Kingmaker

by Rob Preece

  It was the worst thing they could have done.

  The explosion had left their enemies in disarray and the pikemen had been slow to get organized. If the knights had spurred their horses, accepted the casualties, and put their weight into the charge, they might have broken through before the pikemen were prepared for them.

  Instead, too many slowed, trying to fence with their lances against pikes, protecting their hugely expensive warhorses at the cost of their momentum.

  Of the fifty knights, perhaps ten fell instantly to the pikes. Another thirty slowed to a walk and tried to find gaps between the pikes. Only ten made it through the wall of spears into the heart of the enemy.

  Where they were swarmed.

  A gap opened in the palisade and a group of light cavalry trotted out. Against organized knights, they would have been ridden down. Against what was left of the charge, they could swerve in, pick off distracted knights, and slaughter them.

  These weren't bandits. They'd run into a disguised element of Sullivan's army.

  "Sound the retreat,” Ellie shouted.

  The idiot trumpeter who'd followed Sergius's orders and blown the charge had been killed in the knights’ first rush. Nobody in the mercenary ranks was about to talk about honor. Instead, one of the mercenaries nodded, then blew a mournful bleat.

  When nobody responded, he blew again.

  That was enough. The knights disengaged and headed back toward the line of dragoons.

  If they'd been facing pikemen alone, they could have trotted away faster than the pikemen could advance. It is one of the reasons peasant revolts always fails—unmounted men are too slow to follow up their advantages when they win a battle and too slow to get away when they lose.

  But a disorganized rout of slow-moving and heavily armed knights is a perfect target for wheel-lock-pistol-armed light cavalry.

  The light horsemen harried the knights mercilessly.

  By the time they made it back to the line of mercenaries, they'd lost another five knights.

  The King was bleeding from a cut to his face and Arnold's horse was limping. Still, the two who had been responsible for the disastrous plan were among its survivors.

  Lawgrave hastened to the king to handle any magical healing and Ellie decided to pretend she didn't notice. She didn't feel like healing the king, she wanted him to suffer a little first. Besides, she didn't have much time to think because the pikemen were coming after them and there were a lot of them.

  "Make way.” Mark's firm voice cut through the chatter.

  The dragoons created a gap in their line to let the last of the straggling knights through.

  A group of heavily armored sergeants filled the gap, keeping the light cavalry away with halberds and Saxon-style battleaxes.

  "They'll kill us. We've got to run.” The king ignored Lawgrave's attempts to help him.

  "Reform.” Arnold might be an idiot but he wasn't a coward. “Your Majesty, they're still only peasants."

  Ellie decided correcting that error would be bad psychology. She kept her mouth shut.

  The pikemen advanced slowly in a thick phalanx—a unit as wide as the waiting columns of dragoons, but more tightly packed, a dozen rows deep to the dragoon's four, and with long pikes that had a huge reach advantage over the dragoons’ bayonets.

  There were a lot of them. Ellie wasn't sure whether more had arrived, or whether their mage's magic had hidden them but there had to be at least a thousand pikemen marching toward them now. Sullivan's banner flew in the center of the line.

  If Sullivan's men could capture the king or kill him, the war would be over and Ellie's chance to find her parents’ killers would vanish.

  She gripped her katana. The time for magic was over. But she wasn't going to give up—she intended to do some damage before they finished off the last of her family.

  For a moment, it looked like she might be fighting all by herself. The dragoons had seen the King's panic and weren't happy. A few shuffled their feet, their heavy muskets wavering.

  If they broke, their entire force would be eliminated. The pikemen would keep them from reforming and the light cavalry would ride them down and destroy them.

  "Straighten your lines.” Sergeants screamed men back into place.

  Training and professionalism won over fear and panic and the dragoons stiffened.

  Arnold was still yelling at the King so Ellie didn't think they would get much help from the spent knights. But at least they'd stopped running.

  The enemy's light cavalry had done their job for the moment and backed off to the flanks of the pike phalanx. Unlike Sergius's knights, they knew better than to attack organized infantry.

