A Meeting At Corvallis

by S. M. Stirling

  Jones nodded. "The guy in charge there decided to go up and reinforce Will Hutton instead, since he hadn't got the last of his people in, and we were going to get to you first."

  Havel fought down a surge of irritation; he wanted his subordinates to exercise initiative, and it was a perfectly reasonable thing to do.

  "Where do you want us, O Lord Bear?" Jones went on.

  Havel shook his head again, looking westward along his line and then north at the enemy. No time to be flabbergasted. The enemy had frozen in place when they saw the reinforcements coming up behind him; there was a lot of trumpeting and flag-waving and messengers riding back and forth.

  "You're already up there, so form up on my western flank."

  He put out his left arm, pointing it at the Corvallans as they poured out onto the road, then swung it around to his front. "We'll come in on them like this, and see if we can catch Alexis nose in the door."

  "Or his thieving fingers," Edward Finney said.

  "Or his dick," Jones added, and the younger Finneys laughed. "Let's go!"

  They turned their horses around and cantered west to direct their soldiers. Havel looked around at his company commanders, who were either standing slack-faced …

  … or grinning like red-arsed baboons who've just stumbled across a stash of bananas.

  "Gentlemen, ladies, let's get to work." He shrugged his shoulders as they scattered for their commands, settling himself as if preparing for a hard task. "Messengers: to Lord Eric, fall in on the extreme left flank of our friends from Corvallis, and try and get around the enemy and keep them from pulling back. To Captain Sarducci, limber up and hitch your teams. Trumpeters, sound general advance!"

  Three-quarters of a mile westward other trumpets blew, their timbre and the sequence of notes they used different from the Bearkillers'. He understood them, though: Pikepoints down, and Prepare for push of pike!

  The sixteen-foot shafts came level in a quick, disciplined bristle of points. Flanked by the crossbows, the hedgehog shape of the phalanx began to walk.

  * * * *

  Two hours later Mike Havel sat his horse and watched the Protector's men digging in. They were about two miles north of the battlefield, near Rice Rocks, where the Willamette turned north again after an east-west stretch. That was where the northern troops had disembarked that dawn. The Bearkillers and Corvallans observed from a safe distance westward. The falling sun at their backs threw their shadows before them, like goblin mockeries of men and horses; the air didn't have the stink of blood and shit that went with battle here, but it already smelled of turned earth and sweat.

  "I take it back," Havel said sourly.

  "Take what back?" Major Jones said.

  "I told Signe earlier today that Arminger is too much of a Period Nazi"—he looked at the Corvallan and the younger man nodded to show he grasped the phrase; he'd been a Society fighter before the Change—"to use artillery properly. I take it back."

  The barges that had landed the Association's men were still there, drawn up on the sandy-muddy beach that marked the south side of the river at the point of the curve. Their crews and the rowers who'd tugboated them south and upstream hadn't been idle. The square shape of an earthwork fort already showed on some low heights near the river, with workers and wheelbarrows and crank-powered lifts swarming over it like ants. Skeletal gantries with huge lanterns at the tops showed how they were planning on keeping going when the sun finished setting, though there would be plenty of moonlight.

  Havel looked aside at Sarducci. The chief of his field artillery shook his head regretfully. "They outrange me by too much, Lord Bear," he said. "The stuff mounted on the barges in the river is bad enough, but they've been moving some of it ashore, too. Couple of heavy, turntable-mounted trebuchets, I'd say—"

  As if to draw a line under his words, there was a monumental soft whoosh sound from within the budding earthwork fort. The darkening twilight made the fireball that arced up from inside the walls look enormous, trailing a mane of red-orange flames. It landed and spread flame over a field already marked by circular scorches; turf smoldered as the napalm burnt itself out. The bitter reek drifted faintly to them. Steel darts glittered in the same area, half buried; the barges had some sort of machine that threw bundles of them, which came apart n midair and landed traveling almost straight down, dozens at a time.

  "OK, I think everyone's agreed we can't rush them?"

  The men and women around him nodded; Eric Larsson last and most reluctantly of all. "They couldn't kill all of us before we got to the berm," he said.

