by SM Stirling
She bowed in the saddle with impeccable precision—acknowledgment of Astrid’s status as sovereign of an independent realm, albeit not her sovereign, as opposed to her own high military rank and middling social status within the Association’s nobility.
“My lord Alleyne.”
That to Astrid’s handfasted husband, with a bow fractionally deeper than that to an equal, since he was a ruler’s consort. He replied in kind, with a minuscule lift of one pale eyebrow.
“Hirilen o Ath,” Astrid replied, then at the blank look remembered to shift to the Common Tongue and repeat it in English: “My lady d’Ath.”
You orc, she added to herself. No, not an orc. A Black Númenórean? Yes, that would fit. But a very dangerous one.
“Thank you for the report, my lady, my lord,” the Grand Constable went on. “Very complete, and very convenient since we’re out of heliograph communication with Castle Waitsburg for the moment. I’m glad to hear they haven’t deployed caltrops. And you took out their scout network very neatly indeed.”
“Thank you for being so timely,” Alleyne said. “They’re going to notice within ten minutes when they don’t get a man going back to check in; they’re not stupid. I trust all goes well with Lady Delia?”
“My Châtelaine is in excellent health, but pregnant. Again,” Tiphaine said, with the slightest hint of a grave wink. “Now let’s get to work.”
“You’re going to try and break the siege?” Alleyne asked. “And not just raid them?”
His smooth voice still held a trace of the officer-class Englishman he’d been before he arrived during the War of the Eye to court and win her; Astrid thought it added a touch of distinction to his Sindarin too. The way some of her folk treated the “r” sounds or butchered the vocalic umlauts . . . but at least the Noble Tongue was being spoken again, here in the Fifth Age of the World. That love of the Histories was what had first brought them together.
Well, that and he looked so dreamy, she admitted. And the charm, and his laugh, and that he’s so smart.
“We’re going to try,” Tiphaine said. “Break through, destroy the siege works, reinforce and resupply the castle and evacuate the non-combatants at least. Make them commit their field force to reestablish a siege, and tie down more men here. For once I think we’ve gotten inside their decision curve; it’ll make the—”
“Special mission, yes,” Alleyne said crisply. “We’ve been briefed.”
“—disguise for the special mission more convincing if we do them some real damage. A raid with this strong a force would look too much like a demonstration to cover something else unless it had an objective of commensurate importance.”
They all swung into the saddle and moved forward, like the ghosts of horsemen in the dawn gloaming. The Dúnedain peeled off to the right as the bulk of the men-at-arms deployed; Astrid thought there were probably twenty lances of them—two hundred riders, more or less.
The sun was just beginning to peek over the rolling hills eastward, and it caught at a lancehead here and there, or the colored pennants with the arms of count and baron and knight. As they came over the rise they saw the long gentle slope below running down to the river. The besiegers’ camp was there at the bridge, then the occupied ruins of the village, and the castle on the first ridge beyond. It was a rectangle with a tallish square tower in one corner and smaller round ones at the others; a standard design of a type the Protector’s labor gangs had built by the dozens in the Association’s years of expansion after the Change. This had been the northeastern boundary, until the PPA divided the Palouse with Boise well before the current war started.
Woodsmoke drifted down from it, and the besiegers’ camp, a familiar musty-sharp scent on the cool morning air; she even thought she could detect a faint hint of scorched bacon. The castle was probably densely crowded with the villagers who’d fled within the gates when the enemy came. Certainly there were plenty of tiny heads between the distant crenellations.
This is a better use for the place than its original intent.
Which had been to intimidate anyone who objected to having their land handed out willy-nilly by the Lord Protector as fiefs for his newborn lords.
The alarm had just been given down there. The Boisean infantry had been digging like moles; they already had one of their square marching camps within twelve-pounder range of the castle, the Stars and Stripes flying defiantly from a pole topped with a gilded eagle. They’d been digging a trench and barrier all around the castle too, a brown scar against the green of the winter wheat and pasture, but it was incomplete. Now they were swarming out of their orderly rows of tents and from their working parties, falling in with smooth precision outside the southward facing camp gate with its stubby wooden tower above. She took her heavy binoculars out of their lamb’s-wool-padded steel case at her saddle bow; they were a treasure and heirloom of her House, a mechanically stabilized Zeiss 20x60 S-type bought by her father a few years before the Change.
