Well, not quite ordinary horses; these were the big, ugly, fighting horses out of Ashkevron Manor, trained by horse-talkers who were trained by Shin'a'in, or so it was claimed. Knights of Valdemar dreamed of being able to own a single one of these beasts in a lifetime, and Alberich had never seen more than three in all of the time he'd been in Haven, but Ashkevron Manor had sent enough of their finest to mount every one of the bodyguards that wasn't a Herald. They carried their armor, a set of hinged plates that protected vulnerable head, chest, and flank, as if it weighed no more than a bit of barding. Each of the Guards had been schooled by one of the horse-talkers in how to handle their brutes and had not just learned to ride them, but had bonded in a sense with them; the results were impressive. They were pleasant enough in corral and under saddle, but Alberich pitied the man who met them in a fight. A single touch of the knee and a shouted command, and an enemy would be pulp. And if the horses were attacked first, their attacker would be pulp without the signal or the command.
Those horses were much heavier than any Companion save Kantor. So the Guards (and Crathach, the Healer) were in the point position for both the King and Heir, carrying wide shields to ward off missiles coming from the front. The Companions wore lighter armor of chain and leather, probably proof against arrows, probably not against axes. Everyone was armored, even lean Jadus; everyone had a shield, even though Jadus wouldn't use one in a fight. If—no, say when—arrow storms fell, they'd all trained in locking those shields overhead in the formation called "the turtle," to protect Selenay and Sendar. The archers would have to be in range first, though—that was what the Heralds, used to judging their firing distance, would be watching for.
Where's their cavalry? he wondered suddenly, as he realized that the only mounted troops in sight were the officers commanding the front ranks. I know they have cavalry; they've had them before. So where are they?
No time to say anything about his sudden thought; at that moment, a far-off trumpet sounded, and with a roar, the Tedrel shock troops flowed down the side of the hill carrying with them a wall of sound, their running feet making the ground shake. In a moment, they had crossed the little stream at the bottom, and so—broke the peace, and began the war.
As they pounded toward the waiting lines, the Valdemaran front ranks braced; spearmen butting their weapons on the ground and kneeling. Behind them, the pikemen also braced their longer weapons and stood fast. And behind them, the archers waited, arrows to bow, for their officers to call the first volley.
"Hoi!" The call came, a little ragged, as the first line of shouting men, their running feet pounding the meadow grass flat, set foot on Valdemaran soil. The sound of a thousand bows snapping, a thousand arrows swishing into the air was like a wind, a perilous wind; the archers aimed up, so as to clear their own ranks, and not at any specific targets, for with the enemy so thick, enough arrows would hit to make a difference—
The wind went up, the deadly rain came down, and hoarse battle cries turned to screams of pain as arrows found seams in plate, or chain-mail insufficiently fitted or tended, heads without helms or helms without visors. And some men went down, and the ranks behind them stumbled over their bodies, but it wasn't enough to blunt the charge. Screams of pain joined the sound of battle cries and pounding feet.
Now Alberich entered that singular state of hyperawareness that a fight put him into; he saw everything, but was affected emotionally by nothing. His feelings just vanished for the moment, leaving his mind clear and his body ready to act or react. He knew he would pay for this later, when all of that suppressed emotion hit him, but for now, he tightened his hands on his weapons, and watched, and waited—and, in a terrible sense, enjoyed.
The noise was incredible; it battered the senses, and it had a strange effect on the mind. He knew this of old, knew that the quickening of his pulse and the sudden surge of blood-thirstiness was due to the very noises that assailed his ears. Whether any of the others were affected in the same way, he didn't know for certain, but he suspected they were, more or less. Certainly the men of his company had been, some more than others. At the first sound of battle, some of them had nearly gone mad with bloodlust—but those did not last very long. They were first into the fight, charging in with no care for themselves. "Spear catchers," was what seasoned commanders called that sort.
