A Meeting At Corvallis

by S. M. Stirling

  "Got one, or at least a horse," he said as they all vaulted into the saddles and spurred their mounts up in Ivo's tracks.

  "Let the spares with the drag go free," Tiphaine said curtly, and the leading-reins were dropped. Dickhead. We didn't have time for a fight

  One of the spare horses had a ball of cloth dangling from its harness on a line; that was Rudi Mackenzie's bundled kilt and plaid. As long as the horse dragged it, it would lay a scent trail for the last hound to follow. The horse curved away to the east across the open country, panicked by her slash at its rump with the loose end of her reins. Two more followed it, with the natural impulse of horses; their saddles bore crude child-sized dummies of grass and twigs stuffed inside spare clothing they'd brought along for the princess. They wouldn't fool anyone for long, but they might at a distance, for a little while.

  "Boot it!" Tiphaine cried.

  They spurred their mounts in the children's wake, and overtook them faster than she'd expected. Ruffin's haggard face turned towards her, grinning despite fatigue and pain.

  "The little chief there managed to get away—tangled his lead-rein on a stump and made the horse snap it. I had to chase him down."

  Tiphaine looked at the small jewel-cut face; it had dark smudges under the eyes now, and lack of sleep had stripped away the jaunty humor. What was left was pure determination. She bowed her head in respect, and then spurred her horse back into a gallop.

  The three knights matched it, but Joris looked a little worried as he glanced over his shoulder. "We could founder the beasts in a couple of miles at this pace," he said. "We don't have remounts any more and the kilties probably still do."

  "All we need is a couple of miles," she said. "You wanted to know? We're heading for Miller Butte. There's a conroi of men-at-arms there and a company of mounted crossbowmen, hiding and waiting for us."

  Joris' heavy-lidded eyes narrowed. And I'm not going to let you behind me until we get there, she thought grimly. I'm collecting the reward jor this, and I'll see Ivo and Ruffin right. Lady Sandra will give you something, but as for me, you can piss up a rope jor it.

  Then his head jerked back. The belling of the last hound had faded; now it was louder again. The Mackenzies must have found the decoy, backtracked and gotten onto the real trace. Tiphaine hunched in the saddle and headed her horse straight for the river ahead; it was the North Santiam, and she recognized the old transmission line to their left from maps and their trip south.

  "Wait a minute!" Joris said. "We'll have better cover if we veer past those old poles. There's woodland there, they can't shoot at us."

  Tiphaine jerked her head up, fighting the hypnotic rhythm of the hand gallop; the horse was beginning to labor, wheezing between her knees, foam spattering back on its neck and onto her.

  "They'd shoot at us, Joris," she said. "They might even shoot at the princess. But sure as Christ died for your sins, they're not going to shoot when they might hit their Chief's son." She looked ahead. "Four more miles. Go for it!"

  Chapter Fourteen

  Near West Salem, Willamette Valley, Oregon

  March 5th, 2008/Change Year 9

  The thunder of the knights filled the world as they charged, four hundred strong; Mike Havel could feel it through the soles of his boots, a shaking that quivered through soil and leather into his skin. The great hooves of the destriers pounded the soft turf into a chopped surface like a rough-plowed field, flinging clods and tufts of grass higher than the riders' helmets. Their eyes rolled behind the spiked steel chamfrons that covered their faces, and their nostrils were great red pits above the square yellow teeth that mouthed the bits and dripped foam. The lanceheads caught the noon sun with a quivering glitter, and the pennants snapped behind them—and every one looked as if it were heading for him.

  He spat to clear his mouth of gummy saliva and the trace of blood still leaking from the inside of his cheek; the salt-iron taste of it was still on his lips. Facing a single lancer was one thing. Facing this avalanche of steel and flesh was entirely another. Around him the militia were still shrieking the war cry, or in some cases just plain shrieking. He knew some would be pissing or shitting themselves … and that some of those would fight no worse for it. This was the moment when pride and fear of shame before your neighbors and fear for your home warred with the elemental terror of torn flesh and cracked bone and ultimate, unendurable pain and the final blackness.

