by Victor Milán
Snarling, the matador turned to face Camellia. Smelling the meat-eater, she tossed her crested head and trilled her dismay. Jaume felt her heart beat like a bass drum inside her chest. Like their riders, war-hadrosaurs could at best only learn to control their fear of such monsters, not suppress it entirely.
But the duckbills had a weapon of their own, beyond their considerable mass and strength.…
Jaume trusted his Companions to restrain their dinosaurs’ use of their fearsome voice-weapon. A terremoto couldn’t be aimed precisely enough to avoid hitting Jaume and his mount. Both had been trained to withstand the panic, nausea, and stunning effects of the ultradeep sounds. But no amount of training would protect the unarmored Jaume from burst capillaries or lesions in his lungs. He could only hope Montañazul and his friends didn’t evoke their mounts’ “earthquake” calls, through ignorance, heedlessness, or something darker.
Why Dom Xurxo hadn’t used his sackbut’s terremoto against the matador, Jaume would never know. Perhaps he thought it unchivalrous. Jaume, murmuring encouragement to his beloved beast, suspected the young Gallego knight had simply forgotten about it, in his heat-rush of fury, fear, and bravado.
The Allosaurus waited thirty meters down a shallowing slope. It roared—itself an effective terror-weapon. But it was just a scary cry; it had no further impact.
Jaume signaled Camellia with his knees. She extended her neck and opened her beak. Jaume heard a weird rumble, like Paradise playing the dulcian: the terremoto’s just-audible harmonics. As the vibrations rose in power, he felt his skin creep, and his vision blurred at the edges. Pain stabbed through his skull. But he expected those effects, and accepted them as he did the way his sword hilt stung his hand when the blade struck something solid.
The matador caught the full brunt. He reared up, bellowing in surprised pain, his scarlet eyes blinking rapidly. Camellia dropped her forelegs to the ground and charged home.
Jaume clenched his whole body to steady his spear. He aimed carefully. The leaf-shaped head sank into the monster’s narrow chest.
He took the bruising impact between his arm and his ribs and hung on, allowing the full momentum of Camellia’s galloping three tonnes to drive the spear deep, its flaring steel wings cutting a wide wound through muscle and the lungs working like bellows behind.
The matador uttered a wheezing scream. Its breath rolled over Jaume like steam from a volcano’s vent, but reeking of carrion instead of brimstone. The shriek threatened to burst his eardrums.
The meat-eater twisted quickly to its right. The move came too late to escape the fatal thrust, but it kept the much-larger Camellia from knocking him down. The stout ash haft snapped in Jaume’s hand.
The monster darted its head back to bite off Jaume’s face. He leaned far over in the saddle. The jaws crashed shut. Then Jaume and Camellia were by, crunching through brush that whipped at Jaume’s bare legs.
Jaume rode on between widely spaced boles to increase separation from the foe. Then he drew the Lady’s Mirror from its scabbard across his shoulder and wheeled Camellia back to face the matador.
The matador had turned and stood with pink froth bubbling from its nostrils and running from its lower jaw. It started forward, gathering speed.
Jaume nudged Camellia to charge once more. She fluted dismay, but she obeyed, plunging forward on her massive hind legs with her forelimbs tucked against her chest.
The monsters slammed together chest to chest with a mountainous impact. The matador bellowed in agony as Camellia’s weight drove the spear stub deeper into its chest.
It bit at Camellia’s face. She swung her head away with a glass-shattering squeal. She threw her weight into the narrowly built predator and bowled it over on its side.
Even though breath and blood gouted from mouth and nose when he hit the ground, the matador was far from finished. Sustained by rage, he immediately rolled onto his belly and started to rise.
Jaume had sprung from the saddle. As he dropped feetfirst toward the fallen-needle carpet, he gripped his longsword in both hands.
The matador’s head came up. The Mirror chopped down. It took the monster on the back of the neck and wedged between vertebrae to cut the spinal cord.
The monster’s body convulsed to the last impulse transmitted by its furious brain. Its tail whipped around. It caught Jaume on the right side and thigh and flung him through the air. Somehow he managed to keep his grip on the Mirror’s hilt, ripping it free of the dying embrace of muscle and bone.