  They'd give their horses a chance to rest while their pikemen disorganized and destroyed the dragoons. Then they'd swoop back in and hunt down the survivors as they attempted to flee.

  By the standards of local warfare, the battle was over. The musketmen would get off a shot, do their damage, but then they'd be hammered by the massed weight of the pikemen. Worse, both the pikemen and the dragoons knew it.

  One of the sergeants walked in front of the four rows of mercenaries, straightened an occasional collar and pointing out the odd bit of rust on a musket. He seemed indifferent to or ignorant of the organized pikemen now only about fifty feet behind him and closing as fast as their steady march could carry them.

  "First row, will take aim. Second row, will stand ready.” Mark called out the orders as if he had all the time in the world.

  "Shouldn't we be shooting?” Ellie loosened her katana and got ready to die.

  "Second row, will aim. First row, fire."

  Fifty muskets crashed together creating a wall of sound almost as solid as the lead bullets they spat.

  "First row, behind and reload. Second row, kneel."

  The pikemen shrugged off their losses. Mark had the second and third rows fire simultaneously.

  "Second row, back. Third row, move back. Fix bayonets."

  The two columns that had just fired slipped behind the fourth column and fumbled with their unfamiliar bayonets. They were near the moment of truth. Despite the cold under the shaded trees of an old-growth forest, many of the mercenaries were sweating. Nobody had used a bayonet against a pike before in this world, but the simple arithmetic was bad. A bayoneted musket is a six-foot spear. A pike is at least twelve feet long. Which meant her side would get stuck six feet before they could stick their enemy. Plus they were still outnumbered.

  The pikemen were only about ten yards away now. En mass, they lowered their pikes.

  "Row four, kneel. Row one, forward.” Mark was using hand signals as well as spoken commands. Sergeants echoed his orders.

  "Row four, row one, fire."

  One hundred shots tore holes through the pikeman line. At point-blank range, the heavy musket bullets couldn't miss. Many went through the front man and continued on, killing the man behind him as well.

  Ellie could see Mark's mouth moving but she couldn't hear a sound over the scream of pikemen.

  Mark's organized musketwork had cost the enemy dearly—but it was payback time and the pikemen knew it.

  By then, rows two and three musketeers had fixed bayonets. They moved forward to guard their comrades who had just fired and weren't ready to engage the enemy.

  The older soldiers were right about one thing. A disciplined row of pikemen would simply chew the musketeers up before they knew what hit them.

  But the attacking pikemen weren't fully organized any longer. They'd lost some of their cohesion when two hundred and fifty heavy musket balls had shredded their ranks. Well over a hundred of them, including most of the experienced front row, were down. The pikemen coming behind them stumbled over their dead and wounded comrades and their pikes wavered.

  But they kept on coming. Their enemy didn't have pikes. Therefore, they were dead.

  The disorganization didn't mean that Mark's dragoons could win. But it gave them a chance. There weren't as many pikes faci
ng them, and there were holes in the row of spears.

  Mark's dragoons took advantage of the disorganization in the pikeman ranks. They batted pikes out of their way and closed in with their shorter-range bayonets.

  Some made it. Many didn't. The pikemen had started in a phalanx many rows deep and their casualties hadn't affected that. Although the musketeers could avoid some of the pikes, pikes from rows behind prodded forward to pick them up, to protect the pikemen in the front rows.

  Ellie drew her katana and waded into the fight. The samurai who had perfected sword techniques had done so against armies much like the one they faced now. It was time to discover whether Ellie was up to the high standards those ancient samurai had set.

  A martial artist learns balance points—places where the slightest push can send their opponent off balance. Against a phalanx, the balance point is to the side or rear—pikes point in only one direction and turning their axis is difficult. Turning while fully engaged is impossible.

  The enemy light cavalry had pulled back from the phalanx's flanks, looking for a chance to exploit a breakthrough. That didn't mean the pikemen were undefended, of course. Rankers—swordsmen and halberdiers guarded the phalanx's vulnerable flank. But these soldiers simply lacked the experience that Ellie brought and they too had suffered from the hail of musket fire.

