A Meeting At Corvallis

by S. M. Stirling

  "Still, we could work men over the hills to either side. Then they'd either have to withdraw or be surrounded."

  Piotr considered, then shook his head. "We'll have to fight them sooner or later anyway. They're obviously here to delay us while their militia gets mobilized. I won't risk a destrier's legs on them, though. Send in the foot. Spearmen on the left, centered on the roadway. Crossbows on the right; they should be able to drive off half their number of bowmen. Lancers to hold themselves ready for pursuit."

  Piotr smiled at the thought. Once they turned their backs on mounted lancers, foot soldiers were so much meat to be shishkebabbed. Some of them might get away if they ran up into the forested hills, but most would probably just panic and try to escape and bolt down the road leading southward. His knights and their menie of men-at-arms would spear them from the saddle as if they were wild boar. He reached back to pull the padded weight of his mail coif over his head, fastening the lower part across his chin, then snapped his fingers. His squire rode forward to be ready with helm and shield and lance.

  * * * *

  Juniper Mackenzie hugged the tree and peered around its trunk; the dark furrowed bark of the Douglas fir was rough under her free hand. The branches were thick with blunt, thin-stalked needles an inch long, green and whitish on the underside. Twigs of the same breed had been thrust through the loops that made her war cloak shaggy, turning her into a part of the forest; the strong resin smell of the sap was heavy in her nostrils, and it made sticky spots on her gloves. More needles obscured her vision when she leveled the binoculars, for the branch she stood on was fifty feet up on the pillar-shaped trunk. The column of Protectorate troops shifted as she watched, the spearmen and cross-bowmen dismounting from their cycles and quick-stepping forward, spreading out from a thick marching column to a four-deep line as they moved. The black-and-scarlet banner of the Lidless Eye swayed from the crossbar as the line came on down the road to her left, edging out into the fields to overlap the knot of Mackenzies waiting where the road ran between the two hills. That would put them in a broad, shallow V, this forest on the east, the western flank low hills covered in thick scrub you couldn't move through without hacking a pathway.

  Her stomach knotted. Those were her friends and neighbors and clansfolk waiting on the road to lure the Protector's men forward. And leading them was Nigel Loring. It made sense—he had his suit of plate armor, and he was an experienced commander—but she still didn't like any of it.

  On the other side of the tree, Sam Aylward was watching as well. "Taking the bait," he said quietly, his deep, slow voice calm. "At least the first bite of it. Impatient bugger, 'ooever's in charge—good thing Eilir and Astrid drew Renfrew off. Now things get lively.''

  That was a curiously antiseptic way of talking about people dying, but every trade had its jargon. And it's a business I'm in, like it or not, she reminded herself.

  "I'd better get down and help things along," Aylward said stolidly. "Remember, Lady—only if they send in the lancers. Otherwise, we all just sod off on our bicycles."

  "Yes, teacher," Juniper said, and gave the older man a smile. Then more seriously: "Merry meet, and merry part—"

  "And merry meet again," he replied, giving her a thumbs-up.

  Then he reached out for the rope that was fastened to a branch above their heads, took an expert half hitch around his blocky armored torso and slid swiftly downward, landing as lightly as a man stepping out of his own home. Even knowing who was where, she was a little surprised when three figures rose and followed him, trotting silently between the great trees. That was reassuring. If she couldn't see them, it was unlikely their foemen could.

  She looked back out over the open field. The lancers were in a single block a hundred strong now, waiting, a flashing ripple above their heads as the honed steel moved and caught the sun. The Protectorate foot soldiers double-timed forward.

  * * * *

  The spearmen broke into a trot as they approached, their booted feet hitting the broken asphalt in a uniform pounding thump that Nigel Loring could feel through the soles of his steel shoes, their mail coats jingling and clashing as the skirts swirled around their legs. The enemy crossbowmen were fanning out west of the road; they and the archers would be occupied with each other. This would be edged metal at arm's length. Not everyone had the eyesight or inclination to make a good archer, even among Mackenzies.

  "Haro!" the enemy shouted. "Haw! Portland! Molalla! Haro!"

