by Robert Adams
"And how bides the valiant Sir Turlogh?" inquired Sir Ali.
Sir Colum sighed and shook his head sadly. "Och, when that domned Spanisher's mace crumpled the baron's knee-cop and crushed the knee beneath, 'twere a fell stroke. That leg has healed up as stiff as a plank; poor Sir Turlogh no longer can sit a horse at any speed in safety, and so he is running much to fat. He is not at all happy, of course, being almost bound to his seat as he is, but otherwise he is well and healthy. He still talks of that last of his many battles, though, tells any who will listen that they should not think that the last of the English paladins died with the old Norman line, for he has seen a modern-day English paladin fight. Then he always tells of the Battle of Bloody Rye."
Bass had but just opened his mouth to speak again when the first shot rang out up ahead, followed by another, then a ragged fusillade, before a blacksmith chorus of steel ringing and clashing upon steel began to sound. A single rider appeared at the crest of the hill ahead, then descended the steep grade toward the head of the column. As he neared, it could be seen that he was one of the Reichsherzog's Kalmyks, crouched low over the neck of his big-headed steppe pony, his heels drumming at the dull dun barrel, his whip lashing at the straining flanks.
Then the well-oiled machine that was the Duke of Norfolk's condotta sprang abruptly to full life and began to function as smoothly as ever. The pack train came forward at the gallop and squires unloaded the wherewithal to quickly begin to arm their respective lords and themselves. Once fully accoutered, knights mounted their high horses—battle-trained destriers big and strong enough to bear fully armed men at a fair speed for the time it might take to make contact with the enemy ahead—while grooms led their amblers back to the remuda.
Bass turned to the Reichsherzog. "Wolfie, take your Kalmyks up to the top of that hill and send back word of what we're up against, what we'll be riding into. When the mules get up there with the guns, you tell them where to set up, too."
"Jawohl, mein Herr Herzog von Norfolk," replied the big man in the fluted armor from atop his tall black horse. Reining about, he cantered back to his Mongol troopers. Unsheathing his sword, he held it high above his head and shouted, "Voran! Alles voran! Schnell!"
Beckoning his own two Kalmyks over to where his squires were affixing the last pieces of his own armor, Bass said, "Nugai, Yueh, you two speak better English than any of his, so go with him and tell him to give you the messages to send back." Seeing the ever-faithful Nugai frown and drag his feet slightly, Bass prodded, "Dammit, Nugai, you won't be leaving me unprotected. There are a good three hundred galloglaiches here, plus my squires and all my gentlemen, to boot. Go!"
Receiving his order, the pack-mules bearing two of his light howitzers, their carriages, ammunition boxes, and accessories set out from the trains at a brisk pace, following the Kalmyks, Bass watched them with pride. Especially wrought for him by Sir Peter Fairley at the Royal Cannon Foundry in York, they and the four others still back at his camp near Lagore were the only weapons of their kind in all of this world. Though only three feet long, the little tubes were quite strong-walled enough to throw iron shot of demiculverin size (about nine pounds), explosive shell, grape, and canister, though themselves weighing but sixteen stone and so easily transported on mule- or horseback, as too was the light but sturdy wheeled carriage; and mounted on that carriage, the little pieces could be fired accurately at any elevation from point-blank level to forty-two degrees—being both rifled and breech-loading, utilizing the immensely strong interrupted-screw principle.
After Bass had mounted his leopard-horse stallion, Bruiser, and checked the primings of his saddle-pistols, automatically, he looked back up just in time to see some twenty-odd of Wolfgang's Kalmyks go over the crest of the hill. "Now, goddammit," he thought in exasperation, "what the hell is he doing? I told him to just look over the situation down there, not take part in it."
Halfway to the Reichsherzog's position, the galloping artillery unit was passed by Nugai and Yueh, coming back at a hard gallop. The two reined up before Bass.
"Your Grace," said Nugai, "Reichsherzog say that on opposite hill iss Irischers' force of maybe fier hundert, about half mounted. Some of the van down iss, fighting hard are the rest, und Reichsherzog say that to safe them he must, but to not commit all his Kalmyks he vill not until Your Grace to see the situation hass."
