Shadow’s Son

by Shirley Meier, S. M. Stirling

  Sova’s eyes followed them, watching through a screen of bush head-high as she rode by, through a spiderweb starred with blue-white jewel beads of moisture. “Beautiful,” she whispered, to no one in particular. “It doesn’t seem quite real. Like we were looking at everything through diamonds.”

  Shkai’ra laughed softly to herself, chanting in a half-whisper:

  Morning red, morning red

  Will you shine upon me dead?

  Soon the trumpets will be blowing

  Then must I to death be going

  I and many merry friends.

  The girl patted her mount’s neck, was answered with a quiet whicker. “Even the horses feel it, don’t they, khyd-hird?” The world seemed to pause, waiting between breaths.

  “They smell fate on a wind from tomorrow,” Shkai’ra said. She turned, looking critically to where the column behind them climbed the low rise; eight hundred lances swayed like a bed of metal-tipped reeds, blades the smooth color of salt.

  She still normally commanded a hundred; but today she’d been sent to lead this mission. In other armies I could name, she thought, I’d know it was because my superior didn’t feel like getting out of bed this early. In this one ... it’s a test.

  “Trumpeter,” she said; her voice was not much louder, but she pitched it an octave higher. “Sound deploy into column.”

  The column split, the horses stepping higher as they plunged and heaved through the breast-high wheat, trampling paths that lay tumbled and chaotic through the grain. Their coats and the chest-guards of metal and leather most wore glistened with moisture; they tossed their heads, nostrils flared into red pits and eyes rolling as they chewed at the bits. The standard-bearer rode up beside Shkai’ra and Sova, and the trumpeter on the other side.

  “Bows out. Walk-march—trot.”

  They crested the rise, birds and gold-bodied bees swarming up from the stalks beneath their hooves. A thousand meters down the slope from them the long column of Arkan infantry were marching from right to left across their front on a road that ran along the banks of a tree-fringed stream whose bed shone silver with mist.

  “Gods-damned if I know how the Yeolis knew they’d be here, unless they’re using magic scouts,” Shkai’ra gritted happily. “But this is one flanking column that isn’t going to arrive on the battlefield in time. If at all.” She’d questioned it, in fact, when given the orders, though that carried risk of punishment. “Chevenga said they’d be there, so they’ll be there,” the cavalry-general had answered patiently. “You’ll see—and not question again.”

  Arkans, Sova thought. The enemy. She’d seen their camp before—a distant, indistinct mass. She’d even borrowed the far-lookers, fascinated to see, to measure. Scarlet lacquered breast-plates and greaves, blond braids, light eyes, the usual expressions, same as in the Alliance camp; but through the lenses they were still abstract, still far away in the summer haze. Now—she could smell them, sweat, dust from their booted feet, gritty in the crystal dawn air. Now—she would ride up to them, close with them, have them within her reach, be within theirs ...

  Is that why the world seems so clear? On the river last year, there’d been fights, skirmishes in the dark, without warning; but never like this, hundreds against hundreds on a field in the cold light of day after thinking ahead to it all night.

  Am I afraid? she asked herself. No. She wasn’t, somehow, to her own amazement. It’s too beautiful a morning, she concluded, to be afraid.

  An officer’s mount among the Arkans threw up its head and neighed a challenge. Shkai’ra’s arm swept up, then chopped down, and the trumpet sang.

  A roar broke out. Through and over it ran the screams of the cavalry and the gathering thunder of their hooves, pounding out palm-sized chunks of turf as they flung the tonne-weights of steel and armor and flesh forward.

  The infantry—two thousand of them, or a little less—halted, turning in knots and clumps as the officers’ voices screamed at them to deploy, too late. Pikes bristled and crossed in huge X shapes as they tried to face about, and crossbowmen and javelineers tried to force their way forward. Then they were suddenly close, arrows thupping out from the hornbows, men falling; some of them had no room to fall, clots of them toppling back off the road embankment and falling down towards the mud. Faces were close, shouting, screaming, mouths wide and red.

