishment. The dart-throwers carried some sort of sticks, and as he watched, he saw them fit the butt ends of their darts into the ends of the sticks. Then they snapped their arms up in graceful arcs, and the sticks were like extensions of those arms. The alien creatures were already far longer-limbed than any human, and the sticks gave them a reach and allowed them to exert a leverage which sent their darts whistling out to unbelievable ranges.
Sir George had never seen anything quite like it, but it reminded him a little of the staff sling he had once seen a shepherd use. He'd never known where the shepherd, a Scot, had gotten the sling, and the lad hadn't been very accurate with it, but he'd been able to throw stones to an extraordinary distance. These four-armed monstrosities, on the other hand, were extremely accurate, and he judged that their range was very close to that of a Genoese crossbowman. His longbowmen could outmatch that by at least a little, and their rate of fire would be higher, but not as much higher as it would have been compared to crossbows. In fact, with four arms and two throwing sticks each of these creatures could come very close to equaling a single longbow's rate of fire.
Fortunately, neither army seemed to have very many of them, and he wondered why that was. If he had commanded either of those forces, he would have mustered every dart-thrower he could find!
But the reason, whatever it was, became immaterial as the two armies continued to close through the deadly hail of darts. Their blood, he noted, was a bright orange, quite unlike human blood, except for the way it spurted and ran as darts drove into bellies and chests and four-armed corpses thudded to the ground like so much slaughtered meat or shrieked and writhed in agony that was all too humanlike.
Even with their high rate of fire, none of the dart-throwers on either side had emptied their quivers when the two charging battlelines slammed into one another, and Sir George's immaterial eyes narrowed. The demon-jester had called the English "primitive"; Sir George wondered what he would have called these creatures. The baron was no stranger to the terror and howling chaos of hand-to-hand combat and the way every soldier's world narrowed to the tiny space within the reach of his own weapons, yet never in all of his battles had he ever seen anything like this—not even from an army of Scots! Indeed, he doubted that anyone had ever seen its like since the days when men finally stopped painting themselves blue before going out to hack and hew at their neighbors.
There was no formation, no effort to maintain line or interval. There were simply two mobs of nine-foot monsters, each armed with two axes or spears, or here and there one spear and an axe, or a pair of massive flails, all slashing and stabbing away at anything that came into range. It was sheer, howling bedlam, without rhyme or reason, and it went on far longer than he would have believed it could.
While it lasted, casualties were brutal. However thick the hide under their coats of coarse hair might be, in the end it was only hide over flesh and bone, and not one of those warriors carried a shield. Nor, so far as he could tell, had any of these hulking warriors ever even heard of the notion of blocking or parrying blows when it might have been attacking, instead. It was all offense and no defense, and blood soaked the grass and turned dry soil into gory mud. Either the fighters were in the grip of battle madness, or else they were too stupid to realize how dreadful the carnage was... or so unlike any human Sir George had ever known that the death toll truly didn't matter to them at all. Those were the only explanations he could think of for how long those two armed mobs stood toe-to-toe, smashing away at one another in an orgy of mutual destruction.
But finally one side had had enough. Its surviving warriors turned to flee, and, as always happened, their foes howled and lunged forward as they turned their backs, cutting down still more of them.
In the end, the routed side managed to outrun the victors—partly because they had thrown away their encumbering weapons, and partly because those who are fleeing fro
m death always tend to be just a little faster than those who are simply pursuing to kill.
Sir George floated above the field of battle, watching the victors tend crudely to their own fallen and slit the throats of their wounded enemies, and then, slowly, his vision faded away.
* * *
Sir George sat upright on the comfortably padded bench and, as Computer had instructed him to do when the "briefing" ended, removed the "neural interface" headset.
His hand trembled ever so slightly as he set the headset aside. Computer had told him what he would see, but he'd lacked the experience to fully understand what the unseen voice was telling him. He hadn't realized that it would be real—that he would be able to hear the shrieks of the wounded, smell the subtly alien copper scent of the blood or the all too familiar sewer stench of ruptured organs and death. This was one piece of the demon-jester's magical arts that the baron felt no desire to understand. Not just now. Not until the familiar shudders and belly tightening echoes of combat had worked their way through him and subsided.
He heard a small sound behind him, and turned to see Sir Richard, Rolf Grayhame, Walter Skinnet, and Dafydd Howice sitting up on their own benches. Their individual responses to what they'd just seen were interesting. Grayhame and Howice looked almost completely normal, more thoughtful than anything else. Skinnet looked much unhappier than either of the two archers did, but that was obviously because he was considering the size and reach of the opponents he and his men-at-arms would be required to meet weapon-to-weapon. But Sir Richard looked very much like Sir George felt, and the baron found himself smiling sympathetically at the slightly older knight.
"Tough bastards, if you don't mind me saying so, Sir," Grayhame said after a moment. "Don't care much for how far they can throw them spears of theirs, either."
"I'm not so very happy about that my own self," Howice agreed. "Still, Rolf, I'm thinking our lads have the range on them, by a bit, at least."
"Not by much," Grayhame grumbled. "Not by near so much as I'd like, any road!"
"Aye," Skinnet grunted, "but at least your lot can stand off and shoot the bastards. My lads won't have that luxury."
"No," Sir George agreed, "they won't. On the other hand, I've no intention of sending you off to face them until they've been softened up a bit, Walter. Not when I'm riding along with them, at any rate!"
"With all due respect, Sir George," Maynton put in, "I'm of the opinion that you shouldn't be riding along with them even then. You're the one man we can least afford to lose."
"We can't afford to lose anyone at all, if we can help it," Sir George replied. "And if I'm going to send men off on a charge, then it's a charge I'll be making, too."
