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She turned in the saddle. "Now, my iron-heads, I'm going to do you a favor," she said, looking at the eager young faces, shadowed by raised visors or bisected by the nasal-bars of the older helms. "Now I give you a chance to die with honor!"
They cheered, shaking their lances in the air. And they actually think I am doing them a favor, she thought. It's true what they said in the old days. Testosterone rots the brain, not to mention listening to the bards when you're young.
She held out her own right hand, and Armand thrust the lance into it. Tiphaine rested the butt of the twelve-foot weapon on the ring welded to her stirrup-iron, shrugged her shield around and brought it up. The ba
BD looked up from the wounded as she heard the high harsh singing of the Portlander oliphants, the long curled silver trumpets holding the sustained scream that meant charge. It was faint with distance, but the sound was as startling as it would have been to hear a chorus of girls singing a festival hymn to the Lady of the Blossom-time. She'd grown so used to the thought that she would die here amongst angry strangers and the smell of wounds that it took a moment for what her ears heard to filter through to her mind.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw Eilir's eyes move. Her head was a mass of bandages, seeping red where an ear had been sliced; there was another wound on one thigh, a shete-cut.
"The Portlanders are here," BD said, and then repeated it in basic Sign in case she was too dazed to read lips.
Eilir sighed and closed her eyes. Not far away from her, Astrid roused a little and turned and tried to vomit. It was only a dry retching, and when she sank back her face was gray. One of the wounded with a splinted leg dragged himself over and helped her drink. Abstractly, BD sympathized-the pain would be savage, and a concussion like the one she'd gotten from her own sword hilt would keep her immobilized for weeks, and might cripple-but it was Astrid's plan that had gotten them into this mess. BD didn't want her dead, but she had to admit there would have been some justice in her getting hit so hard the brains spurted out of her ears.
It would have been worth it to avoid a battle, she thought. But it looks like we're going to have the battle anyway.
Part of it was taking place right below. The Easterners had better things to do than lob arrows at the little cluster of Rangers atop the hill, and she risked rising from behind a ridge of rock and clay to watch.
Most of the horsemen were fighting the CORA men, at close quarters and handstrokes now that their quivers were empty. Dust hid most of the action, but the sun glinted off the edges of sabers and shetes and axes. Eddies in the earth-mist showed men who hacked and died; she saw a doll-tiny figure topple to earth and go beneath the hooves, anonymous in ranch-country leather and wool, and another dragged from the saddle by a flung lasso.
The sound of their curses and war-shouts came up the slope that was also littered with bodies of men and horses, some still thrashing or trying to crawl away, others motionless. Overhead turkey vultures waited, sweeping in broad circles with their black-and-gray wings outstretched. Ravens skittered lower on the wind. One went over close enough for her to see the clever black eye it cocked at the ground, judging its time.
They're always on the wi
Then the Association's trumpets screamed again; much louder this time, and closer. From here she could see what the men lost in dust and rage below couldn't, the line of a hundred lances catching the morning sun as they came over the low rise to the westward. The pe
The CORA men withdrew if they could, most of them turning north and south in clumps and ones and twos, their mission done. The wind from the west blew the dust away, just in time for the Pendleton Ranchers' men to see what was coming at them. Some tried to turn their agile cow ponies and run; some charged forward, or shot the last arrows cu
But the Portlander knights were at the full gallop, their tall mounts faster over the short distance remaining, their enemies' ponies tired and confused. The long lances dipped in a shining ripple; the hammer of four hundred hooves pounded the earth like war-drums, like thunder; even here she could feel the vibration in the bones of earth, and divots of the hard dry soil flew skyward. Plumed helmets bent forward as the men-at-arms braced themselves in the high-cantled saddles, shields up under the visors to present nothing but shapes of wood and bullhide and steel to their enemies.
Even in that noise, the deep-voiced shouts of Haro! were loud.
Then they struck.
There was no crash; instead a series of heavy hard thud sounds as lance-heads slammed into flesh with a ton-weight of armored horse and armored man behind them. Men were lifted out of the saddle, rising in the air like obscene kebabs until their weight cracked the tough ashwood of the lance-shafts. The destriers bowled the lighter Eastern horses over by main force as they struck breast to breast; she saw one pony pitch over backwards and land full on its screaming rider. Then the knights were through the loose mass of their enemies, throwing aside broken lances. The swords came out, bright and long, or men snatched up the war-hammers slung to the saddlebows, and the knights went raging among their lightly armored foes like steel-clad tigers.
BD sank back down, wincing a little. No need to watch. She'd grown used to what edged metal did to the godlike human form, but there was no point in looking at it if you didn't have to.
Hooves thudded up the slope, and Alleyne Loring and John Hordle stood to raise their blades in salute as Tiphaine d'Ath reined in. The Grand Constable had the stumps of three arrows in her shield, and another in the high cantle of her saddle; her sword glistened with a coat of liquid red so fresh it had not even begun to clot, and more spattered up her arm and across the articulated lames of her breastplate.
She used the edge of her shield to push up the visor, and her face showed framed in the mail coif, red and ru
"We'd best get going," she said, timing the words to her breath. "They'll be here in strength soon; it's going to be a busy day. I've got ambulances."
The light well-sprung vehicles were bouncing up the slope behind her, two tall spoked wheels for each, and a pair of fast horses to draw them.
"We've got the Bossman," Hordle said, jerking his thumb at a man who lay bound hand and foot. "Wasn't 'alf a nuisance, dragging him through the tu
"Then we got something out of this," Tiphaine said.
"Not as much as we thought," Alleyne said. "Thurston and the Prophet are both in Pendleton. And Estrellita Peters, too, for them to use as a puppet."
Alleyne turned and helped his wife to her feet. She blinked, squinted, and then raised one hand in acknowledgment.
"I commend the army to your care, Lady d'Ath," she said.
There was a lump the size of a robin's egg on her forehead just above her nose, and she squinted and blinked at the tall steel-clad figure.
"To both of you," she added owlishly, then swallowed and forced clarity on herself with a visible effort. "I've seen the new Dark Lord. This time he's the genuine article."