“Silly!” Sunshine mindspoke. “Two-legs are surely the very silliest of creatures. Fighting is the silliest of two-leg pastimes, and Sunshine is herself silly for taking part in such silliness; she only does so because she loves you, Gil.”
At that same moment, seven huge, tawny felines were but just arrived in position to the rear of the cavalry reserve of the bandit army. They crouched within a tiny copse, their sleek bodies unmoving, their colors blending well with the dead leaves that covered the ground.
One of the prairie cats—for such they were, come south as part of the Horseclans’ force—meshed his mind with those of two others to gain sufficient strength for farspeak and beamed out, “We are where you said we should be. The horses cannot smell us… yet. But I fear the wind soon may shift…”
Strahteegos Thoheeks Pahvlos’ well-concocted plan of battle had to be severely altered. With the bandit army formed up in position, it became clear that in order to avoid having his center outflanked by the center of the enemy, he must either stretch his lines of armored pikemen to suicidal thinness or commit the unarmored pikemen of Ahzprinos; for the umpteenth time he cursed the old-fashioned, obstinate, obtuse officer and his failure to emulate the other two pike regiments.
At length the strahteegos made what he felt to be the best of a bad situation. He extended the regiments of Hehluh and Bizahros to a depth of only six men, but then he ordered the first and second battalions of Ahzprinos’ regiment to form up two men deep immediately behind the armored regiments.
Of course this left him damnall reserve—one battalion of old-style pikemen, the headquarters guard of heavy horse and a scattering of lancers—but it would have to do.
Nor was he formed up any too soon. Out from both wings of the bandit army came clattering the war carts. Barded to the fetlocks as they were, there was no way to determine just how heavily or fully the pairs of big mules were armored; it was only safe to assume that they were. Three men stood in each jouncing, springless cart, two archers and a spearman; the man responsible for guiding the pair was mounted on the near-side mule, fully armored and bearing shield and sword or ax. The carts kept a good distance from each other lest the steel blades projecting from each wheel hub become entangled with another set or, worse, cripple a mule.
Pahvlos saw immediately that there were not enough of the armored war carts to tempt even such an amateur as the bandit chief to send them head-on against the massed pikes and hope to get any of them back. Anyone knew that the cavalry on the wings could easily ride deadly rings around such slow, cumbersome conveyances, and that left only a couple of alternative uses for the archaic weapons: an attempt to drive between wing and center and take the pikemen on the flank, or a series of passes back and forth across the front while raining with darts and arrows the pikemen they assumed to be unarmored and shieldless.
It was the latter. In staggered lines, the war carts were drawn, clattering and bouncing, the length of the formations of pikemen, expending quantities of arrows for precious few casualties. As the first line of war carts reached the end of that first pass and began to wheel about, however, they got an unexpected and very sharp taste of medicine similar to that they had been so lavishly dispensing. Chief Pawl Vawn of Vawn, commanding the left wing, treated the carts and mules to such an arrow storm that some quarter of the carts were unable to return to the raking of the pikelines. Nor did the carts receive any less from the Horseclansmen under Tomos Gonsalos on the right wing.
With it patently clear that the war carts were doing no significant damage to his front, Strahteegos Pahvlos sent Thoheeks Portos’ heavy lancers out from the rear area and in a wide swing around his own right to deliver a crushing, crashing charge against the units of heavy horse and irregulars making up the left wing of the bandit army. That charge thudded home with a racket that could be heard even within the old warrior’s pavilion. The heavy lancers fought bravely for a few minutes after the initial assault, but then a banner went down, and with loud lamentations, they began to disengage piecemeal and withdraw. Sensing victory within grasping distance, the bandits’ entire left wing quitted its position to stream out in pursuit.
And no sooner had the cavalry left its assigned flank areas than up out of a brushy gully filed Sunshine, Tulip and Newgrass. Speedily the cloth shroudings were stripped away, the heavy, unwieldy, metal-shod boxes lifted up onto the broad backs and strapped into place. Then the boxes were manned by the archers; Gil Djohnz and the other two were lifted by the elephants to the saddles just behind the domes of the huge heads, and those still gathered about on the ground affixed the last pieces of the pachyderms’ armor and uncased the broad and heavy-bladed swords—six feet and more in blade length—each elephant would swing in the initial attack.
