“Now, Ferenc,” I said, in the heat and smoke of the armory. “These two monstrous swords. You see them.”
“Aye, Jen,” quoth this Ferenc the Edge. “And mighty unhandy they look. The handle length is impossible. And there is a curve, if I mistake me not, in the blade—”
“Good man!” I exclaimed. “The curve is of the most subtle, being more of a rise of the cutting edge to the center point. You will make me a sword like this from these radvakka weapons.”
The Krozairs fell about laughing. “It takes skill—” And: “You’ll cut your legs off, if not worse!”
But I insisted and left Ferenc to it, with a promise that he must make the blade superb and if it snapped across in battle I’d stalk back and stuff the shattered end up where it would do him no good at all.
But I knew, sadly, that however fine Ferenc’s work would be, the blade he would forge would in nowise compare with a true Krozair blade.
More days passed and our preparations drew on. We made thousands of bronzen caltrops, chevaux de frise were constructed, and husky youngsters, fleet of foot, were trained to run with them and drop them in position, to pick them up and run again; to the shrill commands of stentors. The benhoffs we had taken were added to our cavalry force, and we could field almost two hundred now. Our five hundred archers were now at the stage where they could loose accurate volleys with an expertise that, while it would provoke Seg to a chuckle or two, would for all that do pleasant mischiefs to the radvakkas.
I was not concerned to choose an auspicious day for the sally, a holy day or a day sacred to some god or other, not even Opaz. I would choose the right day for my brumbytes. As it turned out, the right day dawned on the morning of Opaz Enthroned, which was a good omen. Normally, the long chanting processions singing their eternal “Oolie Opaz” would wind through the streets. I gave the countersign as Oolie Opaz and told the people that that would suffice on this day.
Truth to tell, the sally could not much longer be delayed. Our food was now in sure sight of running out. We had trained to a pitch and now we needed combat to temper our arms. And, as you may well imagine, I was overtaken by the most profound panic of indecision. How could we face the ponderous onrushing might of the Iron Riders? Would not all our careful plans be rendered useless? Our hedge of pikes swept away? Would the burghers change into hardened brumbytes, and stand, and win?
Ferenc the Edge found me, his squat face glowing and smudged with black. He held out the sword.
“Here, Jen Jak. And may Opaz have you in his keeping, for I have tried to swing the blade and took a chunk out of my leg, may Trip the Thwarter take it.” He handed me the sword and I felt a rush of nostalgic onkerishness envelop me as I wrapped my horny old fists around the handle. Ferenc eyed me. “Go in good spirit, Jen Jak, and, by the Blade of Kurin, as my clients say, I wish you well.”
With the sword in my left hand I took out the assignat I had prepared and handed it to Ferenc. When he saw the sum I had written and which had been countersigned by the Justicar, he whistled.
“You put great store by that monstrous brand.”
“Aye. Now go and take your place. Every man must play his part today.” And I added: “And may Vox send his aegis to give you comfort.”
Whatever happened today, from henceforth it would be known as the Battle of Therminsax. That was inevitable.
The temples crowded with brumbytes and Hakkodins, seeking a last measure of comfort. The women bore up marvelously; but I understood their agonies. I held a last order group with the two Kerchurivaxes, Nath Nazabhan na Therminsax and Strom Varga na Barbitor, and with the Jodhrivaxes. They knew the plan. To dignify what we purported as a plan must be overstating it. We intended to march out, form phalanx, and smash the radvakkas.
Even a well-disciplined phalanx will trend to the right so as instinctively to bring the shields around to face the enemy. To give a little added protection to the right flank we would march out across the open plain with the Letha Brook on our right. The Hakkodins would flank us. If we did go right we’d find our feet getting wet. So I had a private word with Bondur Darnhan and Jando Quevada, the two right-hand men.
Briefly, I told them that the direction of the two wings depended on them — they knew that, anyway; they’d drilled enough times — and that they were to parallel the Letha Brook.
“Put your heads down, your pikes level, your shields up — and go straight in. And tread warily over the clutter on the ground,”
So, dutifully, they smiled at the feeble joke, and went off.
We marched out.
The army of Therminsax marched out.
