by Robert Adams
As Bili withdrew his nicked, dulled blade — now cloudy with sticky, red blood from point to quillions — from just below the breastplate of a gasping, wide-eyed pikeman, the back of his helmet was struck so hard that the force of the buffet all but drove him to his knees. Staggering slightly, he turned to face a swordsman in three-quarter armor of an alien pattern.
Shieldless, the Skohshun was swinging his sword with both hands, and his greater than average strength was evident in the crushing, numbing force of his blows, Bili caught and deflected two more sword swipes on the face of his buckler and tried to deflect another down the flat of his blade while fetching his new opponent a shrewd buffet in the exposed armpit with the steel-shod edge of the buckler. But Bili’s much-abused blade shattered and broke off some foot below the quillions.
Gasping a breathless snarl, the young thoheeks slammed the convex center of his smooth-faced buckler full onto his foeman’s visor with all the strength of his sinewy left arm, even as he used his booted right foot to jerk the man’s left leg forward. Despite the flailing of his arms, the Skohshun lost his balance and fell heavily onto his back. His unlaced helmet went spinning off to reveal the red face of an elderly man with flaring white mustache. Before the old man could move, Bili had taken a long, quick stride and kicked him in the side of the head, then appropriated his victim’s sword.
As he straightened, however, he saw a file of men trotting up behind the lines of uncommitted pikemen, led by a mounted officer. These men all worn full helmets and half-armor and were armed with pole weapons of more conventional size than the bulk of the Skohshun army.
“Withdraw!” he urgently mindspoke his lieutenants. “All disengage and withdraw, at once!” Then, to his stallion, “My brother, watch close and be ready to bring up the herd as soon as we clear the pike line.”
But it was not to be, not then, not yet. The members of Bili’s condotta had fallen back only a few yards when they first felt the fast-approaching thunder vibrating up through the soles of their boots, then found themselves dodging the galloping horses of Prince Byruhn’s Third Battle.
With swords and lances, with axes, maces and warhammers, the prince and his men smote down any Skohshuns Bili’s force had missed, then rode through the two files of uncommitted pikemen to hotly engage the newcome poleaxemen to the rear.
* * *
At the hilltop command post, from which he could see the entire length of the battlelines. Senior Colonel Sir Djaimz Alpine waited far longer than he should have for the return of the brigadier and the four or five staff officers who had trailed him when he had so suddenly called for his horse, mounted and ridden down into the rear areas. At some length, he beckoned over a young ensign.
“Grey, ride down there and don’t come back up here until you’ve found the brigadier or. at least, word of what he’s up to.”
“Sir!” The pink-checked boy stamped, spun about, and set off at a run for the picket lines, his armor rattling, his left hand holding his scabbarded sword free of his churning legs.
Even as the ensign set his big gelding down the hillock, a lieutenant of foot reined in a foaming, hard-ridden mount before the headquarters and flung himself from the sweaty saddle to salute Sir Jaimz, then relay the question of his colonel.
“Of course not! snapped the senior colonel brusquely, “Any hot pursuit of mounted foemen is always undertaken by our own mounted troops. Colonel Phipps knows that. He is to stay where he is, maintain the pike line. Dismiss!”
As the lieutenant remounted, Sir Djaimz once more turned to and looked along the nearer, western flank of the lines . . . and felt his blood run cold! The line had been severed, not just battered, but severed. Even as he watched in horror from his eyrie, armored New Kuhmbuhluhn horsemen were riding right through Farr’s regimental lines, hacking down pikemen as they went, to engage the short-haftmen in the rear and spread out to take other units in the flank. Where in thirteen hells was the brigadier?
Colonel Sir Edmund Grey, father of Ensign Thomas Grey, had died of wounds after the big battle with the New Kuhmbuhluhn heavy horse, last autumn. Thomas, his eldest living son, had then been in training. This was the fourteen-year-old boy’s first battle . . . and his last.
Even as he spotted the riderless horse of the missing brigadier hitched with several other saddled mounts to a low, spreading bush, a yelling, screaming horde of armored New Kuhmbuhluhners chopped and slashed their way through the last two lines of Colonel Farr’s regiment, then split into three integuments — one to savagely attack a force of short-haftmen and the officer leading them, one to ride against the rear and right flank of the next regiment east — that of Colonel Herman Taylor, Ensign Grey’s godfather — one to do likewise against the next regiment west, which meant that that unit was riding directly toward Thomas Grey.
