The Starfollowers of Coramonde (17 page)

Off to the
left an attack was launched against Swan’s command, but because the land dipped
and rose that way, Gil couldn’t see clearly. He began to appreciate the
importance of gonfalons and banners. Everyone in the armies—himself
included—depended on the battle flags to tell if their side was moving forward,
making a stand or being driven back. The Trustee told him to go tell a
particular cavalry unit to stand ready. He spurred away, trying to keep some
speed and still not gallop over massed soldiers in his way. He found the
correct outfit and relayed the order. The Sisters of the Line were already in
their files, nervously adjusting helmets, lances and shields.

Finding his
way back, he went along the seam of the two armies on the right flank, where
men of Veganá marked time next to Glyffan women. Gil was amazed again at their
youth. They called to him for news but he couldn’t stop. He knew, though, that
in their place he’d have ripped a bypasser out of the saddle and clubbed the
latest reports out of him.

The leader of
the reserve element came up and awaited orders to move. The Trustee instructed
her to go in either direction when the next probe came, but to wait toward the
left flank. Then she ordered Gil to see how things were going on the Veganán
flank.

He barrel-rode
off again, cutting deeply behind his own lines. The front might shift down
there, and he was a messenger, not a grunt. The arrow showers had stopped
nearer the river, the sides being too intermingled.

The fighting
had overflowed into the river. The clay bank and bed were too treacherous to
maneuver on with a horse; men were clashing on foot, the river running around
their legs, muddy-red. Then he spotted Lord Blacktarget.

The general
had dismounted and waded out chest-deep, holding the extreme end of his flank
himself. A rope around his waist ran back and slightly upstream, belayed by two
husky squires. He was jubilant, sure that the battle would go his way. He’d
called for his piper, who stood on the river bank blowing a lusty war-song.
Lord Blacktarget would occasionally bellow a snatch of the lyrics, waiting for
the next adversary.

His
two-handed broadsword whirled and chopped, throwing back every opponent.
Further downstream, Gil could see corpses of men and horses being whisked away
in the current. The Occhlon had lost an ambitious gambit, trying to outflank
through the river itself. As he watched, Blacktarget lost his footing and was
yanked up again by the two squires.

The river
bank was in the firm control of Veganá again, so the general had himself hauled
in. Dripping and wounded, he accepted his wineskin from an aide and drank
deeply, while his injuries were being bound. His pink skull gleamed with sweat
and muddy water.

In response
to the Trustee’s inquiry, he leaned on his broadsword and studied the front.
“This may have been the feint, or may be a feint-in-deception. We will hold
here against any attack, but I will retain my reserves. Tell her Veganá needs
no succor.” Forgetting Gil completely, he called for his horse. The piper
struck up another song.

The Trustee
heard the reply while monitoring her worrisome left flank. “Needs no succor,
eh?” she repeated, as her aides muttered among themselves. “That was not his
claim a fortnight ago. He hates subordinating himself to me, but if he holds
his end of things I am content.” She peered more closely to the left. “The
Southwastelanders do not like it there, by the water with Blacktarget; he is
secure. Send the first reserve element to Swan.” It wasn’t Gil’s turn yet, so
another rider galloped off.

The sky had
become overcast. Gil looked down to the center where Andre should be and saw
the heavy cavalry was no longer there, replaced by a new unit. He asked one of
the aides about it.

“There was a
quick, impudent sally while you were gone,” she said. She disapproved of his
inquisitiveness, but knew he was somehow favored by the Trustee. “Andre
deCourteney was hurt, taken back in one of the wagons, his contingent
replaced.” Gil fought the impulse to rein around and go see how the wizard was,
unsure that he could even find him.

More
commanders were coming up now, as units were rotated in gradual attrition. The
Trustee still hesitated to group her main strength. Gil viewed the fitful
migrations of the banners, forward in conquest or backward in disarray. This
wasn’t his kind of military action, chafing on an open field while slow,
sometimes hours-long maneuvers took shape. He’d served in an army of tactical
radios, air observers, choppers, artillery and personnel carriers. Operations
had been mobile, fast-breaking. Sitting on a horse marking time had worn his
patience out quickly.