"You might as well give over, Sir Richard," Skinnet said sourly. "I've been trying for years to convince him that there might be just a mite of sense in putting the commander someplace besides dead center in the front line of a charge. You'd almost think he was French."
"There's no need to go insulting me, Walter," Sir George said mildly.
"All my life I've called a spade a spade, My Lord. I'm not about to change now."
"Well, whether you've a mind to change or not," Sir George told him, "I'm of the mind that with a little forethought and a little planning this might not be so very bad after all."
"And just how did you come to that conclusion, if you don't mind my asking, My Lord?" Skinnet responded with the skepticism of a retainer who knows his liege's trust in him is complete.
"Why, you said it yourself, when you were abusing me just a few moments ago," Sir George said. "They may be nine feet tall and covered with hair, but the way they just come right at you reminds me mightily of French noblemen or the Scots, and Computer says that what we've just seen is typical. So I'm thinking, the way to see them off is the same way His Majesty welcomed the Scots at Halidon Hill."
* * *
"I do not like this plan," the demon-jester piped.
"I can't say that I'm entirely pleased with it myself, Commander," Sir George replied levelly across the crystal table. "Unfortunately, the estimates of the enemy's strength which Computer has provided, added to the distance to which they can throw their spears, leaves little other choice. By Computer's most favorable estimation, we'll be outnumbered by at least six to one, and our bows give us much less of a range advantage than I could like. Moreover, despite their lack of armor, these creatures will be very dangerous opponents when it comes to hand blows... not to mention the fact that each of them has twice as many arms as any of my lads do."
"If the ratio of forces is so unfavorable," the demon-jester said, "then you should use all of your manpower."
"My plan does use all of my trained manpower." Sir George emphasized the adjective heavily in hopes that whatever translated for him and the demon-jester would pick up the stress.
"It does not use over ten percent of your total force of males," the demon-jester stated, and Sir George nodded.
"You're correct, of course, Commander," he acknowledged. "But you yourself have told me time and again that my men represent a valuable asset for your guild. The men whom you wish me to use aren't trained for this sort of task. We've begun training them, but making a master bowman is a lifetime's work, and the mariners and drovers you `rescued' with us were never soldiers. If we attempted to use them as archers, they would only get in the way of our men who already know what they're doing. Nor are any of them trained cavalryman, and I doubt that they could even stay on their horses if we attempted to use them as such. And if we attempted to use them as dismounted men-at-arms, especially against such foes as these, they would be slaughtered for very little return."
"If they are so useless," the demon-jester suggested, "then there seems little point in retaining them."
An icy shiver went through Sir George, for he had no doubt what the demon-jester meant.
"I didn't say they were `useless,' " the baron replied, choosing his words very carefully. "What I said, Commander, is that at the moment they're untrained. That's a weakness which we can correct, given time. I doubt many of them will make archers by the standards of Rolf Grayhame or Dafydd Howice, although I could be wrong even there. In any case, however, I feel confident that they can be trained as men-at-arms, in which case they would represent a significant and welcome reinforcement to my existing trained soldiers. But whatever we can teach them to be in the future, at the present moment committing them to battle would be simply to throw away their lives to little point. It would be... wasting your guild's resources."
"I see." The demon-jester sat in thought for several moments, his two smaller eyes half-closed while he considered what Sir George had just said. Then all three opened wide once more and fastened upon the baron.
"Very well. I understand your reasoning, and while I dislike the conclusion you have reached, I am forced to concede that preservation of guild resources should take precedence in this instance. Nonetheless, I do not like the way in which you plan to employ the men you are willing to use in combat. You should attack the enemy, not stand on the defensive."
"Against such numbers, we have no option but to adopt a defensive position," Sir George explained with much more patience than he felt. The demon-jester opened his speaking mouth, but the baron went on before the creature could say anything.
"Commander, you've informed me that the objective of your guild is to compel these creatures to enter into an agreement to trade only with you." Although, Sir George thought, I cannot begin to imagine what such creatures could possibly have to trade of sufficient value to bring your "guild" here in the first place! "From what you and Computer have told me, the key to achieving that objective is to force this Thoolaas tribe to submit to your will, because its power and the awe in which the surrounding tribes hold it will lead all of them to follow its example. To accomplish that, it will be necessary to decisively defeat the Thoolaas in battle, yet the Thoolaas' warriors alone outnumber us almost sevenfold. If we attack them and give them the advantage of the
defensive position, our losses will be severe, even if we triumph at all. Heavy losses will weaken our value to your guild in any future campaign, and they would also mean that if any tribe declines to follow the Thoolaas' example, my men would probably be too few to compel additional tribes to submit.
"This means we must find a way to convince the Thoolaas to attack us in a place and at a time of our choosing. After studying the manner in which they fight with Computer's aid, I feel confident that we can not only defeat them but inflict very heavy losses upon them if we can convince them to do what we wish. And once they've been weakened by losses upon the field of battle—and had some of the heart taken out of them by the knowledge that we've already crushed them once—we can take the battle to them with much greater safety and effectiveness if that is still required."
"And if they choose not to attack?"
"I think that very unlikely," Sir George replied. "With Computer's aid," he stressed the disembodied voice's role in his planning, "my senior officers and I have watched over a score of their battles. These tribes have only a poor concept of defensive tactics in the field, but their villages are well fortified, with earthen walls and wooden palisades, and they would appear to have a much sounder notion of how to defend such works than they have of how to fight defensively in the open field. In addition, their dart-throwers are undoubtedly even more effective and dangerous from behind the cover of walls and palisades than in the open, where my archers can get at them readily.