All of these preparations were well-rehearsed and so took less than five minutes in the accomplishment. Then the three huge beasts set out abreast at a walk that the trailing and flanking horsemen had some difficulty in matching for speed over the broken ground.
Much of Mainahkhos’ “infantry” was no such thing; rather were the most of them a broad cross section of civilian men impressed off streets at sword’s point and handed a pike or a spear before being hustled willy-nilly into an aggregation of similar unfortunates, then marched out to add depth to the pikeline. To these, the mere sight of the three behemoths fast bearing down upon them, swinging two-meetrah blades and supported by a horde of horsemen, was all that was needful to evoke instant panic.
Pawl, Chief of Clan Vawn, farspoke but a single thought: “Now, cat-brother!”
With bloodcurdling squalls, the seven mighty cats burst out of the tiny copse and sped toward the ranks of the now-mounting cavalry reserve. Broadbeaming hideous mind-pictures of blood and equine death, never ceasing their cacophonies of snarls, growls, squalls and howls, the felines rapidly bore down upon the horses and men.
The harried, wounded commander of the war carts had never before heard of such a thing! Leaving its secure position, the entire four-hundred-yard length of the enemy pikeline was advancing, moving at a brisk walk, pikes still presented—an array of winking steel points that projected well ahead of the marching lines. The miserable infantry simply did not advance against armored war carts! Basically a less-than-imaginative man, the commander did the only thing he could just then think to do—he headed back from whence he and his force had come.
But before the carts could reach their objective, their own infantry had boiled forward, out of formation, to block the way. Deeply contemptuous of footmen at even the best of times, the commander led his survivors in carving a gory path through these up to the moment that a terrified man smote him such a blow with a poleax as to hurl him to the ground just at the proper time and place to be decapitated by the sharp, bloodstreaked, whirling blades projecting from the hub of his own war cart.
Portos and his squadron abruptly turned, raised the “fallen” banner and hacked a good half of their pursuers out of the saddle before said pursuers broke and fled. At that juncture, Portos halted his forces, formed them up and directed them at the nearest protrusion of the roiling, confused mass of men that had formerly been the enemy’s center.
But the projection had recoalesced with the main mass by the time the heavy horse reached it, so quick-thinking Portos rode on into the chaos that had lately been the rear areas of the bandit army. After leaving half the squadron to interdict the road leading to the city, the grim officer used the other half to strike the rear and flank of those units still guarding the right wing of the bandit army only bare moments before those units were assaulted all along the front by Chief Pawl Yawn’s Horseclansmen.
With the precipitate retreat of the war carts, Strahteegos Thoheeks Pahvlos ordered the drums to roll the signal, whereupon the pikemen dropped their shields, lowered their long, heavy pikes to lowguard-present—waist-level—and increased their pace to a trot, though maintaining proper interval and formation up to the very moment that their steel points sank into soft flesh or grate
d upon armor and bone.
Although the slaughter continued on for some hours more on that bloody field, the charge of the pikemen had ended the Battle of Kahlkhopolis.
Editor's Introduction to:
THE CONQUEROR OF VECTIS
by Keith Taylor
This story by Australian novelist Keith Taylor is not science fiction. If I have to defend including it in this collection, I’ll claim it’s fantasy. Mostly, though, it’s a whacking good tale of betrayal and revenge.
THE CONQUEROR OF VECTIS
by Keith Taylor
“Look yonder, lads! A wide, inviting path to Hamo, where the British king sits and shakes every time he looks southward! One of these years we will row up it and plunder his town.”
Cerdic laughed loudly and threw out his arm in an extravagant gesture to show the path he’d spoken of. It scarcely needed indicating. One couldn’t look to starboard and miss it: an estuary of mirror-bright water, miles long and wide, as Cerdic had said. Nor did any of the chieftain’s men have doubts about his eventual plans for the mainland. He’d made the same boast many times of late.