The half-squadron of galloglaiches had long been ready to advance by the time their chief moved out to lead them on, flanked by his two Kalmyk personal guards, his squires, his bodyguards, and his gentlemen, with his bannerman and his trumpeter close behind him. As he led his troops at a fast walk, Bass noted that Wolfgang had committed another score or so of his Kalmyks, or at least there were many more missing from the hillcrest. Through his battered, other-world pair of binoculars, he could spy the big German nobleman, now dismounted, at work supervising the unpacking and positioning of the little howitzers on either side of the road and just below the top of the hill, in a position that could not be seen from the other side.
"Your Grace to see can." The Reichsherzog waved an armored arm at the opposite hillside, whereon knots of men mounted on horses and ponies or afoot were gathered, watching the small-scale battle boiling back and forth in the narrow vale between the two hills. "No sooner to put in more men do I, than they reciprocate so that to be outnumbered my Jungen ever are. A few shells would be a very good sight bursting amongst them, I think, Ja!"
Gazing back and forth across that steeper, higher, forested hillside, Bass thought to note a movement in an area more heavily overgrown than most, on the far right flank of the enemy's main force. Again uncasing his precious, unreplaceable binoculars, he fixed them on that area, and what he saw brought his breath hissing between his suddenly clenched teeth.
"Wolfgang," he said, "uncase your glass and look far over to our left there, just a bit down from that big dead tree. See it? Damned right those bastards keep feeding men in a few at a time to just outnumber ours. They hope to sucker us all down there, whereupon—unless I miss my guess—those they've themselves corn-mined will precipitately withdraw and those damned sakers or demiculverins or whatever they have hidden there will fill our troops full of langrage and grape. Nor would I be surprised at all but what there're another brace of the things hidden somewhere over on the right."
"I thought back at Sir Mael's siege lines that a very atypical Irishman must be commanding these Connachta irregulars, and this is but another proof of it, damned if it's not. I'd like to meet that man other than at sword points. Have the two gunners called up here, please."
Rearranged so as to sit almost hub to hub on the reverse slope, loaded with solid ball for sighting purposes and each of them laid to precise angles commensurate with their gunners' experience of the prior performances of the individual pieces, the little pack-howitzers were fired, first one, then the other. Immediately the guns had boomed, each gun crew jumped to swab, load, prick the cartridge open, prime, and wheel the piece back up into battery.
Watching with binoculars and long-glass, Bass and the Reichsherzog saw the first ball come to earth downhill and a bit to the left of the hidden battery, while the second gun's shot plunged into the thick growth just behind the target.
Being so informed, the two gunners put their heads together for a brief moment, altered somewhat the elevations and traverse of their minuscule pieces, then touched them off, almost together, the blast of hot gases from the hurling-charge igniting the fuses of the spherical shells with which the tubes had been loaded this time. The flights of the shells through their high trajectory were easily followed by the naked eye, due to the smoking fuses. Again, one came down a bit to the rear of the concealed battery, but the other did not come to earth at all, rather did it explode in the air about six or eight feet directly above the battery, its blast followed within a split second by another, much louder and more fiery explosion at ground level.
Apparently having been pre-warned that the sounds of cannon fire would be th
eir signal to withdraw, the Irish horsemen fighting the Kalmyks down in the narrow vale had begun trying to do just that from the first shot of Bass's howitzers, but the surviving Kalmyks had pursued the Irish so fiercely and doggedly that the irregulars had had no option but to turn and resume fighting for their lives.
The brush and trees around and about the bombarded gun position had, in the wake of the explosions, begun to burn quite merrily, and men on foot, some of them being helped by others, were moving as fast as possible away from the ranged position. A good reason for their haste was revealed to all when, with a terrific roar, another explosion occurred and, almost immediately, both of the hidden guns fired their loads into the vale, fortunately hitting little save earth and grass.
"That'll teach the bastards," thought Bass with relief that it all had gone so well for him and his. "Teach them to not bring kegs of loose powder, next time. A wooden chest of pre-measured and wrapped charges is one hell of a lot easier to get away in a hurry in thick brush like that than a heavy, unwieldy barrel of gunpowder."