And prying them out of Signe was a complete pain. Honestly, she got Larsdalen and all the rest of Dad’s stuff, but she’s such a clutchfist! Bad as a dwarf. Of course, I got the original editions of the Histories signed by the Great Translator, but still.
The field glasses were cumbrous, requiring both hands and full attention, but worth the trouble: the enemy sprang to within arm’s reach instantly and the image stayed centered. The United States—“of Boise” to outsiders, simply “of America” to themselves—equipped its heavy infantry with big curved oval shields, marked by crossed thunderbolts and a spread-winged eagle. Each man wore identical armor of bands and hoops of steel for his torso and shoulders, with mail sleeves and a plate vambrace for the right arm, a complex helmet with hinged cheek-guards and a flare to protect the neck, and a sporran-like spray of metal-shod leather straps covering the groin. Their weapons were a dagger, a short broad-bladed stabbing sword worn high on the right side, and three long javelins, two with cast-iron balls beneath the yard of metal point to add armor-piercing weight to impact.
Each eighty-man platoon was commanded by an officer they called a centurion, with a transverse crest on his helmet, a vine-stock swagger stick and a scarlet cloak. There were four of them; that meant a half-battalion, a little over three hundred men if they were at full strength, which they probably weren’t. One of the centurions looked back at her through his own binoculars, then over at the Portlanders. He nodded to a signaler beside him, a man with a trumpet and a wolfʹs head and hide over his helmet and shoulders. A standard-bearer had the old American flag on a pole topped by a gilded hand.
The curled tubae brayed, and the first row of Boisean soldiers went down on one knee, their shields overlapping and a spear in each right hand snapping out in a quick uniform bristle. Another call, repeated by the officers’ silver whistles, and the ranks behind brought up their shields and cocked a shaft ready to throw. It was hardly like watching individual men move at all; more as if the signals were playing directly on their nerves, like some automatic machine of the ancient world. The formation gave fairly complete protection from arrows, and even heavy horse would often flinch from a line of unbroken points.
The men shouted as they lifted their shields, a unified hooo—rahhh sound, deep and guttural. Then a crashing bark of: “USA! USA!”
“They are stretched thin,” Astrid said with satisfaction, counting them. “I wouldn’t start a siege this close to an enemy force without at least twice as many men.”
“Nice to know we’re not alone in that overextended feeling,” Alleyne added dryly. “I’ve been feeling like too little butter—”
“—scraped thin on too much bread,” she completed for him.
“For over a year now,” he finished.
He took the heavy binoculars from her for a moment, returned them, and began checking his gear. They were in Dúnedain light armor, open-faced sallet helms, no limb protection except their buff leather boots, and torso protection of fine chain mail made from stainless-steel wire rivet
ed inside a soft green leather tunic.
Behind the Boiseans a scorpion spat from the north wall of their marching fort, throwing a bolt on a long blurred arch towards the castle and warning its garrison not to interfere. Stone and cement spalled away where the pyramid-shaped steel head punched into the wall above the gate. A harsh unmusical taaank! sounded at the impact as hard alloy steel deformed where it met the dense mixture of concrete and crushed granite.
“They think they can see the knights off,” Alleyne said. “And thanks to our bit of Sentry Removal, they don’t know about anything else coming their way.”
“If those pikemen ever show up,” Astrid said. “But I agree, it was a mistake.”
“Reasonable, if aggressive, but perhaps a bit arrogant. I’d be more cautious in his place.”
Astrid nodded in quiet satisfaction. She’d dreamed of being a warrior like those of the War of the Ring from her early youth—someone like Éowyn, but less Anglo-Saxony—but before she actually took it up as a trade after the Change she hadn’t realized how much craftsmanship there was to it, as opposed to simple derring-do.