  She hit them hard, burst through that tough shell, and found herself in target heaven—the middle of a pike phalanx where her opponents were unable to bring their weapons to bear against her at all.

  Pikemen aren't stupid. Most of them carried shortswords as a secondary weapon. Those near her dropped their pikes and pulled their swords, turned to face the more immediate threat.

  But a pike phalanx depends on cohesion, on coordination. The dropped pikes meant opportunities for the bayonet-wielding dragoons and they took it. Facing only the front row pikemen, they could finally take advantage of their shorter weapons. All up the line, the musketeers surged forward.

  "Charge.” Arnold's voice sounded a bit pitched but he'd seen the momentary confusion in the phalanx. The thirty knights he still had active hit the pikemen from the side opposite Ellie. And carved into them like an electric knife into a Thanksgiving turkey.

  Chapter 7

  Of the thirteen hundred infantry and cavalry they'd faced, Ellie calculated they killed more than three hundred. They captured five hundred, half of whom were wounded. It would take a long time before the soldiers who got away could be reequipped and reformed into a confident pike phalanx. They had been shattered emotionally as well as physically.

  Sergius's main army's arrived just in time to take over guard duty from the exhausted knights and dragoons, and the army camped in what had been the enemy stronghold.

  The good news was they had captured plenty of food. The bad news was, Sullivan clearly knew they were coming, had outguessed them on tactics, and had ample time to prepare for their arrival at Dinan.

  Mark collapsed next to where Ellie was gathering the magic stones she'd scattered during the backwash. “I should be feeling happy,” he said.

  "Your dragoons saved the day."

  Both Sergius and Arnold had been humble and quiet versions of themselves. The King had apologized to the sergeants and knights for his moment of panic and seemed anxious to put it behind him. Nobody had repeated any vainglorious calls for no quarter and the prisoners were being treated fairly.

  "I guess so."

  Ellie could understand Mark's feelings. It's one thing to think of tactics and strategy in academic terms. It's another to see death, blood, and severed limbs.

  Their camp echoed with sounds of the wounded and stank of the funeral pyres where their army burned the dead—their own and those of their enemy, indiscriminately mixed in the funeral rites as they'd been in battle.

  She found the last stone half-buried in the turf and replaced it in the velvet bag her mother had kept them in. “I could send you back, you know."

  "With the time distortion, it might be hundreds of years here before you could get back. You'd never avenge your parents."

  "My parents would still be dead."

  Her answer surprised her as much as it did Mark. She still missed her parents, would always miss them. But she'd killed enough now to know that more killing wouldn't bring them back. How many of the soldiers she'd killed that afternoon had been parents? How many new orphans had she created?

  During the fight, her mind had switched into another state. As she'd slashed her way through enemy soldiers, she'd been fully in the moment, one with her sword.

  But that moment had faded and her memory now played back every moment of the fight. Every sword that had stabbed at her, every cut she'd made with her katana. Every one of the men she'd sent to an early grave.

  "They would have killed us if we hadn't fought,” Mark reminded her.

  "I know.” She did know, but it didn't really help. “Come on, let's get something to eat."

  * * * *

  "Ah, there you are. The King has been looking for you.” Dafed had been angry he'd been left out of the fight but he was smiling now. “We're holding a council of war."

  She nodded, looked at the loaf of bread in her hand, decided to bring it with her. She needed to eat and she wasn't going to worry about manners any more. If Sergius didn't like it, he could find himself another mage.

  He didn't seem to mind. He slapped her on the back, gave her a seat by his side, and then addressed the group of captains and sergeants.

  His hair was still plastered to his head with dried sweat and blood from his magically healed injury stained his jersey, but he looked more the King than Ellie had ever seen him. Good. Because they needed a King, not a comic-book hero.

