by Victor Milán
That tantalizing food-cooking smell led her out of her thicket and around the hip of a gentle swell of the ground. The land fell away before her, flattening into a shallow valley, natural meadows interspersed with the oddly regular ones with all the same kinds of plants in them that she knew the tailless ones tended to live next to.
Sure enough, not far away lay a cluster of the boulders made of wood and stone she knew she would see. Even more curiously regular than the one-plant meadows, though far from uniform, their mostly peaked shapes resembled rock crystals. Yet they were hollow, she knew. The tailless two-legs dwelt in them.
As her mother had. Except when they were traveling on the great, noisy hunts her mother took her on, filled with metal clashing and screams. Then her mother lived in an angular shelter made of plant matter.
Turning her head from side to side, she tested the air. As expected, the scent of roasting meat came from the cluster. She could see smoke rise from several of the crystal-like outcroppings, as often happened when the air was as cool as it was today.
She was pleased that the wind blew toward her. The two-legs had little sense of smell. But they kept beasts, especially the small, baying four-legs, whose hides bore small filaments like the ones on two-legs’ heads, instead of feathers or scales. They had keen noses indeed.
She made her way down toward the cluster. On the fringe of a field a field where a flock of fatties browsed on dry stubble, she flattened herself among weeds, waited. After bit the pair of small two-legs who tended the plant-eaters turned away to look at something. She slipped by them downwind, and in among the hollow, peaked-top boulders.
A broad path ran through the midst of them. She stayed away from that, though her senses told her no two-legs moved abroad through the gathering twilight. Until by lesser ways she reached a boulder larger than the rest, whose sides were as if made of lesser stones, smooth-polished as if by running water, of dark and pale grey, and dark blue.
Tall, narrow openings with pointed tops pierced its sides. From its pinnacle smoke flowed up into the cloudy sky, as though it were a miniature volcano. This was what she smelled: not a stink like rotting nosehorn eggs, but succulent roasting dinosaur-flesh.
She pressed her snout to one of the arched openings. A lattice, cool, hard, and grey, blocked it from poking inside. Some kind of clear but slightly sight-distorting membrane like a bubble’s skin was stretched across the aperture behind it.
Nonetheless she could see well enough, by the glows of the small, pet fires the two-legs liked to keep in clear objects near them, and the bigger fire-cave by a far wall. There were propped-up slabs and a pack of two-legs sitting at them, making happy noises at each other while some of their young moved among them with high-heaped platters.
Some of these held merely heated plants, and as such had no interest to her. But then she saw one, so huge it had to be upheld by four two-legs spratlings, which carried a whole roast thigh of duckbill. She thought she could smell it growing nearer. She could definitely hear the crackle of hot grease.
Her stomach growled. I’m starving!
But she could not burst in and take the food by force. Her mother would disapprove most strongly. And she was a good Allosaurus.
Anyway, if she did that, she’d have to fight them. Aside from having been strictly trained not to do that, she didn’t want to. Almost as fierce as the emptiness in her belly was the emptiness inside her. It hurt her now as much as the pangs in her stomach.
She knew the hole could only be filled by soft words and stroking by their oddly smooth, soft hands. She missed, then, not just her loving mother, but the friendly attention of the grooms and others who had helped care for her.
Maybe they’ll be nice two-legs, she thought. Maybe they will give me food and pet me. Like my mother and her friends.
She heard a high, shrill sound: a two-legs’ mouth-noise of distress. A male rounder than most, sitting at the farthest table, was pointing an arm at her. His eyes and mouth were circles of fear.
More two-legs turned to look at her. They uttered many terror-cries. Even through the thick, hard membrane and the tang of smoke and roasted meat, she could smell their fear.
She turned and fled.
She felt mostly sorrow. Why are they so mean to me? She only wanted to be friends. She hadn’t even eaten any of their fatties, though they were delicious, and could see that these in particular lived up to their name.
But two-legs were dangerous. She rejoiced in fighting and killing, when the time came. That was the way she was, just as she ate and drank and voided. But she had a keen sense of self-preservation. She was no foolish hatchling.
