by David Weber
“It looks good,” Roger said as Dogzard slid down off the flank of the packbeast. Although he’d made great strides in mastering the art of civan-riding, Roger had also firmly grasped that pearl of veteran wisdom: stick with what you know works in combat. He and the flar-ta had worked out the rules for a lethal partnership he had no intention of breaking up. Besides, the dog-lizard could ride behind the flar-ta’s saddle, a practice which no civan would tolerate, and the prince’s pet—now a veritable giant for her species—refused to be separated from him. Not that her devotion or increased size had made her any less importunate, and Roger watched her sidle up to Bogess and accept a treat from him as her due.
“It could be better,” Pahner replied. “I’d prefer more ranged weapons, but even if we had more arquebuses . . .” He waved a choppy gesture at the drizzling rain. The Hompag had passed, but “dry season” was a purely relative term on sunny Marduk, and at the moment, the relationship was distant, indeed. “If the Boman are smart,” the Marine went on, “they’ll stand off and pound us with those damned hatchets.”
“We’ve got the javelins,” Roger pointed out, frowning at Dogzard. She finished off Bogess’ treat, licked her chops, and jumped back onto the flar-ta, which snorted its own disgust.
“Yes,” Bogess said, absently wiping his fingers on his armor. “But only one or two per soldier. The Boman carry several axes each.”
“It’s not that big a deal,” the prince insisted. “The pikes have their shields, and if they really do stand off like that, we can hammer them with plasma fire.”
“Some of the companies could be steadier,” Pahner commented pessimistically.
“Jesus, Armand,” Roger laughed. “You’d bitch if they hanged you with a golden rope!”
“Only if it were tied wrong,” the captain told him with a slight smile. “Seriously, Roger. We’re outnumbered three-to-one, and don’t think the Diasprans don’t know that. It will affect them, and the Boman are bogey men to them. They’re all . . . six meters tall. I was going to say three meters, except that that’s about the height of a normal Mardukan. But that ingrained fear is something we have to be prepared for.”
“Well,” Roger said, waving as he prepared to ride down the line, “that, as you’ve told me, is what leadership is for.”
“When they going to come, Corp?” Bail Crom asked.
Krindi Fain tried to keep his expression calm as he surreptitiously wiped one hand on his cuirass. It wouldn’t do for the troops to see that his palms were sliming.
The pikes stood at rest on the battle line, awaiting the arrival of the Boman. They’d been there since just after dawn. They’d prepared the defenses well into the night and then gotten back up after only a brief rest for a sketchy breakfast. Now, between the up and down stresses and the physical labor of marching to the battle site and digging in, the entire New Model Army was adrift in a hazy, semi-hallucinatory condition, the mixture of physical fatigue and sleep deprivation that was the normal state of infantry.
“If I knew that, I’d be up in the castle, wouldn’t I?” he snapped.
The drums from the Boman encampment just over the ridge had been beating since dawn. Now it was moving into late morning, and their enemies’ refusal to appear was making the Diaspran noncom far more anxious than he cared to appear.
“I was just wondering,” Crom said almost humbly. The normally confident private was a sorry sight to see in the morning light.
“Don’t worry about it, Bail,” Fain said more calmly. “They’ll come when they come. And we’ll be fine.”
“There’s supposed to be fifty thousand of them,” Pol said. “And they’re all five hastongs tall.”
“That’s just the usual bullshit, Erkum,” Fain said firmly. “You can’t listen to rumors; they’re always wrong.”
“How many are there?” Crom asked.
“Bail, you keep asking me these questions,” Fain said with a grunt of laughter. “How in the Dry Hells am I supposed to know?”
“Well, I was just wondering,” the private repeated . . . just as a burst of intense drumming echoed from the opposite ridge line.
“And I think you’re about to find out,” Fain told him.
“Quite an interesting formation,” Pahner remarked as he dialed up the magnification on his visor.
The Boman force was at least fifteen thousand strong, yet it didn’t stretch as wide as the smaller Diaspran army. Its narrowness would have invited a devastating flanking movement if he’d had the forces for it, but he didn’t, and if it wasn’t as wide as the Diaspran battle line, it was far deeper. It flowed and flowed across the ridge, a seemingly unending glacier of barbarians, and it was obvious that the New Model Army was badly outnumbered. The captain watched them come for several more moments, then keyed his communicator.
“Okay, Marines. Here’s where we earn our pay. These scummies have to stand.”
“There’s a million of ‘em!” Pol wailed, and started to back up.
“Pol!” the squad leader barked. “Attention!”
The days and weeks of merciless training took hold, and the private froze momentarily—just long enough for the squad leader to get control.
“There are not a million of them! And even if there were, it wouldn’t matter. They all have to come past your pike, and my pike, and Bail’s! Stand and prepare to receive! Stand your ground!”
The private in front of Bail Crom started to turn around—then froze as a chilly voice behind them echoed through the thunder of the drums.
“Sheel Tar, I will shoot you dead if you don’t turn back around,” Lance Corporal Briana Kane said with a deadly calm far more terrifying than any enraged shout. The private hesitated, and despite the drums and the approaching shouts of the Boman, despite the odd, visceral sound of thousands of feet pounding down a far slope, the sound of the Marine’s bead rifle cycling was clear.
Sheel Tar turned back toward the onrushing enemy, but Fain could see him shuddering in fear. The mass of enemies advancing towards them was horrifying. It seemed impossible that anything could stop that living tide of steel and fury.
Pahner saw the occasional flicker of a face turned towards the bastion. It was a nervous reaction he was used to, yet this time was different. He was a Marine, accustomed to the lethal, high-tech combat of the Empire of Man and its enemies. Prior to his arrival on Marduk, he had not been accustomed to the ultimate in low-tech combat—the combat of edged steel, pikes, and brute muscle power. Yet for all of that, he knew precisely what he had to do now. An ancient general had once said that the only thing a general in a battle needed to do was to remain still and steady as stone. Another adage, less elegant, perhaps, but no less accurate, summed it up another way: “Never let them see you sweat.” It all came down to the same thing; if he gave a single whiff of nervousness, it would be communicated to the regiments in an instant . . . and the Diaspran line would dissolve.
So he would show no anxiety, despite the Boman’s unpleasant numerical superiority. Even with the arguably superior technique of the phalanx and shield wall, and the advantage of the stake hedge, the battle would be a close run thing indeed.
And like so many close run battles, in the end, it would come down to a single, all-important quality: nerve.
Roger sat on Patty, eleven-millimeter propped upright on one knee, his hand resting on the armored shield of the flar-ta, and watched the oncoming barbarians. He knew as well as the captain that he should be presenting a calm front for the soldiers of the regiment he was parked behind, but for the life of him, he couldn’t. He was just too angry.
He was tired of this endless battle. He was tired of the stress and the horror. He was tired of facing one warrior band after another, each intent on preventing him from getting home. And more than anything else in the universe, he was tired of watching Marines who had become people to him die, one by one, even as he learned how very precious each of them was to him.
He wished he could pull the Boman aside and say, �
�Look, all we want to do is get back to Earth, so if you’ll leave us the hell alone, we’ll leave you alone!”
But he couldn’t. All he and the Marines could do was kill them, and it was at times like this that the rage started to consume him. It had started at the first battle on the far side of this Hell-begotten planet, and just seemed to build and build. At the moment, it was a fury so great, so bottomless, that it seemed it must consume the world in fire.
And he was especially angry that Despreaux was out there somewhere. Most of the Marines were as safe as they could be in a battle on this misbegotten world. They were standing at the back of the formations, providing “leadership,” and if the enemy broke through the lines, they had a better than even chance of escape. Losing the battle might well mean starvation would kill them all slowly in the end, but not today.
But Nimashet was out there, somewhere, with her team. Cut off, with nowhere to run. All she could do was hide and wait for her orders, and Roger knew what those were going to be and wished—wished as if his soul were flying out of his body—that their positions could be reversed. Despite what had happened in Ran Tai, he’d realized that he had to face the fact that he was madly smitten with one of his bodyguards. He had no idea whether that was only because he’d been beside her in good times and bad for the last few awful months or whether it was something that would inevitably have happened under any conditions, nor did it matter. Right now, all that mattered was that he wanted to kill every stinking Boman bastard before they could put a slimy hand upon his love.
Frightened Mardukan pikemen who knew human expressions, looking over their shoulders for reassurance from their leaders, took one look at Prince Roger Ramius Sergei Alexander Chiang MacClintock and turned instantly back to face their foes, for even the Boman in their fury were less frightening than the face of their human commander.
“Don’t mind us!” Honal called out to the nervous Diasprans as their hands shifted on their pikes and their anxious faces turned to the rear. “We’re just here as observers, after all! Still, we’re glad you’re here, too . . . and we definitely prefer for you to stay right where you are.”
The muttered, grunting laughter of a hundred heavily armed cavalry rose hungrily behind him, and the wavering faces turned back to the storm.
Bogess watched the surges of uncertainty ripple through the pike regiments. He was totally confident in the steadiness of his assegai-armed regulars. Despite their earlier losses to the Boman, they had demonstrated their determination often enough even before the humans had taught them their new tactics and discipline. Now they truly believed what the human Pahner had been telling them for weeks—that no organized force of soldiers was ever truly outnumbered by any horde of barbarians.
Nor did the Diaspran general harbor any fears about Rastar and his cavalry. No one had ever called a Northern cavalryman a coward more than once, and these Northerners had a score to settle with the Boman. Like his own men, they were supremely confident in their own leaders and the humans’ tactics, but even if they hadn’t been, the only way the Boman would have taken this field from them would be to kill them all.
But the new regiments . . . They were the complete unknown at the very heart of the “New Model Army.” The human Marines had accomplished a miracle Bogess hadn’t truly believed was possible just by bringing the ex-Laborers of God this far, but there was only one true test for how any army would stand the stress of battle, and that test was about to be applied.
Assuming that his regulars, Rastar’s cavalry, and the Marines could make the regiments stand in place long enough.
He looked over at Pahner, who nodded.
“I’d say it’s time, General,” the human said, and Bogess gestured to the drummer by his side and looked back out over the field.
The drum command sent an electric shock through the standing ranks of the pike force. The first thunderous rumble brought them to attention, and the second fierce tattoo lowered their forest of pikes into fighting position.
Suddenly, the charging Boman were faced with a wall of steel and shields, and that thundering charge ground unevenly to a stop just out of throwing ax range. A few individuals came forward and tossed the odd ax at the wall of shields, but the light hatchets rattled off uselessly, demonstrating the efficiency of the simple, ancient design. Insults followed the throwing axes, but the regiments stood in disciplined silence, and the Boman seemed confused by the lack of response. Then one of them, a chieftain of note, to judge by his ritual scars and necklace of horns, came out of the mass and shouted his own incomprehensible diatribe at the motionless wall of pikes.
Roger had had all he could take. He slid the eleven-millimeter into its scabbard, pulled out a whistle, and kneed Patty into a trot.
“Roger!” Cord called from where he stood at the flar-ta’s side, startled out of his calm assessment of the incipient battle. “Roger, where are you going?”
“Stay here, asi.” For the first time since he’d saved Cord’s life, it wasn’t a request. It was an order, and he also snapped his fingers abruptly for Dogzard to unload. “I’m going to go teach these barbs a lesson in manners.”
“Oh, shit!” Julian said. “Captain!”
“Roger,” Captain Pahner called calmly, calmly. “Where do you think you’re going?”
Even as he spoke, he saw the prince remove his radio-equipped helmet and sling it from the flar-ta’s harness.
“I’m going to kill him,” Pahner whispered, maintaining a calm, calm, outward demeanor. “See if I don’t.”
The ranks in front of the packbeast parted at the shrill whistle to let the behemoth through, and Roger trotted towards the still-shouting chieftain, slowly raising the gait to a canter as the ancient Voitan steel blade whispered from its sheath. His rage against the obstacles of the long journey had gone icy cold. All the world had narrowed to the blade, the flar-ta, and the target.
As Patty neared the Boman lines, he kneed for her to turn, and rolled off her back. Hitting the ground at that speed was risky, but he was far too focused to worry about something as minor as a broken ankle, and it brought him to his target in a full charge.
The three-meter native was armed with a broad iron battle-ax which had seen long and hard service. The scars on the barbarian’s body and the condition of his ax told his story as well as any chanted saga might have. This was a chieftain who’d conquered half a world and smashed the finest fighters in the Western Realms to dust.
And Prince Roger MacClintock could have cared less.
The Mardukan was fast. The first, furious slash of the prince’s katanalike blade was parried by the heavy iron ax. The razor-sharp steel sword sliced a handspan-thick chunk out of its relatively soft iron, but the blow was blocked.
The second, backhand blow, was not.
The Mardukan was as good as dead, with a cut halfway through his torso, but that wasn’t enough for the prince. As the body crumpled, slowly, oh so slowly to its knees, the sword whistled back up and around in a perfectly timed slash, driven by all the power of his shoulders and back, that intersected the native’s tree trunk-thick neck with the sound of a woodsman’s ax in oak. That single, meaty impact was clearly, dreadfully, audible in the sudden hush which had enveloped the entire battlefield. And then the Boman chieftain’s head leapt from his shoulders in a geyser of blood and thudded to the ground.
Roger recovered to a guard position, then looked at the thousands of barbarian warriors standing motionless in the drizzle a mere stone’s throw away, and spat. He gave a single flick of his blade, spattering the blood of their late chieftain halfway to their lines, then turned his back on them contemptuously and started back to his own lines in near utter silence . . . which erupted in a sudden, thunderous cheer.
“I’m still gonna kill him,” Pahner muttered through his own forced smile. “Or make him write out ‘Arithmetic on the Frontier’ until his fingers bleed.”
Beside him, Bogess grunted in laughter.
It took another fiftee
n minutes for the Boman to work themselves back into a frenzy once more. Other chieftains stepped to the fore and harangued the stolid Diaspran lines. Many of them waved the bloody souvenirs of past conquests at the pikemen, while others spat or urinated in their direction. But the ones who cast nervous glances at Roger, once more sitting atop Patty and glowering at the barbarian swarm, weren’t much help to their cause.
Eventually, the barbarians began to move forward once more, in a creeping, Brownian fashion. A few axes arced out and thudded down, a few warriors charged forward and menaced the pikes, and then, finally, when some magic proximity had been reached, the entire mob flashed over into a howling fury and charged forward, shrieking defiance and hurling axes.
A storm front of javelins answered them. The New Model Army’s javelin supply was severely limited, because there simply hadn’t been time—or resources—to manufacture them in anything like the numbers Pahner could have wished for. Not if the artisans of Diaspra were going to provide the pikes and assegai he needed even more desperately, at any rate. There was only a single javelin for each pikeman, and three for each assegai-armed regular, but they did their job. The avalanche of weapons, hurled in a single, massed launch at the shrieking mob, ripped the charge into broken blocks. Given the numerical disparity between the two sides, the effect was actually more psychological than anything else. In absolute terms, the Boman’s numbers were more than sufficient to soak up the javelins and close, but the holes torn in the front of the charge proved to the pikemen that they could kill the barbarians, and the object lesson worked. The pikes held their ground as the enemy charged forward . . . and was stopped again.