At this dual discharge there were two more from the far left of the enemy's line. Most of those two loads of murderous langrage, however, took the retreating Irish rather than the Kalmyks they were fighting. The other concealed battery having thus revealed its position, Bass saw his howitzers moved quickly and ranging shots of ball fired at this new target, but before the gunners could assess the degrees off the target of the initial rounds, reload, and relay their pieces, a small column of horsemen was to be seen winding their way down into the vale, the leading rider wearing the unmarked, almost-white surplice of a herald over his armor.
In a trice, Sir Ali's squire had unpacked the knight's own herald-garb from a saddlebag and helped his master to don it.
"Take Sir Colum with you to interpret, Ali," said Bass. "If the ambushing bastards want to surrender to me, fine. I might even agree to a brief, secured truce, but nothing else. Yes, they do seem to outnumber us a bit, but then all of my forces are mounted and professional, not just armed farmers and drovers."
Sir Daveog Mac Diugnan Ui Brehenny, Count Ros Commain, looked to be in his mid-forties, his dark-red hair and lighter-red beard streaked now here and there with yellowish-white. There was no need of an interpreter with him, for he was capable of conversing in a number of languages—Gaelic, English, German, French, Latin, Italian, and smatterings of Spanish, Catalonian, Moorish, and Portuguese. Not only that, but he was known of old to no less than three of Bass' gentlemen, all of whom had known the man during his days as a highly successful and widely respected mercenary officer on the continent.
Bass's first question as they sat their horses in converse while men of both commands cooperated in fighting the fires set by the artillery shells was, "Why did you attack us on the march back rather than on our advance, may I ask, Sir Daveog?"
The onetime professional soldier smiled and shrugged. "It was your banner, Your Grace. None of us recognized it, and for all we knew, you might've been riding to attack that pile of pigs' filth squatting around and about Gaillminh; we were all of us tracking your column all the way, and had you done so, why we would've all been giving you of our full support."
"However, when we were seeing of how you rode in and were well received and all by the Ard-Righ's noble bum-boys there, we knew you for just another pack of invaders, so we planned out and laid this ambuscade. Och, and it's all being me own fault, it is. Had I, me own self, been observing your column but only the once more close than I did, I'd of been recognizing at least the Reichsherzog and good old Melchoro, if not Sir Ali—who was but barely a lad when last I was a-seeing of the bouchal and had not yet gained all those fine, honorable scars—and I would've been knowing by that that all Your Grace's column were true professionals and best let be by such a makeshift, make-do little force as I own, here."
"Makeshift it may be," remarked Bass admiringly, "but it and your modern methods of fighting have stung the commanders of the Ard-Righ's besieging troops so sorely that they cried to Brian for help. That's why we were ordered up here, this trip, to assess the situation and report back to Brian how I felt it should be done—that is, the flushing out of your bands by my galloglaiches and Kalmyks. I have agreed to bring up my full condotta, but only if it be understood in advance that they are mine to fully command and in no way under the jurisdiction of Sir Mael and his officers."
"Astute," said the red-bearded man, "most astute. That man is the best foeman I could be hoping to face under the circumstances, he is that. Give me the time and him not being replaced and it's we'll be a-breaking that bloody siege yet. I own horses and even dogs that are having more sense in their heads than that poor wight. It's thanking Our Sweet Savior I am that Count Ardgal is not being the man I'm having to face and fight with the precious little I own; we soldiered together, Sir Tadg Mac Conall and me, we did, both together and opposing, from time to time. With what-all these besiegers be owning over there, I'd not be lasting long if such a man as Sir Tadg was commanding, rather than that lovely, lovely, old-fashioned pighead Sir Mael."
Bass grinned. "Too bad for your king that he hasn't a few more like you, Sir Daveog. If he had, like as not he'd be besieging Brian, not the other way around. He owns a good, loyal vassal in you."
"Hisself?" yelped the man addressed, as if stung by fire-coals, then relaxed a bit, saying, "Och, that's right, being a stranger as is Your Grace, you wouldn't be understanding all the internal ways and affairs and relations of Eireann, you wouldn't."