The two Kerchuris marched. The Hakkodins flanked them. The cavalry and archers took post on the rear flanks, awaiting immediate orders.
And I got the jitters. Were twelve men enough? Was a phalanx twelve pikemen deep thick enough? Ought I to have made it sixteen, like the Macedonians? The pikes projected past the front ranks, forming a multiple hedge of steel; but I could have lengthened the pikes, made five or six project. I looked at that impressive array, superb in bronze and crimson, marching with a swing, with the drums rolling, and I felt the icy shivers of dread.
So much to gamble, so many lives... It is imperative if you are to gain an insight into that formidable and splendid array to grasp something of what it was like to march as a brumbyte in the files. A heavy helmet weighs down your head and the metal visor obstructs vision. You grasp an eighteen-foot long pike, and you hang your shield around on your left shoulder, trying not to let it slide away to the side. You are aware of your bronze-scaled kax pressing on your chest and back. You clump along, in line and file, as you have been trained. The man in front is old Nath, a good fellow if a boaster, the man to your rear is old Naghan, who always wants to tread on your heels. The men on either side you know, have worked and trained with. The dust rises. Your nostrils sting, your eyes want to run with water. The breath clogs in your throat. And you must grip your pike firmly, held aloft until the moment comes when the trumpets shrill and down go the pikes, level, and you increase pace. Then you can hear and see practically nothing as you just press forward until — but then, you have not yet experienced that fraught until. All the training and practice in the world, even charging solid wooden fences, cannot really prepare you for the hideous reality that will follow when that until becomes fact.
Solid, compact, compressed, shield locked, pikes all slanted, the phalanx moved out.
One of Shudor’s paktuns had got himself killed and so I was able to buy his zorca, at an impossibly inflated price, from the band. Gold had to be paid; assignats were of no interest to the mercenaries. So I rode a zorca and was clad in a bronze kax of the same kind as those worn by the brumbytes, wearing a vosk-skull helmet with the bronze fittings, carrying a long spear, a shortsword and a broadsword from the radvakkas — and with the Krozair brand scabbarded over my back. The scabbard had been made by the handmaidens of Nazab Nalgre’s wife, the quiet and soft-spoken Lady Felda. From the saddle hung down a steel axe, short-hafted.
Naghan ti Lodkwara and his Hawkwas, riding the benhoffs we had taken, formed a small guard reserve. And I became aware of a monstrous shadow at my back, and turned, and, lo! There rode Korero, bearing an enormous shield. He met my eyes and he looked abruptly shifty.
“Why do you ride there, Korero?”
“You have given me no place in this phalanx, Jak the Drang. I remember what I remember. This shield is large enough for the two of us.”
All I could do was say: “You are right welcome, Korero the Shield. But guard yourself, you hear?”
As I swung back to check the progress of the phalanx I found myself muttering darkly: “What in the sweet name of Opaz will Turko the Shield say?”
Cleitar the Smith rode with us and he carried the standard. This was a large banner of crimson with the yellow saltire of Vallia, and, in the hoist, the crimson and brown of Therminsax arranged in their insignia shape. Dorgo the Clis and Magin rode with us. Also, we had a trul
y enormous brazen trumpet blown by Volodu the Lungs, a barrel-chested, square-faced rogue with a penchant for ale of any quality and in any quantity.
The brumbytes were signing as we advanced out across the open plain by the brook. Where they got the spit from, Opaz knows. They began with refrains like “The Maidens of Vallia” but as we advanced and saw the mailed cavalry riding out and forming to meet us, the songs grew more wild. A couple of times each Kerchuri was singing a different song; but as we drew forward to the place I had marked, everyone was bellowing out “The Sylvie on the Slippery Slope.” I did not think the ladies crowding the walls of Therminsax could make out the words, even if they might hear the tune, and that was just as well. It is a marvel how decorous, seemly, orderly townsfolk will transform themselves in moments like these into the wildest spirits imaginable.
The stentors blew their trumpets and the shrill notes halted the phalanx. The radvakkas trotted out, ominous and deadly in their iron. The lads with their caltrops on quick-dispensing rods ran out ahead and strewed the ground. On the flanks the chevaux de frise were positioned, ugly trestles armed with spikes, protecting our flanks. The lads assigned to this duty, fleet of foot, collected at the rear of the phalanx, out of the way.