Despite their puny size and strength, the two-legs when aroused could swarm even a mighty hunter such as herself, like ants devouring a fat grub. And she knew especially to fear the way they could even sting her at a distance.
So without hesitation—nor further attempts as stealth—she ran through the rest of the boulder-cluster as fast as her powerful hind legs could drive her. From behind her came sharp ringing that stabbed at her ear-membranes. She recognized a distress call often made by tailless two-leg flocks from their hollow-rock huddles.
It spurred her on even faster. It might bright out a pack of two-legs encased in metal and carrying long stings to chase her on the backs of their four-legged beasts, which had smooth hair like fliers. She wanted no part of them. Nor of their weird ability to sting at a distance.
I don’t want to leave! But she had to. And so she did, racing on with the sun lowering beyond her left shoulder, out into the fields that lay outside the cluster. As she made her escape, she cried out a bitter and triumphant “Shiraa!”
As she passed through a grassy meadow she did veer aside to make a quick dash through another fatty flock on the far side of the village. Initially frozen by sight of the giant meat-eater thundering toward them, they scattered too late. Her jaws snapped shut behind a yearling’s frill. She carried it, not slowed at all by her burden as it thrashed futilely against the poignard teeth clamped on its neck and bleated through a wide-open beak.
She spied another pair of two-legs young. They were running away as fast as their spindly little legs would bear them.
Serves you right for being so mean! she thought.
She slid through the brush of a woodlot and away over small hills until she reached an opening on the flank of a wooded ridge that felt safe enough. She killed the feebly struggling fatty with a quick head shake, dropped it, and pinned it among the low plants with a hind foot on its shoulder. In case some impudent tröodon or horror tried to snatch her prize away.
She turned her head from side to side, senses questing. She could found no sign the two-legs had pursued her.
But on a ridgetop the way she had run, the way the low sun was casting her shadow, she saw a solitary shape that might be the strange-headed two-legs she had so often seen. She smelled her mother’s scent, then.
It was stronger than it had been since she lost her mother, that bad day.
Mommy close! she knew with ferocious joy. See Mommy soon! She raised her head and roared the only thing she said, or ever had: her name, Shiraa.
This time it meant, “Shiraa coming, Mommy! Shiraa good!”
Then she dropped her head. Not all hungers could be assuaged by dining on a fresh-killed fatty calf.
But then, some could.
Part Five
Dubious Battle
Chapter 39
Nodosaurios Imperiales, Imperial Nodosaurs, Infantería Imperial (Official), Imperial Infantry—Élite armored infantry, backbone of the Empire of Nuevaropa. Their colors are brown, black, and silver. Their basic formation is the tercio, a phalanx of three thousand pikes supported by more lightly armored hamstringers, arbalesters, artillerists, and pioneers. Tercios have died in battle to the last man and woman, but never broken.
—A PRIMER TO PARADISE FOR THE IMPROVEMENT OF YOUNG MINDS
Like a lake of flesh the Grey Angel horde seethed, half a kilom
eter distant across a field of gently waving brown grass. A human cataract poured continuously from the north over a forested rise to join it.
If they can be called human, thought Jaume, Comte dels Flors, Constable of the Imperial Army, as he stood watching from the brow of the low, loaf-shaped ridge called La Miche that stood between the Fortunate River and the High Road. Around him his fourteen remaining Companions stood in their beautiful white plate, with the Lady’s Mirror red on their breasts.
“In the name of our Lady and all the Eight!” Dieter von Grosskammer exclaimed.
Machtigern laid a big, square hand on the younger Alemán’s shoulder. “Steady.”
Jaume stood with arms folded across his breastplate. The sun, just-risen over the forested Petits Voleurs ridges to the west, had already perceptibly heated the steel despite dense black-hearted clouds. The wind ruffled his long hair. Around him stood the pitiful handful that remained of his Companions, their white-enameled armor shining.
“One thing we can be grateful for,” Florian said.
“What?” asked Ayaks.
“The wind’s not blowing in our faces.”
Ayaks’s frown turned into a disgusted grimace. If some of the Emperor’s grandes were indifferent to the Creators’ commandments on hygiene, the horde seemed to have abandoned them entirely.