  Closer. Closer. The pikepoints waited, wavering only as much as the tension of the muscles that held the long shafts could account for. Closer, and the enemy were up to a full, all-out gallop, which meant they were about to enter the killing ground. Watch for that piece of cracked asphalt that marked the three-hundred-yard mark—

  "Shoot!" Mike Havel shouted.

  Trumpets relayed the order—one low blat and a sustained high note. The great tunng of the steel bows releasing sounded an instant later, six hundred missiles lashing out on either side of the great block of pikes. The bolts flickered in swift, flat arcs. Noncoms screamed rapid fire, rapid fire, pour it on! as they reloaded themselves; a heavy clicking, ratcheting sound ran along the line as the militia pumped the levers of their crossbows. Some bolts missed. Many struck, the hard smacking sound of their impacts lost in the huge noise of the onset.

  Men pitched back off their horses; horses fell, screaming and thrashing or sometimes limply silent, or ran out of control, bucking and lashing out at whatever had hurt them. The men-at-arms weren't tightly packed enough to pile into a mass of collisions, or there weren't enough horses down to produce one; a few mounts jumped over the fallen ahead of them, and more swerved skillfully under their riders' guidance, but that made the whole charging mass falter. More fell, and more; the bolts were a steady drumroll flicker, fast and hard …

  "They're going to hit!" Signe called; she was still mounted, and had a better view. "Not enough down to stop them!"

  The knights loomed above the infantry, looking as if they could ride down mountains. Glaring eyes stared at him on either side of the nasal bars of the conical Norman helmets …

  "Hakkaa Paalle!"

  "Haro, Portland!"

  The onrush of the knights hesitated … and then began to slow, or split to either side. Havel let out a gasp he hadn't been aware of holding; horses wouldn't impale themselves on sharp pointy things, not if they could avoid it. They had more sense than human beings.

  Some destriers skidded into the line of pikepoints, unable to stop in time or bolder than most or just fleeing the roweling spurs. The foot-long heads of the pikes sank deep, punching through hide and bone and even the steel peytral plates the destriers wore on their chests. A few ashwood shafts burst under the massive impact, sending splinters and whirling batons flying in all directions,. or cracked as flailing hooves milled in the air. More horses reared and stalled in front of the unbroken line, and the pikemen thrust in two-handed jabs at their bellies and heads, making the riders curse and wrench at the reins to keep them facing the foe. Knights tried to push their lances past the pikepoints, but infantry in the second and third ranks thrust at them. Men-at-arms dismounted when their mounts fell or fled, shoved and heaved forward, catching the points on their shields and cutting at the pike shafts with their swords, trying to push their way into the formation. But long lappets of steel stretched down the sides of the pikes below the heads to prevent precisely that, and showers of sparks showed where metal belled on metal.

  Pikemen in the second and third and fourth ranks thrust at chests and faces, the polearms slamming back and forward like pistons. Bearkillers and Association men shoved and heaved and stabbed and hit, cursing and shouting or in sweat-dripping, gasping silence, or screamed in the sudden shock of pain beyond anything they had thought possible. The wounded crawled away, or lay moaning and crying for water or help or their mothers, until hooves or boots trampled across them and bone broke in a stamping urgency that saw bodies underfoot as only a menace to footing.

  "Mike, left!" Signe called; her cle
ar soprano cut through the white-noise rush of battle.

  Havel looked, cursed and shouted: "Follow me!"

  The knights had overlapped the block of pikemen there, some of them ramming into the crossbows. As he watched they spurred their mounts over the bodies of dead Bearkillers and turned to kill from behind, ready to burst the formation open. The seventy glaivesmen rushed after him, swinging like a great door, weapons extended—but a glaive was only six feet long.

  "Hakkaa Paallel"

  A man-at-arms stabbed down at him, lance held overarm. Havel ducked, and felt the ugly wind of the steel head punching by his face. He spun the glaive like a quarterstaff and it slammed into the lance, throwing the lighter weapon high, vibrating in the lancer's hands. Before he could recover, the Bearkiller leader stepped forward, swinging the glaive again, this time in a circle like a horizontal propeller, letting his hands slide down to the end. The broad, curved cutting edge of the head hit the horse's leg just above the knee. Edged metal went into muscle and then bone with an ugly, wet slap-crack, and a jolt that ran painfully up into his arms and shoulders.