  The others stared at him. "Yeah," his sister said. "They could only kill five or six hundred of us. And then we'd have a thousand crossbowmen shooting at us from behind cover. And then we'd have a thousand spearmen and, say, four hundred knights and men-at-arms standing on the fighting platform they're building waiting to noogie on us. Do you think they'd bother chasing whoever was left when they ran away?"

  "All right, all right, Sis, I didn't say we should attack them," the big young man said, raising a placating hand. "But we can't let them set up a base here. They could raid all along the eastern flank of the Eolas and up into Spring Valley. A lot of our farms are there."

  Sarducci pointed to higher ground a half mile westward from the Protectorate position. "We could build a fort there and keep a watch on them," he said.

  Signe made a hissing sound between her teeth. "What are we supposed to garrison this fort with, half the A-list? It's spring planting season. The militia have to go home, or even if the wheat harvest this summer is the best we've ever had it'll be a hungry winter. Unless we eat too much of our stock, and where would that leave us the year after?"

  She gestured at the Corvallans; Edward Finney rubbed at his jaw—gingerly, since it had a bandaged slash on it now. One of his sons, the dark-haired one, had a bandage wrapped turban-style around his head, and was sneaking looks at himself in the still-polished inner surface of his vambrace, doubtless thinking how heroic he'd look back to home. The other was praying silently, his rosary moving through gloved fingers sticky with congealing blood, eyes still wide with what he'd seen on his first battlefield.

  "And our friends here can't stay forever—most of them are farmers too, and they all have a living to earn."

  "Hey, people," Havel said. They all looked at him. "A couple of hours ago we thought we were all going to die. This is an improvement."

  He glanced at the fort, lacing the fingers of his hands together and tapping one thumb on the other. In his mind he called up maps, and memories of riding this ground before. Few Bearkillers lived on the actual banks of the river; it was too dangerous, from floods and half a dozen other menaces. But the drier ground just to the west was cultivated for miles north of here, and strategic hamlets and A-lister steadings were plentiful; it was part of the Outfit's heartland. Eric was right; they couldn't leave an enemy base here—their own people would rightly withdraw allegiance if they weren't protected. Signe was right, too; they couldn't afford to just stick a big garrison here to watch the Protector's new fort. Besides the fact that they just didn't have that many full-time soldiers, if they did that the Association would turn it into a castle over the next couple of months, and that would be completely intolerable.

  "But two can play at the fort game," he said. "It's no use if they can't supply it, and that means riverboats. Hey, Ken."

  The older man looked up with a start; he'd been lost in an engineer's reverie as he stared at the earthworks, making notes on a pad now and then.

  "Ken, you said you punctured those turtle boats of theirs?"

  "Some of them," he said. "Burned a couple more."

  "Think they could make the armor much thicker?"

  "Not much, not and keep them mobile. The reason we beat them was that they didn't have much room inside for weapons, with all the men on cut-down bicycles pedaling away in there. If you made the boats bigger, the armor problem would get worse—the inverse square law is still working fine
! So if you increase the volume to fit in more men pedaling … well, human beings just aren't very efficient engines."

  He shook a fist skyward. "And we're not allowed to have efficient engines! God damn you, Alien Space Bats!"

  "Maybe God did it," someone said quietly.

  "In that case, may God damn God!"

  "Hey, gently, gently. Let's not discuss the Change, hey?" Havel said.

  He got a quiet chuckle from most of those within earshot: that was a proverb for "utter waste of time."

  "You know that bit where there's a bluff near the west bank of the river, maybe a mile and a half north of here, maybe a little less?"

  Ken nodded; so did Signe and a few of the other Bearkillers, and Major Jones; a good eye for terrain was an officer's trait.

  "We put in a fort there—doesn't have to be too big, just big enough to hold out against a storming party until help arrives from the Spring Valley settlements, and we can tie it into the message relays easily enough. And in that fort we put in some of those big-ass throwing machines you built, with a nice view of the river and good thick earth berms in front, and overhead cover. With that, we can interdict the Willamette even at night; it's less than a tenth of a mile across there, even counting that big sandbar, the Darrow bar. We can put obstacles in the riverbed under cover from the engines; come to that, you can rig us up a diving suit, right?"