“One other thing,” said Wil Oakheart of Oakheart dryly.
“So many blessings,” Florian murmured.
“Raguel seems in no damned hurry.”
That being so, Jaume took stock of his preparations. Fifty meters away, across the High Road, a lone hill rose to a height of about thirty meters, somewhat taller than La Miche. It was known as Le Boule. At its crown a great banner snapped defiance at the Grey Angel and his Crusade: the Imperial flag, golden tyrant skull on a field of blood.
Beneath an open tent stood like a red-and-yellow mushroom. In its shade sat His Imperial Majesty Felipe. He wore plain armor of polished, clear-enameled steel with the Imperial arms, colors reversed from the flag—red skull, gold shield—painted on the breastplate. A bare longsword lay across his knees. Pages and squires hovered around, waiting to run messages to his commanders. A score of Scarlet Tyrants guarded him.
Lower down the hill Falk stood like an ancient monolith. He wore his personal harness of royal blue, silver, and black armor today, not Tyrant gold and scarlet. Beside him Snowflake squatted like a broody scratcher, glowering in red-eyed malice held in check by his master’s will.
The bulk of the Tyrants stood at the hill’s base: five hundred élite Imperial bodyguards in gilt cuirasses and pot-helmets with tails of overlapped plates. Each held a curved, oblong shield and a spear with a short heavy haft, a long skinny black-iron neck and an evilly barbed head. A short sword rode in a scabbard at each man’s hip. Each would die fighting before he allowed an enemy near the Emperador’s person. Even Raguel himself.
Off on the army’s left waited a wing of two hundred dinosaur knights with a thousand heavy cavalry behind, commanded by the youthful Archiduc Antoine de la Lumière. His uncle the Francés King had sent him to serve in the campaign against Providence—reluctantly, the rumor ran.
To Antoine’s right stood the three thousand pikemen and -women of the Twelfth Tercio of the Brown Nodosaurs, the “Steel Wall,” who had marched with Felipe from La Merced. Their hamstringers, arbalesters, and stingers were arranged in front of them. From their right to the High Road stood, sat, or shifted nervously in place the bulk of the Imperial foot: seven thousand peasant levies, all that remained of a high of over ten thousand. The army had lost some conscripts to the rampaging passions of their ostensible betters, and far more to desertion, including several hundred who had sneaked through the pickets the night before, apparently to join the enemy horde. In front of them stood a bloc of three to four hundred armored house-bows, and another of around five hundred common archers.
Across the Chausée Imperial the Third Tercio, “Imperial Will,” was arrayed in the same way as the Twelfth. Between them and the riverbank’s steep drop one hundred and fifty war-duckbills, steel chamfrons, and rainbow caparisons shifted from hind foot to hind foot, muttering to one another in low dulcian hoots and farting. Another thousand gendarmes on coursers waited behind. Duque Francisco de Mandar commanded that wing.
The peasant mass, no more happy than their kind ever were, were stiffened by the presence right behind them of a short, wide wedge of two thousand five hundred house-shields—like the armored archers, retainers of the various lords taking part in the campaign. A second formation of five hundred backed up the Third Tercio.
Behind the two heights waited the reserve: Jaume and his fourteen remaining Companions, their five hundred Ordinary men-at-arms, and six hundred cavalry in plate and chain. These latter were adventurers, second sons and daughters or hedge-knights, too poor to afford full plate. Two hundred fifty more House infantry lounged on both sides of the road to the south, their spears and shields beside them in the grass.
Past them the Imperial wagon train had been drawn into an immense circle on the road’s west side. The wagons were chained together tail to tongue to form a rough-and-ready wood-walled fort. The drovers and wagoneers and camp followers within could be relied upon to put up a stout defense of themselves and their livelihoods.
Out in front of the army were ranged artillery engines: mostly the Nodosaur stingers and some others, plus some catapults. Four trebuchets Jaume had brought with his Ejército Corregidor stood with long arms poking toward the overcast. They reminded him most unpleasantly of gibbets.