"Then, Your Grace, know you that, were it only old Righ and Ri Flaithri and his flea-bitten by-blows—all of the lot of them got on diseased camp whores, more likely than not—in that city, I'd be feeling more than a mite inclined to join with Satan hisself, if need be, to bring the walls down around his hairy shanks," declared Sir Daveog, heatedly. "It's stallions and stud-bulls I'm owning of with longer and more honorable pedigrees than that well-damned, hell-spawned, land-stealing, murdering coward of a Ri of Ui Laidhigh. It's I'd not be a-pissing down the whoreson's poxy throat were his cesspool stomach all ablaze!"
Perplexedly, Bass just shook his head slowly. "But I had just assumed that you were one of Righ Flaithri's most loyal supporters. You are one of his nobles, aren't you, one of his vassals?"
"Christ and all the Holy Saints forbid such!" prayed Sir Daveog fervently. "When it was leaving me home I was to go a-warring, as a lad, I was a third-born son of the Righ of Ros Commain, Your Grace, Righ Diugnan Mac Kielthi Ui Flanaghan and Ri of that ilk as well. Four of us sons by the first wife, there were, Your Grace, the eldest and second eldest were, of course, kept close by my sire to be assuring the clansmen a choice in the electing of a new chief when ever God would be a-taking the Ri, and when I—the third—chose the life of a soldier, the fourth was sent off to be educated for the priesthood."
"It was many's the long year I'd been a-learning of me soldier's profession, when the fell word was brought me that me royal sire had fallen in battle against a plaguey ri what had seized the throne of Connachta and was striking out at all his neighbors for to increase the size of his holdings. But as it's in Hungary I was then, a-serving of good King Bela Czintos; the sad word was of course old when I was a-getting of it. Fortunately, the time was good for me leaving. King Bela's armies—hisself's own, plus those of his two most powerful vassals, Duke Friederich and Archcount Vlad—along of my condottas and those of the justly famous condottiere Sir Wenceslaus, Count Horeszko, had but just thoroughly defeated the southeastern ordus of the Khan of the Tatars and what with the unbelievably rich loot of their baggage trains and base camp, it was every high-ranking professional officer was just then owning enough of a fortune for to buy the most of my carefully assembled condottas off of me. Indeed, good King Bela hisself it was, when he heard of how I must so speedily be a-taking of me leave of his lands and triumphant armies, bought of me Landesknechten and right many of me guns, then Archcount Vlad took some and old Sir Wenceslaus the most of the rest."
"And one
imagines that they were overjoyed to gain them at any price, old comrade," remarked Baron Melchoro, "for your mastery at forming up and training first-rate units was ever one of your finest and most famous qualities."
The old condottiere continued, "So I rode down to Venetzia along of me household and some dozens Rus-Goth axemen as were then me personal guards, traded off the most of me great treasure of loot for a letter of credit from the bankers of the Church, then hired us a ship with much of what were left and set sail for Eireann. We were twice over set upon by sea robbers, that sailing, but with so many fighting men shipped aboard, we overcame the both of them and took not a small amount of loot besides, and not to even be a-mentioning the welcome bits of diversion these little episodes were a-giving me and me trusty Rus-Goths, God be a-keeping all the brave bouchals."
"When we landed in Dublin, Your Grace, and the Ard-Righ was after getting the word that it was to Eireann I was returning, he bade me stop at Tara, and I did, hoping that he might be giving me support against the Connachta curs, seeing as how his sire and mine had always been on good terms; also, Mide had been at war or close to always with Connachta time out of mind."
"But devil a word did the bastard speak of friendship or aid, no, he was just wanting to hire on my Rus-Goths to join his own numbers of them. Seeing how badly he was wanting them, I worked him around to trading me galloglaiches three for one, then paid the hire of some bonnaghts he was not using just then and went on me way to the Kingdom of Ros Commain. And oh, alas, the terrible horror I was a-finding in the lands that had been me home, Your Grace."
CHAPTER THE ELEVENTH
With the fires all beaten out, smothered out, or quenched with water from the brook that ran down the center of the narrow and grassy vale, chuckling over and around stones, Bass had had the train and the remuda brought up and camp pitched on the recent battleground. Some of Sir Daveog's riders had gone off somewhere and returned with a brace of sleek beeves and a wainload of ale, army bread, and oddments.