  Smiles broke out around the circle. They became a little strained when Havel turned to the Corvallans. "And I'm sure our friends here would be glad to help with building the fort before they go home, eh?"

  Edward Finney winced. "Well … look, I've got enough hands back home to get by at a pinch, but a lot of our people are smaller operators—"

  "Won't take all that long, not with three thousand strong backs. We may not even have to finish it. I expect that when we show we can cut them off, Alexi will haul everyone back north; we can work some sort of truce-and-ransom thing, which is why I made sure to get some prisoners he'll value. He's probably just hoping we don't have the equipment or the smarts to block the river, and hoping to show the Lord Protector something besides a bloody nose and Corvallis involved on our side. We only need to keep a lid on this bunch here until they realize they can't stay."

  Jones cleared his throat. "Ed, we can do that. And if we have to keep people here more than a week, we can call for volunteers again and have a whip-round from the ones who have to go home to get the spring crop in. Everyone can chip in, oh, a couple of sacks of potatoes and some flour, or bacon or whatever. That way the weavers and blacksmiths and factory workers won't be out of pocket for their lost time."

  "Yeah, we can do that." He looked at Havel, obviously thinking of asking the Bearkillers to chip in, then reconsidered.

  Which is good. Because we just paid in blood. I lost two in every hundred of our militia today, and worse than that for the A-listers.

  "And while we're digging, let's figure out how to make the Protectorate pay," Havel said. "I am"—he paused to consider—"a bit peeved."

  The Corvallans blinked a bit at the ripple of wolfish laughter that went through the Bearkiller leaders.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Near Mount Angel, Willamette Valley, Oregon

  March 7th, 2008/Change Year 9

  Eilir Mackenzie flattened as the patrol rode nearer, peering under the branch of a bush with her bow across the crook of her elbows to keep it and the waxed string out of the damp. The damp, bedraggled mixture of twigs and grass in her war cloak's loops would hide her well on this gray spring day. Wetness soaked up into her brigandine and wicked into the padding underneath it, bringing chill and a stale-sweat smell to mingle with the damp earth and oiled metal. The patrol was more of the easterners, strung out along a road that ran between new hedges and old rows of beech trees planted by some nostalgic Swabian a long time ago—many Germans had settled around here, a century and a half past.

  The sun was just up over the Cascades behind the ambushers, but that was merely a spot of brighter gray in the overcast sky; they were about a mile from the Abbey, as close in as the Protectorate forces and their hirelings patrolled in daytime for fear of the catapults. The huge white bulk of the fortified monastery and the red roofs above it seemed like a dream in the gloaming, like an illustration in one of Mom's books …

  The books that Rudi loved to read. Stop that, girl! We're going to get him back, by the Dark lady and the Dread Lord! Get your mind on business!

  Her eyes flicked down the line of enemy horsemen; six of them, riding down towards the southern edge of Mount Angel's hill, before turning back around the other side towards the enemy camp north of Mount Angel town. She couldn't see fine detail, since they were a hundred yards away or better, but it was definitely easterners, not the Protector's own scouts. That was good—they'd let a patrol of those go by. The mercenaries were skilled at their trade, but they tended to be a bit more impulsive than the men who served the Protector and his barons. Plus they were all close relations, which made them hot for revenge when a man was hurt.

  Closer, closer, and then they were in easy range.

  This has to look good, she thought, then fought down a sneeze as a grass stem tickled her nose, smelling spicy-sweet with new growth. Then: Now!

  She hit the quick-release toggle at her throat and shed the war cloak as she leapt to her feet. That was the signal, and the patrol's heads whipped around in horrified disbelief as a dozen archers appeared from the overgrown verge of the road by the orchard.

  The last one was hers, by prearrangement. Tricky shooting at this range, but the air was millpond-still …

  She let the breath go out between her teeth as she drew the eighty-pound longbow to the ear, pushing out with the left arm and twisting her body into the pull. It wouldn't be too hard to kill at this range, but precision was much more difficult. The broadhead came to the edge of the arrow-rest, and the bow moved up in a single curve as she exhaled. Watch the target, and let thousands of hours of practice tell you where the arrow would go, and hope no twitch of the man or the air threw it off. Let the string roll off the gloved draw-fingers, and you were the bow and the arrow and the target all in the same instant, driving it with your will like a spell.

