Shadow’s Son

by Shirley Meier, S. M. Stirling

  “So, these have been to school,” Shkai’ra said musingly to herself. To Sova: “Take a look at the edge of the woods, then that hillcrest. What do you see?”

  “Well, there they are in the woods, without lances. They aren’t going to have lances in the woods, get caught on the branches. Infantry. A small rejin. And there’s more waiting over the hill ... cavalry?”

  “Excellent. Understanding your opponent’s mind is the key to success in command. It’s easier than understanding people generally, there’s a ... straightforwardness to it.” She rapped her knuckles together. “You always know what the enemy wants.”

  “All right, here’s why they’re set up like this. They want that phalanx to block the road, right? So if any of us come up and engage, they’ve got light infantry in the woods—skirmishers, javelineers, those shitty barbed fuckers they like to use. The light infantry moves out quick and takes us in the flank. When we’re nice and pinned, the lancers over the hillcrest come down through the woods—you can do that if you’re careful—and roll us up. Remember, they’re trying to win time to get away from us; the longer it takes to clear this roadblock, the better. Any questions?”

  The girl stared at the scene for a time, scratching the quillons of her sword. “Uhhh ... what do we do?”

  Shkai’ra snorted. “That’s the hard part. Take a note to Makalina Shae-Sorel, rigaryekrachaseye, Brigadier-General First.” The Thane-girl pulled out a pad of paper sheets and licked the end of a writing stick. “From me, to her, the usual saddlesoap courtesies and the situation as I’ve just explained it.” Sova’s hand flew across the page. “Please send up, firstly, some good light foot to clear the forest, pikes, missile infantry, field artillery. A company or so of Lakan horse would be welcome. With all that, I estimate we could get this boy-buggering impediment off the road, many thanks, you’d better come up in person too, signed me.”

  “It’s a good thing I can write, khyd-hird,” Sova said amiably.

  “Isn’t it,” Shkai’ra said, taking the pad and adding a sketch-map to the end. “Get it there, get an answer, get back, fast. “

  Shkai’ra pushed her helmet back by the nasal, whistling tunelessly as she waited at the center of the three-rank formation of the Slaughterers. The sun was warm on her armor, this metal suit hotter than the lacquered leather on fiberglass she was accustomed to, if lighter. Sweat ran down her face into her coif.

  At the sound of footfalls in unison behind her, she turned in the saddle. Sova was riding with her Yeoli boy at the head of the approaching column: three-hundred-odd women, dark chocolate brown, tall, wire-slender and loping at an easy pace that kept up with the horses’ canter. Each carried two six-foot javelins with long iron heads in her left hand, along with a small wicker shield and another spear in her right, but was lightly equipped otherwise: a leather kirtle and jerkin, metal-strapped leather helmet with an ostrich-plume, long knife at the belt and one-handed axe across the backs. Warriors of the matriarchy of Hyeme, they were.

  Against Arkans, she understood, who had just been rotated forward and so weren’t used to fighting women yet; more prone to be shocked, insulted, ashamed or intimidated, and do stupid things, at least for a short time, which would be long enough. She wondered if this was Chevenga’s idea; it had his stamp.

  They were headed not by Peyepallo, the Hyerne high commander, but her second. Who still outranks me, Shkai’ra thought. But as the Hyerne arrived, giving Hot-blood a wary glance, she said in pidgin-Enchian, “Makalina say you in command until main body comes up.”

  So, so. The smell of another promotion was in the air; somebody had noticed her sucker-punching that battalion of Arkan horse last week. Partly luck, but it always was, and she’d done something similar back in Senlaw, across the Lannic.

  The Hyerne deployed to the left of Shkai’ra’s cavalry, black and white plumes fluttering in the gusting breeze. Sova pulled up on her other side and saluted. The Yeoli boy was about seventeen ... yes, it was the one the girl was bouncing the bedroll with. Can’t pronounce the name. Can’t fault her taste, either. “A regiment of Schvait, two springalds, three companies of Lakans, and rigaryekrachaseye Makalina Shae-Sorel are on the way, knyd-hird,” Sova said.

  “Good,” Shkai’ra replied. To the Hyerne: “The woods. I figure the skirmishers’ll come out to meet you, since they don’t want you taking the phalanx in the side. There’s Arkan cavalry up on those hills; if they move down, we’ll give three trumpet calls. You retreat sharpish, we’ll handle them.”