The oncoming enemies looked huge, far larger than men should rightly be, monstrous; their weapons were splotched and smeared with fresh, bright-red blood, their armor and horse housings splashed with it. Young Ensign Grey’s mouth was suddenly dry as ashes and his tongue seemed cloven to his palate, and breathing was exceedingly difficult. He seemed all at once to be suffering a flux of his bowels, and a painfully distended bladder did not in any way help matters. But he never even considered flight. He drew his sword after lowering and securing his visor, and rode on.
* * *
Earl Devernee, technically the overall commander of the Skohshun army, as well as the hereditary leader of the Skohshun people, usually and wisely left decisions of a military — and especially of a battlefield — nature up to the brigadier and his staff,
Just before this battle, however, he had been urgently approached and bespoken by his first cousin, Colonel Harry Potter, and convinced by the officer that his understrength regiment stood in more danger of attack in their stream-spanning position than the brigadier was willing to credit or admit. The earl had used his seldom-invoked personal authority to strip several regiments of most of their short-haft fighters, then had assigned the lot of them to reinforce his cousin’s pikemen. In the cases of at least three of the affected regiments, this unexpected abrogation of the painfully detailed planning of the brigadier and his battlewise staff was to result in a very high butcher’s bill.
While Prince Byruhn and a few score of his mountain axemen took on the hastily formed ring of poleaxes and other short polearms, two of his most trusted counts led the bulk of his Third Battle in crashing, crushing charges against the now-exposed flanks of the two regiments to either side of that unfortunate one chosen by Bili Morguhn as the target for his new, unorthodox tactics.
Utterly lacking the customary screen of flexible and better protected short-haftuien, the long-pikemen — hampered with a necessarily tight formation and heavy, unwieldy arms — were as helpless as fish in a barrel and went down in droves, spitted on lances and spears, hacked by swords and axes, their skulls sundered or bones crushed by maces or warhammers. Those few who escaped death or serious injury were the less disciplined men who dropped their pikes and fled. All of the well-trained, veteran pikemen died or fell in their assigned places.
Senior Colonel Sir Djaimz Alpine, completely unaware of the earl’s ill-advised last-minute reassignments of personnel, could only assume that the force of New Kuhmbuhluhn cavalry was larger and stronger than it appeared at the distance to have ridden over and downed the well-armed and -armored flank screens of the special troops.
To one of the waiting officer-gallopers, he said, “My compliments, please, to Colonel Powell. He is to bring up his regiment at the double with all pikes presented and, when he has cleared the way, his regiment will plug the gap in the line where Colond Farr’s regiment was posted.”
The first galloper was barely on his run toward the picket lines when Sir Djaimz was rattling off instructions to another and inwardly cursing the absence of the brigadier, even while blessing the old man for his years of patient tutelage and often impatient and profane example.
* * *
&nbs
p; With the Third Battle actively engaging most of the still-standing Skohshuns within reach, the withdrawal of Bili’s condotta was quick and easy. Mahvros and those few humans assigned as horse holders brought up the horses promptly. Bili and the others first saw all the wounded mounted and those unable to mount tied securely onto their mounts before themselves mounting and drawing back a hundred yards or so.
Standing in his stirrups, Bili could see the entirety of the pike lines, and what he saw was in no way heartening. To his right, the First Battle still seemed to be attacking, hacking fiercely if generally ineffectually at the unbroken pike hedge, King Mahrtuhn’s Green Stallion banner waving at the forefront of the fight.
On the other side of the stream, however, there was no battle. The pike hedge stood firm behind uninterrupted lines of glittering steel points. Of the New Kuhmbuhluhner force which had attacked them — Prince Mahrtuhn Gilbuht’s Second Battle — only the bodies of dead or dying men and horses remained on the field before the pikes.
Then, Rahksahnah, sitting her big mare beside him, touched his steel-sheathed arm, mindspeaking. “Bili . . . the king!”
