“Won’t be good at all,” Ned agreed. “Not at all, at all.” He and his men occupied the extreme left wing of Count Thraxton’s army, with Leonidas the Priest’s force on his immediate right. A slow grin spread over his face. “We’ll just have to make sure it doesn’t happen, that’s all. And I know how, too.”
“Do you?” Biffle asked. “What do you know that Count Thraxton doesn’t?”
“Oh, all sorts of things,” Ned answered, and his grin got wider. “But one of the things I know-and the one that really matters here-is how to get Leonidas moving irregardless of whether he wants to or not.”
“That’ll be good-if you can do it.” Biffle sounded dubious. He explained why: “I’ve seen you do things on the field that nobody’d believe if you just told the story. But how do you propose to make somebody else-somebody on your own side-move when he cursed well won’t?”
Instead of answering directly, Ned filled his lungs and let out a one-word shout: “Runners!”
As always, the young men who fought under him hurried to obey. “Lord Ned, sir!” they cried in a ragged chorus.
He pointed to one of them. “Go to Count Thraxton and tell him I am moving out to meet the enemy. Tell him I hope to have Leonidas the Priest moving with me on my right, but I’m going to attack with him or without him. Have you got that?”
“Sure do, Lord Ned,” the messenger said, and repeated it back.
“That’s fine. That’s right fine.” Ned of the Forest waved to him, and he hurried off. Ned pointed to another runner. “Now, Mort, you’re going to go to Leonidas the Priest. You tell him, I’m moving out to attack the southrons with him or without him. Tell him I hope he comes along for the ride, but I’m moving out whether he does or not. And tell him I’ve sent another runner to Count Thraxton, so Thraxton knows just exactly what I’m doing. Wouldn’t want to take Count Thraxton by surprise, no indeed.” For a moment, he sounded every bit as pious as Leonidas the Priest. “Have you got that?”
“I’ve got it, Lord Ned,” Mort replied. When he started to repeat it for the commander of unicorn-riders, he stumbled a couple of times. Ned patiently led him through it till he had it straight, then sent him off.
After dismissing the rest of the runners, Ned turned back to Colonel Biffle. “Well, sir, if that doesn’t shift Leonidas off his sacred behind, to the seven hells with me if I know what would.” Biffle clapped his hands together, as if admiring a stage performance. In a way, Ned knew he’d just delivered a performance. “What does it say about a man when you’ve got to trick him into doing what he’s supposed to do anyhow?” he asked, and answered his own question: “It says the bastard isn’t worth the paper he’s printed on, that’s what.”
“Yes, sir,” Biffle agreed. “Now-are you really going to move forward before you find out whether Leonidas will come with you?”
“You bet I am,” Ned replied without the least hesitation. Colonel Biffle looked worried. Ned set a hand on his shoulder. “Now don’t you fret about a thing, Biff. The good part of riding unicorns is that we can get out of a fight as fast and easy as we can get into one. If we run into more southrons than we can handle, and if Leonidas still hasn’t woken up, we’ll pull back again, that’s all.”
Now Biffle’s face showed relief. “That’s better, sir. That’s a hells of a lot better. We can’t lick Guildenstern all by our lonesome.”
“I wasn’t finished,” Ned said. “The other thing is, if the footsoldiers don’t follow, the Lion God won’t feast on the blood of the lamb. He’ll taste Leonidas’ blood, you see if he doesn’t.”
From any other man, that might have been a joke. Colonel Biffle didn’t act as if he thought Ned were joking, which was just as well, for Ned meant every word. Biffle said, “Don’t be hasty, sir. If the priesthood curses you, half your riders will desert.”
“Ah, but what a fine bunch of devils the other half would be,” Ned replied, now with a charming grin. “Besides, I’m hoping it won’t come to that. Let’s get mounted up, Colonel, and we’ll find out, eh?”
At his command, the trumpeters blew advance. The unicorns rode south and east over a little wooden bridge, their hooves drumming on the timbers. Looking back over his shoulder at the troopers who followed him, Ned of the Forest nodded to himself. He already had a pretty fine bunch of devils. The southrons had found that out on a number of fields. Now he intended to teach them another lesson.