  They came with their big kite-shaped shields up under the eyes that glared from either side of the helmet nasal bars, the front rank holding their spears underarm, the second and third raised in an overarm stabbing grip, the ones behind slanting theirs upward; they'd add weight to the attack with their shields pressed against the backs of the men in front.

  "Ready!" Nigel called to the men around him.

  It was mostly men, in the front rank, you needed a fair bit of weight and heft to swing a Lochaber ax, or the war-hammers or broadaxes some of the others carried. He swung his visor down with the edge of his shield, and the day darkened to a single slit of light through the bucketlike steel dome of his sallet.

  "On the mark … now'"

  They surged forward with a shriek, whirling their huge polearms up to the ready position. Nigel strode forward with them, his own shield up and his longsword held over his right shoulder with the hilt forward and the point back. Others followed behind them with spears ready to stab over their shoulders or around them. It was best not to let the enemy charge strike home while you stood still.

  Closer, closer, oiled mail and black shields and whetted iron reaching for his life—

  A spearpoint flashed towards his eyes. Sir Nigel Loring caught the ugly glint of sunlight on honed steel as it drove at the narrow slit of his visor and ducked his head; the twelve-inch blade scored a groove across the smooth enameled metal of his sallet helm, a painful thumping blow even with the steel and padding, but then the dangerous point was past. He snarled behind the face-covering combination of visor and bevoir and cut over the top of his shield, aiming at the man's neck. The spearman's eyes went wide with alarm, and he raised his own shield and ducked, slapping sideways with the shaft of his spear. The ashwood bounced off the side of Nigel's helmet, staggering him; his own sword struck wood and metal, not vulnerable flesh. Then the hook on the reverse of one of the Lochaber axes snagged the enemy's shield and yanked him forward. He came with it, attached by his left arm in the loops and by the leather guige attached to the shield that ran over one shoulder like a bandolier. A spearpoint eeled past Nigel and stabbed the Protectorate soldier in the face, not a killing blow but enough to break teeth and bone and make him stagger back, shrieking.

  Nigel recovered, catching a spearpoint on his shield and then throwing the man behind it back by tucking his shoulder into the curve of it and pushing with all his weight. An ax flashed past him and broke a man's shoulder; he stabbed at another's face and gashed open a cheek. He panted to draw air into lungs that seemed stiff and dry and reluctant to move. The clamor around him was enormous, a white-noise cataract of screams and shouts, trampling, weapons beating dully on shields and with a harsh scrap-metal clangor on the steel bucklers of the Mackenzies, and now and then the dull thudding of edged metal ramming home in meat and bone.

  He slid forward, hooked his heater-shaped shield inside a spearman's bigger kite-shaped one and heaved it aside with a twisting wrench of body and shoulder and arm. The man's eyes went wide with fear as he was dragged off-balance, and the spear in his right hand was far too long to strike at close quarters like this. The Englishman's longsword punched up under the Protectorate soldier's chin; the man convulsed as the long point rammed through his mouth and brainpan. Nigel grimaced as he yanked it free and bowled the man over, sending him backward to disrupt the others. Three more spearheads probed for him; he caught one on his shield, but the other two glanced off his breastplate and the fauld that protected his right thigh. The suit of plate wasn't invulnerable,
but it gave him a terrible advantage.

  The triple impact staggered him back; a spearman who tried to pursue lost the top right quarter of his shield to a two-handed swing from a Lochaber ax that sliced it the way a knife would a hard-boiled egg, and ducked back cursing.

  And here we are, back where we started, he thought.

  The noise of combat died down for an instant, as warriors stood and panted and glared at each other in one of those odd little momentary truces that broke out spontaneously in this kind of fighting; perhaps it was because nobody could keep up the effort needed for hand-to-hand combat for long without rest. Wounded on both sides crawled back behind the front lines, or hobbled or were dragged or carried by their comrades. Dead men lay sprawled, their blood making the asphalt slick underfoot. Nigel Loring controlled his breathing with an effort, dragging air down into the bottom of his lungs, holding it for an instant until they'd had a chance to get all the oxygen out of it. He didn't let himself bend over and wheeze—that was less efficient, and besides, it showed weakness. He'd been in his early forties when the Change occurred, and he was fifty-three now; most of the men facing him were two decades younger or more. No matter how fit you kept yourself, a little endurance drained away every year.