  The Hyeme nodded and repeated back the orders to acknowledge. She had a jewelled Imperial longsword across her back, and a hastily repainted steel helmet that had obviously once protected some Aitzas.

  “Sova, and you-with-the-unpronounceable-name-that-sounds-like-a-sneeze,” Shkai’ra said, “stay here by the standard. If we engage, keep in the second rank. And listen for the commands, Sova: I’m expecting you to set an example.”

  The Hyerne ran ahead into position beside her standard, a dolphin leaping over a staff, and gave a long shrill cry. Her troops sprang up head-high from their crouch, howling in answer, slamming spears against shields three times whamp-whamp-whamp. The thundercracks echoed across the fields towards the wood, and before the sound of the last died the Hyerne were charging at a bounding run through the waist-high wheat, plumes nodding, whetted spearheads glinting, cocked back over their right shoulders. Their shrieking war-cry was like files on metal, endless.

  Scarlet and steel glinted along the edge of the woods as the Arkan skirmishers came forward to the edge of the undergrowth at the foot of the trees. The Hyerne infantry commander barked; the run of the first line changed to a sideways crab-step. Another shout: heavy javelins flew. Barbed Arkan darts answered, flying on a higher arch. The second line of Hyerne ran through the first, threw; the third did likewise, and the first were ready again. The next flight of Arkan spears was ragged, and men in scarlet tunics burst out of the brush to engage hand-to-hand.

  “Stupid,” Shkai’ra said, as their charging line staggered under a hail of spears. She handed Sova the binoculars. “See: the Hyeme had less shelter, but all their ranks could throw. The towhairs couldn’t take the iron. They should have fallen back, where the Hyeme had to come to them on their own ground. At a guess I’d say their commander couldn’t bear to run away from women. Asshole.”

  The Arkan light infantry had chainmail vests, small round shields faced with steel and double-edged short-swords; but the Hyerne were twice as numerous, and had a bounding agility the Imperials could not match. Through the glasses Sova saw an Arkan face spring out, teeth bared in a grin of tension as he backed before two black women whose spears licked out like the tongues of snakes, striking sparks from the surface of shield and sword ... something flickered behind him, skin-brown and steel bright, his mouth and eyes popped open, stunned, and he was gone. For an instant all she could see were backs and three spearbutts jerking up and down. Yeee-yeee-yeee, the maddened battlecries came yipping across the distance. Shkai’ra giggled; that cut off as she took the glasses back and turned them to the heights above.

  About a hundred, coming over the hill. Half her own numbers, but in full suits of articulated steel plate enameled in scarlet and gold, their harness almost as good as the Zak-made suit she’d had done up in F’talezon; big men on stocky white horses eighteen hands high, long lances in their right hands and kite-shaped shields with the eagle and sun on their left arms; longswords on their hips, axes or warhammers at their saddlebows. The Sunborn Elite, finest of the Empire’s strike-cavalry. Even Arko couldn’t equip and support all that many troops like this, but it was a big empire ... and even a hundred here-and-now was two kilometers of bad news.

  “Ahh ... khyd-hird ... what do we do about them?”

  “Run like hell, if we could.” She turned to the trumpeter. “Sound off.” The man put the lone brass instrument to his lips and sounded three sharp blasts. “Again.”

  The Arkan cavalry was coming down the hill at a stead
y walk, no point in speeding up until they finished threading their way through the woods. What was left of their infantry had run for the woods; Shkai’ra could see the Hyeme officers calling, pushing or kicking them back from pursuit. The Arkans formed up, less about a score of dead and twice that of wounded, the fortunate being carried away on crossed spears between four comrades. The unfortunate were efficiently finished off by Hyerne.

  “Bows forward!” Shkai’ra shouted.”Blunt wedge. Walk-march, trot!”

  Ragged, ragged. She threw up her hand about two hundred meters from the woods; most of the Slaughterers swung to a halt, but here and there a horse kept going for a few paces. There were collisions, cursing, the outraged neighing of mounts shouldered in the haunch and the vengeful commands of sergeants promising punishment-drill.

  “Dress line, you shitheads!” she yelled, and pulled her wheelbow out of its case. I used to enjoy this sort of thing, she thought, as her stomach muscles pulled tight; she clamped her knees against Hotblood’s flanks. funfunfun-fun, the Ri thought. She let his exhilaration wake hers, skinning back her teeth as her arm remembered the twofold sensation of a saber-edge thudding home in meat and grating on the bone beneath.