We halted, all the pikes upright, and the banners and standards moved to the rear.
I wanted — how I wanted — to leap off the zorca and grasp a pike and so stand in the front rank. But I had a duty and that duty chained me here, in command, ready to hurl the weight of our attack where it was needed. A phalanx arrayed so deeply and with shields locked can go straight ahead. It is designed to go straight ahead over anything. To wheel, to form, to go sideways, is so difficult that it is barely attempted. We had carried out experiments, and had some success, but usually the phalanx fell into complete disorder. I had chosen to march out with the phalanx facing the main camp of the Iron Riders.
We would go ahead.
But, all the same, despite that, my place was where I was.
And, all the time, I continued to marvel at the way in which the solid citizens of Therminsax had transformed themselves. From a witless bunch of scared loons — with the exceptions of those men I had seen and noted — the burghers now stood calmly in their packed files and ranks awaiting the onslaught of the dreaded Iron Riders. The transformation was exceedingly marvelous, and I felt a warm and choking affection for these brumbytes sweeping over me.
The jitters persisted. Ought I to have provided baldachins, canopies of cloth to hang from the shields to protect the legs? As I lifted in the stirrups and peered ahead at the advancing Iron Riders, I had to make a fierce effort to banish worries like that. The Phalanx of Therminsax had been forged. It existed. It was. In only a few murs it would be in action, in its first action. Everything was going to go splendidly. It was. I had to believe that, believe utterly and with the fanaticism of the doomed.
Dust puffed from under the iron hooves of the benhoffs. The radvakkas had no doubt been astounded to see the gates open and an army march out. I hoped that they would regard us as just another army like those of Hamal they had destroyed in the outright violence of their charge. They had no doubt tumbled out of their tents shouting with glee, arming in all haste, snatching up sword and spear, leaping into their saddles. Being barbarians they would all race to be the first. Their chiefs would, because they were chiefs, be able to control a few of them close at hand. But the mass would dig in spurs and set off.
This they did, and so they came down on us like a spuming unformed mass, bunched as they closed, riding knee to knee. The front ranks tended to draw together, followed by a whole tail of furiously galloping riders.
“What a sight!” said Cleitar. He shook the great banner. In his right hand he grasped his massive hammer, and the head was newly fashioned into a piercing spike at one end and a crushing hammer at the other.
“Very impressive,” observed Korero. He sat his benhoff alongside my zorca, but I knew he would haul out to the side and rear when the heat grew. He had no fear of arrows, for the radvakkas were in too impatient a mood. They just clapped in their spurs and charged.
Our own archery rose from the flanks. I had not stationed archers to the front for I did not want bowmen running back through lanes left in the files, with the subsequent movements to fill the gaps and possible dislocations. The phalanx waited like a solid rock against the pounding of the breakers.
The Iron Riders hammered on. At the last moment the bowmen retreated behind the bristling spiked trestles and continued to put in a raking discharge. Any moment now — the noise of the thousands of hooves bellowed to the sky. The dust rose. The twin suns glinted from iron armor and steel weapons. Instinctively I tensed and then relaxed as the forces met.
Bedlam. Sheer awful bedlam. The noise blattered away as if insane imps of hell were beating drums through Cottmer’s Caverns. The smashing impact of those superb riders against the steady ranked lines of brumbytes rocked on, rocked in equilibrium, rocked back. I saw a few pikes splinter and sprout skywards. I saw the long level lines of pikes holding, stabbing, transfixing man and beast. The phalanx held. Not a man yielded an inch. The Iron Riders rode into that bristling wall of steel pikeheads and were ripped from their saddles, slashed into the ground, brought to a grinding dusty bloody halt.
We lost men. I sorrowed for that. But only a few, a very few, and particularly in one relianch where the front ranks went down under a collapsing tangle of benhoffs. But the brumbytes in rear moved up, stabbing and thrusting, and the cruel steel pikeheads forced a clearance, and the line held.