  But age and treachery beat youth and strength, he told himself, snatching a mouthful of water from a canteen someone was passing around. Until they don't, at least.

  He could hear officers and noncoms among the Protectorate spearmen shouting at them to get back at it, see them rearranging their lines and occasionally shoving men into place, or holding a spearshaft horizontally and straightening a line by pushing it against men's backs. That was another difference from war before the Change. Then battlefields had been empty, lonely places swept by fire. You were alone, or with a small knot of your comrades; usually the fallen didn't see the man who killed them, and you rarely had more than a fleeting glimpse of the target.

  Now when you fought you did it shoulder-to-shoulder with your comrades, under your leaders' eyes, and close enough to see who you were killing—with spear and sword, close enough to look him in the eyes and smell his sweat and the garlic on his breath and see that flare of disbelief when he felt the bite of the steel.

  Changes the whole mental dynamic, he thought with professional interest. Though some things—

  The spearmen had been spitting on their hands and hefting their weapons, while the Mackenzies around him growled or cursed and tightened their grips on their own polearms. Then they froze, their heads turning to the east, Nigel's right and their left. Eyes went wide in shock, and the next yells were alarm and dismay, not war shouts.

  —stay the same. Surprise, for instance, is a wonderful thing if you're not on the receiving end. Bless you, my fiancé!

  * * * *

  Piotr Stavarov could hear his men shouting Haro! Haro, Portland! as they walked towards the Mackenzies and their green horn-and-moons banner; and cries of Molalla! as well—most of the levy for this central column came from that barony.

  This won't be too difficult. The Bearkiller A-listers are real fighters, but these kilties are just peasants in fancy dress.

  The spearmen were in a compact block facing their Mackenzie equivalents; as he watched their weapons came down with a uniform snap and the big shields came up, the men crouching slightly. The rear ranks brought their own up, to present an overlapping surface like a snake's scales. To their right the crossbowmen spread out, their weapons spanned and ready …

  He heard Sir Ernaldo take a sharp breath as the fifty Mackenzie archers on the far right stood and raised their bows. He gave the man a sharp glance, but the flat, narrow-eyed olive face was impassive.

  "That's long range," Piotr said. "Just a little under three hundred yards, I'd say."

  "About that, my lord," Ernaldo said.

  The front rank of his crossbowmen stopped and knelt just then; the second rank stood behind them. Both leveled their weapons just as the kilted warriors loosed their arrows. Faint and far he could hear the rushing sleet sound of the shafts, and then the deeper tunnggg sound of the crossbows firing back. The arrowheads twinkled as they paused at the top of their arc and plunged downward. Longbowmen threw up their arms and collapsed as the short, heavy bolts thrown by the spring-steel bows struck—and a few got up again, their brig-andines proof against glancing hits at extreme range. More of those struck stayed down, still or screaming and thrashing. Half a second later the first arrow-fall hit his men, slowing the rhythm of their reloading—you had to drop the front of the crossbow to the ground, put your foot in the stirrup bolted to the forestock, and fix the crank's hook to the string and its mount over the butt before you could spin the handle and pull the heavy draw back to catch in the trigger mechanism.

  Three more sleeting ripples fell on the crossbowmen before they were ready to fire again; they took their losses stolidly, closed ranks and kept shooting while the spearmen tramped forward. The archers had to keep their aim on the force that could hurt them from a distance, leaving no spare shafts to slow the advance to contact of the spearmen.

  "Yes," Piotr murmured. "Excellent. Most excellent."

  "My lord!" Ernaldo said sharply, grabbing at his armored arm and pointing.

  Piotr bit back a curse as his head pivoted left; you had little peripheral vision with your helmet and mail coif on. More archers were appearing from the woods to the left of the road, seeming to spring from nowhere. One minute a fringe of brush and saplings stood still and empty; the next it writhed and sprouted armed Mackenzies, along with birds and a deer fleeing the sudden movement. His heart lurched, and then steadied as he studied the saw-toothed line the kilted warriors made.