  “Sova. If those lobster-backs up there get time to build momentum, they’ll hit us the way a sledgehammer hits a bowl of eggs,” she said, conscious of the throaty tone of her voice. “We’ve got to either hit them before they can move, or peck at them from out of range. Watch.”

  The Hyeme were trotting by; Shkai’ra cast a sharp glance right, but the Arkan crossbowmen on the flank of the pike-hedge were keeping ranks, out of range and unlikely to break formation. On Hyeme spear-points were a few heads, including one belonging to an Aitzas, by the length of the fighting-braid, and many more sets of jiggling testicles. The Hyeme did not like the “purification” ritual of Arko, which involved slicing off every girl’s clitoris at the age of seven.

  “Nice work,” Shkai’ra said, looking down. The Hyeme leader’s brown skin glistened with sweat and blood, some of it from superficial cuts on her legs and right arm, mostly from the captured longsword that she twitched negligently back and forth.

  “Want keep crop, kill the rats,” she replied, grinning.

  “Hold your troops in reserve. I’m going to try and stop them cold. Pile in if we do.”

  The Hyeme pulled her swordblade through a rag held in her left hand. “Pile in, yes.”

  “Even stalled, those lobster-shells have too much of an advantage,” Shkai’ra muttered too low for the Hyeme to hear. She twisted in the saddle. “Sova, remember, do not break ranks. You, Sneeze-name,” she continued to the Yeoli boy, shifting into an execrable pidgin of that language.

  “Stay by her, behind me. Savvy?” He acknowledged with a stab of his hand, palm up, and a crisp “Tai, kras!”

  The trampled bush along the edge of the woods shook as the big Arkan horses shouldered their way through, placing their feet with the nervous care horses took on uncertain ground. Their heads wore steel chamfrons, their chests, steel pectorals blazoned with the sun-clasping Eagle. Sunlight hammered back from scarlet and gold enamel, from the three razor-honed edges of each pyramidal lance-head, from a jewelled sword-hilt or silver-plated bridle.

  “Five shafts, shoot!” Shkai’ra barked.

  The bow slid up, pressing against her hand as she drew; the pressure of the string on her thumb-ring dropped off as the wheels flipped and levered against the weight of the stave. A flat snap, and the arrow twinkled, turned down at midpoint, and she could hear the head punch into the neck-armor of the Arkan she’d aimed for, wearing a fancy plumed helmet. Others fell; horses ran plunging as they were hit. But the steady movement out of the woods continued, the Imperial cavalry deploying in a two-deep formation.

  “Trumpeter, sound charge,” Shkai’ra called, dropping her bow back into the case. The note rang out high and brassy-sweet, and the Alliance horse sprang forward with a single war-howl.

  She tightened her grip on Hotblood, bracing her feet; the Ri squealed, wind whipping his silver mane, and even then horses on either side shied slightly. The consciousness of woman and Ri merged, a single mind with two nodes. The shield slid off her back and her left arm reached through the grips, the lance lifted out of the scabbard; out of the corners of her eyes she could see the others’ long shafts slanting down. Under the continuous trumpet note, hooves fell like muffled thunder on the root-laced dirt.

  Halfway there, and the Arkans were deployed. Too late, you should’ve sent out a half-troop to screen while you got into line, shitheads, Shkai’ra thought tightly, bringing her lance around to point over Hotblood’s head at the man she had chosen. Their trumpet sang, and there was a ripple of movement down the Imperial line as the cavalrymen snapped down their visors, blank ovals of scarlet steel with a slit for the eyes and a pattern of holes over the mouth, emblazoned with a rayed sun in gold. Another call, and they lowered their lances and clapped heels to their mounts with a shout. The big horses jumped off their haunches, slowly building toward what would be an earth-shaking gallop.

  Horse noses came up on either side of Shkai’ra; Sova and her Yeoli. “Keep back, second rank, you don’t fucking have lances!” she snouted. Target. Red-lacquered armor, chain and plate. Two-meter lance, oval shield. Close enough now to see details, a hammered-out dint in a shield’s face, the dapple of a white’s neck. A helmet plumed with eagle feathers dyed red bending toward her; a hint of blue eyes. We’re at full gallop, they re not much more than standing ... Floating gallop, Hotblood’s pace smoother and more ground-hugging than a horse’s. She laughed, braced her feet and swung the point down.