"Hoi!" The best archers of Valdemar were good, none better; they could, if need be, get off two more volleys while the first was hitting the enemy. Again, the whirring, as much like the sound of an immense flock of birds as a wind, again the death-dealing rain rattled down—and still they fell, and still they came. Behind the ranks of charging men their archers walked in, slowly, and now it was their turn to come into play.
The spearmen and pikemen were protected by their armor and helms and stood fast; the Valdemaran archers dropped back beneath shields on orders from their officers, and the first of the Tedrel troops hit the line of spears and pikes with a shock.
The avalanche of sound as the two lines met was indescribable, and even Alberich winced. Screaming, shouting, the clash of weapon on weapon; there was nothing as dreadful as the sound of army meeting army. Some of the Tedrel fighters ran right up on the spears like maddened boars, screeching as they died; the rest hacked at the shafts with heavy broadswords and axes, shouting furiously, while more pikemen came up from the rear to take the place of those who'd lost their weapons.
A rain of Tedrel arrows fell on the pikemen and the archers behind them, but the pikemen had good armor and helms meant to defend against arrows, and the archers were under their shields. And the moment the hail of arrows stopped, the archers popped out from under cover and let fly a volley of their own. This volley fell on the Tedrel archers, who were lightly armored and not as fast as their Valdemaran counterparts. This time, the hail of arrows took a higher toll; more screaming, and louder now.
Men of both sides fell and died, or fell wounded, crying out in agony. The innocent little rill that marked the Border went from muddy to bloody.
Though Sendar watched it all, it would be up to the Lord Marshal to issue orders. Wise man, was Sendar; he knew he was no more than a fraction of the strategist under actual battle conditions that his underlings were. The Lord Marshal had faced these troops in his own person for the past three years, while Sendar had only gotten his reports. The Lord Marshal had the direct experience of the battlefield that the King did not, and Sendar knew it.
And at the moment, as the sun climbed into the sky and then reached its zenith, the Lord Marshal was looking for something, peering down at the battlefield with a frown on his heavily-bearded face.
"The cavalry," Alberich heard him saying, as if he was thinking aloud. "Where are their cavalry?"
And in the same moment, he turned to his Herald, and there was urgency in his voice. Alberich felt both relief that the Lord Marshal had noted the same thing he had, and a heart-sinking moment of dread. "MindSpeak the flanks," the Lord Marshal ordered, "And ask the ones with the birds. Find out if the cavalry is behind their lines, still, or if they're trying to get us in a pincer."
Alberich strained to hear the answer, which came within the instant. "No and no, my Lord," the Herald replied. "There is no sign of mounted troops of any sort."
Now Sendar turned his head, to fix the Lord Marshal with a look of surprise. "Then where are they?" he demanded. "Surely they haven't put all of their mounted troops afoot!"
The hair on the back of Alberich's neck stood up, and he got a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. It traveled rapidly over his entire body, and at that moment, he knew his Gift hadn't deserted him. In fact, it was about to come down upon him with a vengeance. He slid down out of his saddle as dizziness engulfed him, so that he wouldn't have as far to fall when it hit him—which it was going to, in less than a heartbeat—
He clutched Kantor's saddle, as his Companion turned his head to look at him. A flash of blue came between him and the rest of the world—
A woman, barefoot, b
areheaded, running, but she couldn't outrun the horseman behind her—
Another flash—
A man, looking up from his weeding, eyes wide, then unseeing, as the lance took him through the heart—
—like blue lightning—
Children, screaming, being herded into a pen by a dozen horsemen, while the rest set fire to the village—
"Sunlord save us—" he muttered in Karsite, automatically reverting to the language he knew best. The visions, thank the God, were silent, silent, and he could still hear, dimly, the sounds of the battlefield and the people around him.
"What?" Myste snapped behind him, in the same tongue. Thank the God she did—he wasn't sure he could even understand Valdemaran at this moment, much less respond in it. The visions shook him like a terrier with a rat.