The overlap of the radvakka charge lapped around our flanks. This was where danger threatened. But the very vehemence of their charge carried them spurring on. Those who tried to rein inwards were stopped by the chevaux de frise, and by the archers who shot lethally into them, and by the Hakkodins who slashed with axe and halberd and dragged the Iron Riders from their tall saddles with spikes and battered them into the ground.
On the right flank a mess of benhoffs floundered into the Letha Brook and were dealt with in water and blood.
I saw the recoiling movement. The Iron Riders following up their first ranks had either crashed headlong into them to add to the confusion, or drawn rein and wheeled away. Groups of radvakkas pirouetted about the plain. They would gather for another charge, of that I was certain. Again uncertainty hit me. Now? Or give them another charge and then? So I waited, confident in the cool heads and high courage of the brumbytes.
The front rank men knelt and thrust the butts of their pikes into the ground, their shields facing front and locked. The second rank men thrust forward under arm, over the shoulders of the front rank. Farther back the two-handed over-arm grip was used. All in all, to face that bristling pike-hedge would take a great deal of nerve and courage.
Of nerve and courage and sheer stubborn pride the radvakkas were plentifully provided. They gathered and charged again. And, again, they were piked to a bloody standstill.
Now!
The rear rank men, the Bratchlins, were yelling and stretching out their empty hands. Men bearing fresh supplies of pikes scrambled forward. As the front rank pikes were broken, so the files passed up fresh ones, levelly, as they had trained. There were no spikes at the butt ends, and no reversing the pikes as though they were mere nine-foot spears. I gave Volodu the Lungs the order.
He blew the “Prepare to advance.”
Immediately the front rank men stood up. The pikes came down level. The brumbytes took a grip on their shields, their pikes, on themselves. I nodded to Volodu.
He blew with scarlet and distended cheeks. “Advance.”
All the other stentors took up the signal. With ringing trumpets and with the thundering rataplan of the drums bellowing the files on, the whole phalanx advanced.
With helmets bent fiercely forward, with glaring eyes, with clenched teeth, the brumbytes advanced. The level rows of pikeheads glittered. The tramp of bronze-studded boots hammered the ground. Careful of the scattere
d caltrops that had brought down many a poor animal, of the corpses strewing the ground, treading small, the men advanced. When the phalanx had cleared the cumbered ground, and ahead pirouetted an astounded cavalry, and the main camp of the Iron Riders, Volodu at my nod signaled the “Double, Advance, Charge!”
The whole phalanx broke into a double march, a furious yet steady pace, almost a run, that carried them over the ground and, scattering the remnants of the radvakkas to our front, brought us up to the leather tents of the camp.
The “Halt!” brought them up with their pikeheads ripping into leather.
Here the Hakkodins went to work, with the cavalry who now came up. They destroyed the camp. During that enjoyable work the phalanx turned about. This was accomplished with a smartness of drill I admired, for I saw how the taste of action had sharpened the men up. Trumpets shrilled. The Second Kerchuri remained fast. The First moved off. All pikes were vertical. When the First had cleared the Second, the whole Second Kerchuri left-faced. Rank by rank they marched to the rear of the First. When each file was exactly aligned, the trumpets blew again, the Kerchuri halted and faced front. Twenty-four deep, we set off back to the city.
Strom Varga, commanding the Second, cantered over to me.
“Yes, Strom. Nobly done. Be ready instantly to halt your Kerchuri and turn about. Or to face either flank.”
“Quidang, Jak the Drang.” He cantered off, perfectly composed. The evolution would be tricky if some wight forgot to hoist his pike before he turned. Drill and discipline — resent them though the soldier might, they helped to keep him alive on the day of battle.
So we marched back in triumph. Had we possessed a good cavalry force we would have ridden in a bloody pursuit. As it was and in a way very satisfying to me although regarded askance as less than dignified by the citizenry, we were accompanied back by a whole clamoring host of freed slaves. Radvakkas maneuvered some way off. But we did not march straight back, for the ground was cumbered. That led to a tidy old mix-up in lining up for the gate; but I told Volodu to signal “Relianch.” Then the brumbytes sorted themselves out and marched in in good order. The gates were closed. I breathed in deeply. I had struck out one good resounding blow. But the pikes of my men, my sturdy brumbytes, were crowned with the laurel wreaths of victory.
Golden Scorpio Page 17