Jaume struck a tree trunk. White lightning shot through his body as he felt ribs crack. He fell into the undergrowth.
He lay on his back, knees up, breathing laboriously. It felt as if he were inhaling fire. He had no way of knowing if his thigh was broken. He did know that it would hurt, once the numbness went away.
He heard the matador’s weakening spasms, and then more localized thrashing. “Here he is!” he heard Bernat shout in Catalan-accented Francés.
“Don’t move him!” answered a deep bellow that seemed to rival a dinosaur’s.
Men knelt over Jaume. Concerned faces peered down from halos of sunlight though hair. Then they went away as giant Timaeos tossed his brother Companions aside like dolls.
Timaeos was the order’s healer. His hands were gentle yet professionally brisk as he examined his fallen Captain-General. The red-bearded chin sank to his breastbone, the big brows knotted in concentration. After a few moments Timaeos nodded.
“His back’s not broken,” he told his fellow Companions. They showed as little resentment at being manhandled by him as he had shown awareness he was manhandling them. When he set about a task, Creators help whoever or whatever got in his way. “His leg isn’t either. Make a stretcher.”
“Not … necessary,” Jaume said. Talking felt like stirring glass shards around in his chest. “Help me up, please.”
“Are you hurt?” It was Bartomeu, his eyes and cheeks puffy and red.
“Yes. You know—how I’ve always told you there’s no appreciation of pleasure without pain? Well, it seems damn foolish now.”
Bartomeu looked blank. The dozen Companions gathered around him now laughed, perhaps a touch more uproariously than the quip called for.
Jaume heard a loud snort. Warm breath that smelled of greenery washed over him. A broad, rounded beak nuzzled his cheek.
He laughed and scratched Camellia’s muzzle affectionately in return.
“I’ll live, I’m afraid, big girl,” he said. “How is she?”
“F-fine,” Bartomeu sniffled.
Taking Jaume by his right arm and left shoulder, Timaeos hoisted him effortlessly to his feet. That hurt a lot, but Jaume had a long acquaintanceship with pain. He could live with it.
“Mind the ribs on his left side,” Timaeos said. As Florian hung Jaume’s right arm over his own neck, Timaeos enfolded the injured man’s left upper arm with one hand. He would steady Jaume as Florian bore as much of his weight as needed.
A couple of tentative steps and one knee-buckle dissuaded Jaume from a half-formed intention of shrugging off their help. The three gimped painfully back up the slope as Bartomeu led the cream-and-orange Corythosaurus after them by her reins.
Manfredo hovered right behind Florian, ready to catch Jaume should the Francés knight falter. There was no need to spot for Timaeos. He could have carried two Jaumes outright.
“You shouldn’t have done that by yourself,” Manfredo told Jaume.
From the other group of knights who had watched the fight came a clatter of gauntlet on gauntlet and hoarse bravos. Even Bluemountain was red-faced and pounding the pommel of his saddle in excitement. Only Ironstar sat silent on his iron-grey and forge-orange sackbut, his face as impassive as if cast from his namesake metal.
“And that, gentlemen, is how you do it,” Florian told his comrades from beneath Jaume’s right arm.
“At least they won’t question the captain’s fitness to lead anymore,” said Dieter with fierce pride.
> “For a week or two,” said Florian.
* * *
The town lords came back next morning early. This time they brought at least thirty house-archers and spearmen.
With Rob at his side, uncased axe in hand, Karyl stood in the road to meet them as they resolved out of the mist. His silver-streaked hair hung unbound to the shoulders of his simple brown robe. His hands were folded over the top of his staff.
Lucas stood on Karyl’s other side. He had an arming-sword belted on and fairly danced with eagerness to use it. Careful what you wish for, lad, Rob thought. Blood’s not so easy to put back in, once you let it flow. Your own no more than anybody else’s.
Emeric stood by Rob, far calmer but still alert. Rob took his demeanor as corroboration that he had seen his share of trouble, and maybe a couple of other men’s as well. The woods-runner struck him as a man who neither sought out trouble nor shied away from it.
A disheartening few others came up to stand on the pumice-graveled High Road behind them. A larger number stood off the causeway near the farmhouse. Apparently they wanted a safe vantage point to watch the fun.