“We’re going to find Guildenstern’s men,” he called to the unicorn-riders. “We’re going to find ’em, we’re going to smash through ’em, we’re going to get between them and Rising Rock, and we’re going to break their army all to flinders. How’s that sound, boys?”
The unicorn-riders whooped. They growled like wolves and roared like lions. For a heady moment, Ned felt as if they could beat Guildenstern’s army to flinders all by themselves. Steady down. He deliberately made the mental command stern. Thinking you could do more than you really could was as dangerous as not thinking you could do enough.
They hadn’t gone much more than a mile when shouts of alarm and crossbow bolts hissing through the air announced they’d found the foe-and that the foe had found them. Ned grimaced. It wasn’t an ideal place for a fight: the road ran through dense forest, in which a man couldn’t see very far. But Ned didn’t hesitate. If this was where King Avram’s men were, this was where he’d hit them.
“Dismount!” he shouted, and the trumpeters echoed his commands. “Form line of battle and forward!”
Colonel Biffle said, “Leonidas had better come after us now.” He cocked his head to one side. “Unless I’m plumb daft, we’ve run into a lot of southrons here.”
“I’d say you’re right,” Ned agreed. “Well, this here is what we came for. Ride on up the road with me a ways, Colonel, why don’t you? We’ll just see what we’ve got.” Without waiting to find out whether Biffle followed, he spurred his unicorn on.
Biffle didn’t hesitate. No man under Ned’s command hesitated when ordered to ride with him. On they went-and collided headlong with a squad of southron cavalry trotting north down the road to see what sort of force they’d just bumped into.
Ned’s saber flew into his left hand before he was consciously aware of reaching for it. Where a more prudent man would have drawn back, he howled curses and galloped toward the enemy. Their startled cries became shouts of pain when he slashed two of them out of the saddle in quick succession. His unicorn, a well-trained beast, plunged its horn into the side of another southron’s mount. The wounded animal let out a scream like a woman in torment and bucketed off, carrying its rider out of the fight.
Colonel Biffle traded swordstrokes with a southron, then slashed his shoulder to the bone. That was enough for the unicorn-riders in gray. They fled back up the road they had ridden down so confidently. But as they fled, one turned back and shot a crossbow over his shoulder.
The quarrel caught Ned of the Forest in the right upper arm. He cursed foully as blood began soaking his sleeve. It wasn’t a bad wound; he could still open and close his right hand. But he felt dizzy and weak and more than a little sick. It might not have been a bad wound, but no wound was a good one.
“You all right, Lord Ned?” Colonel Biffle asked anxiously.
“Just a scratch,” Ned answered. But his voice gave him away-he sounded woozy, even to himself. It was more than a scratch, even if the bolt had only torn a gouge in his arm rather than piercing him through and through. Angry at himself for showing weakness, he tried to make light of it: “I’m fine.”
Biffle shook his head. “You don’t look fine, sir, and you don’t sound so fine, either. Let me bind that up for you, and you take a drink of this here while I’m doing it.” Like a lot of officers, he carried a flask on his belt. He handed it to Ned.
“I don’t know…” Ned was rarely irresolute, but he hesitated here. He hardly ever drank spirits, and despised drunkards with all his soul.
“It’s medicine, sir,” Colonel Biffle said firmly as he got to w
ork on Ned’s arm. “It’ll put the heart back in you. You need it, by the gods. You’re green around the gills. Nothing to be ashamed of-any man who gets wounded looks that way.”
“All right.” Ned yielded. “Here, you’ll have to pull the stopper out.” Colonel Biffle briefly paused in his work, took the flask from Ned, and then gave it back to him. Still unhappy, Ned raised it to his lips and took a long pull. He almost spat the mouthful out into the dirt of the roadway. After he’d choked it down, he wheezed, “Gods, that’s foul! How can you stand to drink it?”
Biffle looked affronted. “Them’s prime Franklin sipping spirits, Lord Ned. You won’t find better anywhere in Detina. Take another slug. It’ll do you good.”
“It tastes nasty enough-it must be strong medicine,” Ned said, and forced himself to drink again. Flames ran down his throat. They exploded like a firepot in his belly, spreading heat all through him. The wound still hurt, but Ned felt himself once more, or at least better able to carry on. He gave the flask back to Biffle. “Thank you, Colonel. I reckon that did some good.”