The young chief of Clan Morguhn snapped his gaze back to the area of the First Battle’s unavailing engagement to see King Mahrtuhn — recognizable by his richly embellished armor and gear — lolling limply in his saddle, supported at either side by members of his bodyguard, neither of whom looked sound and whole themselves. As they led the monarch’s limping charger from proximity to the dripping pikepoints, the horse bearing the Green Stallion Banner followed in its accustomed place, despite its empty saddle.
However, few if any of the remaining bulk of the First Battle seemed to be aware of the wounding of the king. They continued to vainly hack away at the Skohshun formation, losing man after man and horse to precious little avail.
None of it made any sense to Bili. Spotting the chief hornsman of the royal trumpeters on the outward fringes of the broil, the young thoheeks galloped Mahvros over to the man.
“Blow the recall!” he ordered shortly.
The middle-aged musician turned slightly in his saddle and, with a ghost of a sneer, stated, “My orders come from King Mahrtuhn, alone, my . . . lord mercenary.”
A big, powerful hand in a blood-tacky gauntlet grasped the hornman’s richly embroidered surcoat and half-dragged him from his saddle, slowly shaking him the while.
“King Mahrtuhn,” snarled Bili, “has been severely wounded and is being borne from the field. I, Bili, Duke of Morguhn, command you to blow recall at once, while there is still something left of the First Battle. Put that damned horn to your lips or I swear that you’ll be lacking lips, and head, entirely, sirrah!”
Intimidated to the point of stuttering tenor by the towering, grim and blood-splashed nobleman-officer, the chief hornman gasped out the call to his subordinates, but it was they who ended up blowing it, for his lips were trembling too severely to shape the notes properly.
* * *
Fortunately for his Third Battle, Prince Bymhn spotted the fresh regiment of pikemen trolling down the valley when they were still sufficiently distant to allow him time to collect his scattered horsemen and withdraw them through the much-widened gap in the Skohshun lines. Otherwise he and they might well have been trapped behind those lines and cut down, piecemeal.
A few yards out from the Skohshun formations, Duke Bili rode up to him. “Byruhn, your father, the king. is sore hurt, maybe dead, for all I know. I’ve had the recall sounded for his battle, since their tactics were accomplishing nothing of a positive nature. There’s no sign of your nephew or his battle; they must have withdrawn earlier. The command is now yours, obviously. What are my lord’s orders?”
Byruhn sighed and looked behind, where the lines of the Skohshun pikemen were reforming precisely even as the fresh regiment moved into place in the gapped formation.
“Get to hell out of here,” he snapped, “before they are formed up to countercharge, as they did last autumn. It has all, everything, been wasted, today, young cousin. But then, we — both of us — knew that it would be, eh? So much for old-fashioned, senseless pursuit of an outdated honor. Now let’s get what force hasn’t been frittered away back to New Kuhmbuhluhnburk, wherein the terrain and the odds will be on our side for a change.”
But the Skohshuns did not countercharge. Bili’s last view of them from the crest of the ridge between the blood-soaked valley and the river showed them still in their place, the forward lines of pikes still at “present.” But the Skohshuns’ rear area was a seething boil of activity, and the constant passings back and forth of riders up and down the western hillock led him to believe that some important person of that alien army had his headquarters thereon.
No sooner were the New Kuhmbuhluhn survivors across the river and back into camp than Prince Byruhn set every sound man and woman to the task of breaking that camp and forming for a march back to New Kuhmbuhluhnburk. There was much grumbling and grousing on the part of the exhausted warriors, but Bili could see the points: to stay here was to invite an attack by the numerically superior Skohshuns, and cavalry was of little account as a defending force; also, there was the matter of the wounded — including King Mahrtuhn — all of whom would be immeasurably better off in the cam of Pah-Elmuh and the other Kleesahks skilled at healing, and while a night on the march might kill some of those wounded so too would a night of suffering on hard pallets in camp under only the rough-and-ready care of their comrades and a horse leech or two. And there were plenty of spare horses to bear horse litters. Over half of the force that had ridden into that ill-conceived attack were now dead, wounded or missing, but only about a fifth of the horses were dead, missing or seriously enough hurt to require being put down or immediately tended.