Men laughed in response and threw taunts northward that no Briton could hear. Cerdic was a popular leader. The dourer spirits among his band stayed silent. These were mostly the older, more experienced warriors. They thought that boasting so freely tempted ill luck. Still, that was Cerdic’s way. He’d a wide-ranging mind, but one thought that never seemed to enter it was failure. Maybe that was why he almost never did fail.
His three serpent-ships raced on, striped sails full of a powerful breeze that bent the masts a little. He’d been harrying on the Gaulish side of the Narrow Sea and had good pickings. A sudden storm had parted him from his two other ships—from all his other ships, in truth, although two had rejoined him later and two had not. He’d spent time looking for them, to no avail. They might be sunk.
That possibility did nothing to dampen Cerdic’s mood. Who could outlive his fate? Either the two ships would come home or they wouldn’t. He turned his disconcerting eyes to port and looked on the shore of Vectis, his island by conquest. He grinned and stretched. Life was fine.
“Best we clew up the sails now,” said Ulfcetel, the wolf-gray sailing master. He was one of those who had kept his mouth stolidly shut when Cerdic talked of sacking Hamo. The chieftain was not put out. Ulfcetel might be chary of talking, but Cerdic knew he wouldn’t find the man backward when it came to doing.
Anent the sails, he nodded. They were as near the wind now as the ships would go. Luckily they were also almost home. Under the long ash oars they moved into an estuary which, while tiny compared with the mainland estuary, was the largest Vectis could show and led nigh to the center of the island. At its head rose Cerdic’s fortress of Wiht-gara-byrig. It had been known as Dun Kinmalin until Cerdic had come there with five ships and almost three hundred war-men to carry the palisade and slay the British defenders. The peasants of Vectis had shuddered at the din and learned in the morning that they had a new lord—although he had proved no worse than the old and was at least half British.
The wide-bladed oars flashed wet in sunlight and sank into shadow. The ships moved in file past oak woods, where the acorns had begun to turn brown. Before long they came in sight of Wiht-gara-byrig’s palisade and saw two other war-boats drawn up on the shore in front of it, recognizable at once.
“By Frey’s prick,” Cerdic said. “Withucar is back before us! Yet we returned early ourselves. He must have had great luck.”
Cerdic was first to spring ashore, a tall man, large-boned and powerful. The mass of tawny hair sweeping back from his temples and wide forehead was confined by a plain leather band, which also kept his helmet from rubbing him raw. Not that he wore his helmet now. His scale byrnie glittered in the sun, and his plenitude of golden arm-rings, studs, buckles, sword-hilt and scabbard ornamentation far outshone it. The Kentish jewelers were superb craftsmen, and Cerdic believed in adorning himself with the best or nothing.
Men called greetings from the ramparts above the gate, which stood open, but none came forth. Cerdic stood for a moment, looking for Giralda and his children. No sign of them. His frown betrayed astonishment and even slight hurt. Why, he hadn’t held Vectis above two years! Were they so used to his coming home from plundering forays that they didn’t rush down to the water’s edge with embraces, questions about the fighting from Cynric, questions from the girls about the gifts he’d brought them? For a moment the infamous pirate looked his son’s age, which was rising five. Then he turned to give a hand with hauling the ships ashore.
“Quiet in the holding,” Ulfcetel grunted. “I’ll wager they didn’t precede us home by much, and there’s been heavy drinking done.”
Young Lanfrith, just behind him on the rope, said, “There’ll be more,” and dug in his heels.
The serpent-ships beached, Cerdic led the way toward the gate. He was halfway there when a sound he knew well rang forth hideously: the scream of a mortally stricken man. He bared his sword. Through the open gate he glimpsed savage movement and three figures fiercely beset. A spear flashed and reddened.
Breaking from the fight, one of the three ran for the gate. Despite the plain hooded cloak she wore, Cerdic recognized her by her running. He’d have been in a bad way had he failed to recognize her. With a flaming oath, he began to run himself.