  Sova crowded in behind Shkai’ra’s right stirrup as the Kommanza dropped her bow into the case and swung down her lance. The Thane-girl’s lance seemed suddenly light, and the motion of the gallop was like the swoop of birds. I’m not afraid. I’m not—how can I not be afraid? Then it was time to close, and she had no more time to wonder.

  Thunk. Not like the sound of lances hitting practice dummies. Heavier. A shock like her horse stumbling at speed, it was jumping and there was a twisting body on the crushed rock surface of the road with her lance, broken, through his chest. A sound like one united scream, of massed human death-cries, so loud her ears felt pain, the sound of hurt horses even louder. They were stopped and Hotblood had an Arkan pikeman by the face and he was whipping his head back and forth and it ripped away and the man went running ... Then they were wheeling and turning and driving both ways up and down the road. She followed Shkai’ra, drawing her sword. An Arkan drove a halberd at her from the side, and her arm came over with the sword point-down, training moving it without thought; her foot lashed out and the stirrup-iron hit him in the mouth; she stabbed and the point went in over his breastplate. That jerked up her wrist; she could see his blue eyes flare wide, his face not two years older than hers, as he fell away and the steel dragged free with a sucking reluctance.

  No enemy within reach. She didn’t know what to do, and so followed Shkai’ra. How do commanders know what to do? She tried to see it with an officer’s eyes, orderly, spotting signs suggesting courses of action, saw nothing but chaos.

  “Don’t let them rally!” Shkai’ra screamed. The Arkans were running away, out into the fields, up and down the road. “By platoons, pursuit!” Of course, Sova thought. Don’t let them rally, what else?

  She followed Shkai’ra as she spurred her horse out into the wheat; it was all trampled now, bodies lying or crawling, one right in their way with his hands over his head. Sova heard the hooves thumping into dirt and then into his body, a different sound. A knot of men beyond, an officer trying to get them to face about: he waited for Shkai’ra with his knees slightly bent, blade and shield up, eyes on her but mouth yelling for his soldiers. Hotblood twisted aside and her shield darted down to cover her calf; she stabbed over her mount’s neck and the officer went down. The others ran, one right in front of Sova, then almost under her horse’s nose, sobbing as he lumbered along, not even noticing her. His helmet was off and his okas crop was thin and white-blond. Sova raised the sword until the blade lay along her back.

  Milk the hilt. Shkai’ra’s voice said in her head. Loose until it’s three-quarters of the way along, think of the edge as a line you’re drawing through the head from the crown to nose. Then clench your gut and push your feet into the stirrups. It’s called the “pear-splitting cut.”

  She did it, the movement exactly like the hundreds of times in training, the feeling as the sword struck different. Bone split, and blood and brains burst out in a great fan of red. Wet splashed across her face and into her open mouth; it tasted of salt and iron. She spat, wanted to wipe her mouth, couldn’t, hands full. It worked. The body ran two steps before it fell under her mount’s hooves. Gotthumml, did it work ...

  Pursuit, the command rang again in her mind. She looked around, saw no Arkans who weren’t down or going down or chased by someone else or on the other side of a mill, too far to chase. She looked around; all seemed confusion, and she didn’t know what to do again. Then the trumpet sounded rally. She looked for the banner and rejoined Shkai’ra.

  The Kommanza’s eyes scanned all around, a thin-lipped grin on her hawk-face. “That was easy,” she drawled. “Very easy. They weren’t expecting
us.” On the faces of her motley cavalry, shit-eating grins were suddenly wiped away, replaced by businesslike attention. “Help our wounded, gather our dead, strip theirs.”

  Why is there cold on my face? The blood-tang in Sova’s mouth reminded her. She pulled off a gauntlet, wiped the back of her hand across her chin; it came away soaked red. Her throat was parched, though she hadn’t noticed it getting that way; by will she slowed her breathing, and rinsed out her mouth with a swig from her canteen. A flash of memory of the okas’s head splitting, and suddenly her throat and the back of her mouth went tight and sour, watering, her stomach—No. I won’t throw up. Not in front of everyone. Think of breathing. Now, she was afraid. In a little time the nausea eased, but it didn’t go away completely. None of the wonderfully valuable Arkan breast-plates would fit her—a problem all women warriors in the Alliance had—but she got a good pair of shoulder-guards that could be adjusted, and a new dagger. The rose glow of dawn had changed to the harsh gold of full day, showing with wordless clarity the sleepy country landscape littered with corpses, darkened with blood.