The visions caught him up again and threatened to pull him in so far he would not be able to tell the others what he Saw; he struggled against them, against a Gift that was running away with him. :Kantor!: he cried, and a steadying presence held him out of the chaos of a hundred, a thousand disasters playing out at once inside his head. He could still see them, but at least he could manage to get a few words out.
"The cavalry has flanked us on either side, but not to attack us," he babbled in Karsite, thanking Vkandis yet again that Myste was there. Myste, who knew Karsite, who could tell the King, tell the Lord Marshal— "They're clearing the countryside—burning the villages, killing the adults, rounding up the children—"
He knew why, but he didn't have time to explain; the visions took him again, despite all of Kantor's help. A man pinned to the door of his own house by a spear. A child being wrenched from its mother's arms, and the woman tossed into the flames of her burning barn. The Tedrel cavalry, riding across the land like a wave of locusts, clearing it for its new masters, keeping only the young children, whom they would then take into their own ranks and turn into Tedrels—
He struggled to speak, but his throat and mouth were not his own, not now while the visions held him. He knew dimly that he had gone rigid as a plank, jaw clenched, unable even to whimper.
Fire. Murder. Fear. Death. It went on forever. He was the helpless observer, unable to do anything save—sometimes, in brief moments when the visions released him—babble a report of what he saw, and where it was. Names came to him, the names of villages? Villages that were not going to exist shortly—but he called them out anyway. How much was now and how much soon? How many places were far enough distant that help might come in time?
He was engulfed in a sea of horror, until, without warning, the visions let go of him entirely, and he dropped back into his own time and place.
Head swimming, he looked up through streaming eyes to find that he was clinging with both hands to Kantor's stirrup and the pommel of the saddle, that he had buried his face in Kantor's shoulder.
Sendar and the Lord Marshal were arguing at the tops of their lungs, while Selenay's gaze switched from one to the other. Her face was white and pinched, and her hands in their armored gauntlets shook.
"But then, we'll have no reserves!" the Lord Marshal shouted.
"And what good will reserves do us if every creature older than a child on this side of the Border is dead?" Sendar shouted back. He whirled and turned to Talamir. "This is a royal command, King's Own. You heard where the attackers are, now deploy the reserves and every Herald not in combat to the rescue!"
Talamir bowed his head and closed his eyes for a moment, while Taver stood as steady as a statue. "Done, Majesty," the Herald said in a perfectly calm and slightly distant voice. "But you do realize that this will leave us seriously outnumbered on this field?"
Alberich was aware of movement, massive movement, behind them. The reserve troops were moving out, to the right and the left, the cavalry first. Ahead of them, on the swiftest steeds of all, two wings of Heralds, already speeding out of sight over the crest of the ridge, like a flock of swift, white birds. Behind them, the troops pulled out, leaving their rear unprotected.
"Of course I realize it," Sendar growled, and drew his sword, with a bright metallic scrape. It glittered wickedly in the sun, matching the hard gleam in the King's eyes. "We need to end this—now. Or we won't have a country left when we win the war." There was something wild in the King's eyes that Alberich recognized; something he had felt himself, down in the taverns of Haven....
That feral look matched the savageness that he felt, when he let himself work out his frustration on the bodies of those two-legged beasts that populated Haven's criminal underground.
But he was only one Karsite Herald, and replaceable—not easily, perhaps, but replaceable. He could—marginally—rationalize risking himself. This was the King of Valdemar.
He's not— Alberich thought with sudden terror.
:He is!: said Kantor, grimly.
No—Sendar couldn't—Someone had to stop him!
And as Alberich struggled to pull himself up, the Companion gave a kind of twist and a shove with his nose just under Alberich's rump. That got Alberich most of the way into the saddle, and a gut-wrenching effort of arms and legs got him seated securely enough to turn and try to stop Sendar before he could move—
But the King was already gone, halfway down the hill, though Alberich had no idea how he could have gotten that far in so short a time.
Too late—He could do nothing for Sendar. But Sendar was Talamir's responsibility. Alberich had another.