In the background, the two gesiths who had bought her her respite were cut down, overwhelmed by numbers. A warrior darted into view and seized her about the waist. She writhed in his grip and used the sax-knife she held. It opened his arm from shoulder to elbow as if boning a joint of beef. He howled, let her go and commenced bleeding to death.
Her hood had fallen back in the brief struggle. She swung toward the gate again with a swirl of gray mantle and flame-red hair. Her ear splitting yell scared birds off the river.
“Go back, Cerdicl It’s a trap!”
The heavy gate thudded shut. From the rampart beside it, spears flew at the chieftain; he sprang nimbly to escape them. Then when he saw bows being drawn, he legged it, dodging, to the shelter of his ship.
“Well, Cerdic,” a nasal bass addressed him. “I nearly had you then! Still, I have your woman and brats, and that’s near as good. What will you do now?”
“Withucar!” Cerdic said. He comprehended suddenly. Salt-seething rage filled him. “Do? I’ll haul you out of my fortress and hack you into twelve pieces!”
The Saxon adventurer laughed like a gander’s honk. “Try! Rush this palisade! We’ll slaughter you! Even if you get over it, the first thing I’ll do will be to throw Giralda’s head at you. Then if you begin to get the upper hand within the walls, we can start cutting your children’s throats, beginning with the youngest. Tell me though… do you truly think it would come to that?”
Cerdic’s men howled and brandished their weapons. The chieftain stood as if carved from heart-of-oak. No. The treacherous cur was right. It wouldn’t come to that. Wiht-gara-byrig’s defenses were too strong.
Giralda was in there, and the children.
Cerdic mastered himself. The effort it demanded made blood roar hollow in his ears and darkened the sunlight. He said at last, equably:
“That requires thought, doesn’t it?”
Withucar chuckled. “Think all you please. I’ll still have the best hostages a man could wish. You couldn’t think your way past that were you as wise as the One-eyed. Now I’ll go take a knotted rope to Giralda’s back for warning you.”
“Wait!” Cerdic said hoarsely. “Can you be bargained with on that score?”
“Not to thrash her? Come! You will never get her back. Take my word for that. Even if you did, you’d find her the sweeter for it.”
Cerdic wanted to roar, “Touch her and I’ll kill you!” but he didn’t. This was no time for foolishness; he couldn’t reach the man, and besides, he intended to kill him no matter what happened. He’d have given an arm to get the remaining hand on the oath-breaker who stood and taunted him.
“What will you take to forget the rope’s end?”
“The plunder in your ships!” Withucar laughed.
Cerdic turned to the silent men behind him. “Fetch it up,” he said curtly.
A murmur swept them. Young Lanfrith went further. “What?” he yelped. “But, lord–”
Cerdic’s lips barely moved. “I wouldn’t wish to let that swine see me slay you. Obey me.”
Lanfrith shifted his feet, confused. Ulfcetel spoke out. “Lord, I’m not disputing you. But have you thought this may well do no good?”
“And it just may. Whether or no—do you suppose I mean Withucar to keep it long? Or his hostages, or his life? Now we have argued sufficiently.” His voice rose to an angry roar. “Move!”
They obeyed, piling their loot before the gate. Cerdic’s face was almost black with fury as he watched, less for the plunder than for the rash words he had no notion how to redeem. One idea did occur to him, but even in his wrath he saw it was worthless. Withucar would never agree. Why should he?
They sullenly withdrew to their ships.
“This is the way of it,” Cerdic said to his men, his strong voice ringing out. “We are here, and Withucar is there. He holds Giralda, my son and my daughters. May monsters eat his corpse on Nastrand! Well. I could bid him meet me in single fight. He’d laugh. As for ransom, I might sack the world from end to end and pour its treasures before him and he wouldn’t part with his hostages. What use is treasure to a dead man? And that he’d shortly be, once he had no threat to hold over my head! Maybe he’d send out the girls, and maybe even Giralda or Cynric with them… one or the other, but not both. Now if there’s a man here who knows I’m overlooking something, let him tell me.”
There Will Be War Volume IV Page 18