“Maître Karyl,” called Melchor, the stout, bearded Town Lord. If tones of falsity rang though his heartiness, not even a seasoned scammer’s ears could hear them. Yannic on his jittery strider looked as if he were sucking on a bitter root. Persil had his outsized head hunched down between his shoulders.
“Bogardus explained to us that you’re a noble from a far land, who has graciously consented to lend your considerable skill at arms to defend us from our neighbors,” Melchor said. “Please forgive yesterday’s misunderstanding. Naturally we shall be honored to serve under your leadership.”
He bowed from the saddle of his mule, which was no easy task across a paunch like his.
Who’d’ve thought Bogardus could bestow a magisterial ass-chewing? The notion delighted Rob, but didn’t allay his building anger.
“So if you were the greatest warrior in the land,” he hissed aside to Karyl, “which of course you are, but born of a washerwoman, they wouldn’t consent to learn from you?”
It sorely tried self-control not to bellow it in the noblemen’s faces: “What arrogant sods!”
“Let’s not make this harder than it has to be, my friend,” Karyl said quietly.
To the newcomers he called, “Welcome, gentlemen. You come just in time. The morning’s exercises are about to begin.”
Chapter 33
The Bestiary of Old Home—A late-first-century book that describes in words and pictures over a thousand creatures claimed to be native to Home, the world from which humans and their Five Friends (horses, goats, dogs, cats, and ferrets) came to Paradise. Though superstitious people believe it was directly inspired by our Creators, educated folk think that many of the animals in it are imaginary. It does provide a rich source for art and heraldry.
—A PRIMER TO PARADISE FOR THE IMPROVEMENT OF YOUNG MINDS
“Ríu, ríu, chíu, la guarda ribera.”
The voices rumbled like distant thunder from inside browned-iron sallet helmets. Snare drums kept time, as did the tramp of boot soles crushing tender pale-green grass into the eponymous soil of Terraroja, the Redland.
“Dios guardó el lobo de nuestra cordera.”
The ominous conjoined voice repeated the second phrase. A double beat of the vast, cart-mounted kettledrums that accompanied an Imperial tercio to pound out battle signals marked the end of each measure.
A single voice, high and clear, sang a verse of the Nodosaur battle-song:
“El lobo rabioso la quiso morder
“Más Dios Poderoso la supo defender—”
Jaume guessed it was a drummer boy singing. He stood on the brow of a low ridge in the morning sun with his sixteen Brothers-Companion. All wore their full plate, simple, white-enameled, unadorned except for the orange Lady’s Mirror painted boldly on each chest piece. The scents of dust, dung, and wildflowers filled the air.
By long-standing custom, the tercio’s purest soprano got the honor of singing the verses. Although her face and form suggested a dray nosehorn, their commander, Lieve van Damme, possessed a strikingly beautiful coloratura voice. When she had served as a simple pikewoman, she’d sung the part for years.
“Quizo la hacer que no pudiese pecar
“Ni aun original esta virgen no tuviera.”
Mor Bernat, good Catalan that he was, had put aside the notebook in which he wrote and sketched his impressions of the coming battle to sing tenor harmony with the distant Nodosaur vocalist. Owain, his longbow strung and slung over his armored shoulder, sang baritone—a Galés would no sooner yield to a Catalan in the matter of singing than a Catalan would to a Galés. Ayaks added his giant-bronze-bell bass.
Jaume joined them in his own famous tenor. He was Catalan too, after all, albeit more famous as a lyricist than as a performer.
The Imperial infatry column began to split left and right, flowing outward into ranks of pikes interspersed with halberdiers and greatsword-wielders. A dozen two-horse teams pulled stingers on their light carts into position before the grim lines. Nodosaur skirmishers in springer-leather jerkins and caps trotted to the fore, carrying arbalests and javelins. Each had a brown iron buckler slung about the neck, bouncing on his or her chest. In contrast to the tercio’s perfect lines, the light infantry fought in swarms like biting insects—a comparison that the Redlanders would soon find all too apt.