He noticed
the Trustee was unoccupied. “Any word on Andre?” he asked. Aides glowered.

“None,” she
said, having forgotten her son in the absorptions of the day. “If you would do
me a service, go rear and inquire.” Her mind reverted at once to the battle.

He threaded
his way back through waiting soldiers, cavalry who stood in their stirrups and
infantry who held one another on their shoulders, craning for a view. Further
to the rear, those waiting were more relaxed, passing time. At the very edge of
the plain the chirurgeons had set up their crude field operations in an open
tent with wooden slabs on which they performed desperate surgery. A constant
flow of wounded was the engagement’s yield.

Gil spotted
Ferrian. Answering to his name, the Horseblooded didn’t stop his work. He
carried men and women groaning and screaming their pain to where they must wait
until they could be attended to. Gil finally halted him by grabbing his
shoulder over an empty sleeve. There was a vacant look in the brawny
Horseblooded’s eyes. He motioned to the wounded, “So many, so very many.”

Gil shook
him. “Forget that. Where’s deCourteney?”

The left hand
pointed; Gil released him.

The wizard
was sitting beside a water barrel, rewrap-ping his wounded side more to his
liking. Seeing Gil, he achieved a wan grin. “I shall live, it seems,” he
conceded. Gil heard sounds of the wounded being treated with measures nearly as
sanguinary as the battle itself. He avoided looking into the tent.

“Where’s your
horse?”

“Appropriated
as soon as ever I fell. Ferrian was first to my side, and carried me to
safety.”

“Ferrian
better be cool. He’s losing his grip.”

Andre stood up
angrily. “Do you know what he has dealt with today? Then go, behind the tent.”

Training his
eyes to the ground, he did as Andre bid him, unwillingly. In the area behind
the tent were rows of the dead, butchered and savaged in a hundred ways,
darkening the earth with blood. To the side was a pile of what he thought at
first to be wood, or discarded armor. Closer, he saw they were human limbs,
blackening as they lay, arms and legs and hands and feet too ruined to salvage.
White bone poked from bloated flesh; clouds of big, shiny black flies covered
the piles. The steamy reek drove him back.

He caught
shaky balance with one hand on a tent post and fought his compulsion to retch
until his stomach inverted. Andre pulled him away. He was breathing harder,
heart racing. “I’m clearing out of here; let’s go.” When Gil had remounted, the
wizard climbed up on Jeb’s croup. Gil caught a last look at Ferrian, assisting
a stumbling lancer who was pressing her intestines back in and crying like a
lost child. The American kicked hard. With a peevish snort, Jeb Stuart bolted
away.

“Why don’t
you and your mother use magic?” he called, as they cantered along. The wind of
their passage took away much of the reply.

“Too close…
preparation… on their side too.”

It began to
drizzle. Gil reined in to find he’d drifted too far left. There was intense
fighting along the foot of the slopes. He could see Swan’s banner, with her
white-winged namesake. He decided things were going to go the way they were
going to go, no matter where Gilbert A. MacDonald was, and wanted to see if the
High Constable was all right. Andre made no objection.

Others were
going that way. The two rode past a detachment of infantry with Angorman at its
head, and swapped news.

The assault
on Lord Blacktarget had indeed been a feint, the light sally at Swan a screen
for the advance of a larger force. The whole left flank could be rolled back if
it wasn’t stopped. Angorman was bringing up his sword-and-shield men to protect
the archers. Gil hurried on.

The Sisters
of the Line must have repelled the attack and gained ground; there were
trampled Occhlon corpses at the rear of their position. It was Gil’s first
sight of them close up. They weren’t unusual, just men who were dead. They were
a taller race than the Veganáns, with slightly darker skin and hair. These wore
armor of
cuir bolli,
faced and shaped with metal. Their weapons looked
light, slender swords both curved and straight, and shorter lances. But, Gil
remembered, there were supposed to be more heavily armed and armored
Southwastelanders somewhere.

He worked
forward, Andre clinging to him, past groups of archers and strings of pikewomen
crouching behind mantlets. Dust swirled thickly; they heard the ringing of
swords and yells of combatants. A captain rode by, not noticing they weren’t
part of her unit. “Up! Up to the line and ’ware. Their knights come against us
now. We broke their last onset, but another will come soon.”