A litter was fashioned of King Mahrtuhn’s cushioned camp bed, and the still-unconscious monarch — stripped of his hacked and bloody armor, boots and gambeson, his visible wounds cleaned and bandaged — was gently placed therein. Prince Mahrtuhn Gilbuht’s crushed and mangled corpse, wrapped in the silken folds of his personal banner, was securely tied atop the load of one of the wagons, on Prince Byruhn’s order.
They marched through the night, under a bright half-moon, with Bili and the hale members of his condotta providing flank and rearguards. A bare score of Skohshun dragoons had splashed across the ford when the camp was finally struck, the site deserted and most of the slow-moving column a good mile on the road to New Kuhmbuhluhnburk. But the small unit of cavalrymen never made any attempt to close that distance. Indeed, they deliberately halted several times to maintain it whenever the column found it necessary to slow or pause. It was obvious that they were but a scouting force, not seeking to harry or fight, and none in Bili’s condotta or in the main column had the mind or the energy to try to take a fight to them.
Bili had sent the prairiecat Whitetip racing ahead to the nearest point from which the big, talented feline could farspeak the Kleesahk Pah-Elmuh, in order that the huge humanoid and his ilk might meet the column before it reached the mountain city. With the king comatose, his chosen heir dead and Prince Byruhn in full command of the shattered remnants of the royal army, there was no longer any need to conceal the fact that he had had the big cat accompany the force.
Pah-Elmuh and five other Kleesahks met the battered column at the fourth hour after dawn, still some twelve miles from New Kuhmbuhluhnburk. Pah-Elmuh himself made directly for that litter holding King Mahrtuhn, knelt beside it and, with his eyelids closed, lightly ran his gigantic palm the length of the royal body, from feet to head.
When he finally looked up at Prince Byruhn, there was both pain and sadness commingled in the depths of his oval-pupiled eyes. “King Mahrtuhn no longer lives, Lord Prince. His body is cooling and has begun to stiffen. I grieve with you. He was a good and a just sovran.”
The massive, hirsute creature swiveled his bone-ridged head on his short, thick neck, looking about. “Where is your nephew, Prince Mahrtuhn Gilbuht? He must be told that he now is ou
r king.”
“No, Pah-Elmuh,” Byruhn sighed. “Poor young Mahrtuhn will never wear the crown of New Kuhmbuhluhn, not now. He died on the field, and his body is back there on a baggage wagon. I suppose, Steel aid us all, that that means I must be king.” He sighed again, more deeply then added, “And I must be the very last of my line. I fear me, for my nephew had not yet sired any sons, and, as well you know, I . . I dare not breed.”
Chapter V
Ahrkeethoheeks Hahfos Djohnz, Warden of the Ahrmehnee Marches, looked up from the letter he had been reading and leaned back in his desk chair, his elbows on its arms, his hands idly toying with the leather tube in which that letter had been rolled.
The middle-aged-to-elderly man who stood before his desk did so at rigid, military posture of attention, for all that of all his clothing and equipment, only the plain, functional sword and the businesslike, unadorned dirk he wore looked at all military. True, his clothing, boots and armor were all plain enough, but their rich quality betrayed them — no army ever issued, or could afford to issue, such material.
The shadow of a smile flitted over the lips and eyes of the seated officer. Then he remarked conversationally, “It’s obvious that civilian life agrees with you, Djim Bohluh. So why must you go a-traipsing off into the unknown western mountains, eh? Not that I’m of any mind to refuse you, not with the backing of your insanity that this letter indicates you to have, I’m not.”
His pale-blue eyes fixed on a point above and beyond the head of Hahfos, the older man began, “Sir, with the lord strahteegos’ permission. Bohluh. Djim, has —”
He ceased to speak suddenly, as the seated man began to laugh. “Oh, knock it all off, Djim. I’m no longer a strahteegos and you’re no longer a sergeant. Pull up that chair yonder, help yourself to the ale or the wine and let’s discuss this like the civilians we both now are. There, that’s much better.”
Hahfos poured himself a measure of wine and indicated that his guest should do likewise, The cups were large, of massive, chiseled silver and decorated with the golden bear that was become Hahfos’ personal ensign as well as that of this new sept of Clan Djohnz.