And archery and horsemanship and swordplay, but I started those when I was a little girl, when I first read the Histories. The rest of it . . . is more like a combination of chess and tennis, more or less. You are playing against your foeman’s mind, when you are in command.
Her brother-in-law Mike Havel had started her education in that, and she’d learned diligently from many instructors over the past generation. Including the people she’d fought.
The Montival light horse spurred down the long slope towards the Boisean troops. Their equivalents came to meet them, and arrows twinkled as they arched in long flat trajectories between the two formations of horse-archers. The Association men-at-arms walked their horses forward at a steady pace, halting just out of practical catapult range of the fort, about three times the distance of a long bowshot. The enemy mounted archers withdrew, with Eilir and John Hordle and their troop chivvying them north and west; they were outnumbered, and anyway had no place on a confined field where armored lancers and heavy infantry might clash, any more than a wasp did between hammer and anvil.
Over the crest of the hill behind Astrid poured a stream of soldiers on bicycles, puffing as they pumped at the pedals in low climbing gear. Their leader was on horseback; he spurred over to the Grand Constable, then stood in his stirrups and waved to his command, about six hundred men. They skidded to a halt, laid their cycles on the kickstands and ran to deploy between the Portlanders and the smaller group of Dúnedain. One carried a red-white-and-blue flag on a tall pole; it streamed out in the cool breeze, showing . . . she blinked.
“Ah, they did make it,” Astrid said. “And in time, too, for a wonder. Thanks be to the Lord and Lady.”
“Hazards of coalition warfare . . . Is that a bloody teapot on their flag?” Alleyne asked. “Surrounded by seven stars? I call that cheek!”
Their eyes went immediately to their own banner; the silver tree on black, surmounted by the winged crown of the Sea-Kings and surrounded by seven stars also.
She fought down a stab of irritation, and went on: “It’s . . . yes, that’s Zillah’s banner. One of the Seven Free Cities of the Yakima League. Manwë and Varda alone know why they use a teapot. Wait, wait, there’s a famous building there shaped like a teapot. Quite an old building, as Men of these later ages count years. Tourists used to come and see it.”
“They’re rather out of the way there. Doubtless some story behind it originally.”
“Yes, they’re a little like the Marish beyond the Eastfarthing,” she said, running a soothing hand down the silky dapple neck of her horse, Arroach. “Full of odd notions and queer customs. I wouldn’t mind paying them a visit after the war. I understand it’s very pretty country, and the wine is certainly good.”
Astrid watched with interest as the infantry deployed; the Yakima valley’s prosperous but rather insular little cities—towns, by the old world’s standards—hadn’t come in her way much before. Their close-settled, intensively farmed irrigated countryside didn’t need the Rangers to put down bandits or beasts or guard caravans or convey messages and parcels through dangerous territory, and they were surrounded on all sides by Portlander fiefs anyway; they’d fought valiantly in the wars against the Association in Norman Arminger’s time. The troops were armored catch-as-catch-can, brigandines mostly, with mail shirts and some leather jackets sewn with washers; reasonable for infantry, though a bit old-fashioned except for the modern turtlelike sallet helms, which were probably recent issue and looked as if they’d been bought en masse from a Portlander arsenal, or someone else who had pneumatic presses.
About what you’d expect from a prosperous farmers’ militia.
The weapons were more standard, sixteen-foot breakdown pikes, glaives, and sword-and-buckler at their waists. There was a long rattling clatter as the two sections of each long polearm were fitted together in their metal collars, and then a shout as the pikemen raised them in unison. Suddenly what had been a collection of anxious tillers of the soil a long way from home was a bristling hedge of foot-long steel points each on an ashwood shaft more than twice a tall man’s height; the formation was six men deep and ninety wide. A bugle called, one of the type that high school marching bands had used before the Change.
“Pike points . . . down,” Alleyne murmured to himself, reading the notes.
Another shout, and the front four rows of pikes swung downward; the first two rows held underhand, the third at chest height, and the fourth overarm at shoulder height slanting down. That put four rows of overlapping steel points in front of the formation; the last two rows of pikemen held theirs upright, ready to step forward if a comrade before them in the file was struck down.