To either side of the Nodosaurs milled a peasant levy about a thousand strong, to use the word loosely, carrying pikes, billhooks, hunting spears, and whatnot. Even from up here Jaume could tell they were none too eager for what was to come. He couldn’t blame them. Their own feudal masters despised them. And given the chance, the enemy montadors would hunt them down laughing as if they were bouncers.
The levies didn’t even matter much to the outcome of the impending battle. They were there to impede the enemy, like walking caltrops. All glory would go to the men-at-arms on their gorgeous horses and war-dinosaurs. And to the extent the fight was decided on the ground, the decision belonged to the brown Imperial elite and their fearsome melody.
“What a stirring song!” Dieter exclaimed. His blue eyes shone. “What does it mean?”
“No one knows,” said Bernat. “It was almost certainly ancient before the world was made. The language is a dialect of Spañol, probably a predecessor. It’s about a raging river, at least. It mentions a powerful god defending a lamb from a rabid wolf—both creatures that most people consider mythical, though they’re listed in The Bestiary of Old Home.”
“Also virgins,” said Florian. “Which, while not mythical, are certainly rare in Nuevaropa.”
“And the ‘powerful god’ can only mean Chián, King of the Creators. As for the rest—”
“It’s meant to scare people,” Machtigern said.
“It works,” said Florian.
“Why not join the song, Goldilocks?” Ayaks called to him.
Florian laughed. “Thank you, no. I have a voice like a frog in a tin bucket. It would be cruel to inflict it on your tender ears.”
They watched the armies move into position from atop a red lava flow, mounded soft by grassy soil, called La Dama Rosa, the Pink Lady. Behind them their hadrosaurs grazed and drank from buckets lugged by sweaty arming-squires. The Ordinary hombres armaos waited in reserve farther back.
A road ran north up a broad, gentle slope toward Terraroja’s castle on its red granite crag and its attendant town of Risco Rojo. Both armies had deployed athwart the road in conventional formation: infantry in the center, cavalry to either side, and outside of them small, powerful blocks of dinosaur knights. Estrella del Hierro commanded the Imperial left wing. The right, under Montañazul, was drawn up at the foot of the Pink Lady.
The Companions’ builders and fortifications experts, Fernão, Iñigo Etchegaray, and Wouter de Jong, stood together admiring the distant keep. The usually taciturn Gallego Fernão, a master of siege warfare, was actual
ly animated. His brown-green eyes glowed as he pointed out its various excellences—and shaped with his hands how he’d defeat them.
“It wouldn’t be easy,” he said, “but, Torrey and Telar, what a challenge!”
“What’s Terraroja’s castle called?” asked Dieter, drawn by their enthusiasm.
Wouter laughed. He was a sturdy, towheaded Flamenco from Brabant, a fiefdom of Sansamour’s Archduke Roger’s that straddled the border of Alemania and Francia.
“El Gallo Rojo,” he said, leaning on his battle-axe. “Which means both things you think it does.”
Dieter flushed. It meant “the red cock.” While the Companions did not mind each other’s business, especially where love and sex were concerned, in such a small group it was impossible for it not to be common knowledge that he had become the Flamenco knight’s lover.
“A castle is aggression made stone, boy,” Fernão declared. “Don’t ever forget that.”
“Still a powerful defense, though,” grumbled Iñigo, scratching his beard with a thumbnail. “Leopoldo’s a fool not to squat inside and dare us to pry him out. We would, of course, but it would cost us more than even a set-piece battle.”
“If he was smart,” Florian said, “he wouldn’t be a buckethead.”
Jaume pulled a rueful mouth.
“Melodía warned me we wouldn’t need siege-engines,” he said. “She said Count Leopoldo could never resist coming out to fight.”
If only I hadn’t dismissed her when she said it, he thought bitterly. Perhaps she’d be answering my daily letters now if I’d bothered to listen to her then.
“Terraroja sees war as a game,” Florian said, “a tourney on a grander stage. So he picked a field almost as flat and clear as the lists to fight us on.”
“Don’t complain,” said Machtigern. He began ticking the steel shanks of his war-hammer head against his pauldron. “It’s one reason we consistently beat the bucketheads.”
Ayaks threw up his hands and stamped off. Slight as it was, the clacking always drove him crazy.