  The cord slapped at her bracer with a sharp impact felt up her left arm even through the metal and tough leather. The release felt right, smooth and sweet, the surge of recoil like a dance. She was so caught up in the moment that she almost ignored the arrows coming back towards her; then she ducked at the unpleasantly familiar feel of cloven air moving on her face. Then she drew and loosed again, and again, using bodkins designed to punch armor now. That startled volley was the only one the riders could fire, though, and that only because they'd been moving with their bows in hand and a shaft on each string. Five of the enemy were down almost at once; most of the Rangers loosed only two or three shafts.

  Among the other qualifications, you had to be a good shot to be a Ranger.

  Eilir grinned silently as the last enemy trooper galloped off northward, bent over his horse's neck with an arrow in his shoulder; from the look of it the broadhead had just barely punched through the stiff leather of his cuirass, enough to wound but not knock him off his horse. A bodkin would have sunk deeper and done more damage …

  But that's the point, she thought with a silent giggle. Then she thrust the bow back through its carrying loops. And thank Luck that nobody got carried away and shot him jor real. Get the horses! she signed. They had to make this look like an ordinary nuisance raid, and they wanted to be chased. No real raiders would pass up the opportunity to snaffle off three good quarter horses and their gear.

  The Dunedain ran onto the road, one or two grim but the rest grinning like children pulling off a prank. Sometimes they all make me feel very old, Eilir thought; she and Astrid were the senior Rangers in years as well as rank. Except for Alleyne and John, of course. And John can be like a kid sometimes, too. Alleyne's too serious for my taste. Lovely package, hut he and Astrid were me
ant for each other.

  She could feel the wet gravel scrunch under their feet and see little milky spurts of mud come up under the horses' hooves; this was a road built after the Change. One of the enemy mounts had galloped away north after the wounded scout; another was down with an arrow through its ribs, breathing like a bellows and rolling an eye at her in piteous entreaty: make it better. She signed the air to ask its forgiveness and used her dirk to give it peace; Pilimor did likewise with a wounded mercenary with three shafts through his body who lay arching his back in a bow and spitting out wet bits of lung as he clawed at the stone with bloody fingers. Then they led the horses east at a trot through the orchard. Their own mounts and a dozen more Dunedain waited there. Astrid slid down from the crown of a tall Douglas fir and dashed across the open ground. Alleyne was leading Asfaloth, with the mare's head already in the right direction, and the Dunedain leader vaulted laughing into the Arab's saddle.

  "Go!" she shouted. "They're coming! They had a force ready; two hundred riders or better. They probably think we're the ones who shot their chief yesterday, and they want vengeance."

  The score of Dunedain turned their horses' noses towards the east and a little north and the band surged into motion. John Hordle wasn't with them; it wouldn't have been sensible, when a pursuit on horseback was in order. The half-Percheron they'd found for him could bear his weight easily enough, and it was even fairly fast given time to work up a gallop, but it couldn't keep the pace they expected for long. The ground ahead was open farmland with plank or wire fences, a few with new, low hedges, mostly wheatfields or pasture, or half-readied for the spring planting and abandoned when the northern foe arrived. They fell into a long lope, the sort of gait used when they expected to be running for a while, turning a little aside now and then to avoid plowed ground where the mud would suck speed and strength out of the hooves and legs of their mounts.

  Eilir looked over her shoulder. Horses didn't raise dust this time of year in the Willamette and the easterners' gear was mostly dull-colored, hard to spot against the brown of plowland and the green of pasture. Another fence came up, and Celebroch took it without needing directions … yes, she could see a mass of horsemen boiling down from the northward, angling out from the enemy camp, with one in the lead carrying a banner with a mountain lion worked on the cloth, and another beside him wearing the tanned head of one on his helmet. Perhaps they'd copied that from descriptions of the Bear Lord's headgear.