The rest of the Yakimans were armed with glaives or billhooks, six-foot shafts topped with heavy pointed single-edged blades, each with a vicious hook on the reverse side, capable of stabbing or yanking a horseman out of the saddle or a roundhouse chop. They formed up in columns to either side of the rectangle of pikes, making the formation like a thick I shape. The bugle beside the flag at the center blew again, and a quartet of snare drums beat: rat-tat-tat-tat, rat-tat-tat-tat. The soldiers began to mark time, marching in place; they counted cadence too, heep-heep-heep, but it took half a dozen paces before they were all keeping step.
“Not bad, for amateurs.” Alleyne chuckled and stroked a knuckle across his mustache, which was corn-yellow with the first few gray hairs hidden in it.
The long Portlander trumpets—the oliphants, a name she’d always liked—gave a high silvery scream, and the formation of men-at-arms swung behind the Zillah infantry, split into two, and began to deploy on either flank. The pennants on their tall lances flickered and fluttered out as the destriers paced into the wind from the north.
His smile grew a little cruel: “That Boisean commander is going to be a very unhappy fellow; he thought we were digging in to defend Walla-Walla. And he’ll be wishing he’d had his own men out on over-watch, not the Prophet’s.”
“We’d have killed them just the same, bar melindo,” she pointed out. “He wouldn’t have known a thing then, either.”
“Yes,” he drawled, sounding something a little more like yaaaz. “But he won’t believe that. They’re none of them very happy with each other in that alliance. Oft evil will—”
“—will evil mar,” Astrid said happily, and they grinned at each other.
Eilir and John Hordle came up with their troop. Hordle had his greatsword out, looking like a yardstick in his massive paw; there was blood on it, and on the side of his face and neck.
“Nothing,” he said to their questioning looks. “Just an arrowhead grazed me, loik. We got them going in the right direction, and I don’t think they’ll be back anytime soon.”
Eilir leaned over in the saddle to deal with it; Hordle swore mildly as she wiped away the blood with a square of cloth soaked in alcohol, then ripped open a package of glazed
paper with her teeth and slapped the adhesive edges of the sterile bandage to the shallow slice-wound on his neck behind the ear, under the tail of his sallet.
“Glad I’m not ’im,” he grunted in Sindarin heavily accented with Hampshire yokel, nodding at the Boisean position. “Thanks, luv. You’ve got it corked.”
A final rattle came from behind them as a six-machine battery of catapults came up, and then rocked up to a gallop. The field artillery were Corvallan demi-scorpions, six-pounders on spoked rubber-tired wheels pulled by four strong cobby horses each, the type used by farmers who preferred them to oxen. Each machine had the scowling beaver’s-head blazon of that rich city-state painted on its shield in brown on an orange circle; those of the crew not riding on the teams were on mountain bikes. Astrid estimated heights, and her lips moved in a small smile.
“They can shoot over the pikemen with that slope to help,” she said. “And they can get into position to cover the whole ground between them and the earthwork of that marching fort. It’s really not a very good position; he should have stayed inside, even before he saw the infantry.”
“Boise’s commanders still tend to underestimate how dangerous heavy horse are,” Alleyne said. “Especially when you can’t get out of their way.”
Another bugle call and rattle of snare drums from the League’s levy, and they began to advance at the quickstep, a hundred and twenty paces to the minute, thirty inches to the pace. The honed edges of the pike heads caught the early sun in a continuous blinking ripple as the shafts flexed to the pounding half-trot, glittering as if on wind-ruffled water.
The Boisean commander evidently thought he’d made a mistake too; he looked over his shoulder as the fieldpieces slewed around. Their crews let the bicycles fall and sprang into action; one leading the horses back, two opening and spreading the legs of the trails behind the weapons, another attaching the armored hose to the outlet of the hydraulic jack built into the mount. The remaining four in each set up the pump, a rocker beam with handles on either side. Smoke rose as thick glass globes of napalm were set in the launching troughs and the gunners’ mates set their lighters to the wicks of oiled rope wrapped around them. Pale flame ran over the hemp. Faint with distance she heard the shouted orders of the battery commander:
