King's Shield

by Sherwood Smith

  They would have to march hungry, but march they must. He glared in the direction of Ala Larkadhe’s white tower, hazily outlined against the rising sun, the battlements of the walls just visible. If anyone came riding out of the gates of Ala Larkadhe, there’d be no mercy this time.

  He nodded at the signal ensign, who blatted the horn. The men rose and prepared to march alongside the river to the mouth of the pass.

  When it was just barely light enough to make out figures, Evred woke with a snort. An Inda-shaped shadow stood in the middle of the trail, head slightly bent.

  “Inda?”

  The shadow straightened up. “Can you see me?”

  “Barely.”

  The sound of their voices roused the others.

  “Then I can see the trail. I’ve been wondering if I can or I just think I can.”

  Evred did not try to make sense of this. He got to his feet. “Let’s go.”

  They emerged through a mossy natural archway onto an outcropping where the stone foundation of a tiny house sat looking over what once had been a spectacular panorama.

  Thump. Thump. Thump. The tramp of many feet echoed up the stone canyons. Evred had thought the thumping was just the ever-present headache; he became aware that it was external.

  They couldn’t see the pass, only a wider gap in the rocky cliffs and crags. But they certainly could hear the army marching up the last leg of the pass toward the top.

  They stopped at one of the many little waterfalls and drank, then shared out one of their travel loaves. Finally, with a luxuriant whispering of cloth, Evred pulled out his heavy silken battle-tunic, golden light running along the embroidery, the silk itself glowing like the heart of a fire. “I think we’d better get ready,” he said.

  Inda grinned, sat down, pulled on socks and boots. Then stood up, wiggling his toes and rocking back and forth to get used to footgear again. “Tau?”

  “Right here.” Tau pulled from his pack the neatly folded battle-tunic that he and Vedrid had made.

  Inda hadn’t thought about clothing for so long, he felt strange as he took off his coat. Tau lifted the battle-tunic over Inda’s upraised arms. His chain mail bunched at the shoulders, then lay flat again, jingling as the cool silk rustled down around him. He looked down, his rubies winking at his cheeks, then up. “I look like a hothouse fan dancer.” And he swung his narrow hips from side to side.

  The men nearby laughed heartily, for there could not possibly be any vaster a difference between a daintily and alluringly dressed pleasure house performer and this powerful, hard-bodied, scar-faced fellow with the king’s eagle spread so splendidly across his chest, piratical earrings glinting. His total lack of strut won favor in their eyes—even if it did not in his king’s.

  But only Tau observed the quick contraction of Evred’s features. Once again Evred had been moving with that ritual deliberation, signifying an internal scale of meaning of which Inda was unaware. But his expression shuttered again. “Let’s run.”

  When Durasnir emerged from his cabin ready to begin the day, he found Dag Ulaffa waiting, eyes closed, hands together.

  No one else was in the little breakfast alcove. Durasnir looked from his message case to Ulaffa, who gave a single shake of the head. “Erkric is not here,” he said. “The prince sleeps. In the south, they are marching toward the pass.” And then, “The clash will be in the north this day. Valda found a place if you wish to observe our people and the Marlovans meeting in the pass.”

  Durasnir did not wish to, but once again he felt the conviction that he must be there. Through the roots, the trunk, the mighty branches—people, culture, kingship—came meaning. Though roots were uplifted, the great tree twisted and cracked, and the branches shed leaves into the fires of ambition so that everything around him burned, he had to see.

  Why? Perhaps his real motivation was only the military hatred of being taken by surprise. Simple curiosity.

  Immaterial. He was not going to question anymore. “Please take me there,” he said.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  HAWKEYE’S and Noddy’s men heard the Venn approaching long before they saw them. The sound was intermittent because of the thick, swirling fog. But the animals knew they were there; ears twitched, heads tossed, forefeet plunged.

  Noddy and Hawkeye waited side by side in the middle of the second row of lancers. The fifty in front were the biggest, toughest dragoons on the toughest horses. The wings of the second line were the next toughest. The honor of riding to either side of the commanders had been hotly contested, though a couple of them had not been able to hide little signs of relief when they were not picked. Maybe only Noddy noticed because he was paying attention: though all protested, some vehemently, there was just that lightening of the voice, the easing of tense faces, that betrayed the stubborn body that wanted to live.

  Wanted to live.

  In the realm of the spirit few can hide thoughts. As the Venn marched up the last distance, Noddy and Hawkeye fell silent, but their inner voices were clear to any who had the ability, and the interest, to listen.

  Hawkeye had never told anyone that the urge to fight made him hot. All the others saw was smiling, fierce alertness, as he checked the placement of archers behind two lines of straw men, then more straw men and the stronger archers. His lust for battle being real lust, well, it sometimes bothered him—felt wrong, somehow, except wasn’t he a fighting man? If he knew the fight was honorable, then it couldn’t be wrong, could it?

  Back in the academy days, he’d loved fights until Gand pulled him aside one day after lance practice and pointed out that broken bones and teeth on our side was doing the enemy’s work for them, right? So Hawkeye had ceased scrapping, saving his martial ardor for a real enemy.

  He’d got that when he faced pirates on the Nob. Battle was far better than scrapping, he’d discovered. But it had been over far too fast.

  Now, at last, here were the Venn.

  “Fog! Came down to help us, eh?” Hawkeye laughed, clapping a man on the shoulder as he rode down the lines in inspection, then he passed through the last line of lancers and reached the first line of the fake army. “Hey, straw man, where’s your prick? Who built this one? Tlennen, get over here, give him yours. Who’ll notice the difference?”

  A shout of laughter amid hoots and jibes at the grinning Tlennen. Hawkeye rode back and forth, horsetail swinging, handing out insults mostly, but the tone was one of comradeship, and the laughter felt good.

  Men took courage at the sight of his flashing smile, the ring of anticipation in his voice, the strut in his moves. He was not yet thirty, tall and tough and handsome, looking like he was riding off to Heat Street and not to a battle where he was outnumbered a hundred to one.

  The men scattered among the straw army were under orders to yell and wave weapons, to look like more than one man. “We couldn’t have asked for a better day,” he said to another who kept chewing his lips, which were revealingly chapped and red.

  Yes we could, Noddy thought. A good day would be me at home, eating breakfast with my wife and cousin before we plan the day’s work. Watching my boy drool. Chasing the colts around the paddock before the watch changes. He had done his best, but he couldn’t resign himself to certain death. He couldn’t fight off the sickening conviction that Inda’s plan was a shambles, that no one was where he was supposed to be—except for himself, Hawkeye, five hundred men, and how many thousand Venn?

  Oh, yes. Five hundred men and a whole lot of horses and men of straw.

  The whisht! of arrows was the first sign of battle. Damn the wait, Noddy thought, and was surprised at a small spurt of relief. The inevitable was here at last. He’d soon be too busy for regret.

  “Helms!” Hawkeye shouted, one hand winding up his horsetail, the other thumping his helm over his head.

  The men unhooked their helms, shoved their hair up inside to further cushion their heads, settled the helms down tightly over their ears. Though they’d all complained about their h
eaviness, the heat, no one complained now.

  “Shields up!”

  Conk! Plink! Clang!

  Indistinct movement in the gray murk resolved slowly into tall figures, square shields, spears. Swords. Horned helms. Rank on rank of them, more shadows than shapes: a hundred men across, for Talkar had never liked how messily charges ended on the plains, and here they were in a terrain that couldn’t be more different.

  When in doubt, fight the way you know how.

  A horn winded weirdly, and a rustling hum became the hissing rush of arrows. Noddy jerked up his shield. Four, five clunks jolted his arm.

  The straw men jerked as arrows pierced them.

  Cold fear washed through Noddy, followed by wordless rage when a shot, either better aimed than most, or carried by errant wind, struck his own Runner, who’d begged and pleaded to ride at his left. The boy clutched at his neck, then toppled away from Noddy’s reaching hand and vanished.

  “Lances!” Hawkeye shouted. “Archers high!”

  Right arms brought up lances, heels locked down hard behind the stirrups. Horses, trained, began the deliberate walk forward, muscles bunched for the expected command to leap to the gallop. Archers brought back arms, points high, a straight line from arrow tip to back elbow.

  “Archers: loose! Second line: lances!”

  From the Marlovans arced a lethal hissing of arrows. The front ranks of the Venn serried under the impact, but kept moving forward. Noddy’s heartbeat thundered in his ears.

  The second line fell in step, slow at first, then more rapidly; the horses’ ears pricked, tails flicked, one whinnied as the third line formed up behind them.

  The Venn blatted horns, the sound echoing like wailing ghosts. Thump, clatch! The men shifted, standing square, the big square shields braced and tight one against the other in a wall. They used round shields in the back ranks, but the front had extra heavy metal shields, locked edge to edge by big men with powerful arms, the only difference being no swords spiking between each shield for they wanted horses, they were ordered to just kill the riders. Their second row formed up on their heels.

  “Hold,” Hawkeye warned, eyes forward now, gauging. “Hold . . . hold . . .”

  And when the enemy was a hundred strides off he shouted, “Charge!”

  The front row’s horses sprang to the gallop. “Yiyiyiyi yip yip yip!” Hawkeye shrieked, a high, harrowing cry, the sound picked up by the men in a shrill and savage echo.

  The front of the Venn lines faltered as those behind shoved forward; the ranks shifted just before the thudding crack and smash of fifty lances striking shields, helms, chest plates.

  “Charge!”

  And it worked the way Inda had drilled them: the first line was still even, fighting furiously as the second line galloped up and neatly as a comb passed the first line and smashed into the Venn front lines, driving them back some twenty paces.

  Many of the lances splintered. Hawkeye’s did not, and he wielded it with enormous strength, screeching, “Yip! Yip! Yip!”

  “Yip! Yip! Yip!” the terrible shriek was taken up behind, the canyons echoing it back.

  Venn front liners lost balance and fell, to be trampled under the feet of their own forces, far too tightly packed. The lancers used their spear-tipped weapons until they broke, and then out came the curve-tipped swords and the powerful downward strokes.

  The captain of the third line shouted, “Charge!”

  They hit with a thundering smash, driving the Venn ten more paces back: the Venn at the rear had stood fast, making a press as lethal an enemy as the Marlovan warriors. Men fought to stay upright, fought just for air.

  The mass shoved against Talkar’s struggling mount. He peered through the arrows, the weapons, the swirls of vapor: he had vastly underestimated the power of a charge. You couldn’t really charge your own men in drill—

  “Kill the horses!” Talkar shouted, but not even his ensign, separated by fifty shouting men, could hear him over the din.

  There was no more thinking, just the whirl and judder of sword and shield, the plunging of horses, the flying of mud, while the slowly emerging rays of sun beat down on steel helms.

  For longer than they believed they could, the Marlovans shoved the Venn down the incline, perhaps a hundred paces in all. For that length of time the Venn did not see anything beyond the high point but horses’ heads and waiting men, shadowy and ill-defined, some shooting, some waiting for attack.

  But then the lancers began to fall. Talkar grinned in satisfaction as Marlovans with hacked joints toppled from horses to disappear under the melee. Waiting hands gripped the riderless horses and muscled them inside the Venn lines. Just as well no one heard the order, Talkar decided, and did not reissue it. Now just bring us a few thousand more—

  Another massive surge: the yellow-haired Marlovan commander, his teeth flashing as he laughed, had rallied the remainder of his front lines into one, this time joining it himself and together, stirrup to stirrup, the horses reared and threw the Venn front line back into more chaos.

  Talkar shot his arm up in the signal for “form attack circles.”

  Venn horns blatted with angry insistence, and Talkar urged his horse forward as he whacked the flat of his blade against helms to get the men into bands to surround each rider.

  Noddy yelled something, lost in the noise, but his tip of the chin alerted his trumpeter, who sounded the retreat. The horses plunged, kicking out, biting, smashing with forefeet, forcing the humans back so the animals could go with their fellows.

  The surviving lancers backed out of the surge to reform their lines and the Venn—directed by the mournful howl of horns in a new pattern—stamped, locked shields together, and charged uphill.

  Hawkeye stopped his chargers at the top of the slope.

  Runners brought fresh lances from the back. When the Venn were twenty paces off, the horses charged. They were tired, but a short charge downhill still packed power.

  Again the lances smashed hard into the Venn shield wall. The Venn horns bleated. The men in the center of the shield wall performed a rapid retreat before those lances and the wing men scrambled along the canyon walls to flank the Marlovan horsemen.

  Hawkeye and Noddy made their horses rear, followed by the others. The animals struck out with hooves. When the horses came down, their riders’ slashing blades hummed through the air, cutting and hacking at the press of Venn.

  Unbidden, the men from the back abandoned their ruse with the wagons and formed into a rough and ready line, sighting on Hawkeye and Noddy.

  Noddy glanced back, saw them, and jabbed his sword skyward in the command to charge.

  The line serried as the flanking Venn surged out of the way, exposing the Marlovan lancers, who had lost all semblance of order. The new chargers turned to one another for clues and then it was every man for himself as Venn pressed on them, trying to surround each mounted man.

  Hawkeye laughed, kicking shields, striking down with maddening speed and force at the forest of swords around him. “Yip! Yip! Yip!”

  “Yip! Yip! Yip!”

  For a time he held the front by force of will and speed of blade, surrounded by his personal Runners tight on either flank. No one got past those three.

  But on one wing five horseman went down under a concerted attack, and the Venn, running over the top of the high point, discovered the straw army.

  The cry shrilled back through the ranks, “Ruse! Ruse!”

  Talkar grunted in surprise. The straw men had probably taken most of the covering arrows. Smart move. But—

  A series of images followed by a new idea: were they as lamentably shorthanded as their brethren on the far side of the pass? If so, would a spearhead attack be more effective?

  Talkar scowled impatiently up at the cliffs. On the east side they were impossibly high, rugged at the top. But no one could scale those heights. And behind the cliffs, bodies of water made army access even more impossible. There was no getting an army up there, not withou
t a year to prepare.

  He peered more closely at the Andahi River side, which was rockier, full of chasms and cracks. Maybe there was some kind of—

  He motioned to his Scout Chief. “Take a look along the western face here. If there’s a way up, I want you to get high. Count the Marlovans.”

  Another charge, another roar, this one bright with howls of laughter as the Venn knocked down the straw men, grappling for the plunging horses. The real Marlovans abandoned the straw men and formed up for a desperate last charge—

  “Yip! Yip! Yip!” Hawkeye screamed.

  “Yip! Yip! Yip!” Horsemen erupted through the middle of the straw army, the last of Noddy’s and Inda’s dragoons, striking hard into the Venn warriors. But the Venn were over the top now, and it was the Marlovans’ turn to be forced backward, step by step, downhill.

  Hawkeye was closed in by the forest of steel.

  “Yip! Yip! Yip!” His fox cry rose to a nerve-ripping shriek, and screeches answered him—primal cries like the terrifying shrills of predator birds—

  From the heights.

  “Yip! Yip! Yip!”

  Arrows whirred down and smacked with liquid thuds into Venn. Eyes on both sides lifted skyward at the impassable stone walls to discover men lining the tops of the cliffs. One of them carried a huge pennon, just visible in the swirling mist: a crimson-and-gold eagle.

  “Inda!” Hawkeye yelled, teeth flashing—

  And dropped his guard, just for that moment. A sword smashed the back of his elbow; as he lunged up in his saddle, another blade cut viciously behind the knee. He fell back onto the saddle as the swords struck again and again.

  Noddy was breathing through his mouth, which cut down the stink of fear-sweat, blood, and death-voided bowels. Sorrow had flared into hatred and rage, directed at the horn-helmed men trying to kill him: beneath was rage at the senselessness of it all, the meaty crackings and thunks no one should ever have to hear as men he knew were smashed out of life one by one.