The Excalibur Alternative

"Very well," the creature said at last. "I would still prefer a swift, decisive attack that would take the Thoolaas by surprise and crush them in a single blow, but as you have said, you have far more direct experience than I in the employment of such crude and primitive weapons. I will allow you to fight this battle as you wish... but I strongly recommend that you honor that promise and produce the victory my guild requires."

It was remarkable, Sir George thought, how much chill threat could be packed into a completely expressionless and uninflected sentence.

"Can't say I much care for this position, M'lord." Rolf Grayhame hawked and spat a thick glob of spittle into the u

"I'm not exactly overjoyed by either of them myself," Sir George told the powerfully built archer calmly. "Unfortunately, they're the ones we have, so I suppose we'll just have to make the best of them."

Grayhame chuckled sourly, then nodded and touched his forelock with a bob of his head.

"With your permission, M'lord, I'd best go make one more check."

"Go on, Rolf," Sir George said with a smile. "And remind the lads that whatever he might have to say," the baron jerked his head at the strange device Computer called an "air car" where it hovered u

He saw a trace of surprise on the archer's face and barked a laugh. Grayhame's reaction didn't surprise him in the least. The demon-jester had spent the better part of an hour exhorting "his" troops to do battle in the name of his guild. If it hadn't been for the life-or-death power he held over all of them, his ludicrous, bombastic harangue would have had every man of them in stitches of laughter. The very thought of "honoring the guild we serve with the offering of your courage and blood" was enough to make any one of Sir George's hardened veterans laugh—or puke—and the thought that the demon-jester could think them stupid enough to be taken in by such bilge was even worse.

"Oh, I don't give a rat's arse for him and his precious guild!" the baron grunted to the bowman. "They could all take the pox and rot, for all of me, and the sooner the better! But whatever we may think of them, our lives depend on convincing them that they need us, and that means wi

"Not to mention the little matter that if we lose, the four-arms will slit all our throats, M'lord," Walter Ski

"Aye, not to mention that," he agreed, then waved at Grayhame. "So be off, Rolf, and pass the word."

"Have no doubt of that, M'lord," Grayhame assured him with a crooked grin, and trotted off while Sir George turned back to survey the field around their hilltop position.

There were enough subtle and not so subtle differences between this place and Earth to make the entire scene seem just slightly unreal, like a fever dream or a hallucination. The sun was a cooler, dimmer thing. The "trees" which dotted the plain about the burial hill were too tall, too spindly, and completely the wrong color. Even Sir George's own weight felt wrong, for he was too light on his feet and felt too charged with energy. He was accustomed enough to the surge of energy which the threat of battle always seemed to bring forth, but this was different. He'd mentioned it to Computer when the "tenders" from the demon-jester's main vessel had deposited the English and all of their equipment and horses here, and Computer had replied that the local "gravity" was lower and that the local air contained more "oxygen" than that to which the English were accustomed.

The baron had no idea what "gravity" or "oxygen" were, but if they could make him feel this way, then he wanted all of them he could get!

His mouth quirked in a grin at the thought, but it was fleeting, and his eyes narrowed as he continued his survey.

The oddly colored grasslands stretched to the limit of his vision, broken up only by an occasional, small clump of trees and the steeply cut banks of the small but deep river that wound around the western edge of the hill upon which the English stood. The lands were flat enough that the Thoolaas' main village was clearly visible on the far side of that stream, perhaps five miles from the hill, and even as he watched he could see the surging tide of the tribe's warriors shoving and jostling for position as they loped through the grass, waist-high on a human and reaching almost to mid-thigh on them, towards the ford that carried the trail from their village to their burial hill. Even at their pace, it would take them some time yet to reach the hill, and he could make out very few details from here, but the deep, rhythmic booming of their war drums already came faintly to his ears.

"How many dart-throwers do they have, Computer?" he asked quietly.

"Approximately nine hundred and seventeen out of a total force of approximately six thousand two hundred and nine," Computer's voice replied in his ear.

Despite the fact that Sir George knew Computer reported everything he heard to the demon-jester and the rest of the crew, hearing the other's voice at this particular moment was a great comfort. The numbers Computer had just reported, on the other hand, were not. Without the mariners and other untrained men Sir George had convinced the demon-jester not to commit, he had barely eight hundred men in total. True, sixty percent of them were archers, but the enemy had him outnumbered by two-to-one even in missile weapons, and his bowmen were much more lightly armed for close combat than his men-at-arms, with only daggers, short swords, and an occasional maul or hammer to supplement their bows. If the rest of that horde ever got to grips with them, the longbowmen would be at a deadly disadvantage.

Which meant that somehow Sir George had to prevent the Thoolaas from getting to grips. That was where the hedge of sharply pointed wooden stakes set into the slope of the hill came in. Not to mention the caltrops hidden in the river and seeded thickly through the tall grass all the way from the edge of the stream to the foot of the hill. And also not to mention the double line of dismounted men-at-arms between the stakes and the front ranks of the archers. It was ironic that after arguing so strongly with the demon-jester about the necessity of horses, he had dismounted all but fifty of his men-at-arms for the very first battle.

Of course, he reminded himself, turning to look at the ranks of horses being held at the rear of his formation, once the Thoolaas had been broken—if they were broken—he would need all of those mounts for the pursuit he intended to put in. In the meantime, Ski

At least his men were by far the best armed and armored troops he had ever led into battle, he reminded himself. For all of the demon-jester's contempt for the crudity and primitive nature of their equipment, the "industrial modules" of the guild's huge ship had met and surpassed all of the requests Sir George and his advisors had submitted.

Like every commander of his day, Sir George was only too intimately familiar with the cost of properly equipping men for war. Knights and mounted men-at-arms usually had priority, because they were the decisive element in hand-to-hand combat, where protection against hostile blows was paramount... and because knights were usually wealthy enough to afford better quality armor. No liege lord or captain could possibly have afforded to provide his entire force with such armor, however, and the archer and the footman-at-arms usually had to make do with less effective but far cheaper forms of armor. An archer was fortunate if he could afford brigandine rather than simple leather jack, and a footman was fortunate if he could afford a proper haubergeon instead of brigandine. Even knights and mounted men-at-arms were frequently forced to substitute boiled leather for the bits of plate armor used to reinforce their mail.