“Fine,” Biffle said. “I’ve got you just about patched here, too.”
“Thank you kindly,” Ned of the Forest repeated. Thinking of firepots made him raise his voice to a battlefield shout: “Captain Watson! Come here-I want you!”
“Coming, sir!” The officer who headed Ned’s field catapults was a fresh-faced boy who couldn’t yet have twenty summers. When he’d reported to the unicorn-riders, Ned had thought some capricious fellow over in Nonesuch was playing a joke on him.
But Viscount Watson always got the dart- and stone-throwers up to the very front of the fight, and any officer who did that had little to complain of from Ned of the Forest.
Ned pointed toward the trees not all that far away, from which the southrons were still shooting at him. “I want your engines to pound those bastards. Pound them, do you hear me? They’re here in numbers, and we’ve got to shift ’em.”
“Yes, sir!” Excitement glowed on Watson’s face. “I’ll see to it, sir. You can count on me!” He went back at a gallop, shouting for his catapult crews to hustle their deadly machines forward. Ned grinned and shook his head. Like a lot of common soldiers, Watson was young enough to imagine himself immortal as a god. Ned wished he were still that young. He knew the southrons could kill him-unless he killed them first.
So did Colonel Biffle. “Sir, they’re still pushing on us. We’re going to stop more bolts if we don’t pull back a bit.”
“Right you are,” Ned said. As he and Biffle rode back toward their own line, he saw Captain Watson and the catapult crews bringing their engines forward. In minutes, stones and darts and firepots started coming down on the southrons’ heads. Ned whooped. “That’s the way to give it to ’em!”
But the southrons had engines of their own, and punished his dismounted riders with them. And they had footsoldiers in great numbers. They kept on storming forward, ready to fight. A captain called out to Ned in some alarm: “Sir, I don’t know how long we can hold ’em unless we get some more men here.”
“Do your best, gods damn it,” Ned answered. He slammed a fist-his left fist-down on his thigh. “Where in the seven hells is that low-down, no-good son of a bitch called Leonidas the Priest? If he really has turned coward on us, we’re going to have to get out of here, and I’m cursed if I want to do it. We can lick the stinking southrons, if only we get to work and do it.”
But General Guildenstern’s men came on like a gray wave of the sea, always looking to lap around the edges of Ned’s line and roll it up. At last, he couldn’t bear it any more. He spurred his unicorn back toward the rear. If I catch Leonidas back there praying when he ought to be fighting, I will sacrifice him to the Lion God, he thought. But to the seven hells with me if I think his lion would much care to gnaw on his scrawny old carcass.
That thought-and maybe Colonel Biffle’s spirits coursing through him, too-made him laugh out loud, his own spirits almost completely restored despite the wound. And then he took off his hat and waved it and whooped out loud: up the road marched a long column of crossbowmen in indigo tunics and pantaloons (some in gray pantaloons, taken from dead southrons). Leonidas might not have been quite so fast as Ned would have liked, but he’d got his soldiers on the move.
“Come on, boys!” Ned yelled, and pointed to the south. “We’ve got plenty of southrons up there for you to kill!” When Leonidas’ troopers cheered, they sounded like roaring lions themselves. Ned rode forward with them. Going forward, going toward the fight, was what he did best.
* * *
A crossbow quarrel slashed the bushes behind which Rollant hid. He flattened himself even lower to the ground. He wished he could burrow his way down into it, like a mole or a gopher. Something-a shape in blue?-moved out there among the trees. He shot at it, then set another bolt in the groove to his crossbow and yanked back the bowstring as fast as he could. He had no idea whether he’d hit the enemy soldier. He wasn’t altogether sure there had been an enemy soldier. The only thing he was sure of was that he dared not take a chance.
Smitty crouched behind an oak not far away. “How many traitors are there, anyway?” he asked, reloading his own crossbow.
“I don’t know,” Rollant answered. “All I know is, there are too many of them, and they all seem to be coming right at us.”