  The horse screamed, a deafening sound, rearing and falling in a kicking heap. The rider kicked his feet out of the stirrups, riding the fall down and landing on his feet with astonishing skill, shouting: "Runner! Runner!"

  Probably the horse's name, Havel thought in a moment's astonishment.

  Then the man was rushing at him, screeching: "Bastard!"

  The Norman broadsword swung down at his head. Havel caught it on the thick hook welded to the back of the glaives blade, and let the impact pivot the heavy shaft around so that the metal-clad butt whipped at the man's face. He raised his shield and stopped it with a thud and hollow boom, but at the cost of blinding himself for a crucial instant. Havel kicked at the inside of his leg, just where hauberk and steel-splint shin-guard met, and the joint went side- ways in a manner not suited to the construction or nature of knees. The Association soldier shrieked between clenched teeth as he toppled over backward, and then nearly killed Havel with a hocking stroke as he fell. The Bearkiller managed to hop over it, testicles pulling up at the lethal hiss of steel just under his boot-soles; then he snapped the business end of the glaive down, and thrust with a grunt of effort and all the power of shoulders and torso behind it. The heavy point split the mail and gambeson and the breastbone beneath; a crunching and breaking and popping sensation ran back up the ashwood beneath his palms. Blood burst out of the dying man's mouth and nose, spraying Havel from the thighs down.

  He planted a boot on the corpse and wrenched the weapon free. Not five yards from him a lancer killed a Bearkiller with a thrust to the throat, then went down with his hamstrung horse. Another was lashing around him with his sword, until two glaives darted in and caught their hooks in the chain mail of his hauberk and yanked him out of the saddle as if he'd run into bungee cords. The destrier ran free to the south, stirrups flopping and reins loose …

  Havel skipped backward a half-dozen paces, his head whipping back and forth to try to gain some picture of what was happening. The block of glaives-men was stepping in, mingling with the other infantry as the last knights who'd gotten through the line died. On the right a hundred of the crossbows had pulled back into the soft ground, to where they sank ankle-deep; the lancers there had unwisely tried to follow them, and two score or better were in over their fetlocks, heaving and scrambling as the crossbow bolts flickered out at them at point-blank range. To his left the surviving missile troops were swinging farther forward, shooting into the stalled mass of horses and men in front of the line of pikes …

  "Stevenson!" he shouted, trotting behind their backs, judging what he could see over their heads; the knights and men-at-arms were still trying to move forward, but they'd gotten tangled up good and proper. "Push of pike!"

  The commander of the phalanx nodded, and shouted orders of his own.

  The file-closers took it up: "Push of pike! One … two … three … step!"

  The bristling mass of pikes took a uniform step forward, jabbing. "And step. And step!"

  Then the curled trumpets wailed. A few of the horsemen were too transported to listen; they stayed, and died. The rest reined in, turning their destriers and spurring back towards the Association lines, with the deadly flicker of crossbow bolts pursuing them. The noise of battle faded with the drumroll of their hoof-beats, until individual shouts and screams could be heard; Havel cursed mildly to himself as he saw Alexi Stavarov's banner going back as it had come forward.

  "Halt!" the pike commander cried.

  In a story, Alexi and I would have ended up squaring off sword-to-sword, the Bear Lord thought, pausing to pant some air back into lungs that seemed too dry and tight, against the constriction of armor and padding. Suddenly he was aware that he'd picked up a cut on his left arm just below the sleeve of his hauberk, and that it stung like hell and was dribbling blood to join the sweat soaking his sleeve. Pity it doesn't usually work like that.

  Signe led his horse over. He grounded the glaive point-down in the earth and mounted, grateful for the extra height. Stretcher parties and friends were helping the wounded back towards the ambulances and the aid station; he saw Aaron Rothman glare at him for a moment as he knelt beside one that couldn't be taken that far, then go back to his work.

  "Casualties," he rasped, reaching for the canteen at his saddlebow.

  "Eighty dead or as good as," Signe said. "One hundred thirty too badly wounded to fight. Let me see your arm."