The wounded
were being dragged away from a point in the line where it had thinned. Swan was
there, dismounted for a rest. She’d taken off her helmet, and an aide dashed a
bucket of water on her face, cooling her in her stifling armor.

She waved
wearily. “How goes the day?” Gil told her as much as he knew. She listened,
again turning her head to hold her birthmark away. “Those clanking ironclads
will be down on us again,” she admitted. “I had never dealt with plate armor
before. It seems rather clumsy. We shall stop them.”

Gil, who’d
seen knights of Coramonde in full career, wasn’t so sure. He couldn’t see many
of them, though; maybe two hundred had drawn up on a rise a quarter-mile away
and formed a wedge, probably to be followed by the more numerous heavy cavalry.

“And what of
your pikewomen?” Andre asked.

She motioned
rearward with a thumb. “There. I thought they stood no chance against those
behemoths in plate.”

“How long are
their pikes?”

“Ten, or
perhaps eleven feet.”

“Mmm, not
good, but perhaps sufficient. I advise you to bring them up in support, High
Constable. Let the enemy through your center, stop the knights with pikewomen
and try carving them up from their flanks.”

She ordered
the infantry up, then looked to Gil. “What do you think, Seeker?”

He shrugged.
“Ask me tonight.” He was still in turmoil, angry at what he’d seen and heard
through the morning.

“I will. They
say fighting on the river bank has gotten sharper, but the men of Veganá are
happy for that. I believe the day will be decided here.”

Angorman
arrived and dispersed his swordsmen among the pikewomen, placing himself at the
head of their formation. Someone shouted; the enemy knights were moving out at
a trot. Swan mounted at once, and Gil let Andre down.

That vicious
something that had been hovering at the outer circle of his thoughts began to
take form. Seeing the charge, Gil felt his pulse hammer. It was as if the
Occhlon advance was the final affront, obscene provocation. Ignoring Andre’s
call, he fell in at the end of Swan’s riders, wanting to see what would happen.

They moved
forward at a walk, then a canter. A horn winded. Dressed and aligned, they
broke into the charge, Swan in the van. The High Constable of Region Blue
hunkered down behind spear and shield and met her antagonist, who led the
Occhlon. She downed him at first impact, her point skillfully catching his
helmet on its crest, bursting its retaining laces and carrying him backward off
his horse. He landed with a clang.

The two sides
rammed into each other while Swan stopped to recover her own balance. Gil raced
by, all restraint gone, hunting an opponent, calling out, “Nice lick!” She
shouted something, but he didn’t catch it.

He spotted an
enemy on a roan charger. They bore in on each other by unspoken consent. The
man crouched behind his triangular shield. Jeb’s mane was stiff as a flag in
Gil’s face. He knew he should have been scared, but wasn’t. The new thing on
the rim of his awareness was overriding fear with volcanic anger.

As trained,
they came in on each other’s left side, shield to shield, lances held loosely until
the last instant. The American kept his point more or less aligned, knowing
he’d have to target in the last moment before meeting. The drizzle had made the
lance slippery. Jeb, more experienced than his rider, gathered himself for
collision just before it happened. The two men clamped knees to their horses’
sides, clutched their weapons and threw all their weight forward. The Occhlon
let go a battle cry that the American, in his emotional transport, never heard.

Their spears
transversed into shields. Gil’s skidded; the Occhlon’s didn’t. The jolt was
like being clothes-lined, blind-sided and body-blocked at the same time. The
man felt Gil going and gave his point a clever twist, to kill him right then.
Jeb did a kind of change-step, and Gil almost found his balance. Then he
toppled sideways and backward as the Southwastelander came around to finish
him.

The fall
released that thing that had waited in the American. He ignored the pain of the
fall and came up in a fit of virulence so vivid he felt he could murder with
his will alone. He’d dropped his shield and lance, and took no notice of Jeb,
who stood waiting for him. He drew the Browning, raised it in sidelong stance
and shot the Occhlon. It gave him an awful elation he’d never known before.