  “Word is, we’ve done our duty for the day,” Shkai’ra told the unit, once she’d got Sova to read the letter of orders. “We get the battle off. And we’re duly commended, signed Brigadier-General First Maka-unpronounceable.” That brought a laugh, and shouted corrections from Yeolis in the unit.

  She’d vaguely been hoping for the signature to be Chevenga’s, actually. That really would have smelled like promotion. I guess it’s too much to expect for a mission of spearing fish in a barrel. Oh, well.

  Brigadier-General First, as the Yeolis called it, was the position Shkai’ra aspired to, being the highest she could hope for; it was directly under the First General First and meant membership in the privy Command Council. And a name in history, if she helped keep this war going as it was. Maybe, as time goes by and Gold-bottom gets more trustful of foreigners, she thought, I won’t have to be a Yeoli to get it.

  “This doesn’t mean you get to relax,” she said to Sova, once she’d dismissed the troop. “We’re going to watch from the most convenient hilltop and see if you can’t learn a thing or two about commanding from Gold-bottom himself?”

  On a rise over the plain, they settled, with a motley crowd of other watchers, walking wounded, camp followers and so forth. Reclining catlike on a blanket while Megan and Sova prepared the picnic, Shkai’ra scanned the field, where, wide and distant as a painting, the two armies were deployed.

  “Well, there you have it, apprentice. Plain ground, two armies straight on, everything wide open—a strategist’s fight. You know our number, or at least what the rumors say, since it keeps getting bigger.” Sova had heard anything from sixty-five to seventy-two thousand in the last little while. “About sixty-odd on the field today, nine-thousand cavalry. What would you say, from a look, is theirs?”

  Sova tried to estimate with a professional eye. “Uhhh ... about the same? Maybe a little less?”

  “Look closer,” Shkai’ra barked.

  “Ummm ... less ... uhhh ...” The Kommanza’s fingers drummed her knee significantly. “Oh, ya! Arkan close order isn’t as close as ours, so it makes them look like more—fifty thousand.” She tried to make it sound authoritative. “Would’ve been fifty-two thousand if it hadn’t been for us this morning—heh, heh ... ahem. Judging by the number of cavalry they have, too. Yep. Fifty-thousand. I think.”

  “Good enough for our purposes,” Shkai’ra sniffed. “All right. Tell me who’s making the first mistake.”

  Sova surveyed the field through Shkai’ra’s far-lookers, then squinted without them. “Nobody’s moved yet. I want to say the Arkans, but that’s assuming. I don’t think that the way he’s got them ranked is that smart—”

  “Commanders say things clearly, girl. He who, Zh’ven’gka or the strawhair?”

  “The strawhair. I’d say him anyway because his center can’t really move without plowing over everyone else.”

  “You’ve gotten much too complicated, girl,” the Kommanza chided. “From looking through those things, probably ... you should be able to see it at a glance.”

  “Uhh ...” Sova blinked a few times, looked, squinted, gazed helplessly at Shkai’ra. “Khyd-hird ... I don’t.”

  The Kommanza heaved a long-suffering sigh. “Well, I guess you aren’t doing any worse than the strawhair—he doesn’t see it, either. And he’s an accredited strategist, trained and all. Or maybe he got orders and had no choice.”

  “But they’re all just standing still!”

  “You think the planning doesn’t start before the ranks are drawn, girl? Hurry up and figure it out before the fight starts and we have to watch for the difficult points.”

  “But—I thought you wanted me to look for the way they were ranked and that’s what I answered!”

  “I didn’t say anything about how they were ranked, just who was making the first mistake.”

  “But all I can see that’s different is—” She slapped herself on the cheek. “Oh, duhhh! The numbers!”