  "How many? A hundred? That many could have fooled the scouts; they're good at camouflage, from all I hear."

  "Yes, my lord; about a hundred. Probably ninety-nine, they use a nine-man squad. Shall I sound the retreat? Our foot are going to be in range soon and the numbers are nearly equal now. We don't have any missile infantry on that side of the action, either. They can take the spearmen in defilade."

  Piotr stared at him incredulously. "Retreat from a force smaller than our own? Knights and men-at-arms of the Association retreat from half-trained peons? And retreat when better than a third of them are women? Of course not! They think they can shoot at the spearmen in safety … but I have more than enough lancers to overrun them. Sound the advance."

  The knight sighed and crossed himself, and spoke to the trumpeter. Piotr grinned at the scene bisected by the nasal bar of his helmet.

  The kilties got overconfident, he thought. I have them pinned here out in the open, and without protection they're easy meat for a charge. Father will be pleased—and more pleased that the credit goes to the Stavarovs of Barony Chehalis, not to my lord Renfrew, Count of Odell.

  * * * *

  Juniper Mackenzie gripped the rope between locked boots and in her gloved hands and stepped off the branch of the tree, letting Earth pull her homeward. The downward swoop took seconds, leaving her palms tingling-warm beneath the leather when she landed. Cynthia Carson was steadying the rope and waited tensely for the word; her face was a Gorgon mask of black and gold and scarlet behind the gauze mask of the war cloak, painted with the wolf-head emblem of her totem. Most of the younger Clan warriors painted their faces before a fight these days, despite Sam's grumbles that it reminded him too much of football hooligans back home …

  "They're moving," Juniper said grimly. "Pass the word to be ready." "We're ready, Lady of the Clan," Cynthia Carson. "Ready and eager." She looked it; Cynthia was a tall, fair woman of twenty-eight who'd lost father and brother to the Protector's men in skirmish and raid over the years since the Change, and her blue eyes were as cold and grim as any wolf's. She followed Juniper forward, with the signaler and banner-bearer. All around them the First Levy were rising and shedding their war cloaks, taking their bows in their hands but waiting on one knee until the signal came. Juniper pressed forward to the edge of the woods, using her
own bow to press brush aside, ignoring the body of the Protectorate scout who lay with his horse, both bristling with feathered shafts. There they are …

  A hundred lancers were a terrifying sight, and they looked a lot more imposing from ground level than from fifty feet up. Big men on big horses, steel and tossing plumes and blazons and the twinkling sharp-honed menace of the lanceheads above the colorful flutter of pennants. The long block of horsemen walked out from the roadway and aimed itself at the hundred bowman who'd come out of the woods to lure them. Then the curled brass trumpets screamed and a long ripple went through the men-at-arms as they lifted the butts of their lances free of the scabbards and brought them to rest on the toes of their right boots, slanting slightly forward. In the same instant the horses took their first pace, stepping high, heads tossing beneath the spiked steel chamfrons. The big kite-shaped shields came to the front as the riders pulled on the leather guige straps that hung around their necks and slid their left arms into the loops. All the shields carried the Lidless Eye; most also had their own or their liege-lords' blazons quartered with it, the heraldry of knight and baron and their vassals and paid men. There was an arrogant splendor to the sight, one that roused hate and grudging respect at the same time. There was no fear in those young men, even though they knew they might be going to the Dread Lord in the next handful of minutes. They'd been told they were the lords of human kind, and they believed it.

  Well, like them I might be heading for the Summerlands today, she told herself. And I've got less to worry about when I set to discussing my deeds with the Guides. Wait. Breathe in, breathe out. Ground and center, ground and center.

  Even across double bowshot the beginnings of a trot from four hundred hooves could be felt through the earth, a thuttering through the soles of her feet. The lancers would try to hit a hand gallop just at extreme bowshot, to get them through the killing ground as fast as possible. Against a hundred archers, it would work. Against eight hundred …