  "It seems that our uncles know we are coming,” Sergius admitted. “Continuing on to Dinan is a more dangerous choice than we had anticipated."

  "He has half a thousand fewer soldiers to defend it with,” Dafed said. “And if we retreat after such a victory, what would we do after a defeat?"

  "Mark, Ellie? What say you?"

  Sergius didn't ask for opinions often. Ellie knew she should be grateful. Instead she shrugged.

  "How has what we learned here changed our situation?” Mark finally said when it was clear that Ellie wasn't going to answer. “Retreating to Morray means giving up. You've got to take the fight to your enemies."

  Sergius nodded slowly. He'd caught Mark's use of your enemies rather than our enemies. “But we have gained time. We could stay here and recuperate. It's a secure camp. It has food enough to last us a week. We could set up our forges and make more of your bayonets."

  Ellie had wanted to stay out of the argument but this was ridiculous. “If you sit here, you've lost as surely as if you go back to Moray. Dafed is right. You've got them off balance. The survivors are going to go back and talk about secret weapons, about huge magic, about the great king's overwhelming charge. But they're professional soldiers. How long will it take before they realize that if we aren't pursuing, it's because we can't? They'll send out snipers, burn the fields to keep us from feeding our animals, and ambush our vanguard and our foraging parties. It's what they should have done anyway, rather than risk a thousand men on the trap."

  And if they had the spies Ellie guessed they did, they'd be heartened by the King's panic. But she didn't think it wise to bring that to his attention.

  "We have wounded men,” Arnold pointed out. “We can't abandon them but many of them can't be moved."

  She wondered if he'd be as concerned if many of their wounded hadn't been fellow nobles.

  She shrugged. “This is your war, not mine. If you want to fritter it away, that is your decision to make. But you might want to consider how many more will be wounded or killed if you sit here and wait for the Duke of Sullivan to figure out his next step."

  "The princess is right.” Sergius heaved a sigh, stood and struck a pose. “We will leave a small force here to care for and defend the wounded. With them, most of our blacksmit
hs will stay to repair the captured cannon and start making as many bayonets as possible. The rest of us will press on. We agreed to capture Dinan—capture it, we shall."

  Ellie would have been inspired by that kind of talk the previous day. Now, though, she merely nodded. “We'll continue tomorrow, then."

  * * * *

  There was plenty of grumbling the next morning.

  Only ten of the knights were up to scouting. Mark detailed twenty of his dragoons to help, and mounted the rest of the dragoons as rear-guard, giving them an extra hour to rest.

  Their numbers, too, Ellie noted, were sorely depleted. Of the two hundred who had stood in line the previous day, scarcely a hundred could ride now. Many of the others would be able to join them in a few days—if their wounds didn't get infected. But forty of Mark's two hundred dragoons had died in that one battle. It wasn't an encouraging thought.

  Lawgrave approached her an hour after they'd set out. “Do you want to talk about it, my child?"

  He should have looked ridiculous on a small mule, his feet nearly dragging on the ground and his dress-like robes pulled up to show pale calves and knees. Instead, though, he looked concerned and, for the first time since Ellie had met him, almost kind.

  "Talk about what?"

  "I'm not just a mage, you know. I'm a priest. That means I'm trained to see anxious souls. And your soul is deeply troubled."

  She couldn't argue with that. And she needed to talk. Once, she would have worried whom Lawgrave might report to. Now she was past caring. “I realized that I couldn't bring my parents back no matter how many people I killed. All I'm doing is killing other people's parents. Or other people's children."

  He nodded slowly. “Our church fathers preached against war for centuries in the early days of the faith. Against all war because the Prophet was a peacemaker. Hundreds of years ago, though, they made an exception. Wars could be fought, but only just wars.” His lips turned down into a frown. “A few argue this exception was a mistake."

  Ellie had always thought that war could be just. You had to defend yourself if you were attacked; otherwise the violent and evil get a free ride. Martial artists learn to be gentle, but abject surrender wasn't a part of her nature. Still, the gap between her ideas and reality was too great.