  “Exactly,” said Shkai’ra. “Here’s this Arkan, of no particular genius anyone here has ever heard of, outnumbered, against He Whose Bottom Is Dipped in Gold. He, or whoever’s commanding him, is nuts to fight here like this—they’re going to get their asses kicked from here to Illizbuah. Maybe they’re just being set up as sacrifice, to incur losses; stupid, when they’ve seen so many times that he knows how to win without great cost.”...

  “Maybe,” she amended her own prediction, heavily. “There are those who’d argue that it isn’t particularly smart for Gold-Arse to fight sixty-thousand on fifty, on plain ground, if he wants to keep advancing through hostile territory. The numbers aren’t that lopsided. But then, he’s won with less advantage than this. All right. What else do you know that touches what’s going to nappen?”

  “They haven’t had much sleep,” Megan said drily. Sova snickered.

  “Ummm ...”

  “About either side. Anything.”

  “We’re in good morale. They’re not.”

  “All right, what else?”

  “The Arkan’s commanding troops he’s not familiar with. And a good chunk of them—” Shkai’ra gave her a withering look. “Uhh, about seven thousand are tired from marching here.”

  “What else? Sova, pretend I just came here from the moon. That I know nothing, and you have to tell me everything.”

  “Uhh ... despite being tired, the fresh troops are overconfident?”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because they’re Arkan. And they think they’ve never lost.”

  “You’re assuming. They aren’t blind; they can see how far into their Empire the invaders are.”

  “Oh.” Sova cast her eyes downwards. Gott, I feel stupid.

  Shkai’ra sat up sharply. “Zaikdammit, you’re slow today, girl. Here.”

  On, no. Sova sidled to her side. She couldn’t see the fist raised behind her head, but felt it there, waiting. “So. What else?”

  “Ahhh—” Sova thought fast. “The fresh troops—their horses are tired. They must have outrun their supply lines and I heard there was a raid to cut them off but they’ve outrun them anyway. They don’t have Haians, but that’s standard—” That was dumb, oh no ... She flinched, though without showing it, but the hand didn’t come down. “Ummm ...”

  “You’re missing half,” said Shkai’ra. “At least mostly. Which half?”

  One of those questions that had to be answered instantly, or else. “Half? Oh, Gotthumml, our half!” The fist, starting to come down, stopped. “Us, umm, all right. We’ve had a good night’s sleep, we aren’t tired, new mercenaries have joined up, we have Haians, and we have Che—”

  Whap. Hard knuckles drove into the top of Sova’s head. Oww. “You’re just repeating the opposite of them,” the Kommanza snapped. “Don’t you know anything about us that you don’t about them? We have Zh’venghkua, you said. So what?”

  “Well, we don’t o
nly have him but his reputation—that makes them shit their pants. Excuse my la—”

  “Yes, all right, though you mostly covered that before, under morale. What else does it mean? What does he habitually do?”

  She hates giving hints, Sova thought. So she’s more likely to hit after she does. “Uhh ... leaves them a way out. To retreat.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Everyone—I mean, I heard it. It’s common knowledge.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “What—that it’s common knowledge?”

  She sensed Shkai’ra’s hand wind up slightly, then hold off. “Ia.”

  “Uhh ... well ... I guess ... they’d know it, too! So they won’t fight as hard as they would if they were cornered.”

  “Yes.” Shkai’ra’s voice actually sounded somewhat pleased, but she didn’t go so far as to say “Good.”

  “What else does he do, habitually? Can you think of anything?”

  I haven’t watched any battles before, how am I supposed to know? Sova racked her brain for anything else she’d heard, and came up with nothing. “Umm ... ahhh ...”

  Too slow; the knuckles rang her skull. “Don’t tell me what you think in your flea-sized brain I want to hear, Baiwundammit! Tell me the zteafakaz truth!”

  “I don’t know!” Sova said helplessly, trying to brace herself for another blow without flinching too obviously. Sometimes Shkai’ra would hit her just for flinching. Think something will happen, she’d say, and it will! “I can’t think of anything, I haven’t heard anything else, not that I can remember!”