"Stay here!" he roared to Selenay and her bodyguards, who were only just starting to react. The King's Six had—Vkandis be thanked—acted in concert with the King. They must have realized the moment he drew his blade what he intended to do; they rode with him, knee and knee, with Talamir at Sendar's right and Jadus at his left, a flying wedge that penetrated the ranks of those between them and the struggling front lines. A roar went up as the King, his banner bearer, and his escort of Heralds and Guards (and Healer!) entered the zone of fighting.
Alberich and Myste imposed themselves as a barrier between Selenay and the path to her father's side; the rest of her escort crowded in, hemming her and Caryo in among them. "Stay here!" he bellowed at her, trying to get her attention. "Selenay! Heed me!"
She had no intention of doing any such thing. He could see it in her eyes, wild with fear and grief beneath her light helm. She hit out at them with mailed fists, flailing at them as she sobbed and cursed; she sawed at Caryo's reins, she even tried to fling herself off Caryo's back and follow on foot. But there were no divided loyalties among those who were protecting her. However suicidal Sendar's action might be, however much their hearts and minds cried out to follow him and protect him, their duty was with Selenay. To keep her safe. And if there was one thing that a Herald understood—or a Guardsman—
—or the Sunsguard—
—it was duty.
She wept and fought their restraining hands; she hit and screeched at them, with the background of the chaos of battle nearly drowning out her screams. She actually caught Alberich a glancing blow across his chin, and Herald Keren a direct hit that would leave her with a black eye soon. She called them cowards, traitors, and worse. She ordered them to let her go, pleaded with them, threatened them with imprisonment, whipping, death. He paid no attention to what she said, not because she didn't mean it, because of course, she did, but because it was irrelevant. No matter how much she cursed them now or hated them later, they would keep her here, out of the fighting.
Satisfied that her bodyguards had her pinned, if not under control, he edged Kantor out of the tangle and let Myste take his place. The danger to her was not less with Sendar down on the battlefield. If anything, it was greater.
He pulled his own sword and stood lone guardian for a moment over the group, his eyes raking over the hilltop, looking for help. He was in luck; there were still a few of the Royal Guard who stood hesitantly nearby, milling a little in confusion. They were not mounted, not swift enough to follow Sendar on his headlong plunge toward the fighting-zone; they wer
e torn between trying to battle their way toward him and staying to guard the Heir. Alberich solved their hesitation for them.
"To Selenay!" he roared at them; given clear orders, they gratefully obeyed, and made a second line of defense in a half-circle around her, weapons at the ready, a line of four archers kneeling in front of another five swordsmen.
He turned back to the group around Selenay; she was still in danger, if the enemy archers took it into their heads to shoot. Perhaps only the fact that the Tedrel commanders wanted her alive had kept them safe so far, for they were the only members of the command group still on the ridge. Everyone else, the Lord Marshal included, had followed Sendar. He wanted to look—but Selenay's safety came first.
"Get her down!" he shouted, "On the ground!" and enforced his order with Mindspeech. No telling which of them would hear—but the Companions would. Caryo would. "On the ground, unhorsed, get her down! Form the turtle!"
The others fell back a little, as Myste half-lunged and half-fell off her Companion, taking Selenay and the banner with her, while Caryo helped by giving a buck and a twist to dislodge her rider. Myste and Selenay disappeared as Keren and Ylsa spilled off their mounts and formed the turtle over them with their shields. The Guardswomen looked uncertain for a moment. "You four, ahorse stay—help me!" he shouted at them, and they stayed mounted. :Kantor, I want the Companions and us between the enemy and Selenay, but behind the Royal Guard. Make a circle:.
:Right.: The Companions, now without riders, made a square of their bodies around the turtle. "Yourselves space out," Alberich ordered. "Bunch not, but knee to flank go—Companion, Guard, Companion."
Garbled and heavily accented as his words were, they evidently figured out what he wanted; with riderless Companions between them, they wedged themselves into the circle, facing outward. Under the turtle of shields, there was still a lot of movement and raised voices, but nothing was coming out, so Alberich dismissed the struggle from his mind.
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