Jaume drew a deep breath and willed his heart to slow. It had a tendency today to race far out in advance of the rest of him.
He had an excellent anchor for his right flank in the Fortunate River. But his left flank was up in the air. Dense forest stood five hundred to a thousand meters off to the west; beyond it he could he could see the blue line of the Petits Voleurs. If he’d tried to stretch his forces to cover the distance they’d be thin as an embezzler’s excuse; the horde could blow through them and scarcely break stride.
He felt a pat on the pauldron that guarded his left shoulder. He turned to see Jacques smiling sadly at him.
“Leave it, Jaumet,” the lank-haired knight said. “What humans can do, you’ve done. We couldn’t find better ground to fight on, in the time the Angel left us.”
“Mor Jacques, the pessimist eternal, telling me not to worry?” He laughed in genuine delight. “A miracle!”
The Francés shrugged steel shoulders. “Don’t count on us getting another.”
Still, he stood straighter than Jaume had seen him do in months. That reassured Jaume—some. His old friend’s air of resolute resignation would serve everyone better than despair.
“They’re deployed in conventional array,” Florian said. “Infantry in the middle, dinosaurry and cavalry on both wings.”
In battles of this scale mounted wings customarily consisted of dinosaur knights before, heavy-horse behind, rather than each constituting a single wing. Just as with horses, war-duckbills required a certain concentration to be effective.
“Where did they get so many dinosaur knights?” asked Owain de Galés. He carried his longbow strung. A quiver of meter-long arrows in a flier-skin quiver rode his back.
“They’ve cleared the provinces between here and the mountains,” Jacques said. He stood taller than Jaume had seen him do in months. Jaume was little reassured. His old friend’s air was one of resolute resignation. Still, it would serve everyone better than despair.
Including, Jaume hoped, the man himself.
“But knights?” persisted Ayaks. “Why would they join in such abomination?”
“Nobles certainly aren’t any less susceptible to a Grey Angel’s compulsion than common folk,” Florian said. “And as for evil natures, have you forgotten the Via Dolorosa we rode down to join our Emperor? Terraroja’s fate, and the murder and disorder every day in our army’s camp?”
“I remember,” t
he blond-bearded Ruso rumbled. “Too well to sleep well.”
“We’re their equal in armored riders, anyway,” Machtigern said. “Or superior even.”
“If only there,” Wil said. “Even allowing for defeat-induced exaggeration, refugee reports make Raguel’s Horde a hundred thousand strong.”
Felipe fielded a vast army by Nuevaropan standards: almost twenty-two thousand fighters, as nearly as Jaume could reckon. Notwithstanding their own unhappy residue of peasant infantry, they probably had more well-trained and equipped fighters than the whole Grey Angel Crusade. And those were interspersed among half-starved, half-naked lunatics armed with hands and teeth. Yet even though the enemy captain—Jaume had to guess that was Raguel himself—had deployed mounted wings like a proper army, the legends, and ancient histories everyone including Jaume had assumed were legendary, said that a Grey Angel horde relied on size, speed, and ferocity instead of tactics.
The point of a Grey Angel Crusade, after all, was the wholesale destruction of human life. Raguel’s casualties would gratify his unknowable desires scarcely less than his enemies’.
“Wait, now” called Jacques.
Jaume shook his head, smiling with gratitude for his friend snatching him back from an abyss of black despair.
The Francés knight had a shiny brass spyglass pressed to one eye. “Something’s happening. The mob is clearing a path.”
The horde’s front ranks flowed apart like the early morning river-mist that was slowly yielding to the feeble sunlight. A figure rode between them on a pure-white sackbut. It was a woman with a wild mane of silver-white hair. She was naked except for a cape of white feathers thrown back to lie over her back like folded wings.
Bartomeu cleared his throat. He stood holding his mare nearby. He and the Companions’ other arming-squires waited to serve as message-runners.
Jaume shook his head. He didn’t need to send a message for his commanders to hold in place. They had orders too clear for even the most willful buckethead to misconstrue. Also the Emperor’s personal assurance that anyone who disobeyed would be relieved of his command at once, as well as his head.