This was different from the savage little skirmish his company had fought a few days before. Now all of Lieutenant General George’s soldiers were in line together-and all of them, by the racket that came from both east and west of Rollant, were being pressed hard. The traitors roared like lions when they came forward, as if to say they were the true children of the Lion God.
The sound made the hair prickle up on the back of Rollant’s neck. The Detinans had roared when they smashed the blond kingdoms of the north, too, back in the days not long after they crossed the Western Ocean and came to this land. Iron and unicorns and catapults and magic had had more to do with their triumphs than the roaring, but no blond to this day could hear it without wanting to flinch.
They won’t capture me, Rollant thought. I won’t let them capture me. If they let him live, they would haul him back to Ormerod’s estate in chains. I should have killed him. I had the chance. He shook his head. He knew he was lucky his former liege lord hadn’t killed him.
Somewhere not far away, the din rose to a peak-and then started coming from farther south than it had. Smitty and Rollant both cursed. “They’ve broken through, Thunderer blast them,” Smitty said. Then he said a worse word: “Again.”
“What do we do?” Rollant looked nervously in that direction.
“Hang on here till we’re ordered back,” Smitty answered. “What else can we do?”
Rollant shrugged. Hang on here till the traitors flank us out and roll over us, went through his mind. He couldn’t say that. An ordinary Detinan trooper might have, but he couldn’t. He didn’t think Smitty would start going on about cowardly blonds, but he wasn’t altogether sure. And he was altogether sure some of the other Detinans in the squad would go on about exactly that.
“Hold your places, men!” That was Lieutenant Griff, still in command of the company. His voice was high and anxious. Had Captain Cephas been there, the identical order from his lips would have heartened the men. After Griff gave it, plenty of Detinans started looking back toward the rear, to make sure their line of retreat remained open. Rollant wasn’t ashamed to do the same.
Great stones and firepots started landing close by. A stone that hit a tree could knock it flat, and the soldier beside it, too. “Curse the traitors!” Smitty howled. “They’ve found a road to move their engines forward.”
In country like this, engines could move forward only on roads. Hauling them through the woods was a nightmare Rollant didn’t want to contemplate. He had other things he didn’t want to contemplate, too. “Where are our engines hiding?” he asked.
“They’re back there-somewhere.” That was Sergeant Joram, poin
ting back toward the rear. “You wouldn’t expect the fellows who run them to come up here and mix it with the traitors, would you? They might get their fancy uniforms soiled.”
That was unfair: catapult crews fought hard. But none of them seemed close by right now, when the company needed them. And Joram’s sarcasm did more to steady the men who heard it than Lieutenant Griff’s worried command to stand fast. Why isn’t Joram an officer? Rollant wondered.
Then he cheered like a man possessed, and so did the soldiers close by, for Doubting George’s army did have some engines hidden up a tunic sleeve. Stones smashed down on the enemy soldiers pushing forward against Rollant’s company. A bolt from a dart-thrower transfixed two men at once as they ran forward. A firepot landed on them a moment later, giving them a pyre before they were quite dead.
“See how you like it!” Rollant shouted. Another crossbow quarrel tore leaves from the bushes behind which he lay.
“Don’t be stupid,” Sergeant Joram said. “Just do your job. Everybody does his job, everything will turn out fine.” He sounded calm and confident and certain. By sounding that way, he made Rollant feel guilty. Captain Cephas had had the same gift, but who could say when-or if-Cephas would return to the company?
No sooner had Rollant started reflecting on how calm he felt than a storm of crossbow bolts came, not from ahead of him, but from off to the left. The traitors gave forth with their roaring battle cry.
“Flanked!” Half a dozen men shouted the same thing at the same time. Rollant wasn’t the least bit ashamed to be one of them. He scrambled away from the bushes, trying to find a couple of trees that would protect him from the left and from the front at the same time. It wasn’t easy. It was, in fact, next to impossible-trees didn’t grow so conveniently close together.
“Fall back!” Lieutenant Griff commanded. “They’ve broken through on this line. We’ll have to try to hold them on the next one.”
The men had hesitated to obey his order to stand. They didn’t hesitate to retreat. Rollant wondered if they could hold Thraxton the Braggart’s army on the next line. He wondered if they could hold it anywhere.
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