  CRASH. All along the line, the heavy blacksmith sound of lances hitting steel, tung-chung, or the lighter shivering clang if the curved surfaces shed the blow. The Arkan’s point banged off her shield, no force behind it. Hers took him on the gorget, pink and a hard feeling as it struck the metal, soft punk as the lancehead shoved the plate aside and he went over the crupper of his horse, impact slamming her back against the rear of the saddle and the stirrups. His horse twisted and went down, neighing as Hotblood shouldered it. Thrashing hooves. Crack, her lance snapped; she threw it aside and swept out her saber, keening the shrill Kommanz war-cry through her teeth.

  Sova was at handstrokes with an Arkan, her arm jolting at the force of the blows from the long straight Imperial sword, her young face set with determination. Echera-e came up on Sova’s other side and jabbed the Arkan under his armpit, and she struck the way Shkai’ra had taught her, up under the chin without hesitating. Then she sat there while his weight pulled him off the point, as if frozen in fascination with having killed.

  “Move, girl!” Now another was at the Kommanza, boot to boot, hammering, sword, shield, sword. The Arkan’s horse, an uncut stallion, bugled and reared to chop at Hotblood with ironshod hooves; the Ri twisted in, weasel-quick, and sank his fangs into the thick base of the neck. Shkai’ra locked shields and clinched, tilted her saber to let his longsword flow down it with an unmusical shinnnng; then punched up under his visor with the eagles-head pommel. Something broke, and he crumpled out of the saddle. The horse fell across him, kicking, lifeblood pumping out of a wound the size of two clenched fists. Hotblood’s neck worked as he swallowed a huge lump of flesh, and belched.

  The Arkan banner was beyond; the four Imperial troopers around it came for Shkai’ra, the forward pair with swords, the rear thrusting overarm with lances. Hot-blood hissed and his head weaved like a striking snake’s; the first two Arkans split unexpectedly as their horses shied—into perfect positions to take her from either side. A sword thundered on her shield, hard enough to numb her arm and cut the metal rim; another beat at her blade, and the Ri was too blood-drunk to back. Lance-points poised to take her life.

  Shkai’ra saw them cock back, one man grinning as he saw her hands too full to stop it, and the knowledge of her own death ran through her as cold as steel. Zaik dammit, Megan needs me! she shouted in rage.

  Something
hissed past her ear, shhhup above the scrap-metal clamor of battle; a black Hyeme javelin-shaft stood stiff in the eye-slit of the Arkan before her, and he fell back limply off his horse. The other dropped his lance to draw sword and cut at the Hyeme woman who darted in to swing a hamstringing axe at his mount’s hock. The long blade caught her in the neck and went halfway through the shoulder, catching in bone and nearly dragging the Arkan from the saddle. Shrieking, another leaped at him from the other side, climbed him, touching stirrup and knee and waist, wound her legs around his torso and jerked his chin back to slit his throat from ear to ear.

  In the pause Shkai’ra glanced around. Arkans were going down all over. Charging, with the terrible weight of a mount under him, a horseman was a deadly weapon; standing, he was simply a soldier who couldn’t turn around very quickly, atop a moving and very stupid object. Shkai’ra turned her shield like a giant disk, forcing the lance stuck in it out of the Imperial’s hand; it fell loose from the plywood and leather to clatter to the ground. Just in time; the swordsman on the other side had nearly disarmed her. Hotblood caught the man’s shield-arm in his fangs, and she gave him a solid overarm cut across one gauntlet. Minztan layer-forged steel cut the thin sheet metal, and he went over with a cry of despair.

  She hammered free of the press and thrust her helmet back, standing in the stirrups. The Hyeme were going for the Arkan horses, hamstringing, slitting girths, stabbing bellies. But these Imperials had more going for them than weight and metal, no ox-witted okas conscripts here; dismounted, they still had superior weapons and armor, and were proving murderously quick and skilled at foot combat as well. Knots of them drew together, back-to-back, hacked their way toward the woods and flowed together to make bigger groups, locking shield to shield. Light-armed Hyeme were thrown back from shieldwalls and long swords.

  It would cost too heavily to overwhelm them, and she had accomplished the mission; neither the Arkan skirmishers nor these lancers were going to support the pike-phalanx in the gap. Her trumpeter was still mounted. “Sound retreat-and-rally,” she told him, thumping him on the shoulder to emphasize it.