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"We are the point "We are the edge "We are the wolves that Hecate fed!"
Then a cow-horn trumpet snarled and blatted, and the chant stopped. Another call, and a thousand yew bows came up and drew, each arrowhead pointing halfway to the vertical as the yellow staves bent.
"Oh, notice the ranging stakes in front of each unit?" Thurston said. "That's clever, that's really quite clever."
The aide was from a prominent military family who'd supported his assumption of his father's power, and was beside Thurston because of it, but he was no fool. He blinked at the bristling unison of the movement, bringing up his own binoculars.
"They've got good fire discipline," he said. "I would have expected a fangs-out-hair-on-fire charge, what with the war-paint and the-"
He grimaced in a mime of ferocity, mock flapping his arms and making a movement that suggested jumping up and down; the traverse red crest on his helmet wobbled with the motion.
"- wudda-wudda-wudda stuff. It's like something out of ancient history."
"They had good instructors right at the begi
The Pendleton men went forward in a body, calling out the name of their kidnapped Bossman as a war cry, not in any particular order but spreading out in loose clumps and clots around the ba
"Three hundred yards, two hundred and fifty-"
The first arrows from the Ranchers' bows were dropping on the Mackenzie warriors when an order ran down the harrow formation. It was too far to hear it, particularly with the drumming thunder of four thousand hooves an endless grumbling rumble between, but Martin had learned to read lips. His own followed what he saw through the binoculars, repeating softly:
" Let the gray geese fly! Wholly together- shoot! "
Despite his trained calm the General-President of Boise felt the tiny hairs along his spine crawl at the massed snap of waxed linen bow-strings striking the leather bracers on each left wrist. And beneath that a whickering, whistling sound. The arrows arched into the sky like a forest of rising threads, more and more, and still more-three more from each bow in the air before the first thousand struck. The whole Mackenzie line was a shiver of motion as the archers snatched shafts from the bundles at their feet, set them to the strings, drew and loosed in a single smooth wrench of arm and shoulder and body.
He focused on one bowman with a wolf's mask painted across his own face and mentally timed the sequence.
Three or four seconds per arrow. Christ, better than three hundred a second all up-call it twenty thousand a minute. Crossing the killing ground, even at a gallop… those saddle-bu
The narrow steel arrowheads blinked in a manifold ripple like sunlight on distant water as they reached the top of their arch and seemed to hang poised for a second. Then they turned and plunged. The whistle of their flight was much louder as they came down, and the air above was a continuous sparkling flicker as thousands more followed in wave after wave.
They can see and hear them coming, he thought. Glad I'm not there , by God! Nor my men.
The whole mass of charging horsemen faltered and shook as men sawed at the reins. Then the first volley struck. The noise was like a storm in the mountains driving hail or heavy rain on a shingle roof, but there was nothing in flesh or bone or the light armor of the range-country horsemen to stop the bodkins. The whole first swath went down, mounts dropping like limp puppets or tumbling or plunging and squealing and kicking in astonished agony, men falling out of the saddle or clawing at the iron in face or body or screaming as horses fell and rolled across them. The rising threnody of pain was loud even on a battlefield.
Those behind ran up against that wall of kicking flesh and halted, rearing, or slowed to pick their way between the bodies… and still the arrows fell out of the sky in a pulsing, hissing sleet. Three thousand of them in the time a man could count to ten…
The party around Martin was silent as the survivors turned and fled as fast as they could flog their horses; men followed them on foot, ru
"You know, sir, I'm sort of glad you wanted the northern part of the line," Thurston's aide said. "Even if the ravines are steep off there."
Martin Thurston gri
The party of Boisean officers chuckled. Martin went on: "Now, gentlemen, this allied army has three commanders-which means it's a disaster waiting to happen. But we do outnumber the enemy by two to one, so let's get to work. To your units!"
He looked to his front; there were the Portlander infantry, blocks of spearmen and crossbowmen, and beyond them the knights, sitting ready.
"Colonel Jacobson!" he said.
"Sir!"
The cavalryman was standing at the head of his horse. "You keep those lancers in play. I don't expect you to beat them, but keep them busy while we chew our way through their foot."
He saluted and vaulted into the saddle. Martin Thurston looked down at the solid disciplined ranks of Boise infantry, standing easy with the lower rims of their big curved oval shields resting on the ground. He raised his hand and then chopped it downward, and the signalers raised their tubae. The brass bellowed out the order ready ; the men picked up their shields by the central grips, each holding an extra heavy javelin there too. Their right hands hefted the first pila, the long iron shanks sloping forward.
Then: "Advance!"
Two thousand men stepped off, an audible thud through the hard ground as the hobnails struck. Ahead of them the Eagle standard swayed, carried by a man who wore a wolfskin over his helmet, and along the lines the upright hands on poles that marked the battalions.
"The game begins," Martin Thurston said. Then: "Courier!"
His brain was busy with distances and numbers and contingencies, but behind that was an image of his wife and the son just born to them.
My son, he thought. From sea to shining sea… and every bit of it will be yours!
TheScourgeofGod