  "Well, shit," Havel said.

  Christ Jesus, we lost over a fifth of our effectives in fifteen minutes— He checked his watch; it had actually been more like an hour. All right, an hour. It's barely noon. And we barely killed more of them than they did of us; we lost a lot of crossbows when they made that breakthrough. I can't afford to trade at that ratio.

  "Messengers," he said. "To company commanders: consolidate to the right."

  Which would leave a great big gap between the far left of his line and the artillery and the A-listers, but they had to do it; one in five of the people he'd had standing in the line to begin with were gone now. The line had to be shorter if it wasn't to be thinner, and it had been too thin to start with.

  "To Lord Eric, close in on the infantry's left. Prisoners—I want prisoners, the men-at-arms as well as the knights. And to Dr. Rothman, get all the wounded who can be moved onto the railway and out of here."

  Because we may not have time later, he thought grimly.

  Squads ran out onto the field, checking for living enemies. Where they found them, they began dragging them back, in a few cases subduing those still showing fight with a flurry of well-placed kicks first.

  "See that they get care," he said, looking back at the aid station.

  "What's next?" Signe said, as they watched the formation shift rightward.

  Havel pulled his binoculars out of their leather-lined steel case. Left, two of the catapults were out of commission, smashed, smoldering wreckage in their pits. Three of the enemy's were destroyed likewise, which meant they'd suffered proportionately more, and their unprotected crews had taken heavy losses. And Alexi Stavarov's banner was going along the front of the enemy formation; as he passed a cheer went up, guttural and savage. The cavalry were reforming behind the footmen. They looked as if they would be glad to try where their betters had failed … and they hadn't suffered much at all, yet.

  "To Captain Sarducci, concentrate on the infantry as they advance—raking fire from the center of the enemy formation to the left. To Lord Eric, don't charge until you get the signal. Their cavalry is still in the game."

  "What next?" Signe said, her horse stepping sideways as an auxiliary leading a mule loaded with panniers of crossbow bolts went by.

  Havel kept his voice soft. "Next they send in their foot, and we see how good we are at a fighting retreat. We can't take another attack like that, and we didn't kill enough of them to rock them back on their heels. We'd have done better if they hadn't pulled
back in time, but Alexi was too smart to keep them face-first in the meat grinder after we didn't break."

  Signe nodded soberly, her eyes worried. Her voice was calm as she went on: "Report from the bridge—"

  * * * *

  "They're burning!" Ken Larsson shouted.

  "Keep down," his wife screamed in his ear.

  She grabbed him by the collar of his hauberk and hauled him bodily from the box he'd been standing on for a better view. He staggered, windmilling his arms and trying to keep erect on the rough footing of the railroad track, then went to one knee. Bolts went snap-snap-snap through the air above. They might have missed, but then again, they might not. And hurled by the flywheel-powered throwers of the turtle boats …

  As if to underline the point, a bolt flashing through the space above an engine on one of the railroad cars didn't miss. Larsson swallowed thickly as a loader's head disappeared in a spray of red mist, and the body toppled backward to land bonelessly limp. The helmet he'd been wearing spun away with a painful bwannggg harmonic, and landed like a flung Frisbee in the river a hundred yards south of the bridge.

  But that one is burning, he thought, ducking for a better look through the slit between two of the metal shields.

  The lead boat that had taken three of the napalm canisters at once had smoke pouring out of the ventilators and the eye-slits of the bridge. Suddenly hatches popped open and smoke billowed up in earnest, along with yellow-orange flames. A half-dozen men jumped out and threw themselves into the blue-gray water of the Willamette. The last two were burning; one more tried to crawl out and then fell back, and the boat drifted away northward in a fog of sooty smoke.

  The war-engine crews along the railroad bridge gave a brief, savage cheer. A replacement for the luckless loader stepped up and grabbed the forged-steel bolt he had dropped. She slapped the giant metal arrow into the machine's trough; it was four feet of hard alloy, tipped with copper and with metal vanes like a real arrow's fletchings at the rear, as much like a tank's long-rod penetra-tor as he'd been able to manufacture with the machine tools he could salvage and rig to run by waterpower.