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Now we find out whether that idea of yours works, me girl, Hordle signed.
Don't remind me, Eilir replied with a shudder. I'll be so embarrassed if it doesn't.
No, love, you won't be embarrassed, not likely, Hordle answered, his usually good-natured face gone more sober.
She nodded unwillingly. The chances were that if it didn't work, she'd be too dead to be embarrassed, along with her kinfolk and friends and all their hopes.
Boom.
"Sound halt," Baron Emiliano said.
The curled trumpets screamed. The long column of men on bicycles clamped on their brakes, skidding to a halt and resting on one booted foot; they'd just turned east at what the old maps said was a Lutheran church and what looks said was a Catholic one now. The long, crunching rumble of the cavalry moving up on the graveled verges stopped a little more slowly. For a moment, the Marchwarden of the South idly thanked the monks for keeping the roadways in their territories so well; the surface was smooth, the potholes patched not just with gravel but fresh melted asphalt, and the fields on either side were neatly trimmed.
Silence fell, or as much silence as a force of twelve hundred men could make; even their breathing was a susurrus under the sough of the wind, shifting of horse hooves, snap of ba
Boom.
The sound was deep and resonant, even in the muffling dankness, traveling as if it would echo across miles.
Boom. Boom. Boom: boom-boom-boom -
The thudding continued, building to a continuous thudding crash. Beside him, Lord Jabar stirred in the saddle. "Drums," he said u
As to confirm his guess a raw, squealing drone started underneath the deep hammering, weaving around it with a sound at once jaunty and menacing; the war-pipes of the Clan.
"That's Mackenzies all right," Emiliano said with a grin. "But not close. From the sound, say two, three miles."
He started to raise his hand to shade his eyes, then stopped, feeling faintly foolish for a moment. For one thing it was very cloudy, for another he was wearing a new type of helmet, with a hinged visor like a pierced mask of flat steel. It was swung up at the moment, sticking out like the bill of a cap. Instead he glanced skyward, cocking his head as he judged where the bright patch was.
"Not ten o'clock yet," he said happily. "We got time."
Hails came from ahead, and he watched a figure approach at a canter. When he drew rein, it was one of Emiliano's own mounted scouts; the Pendleton cowboys weren't what you could call organized right now, though they were mad enough to get into a chewing match with a bear.
"Hey, my lord," the Association commander said to Jabar. "Remind me, next time we see the Grand Constable, if we hire any of those cow-country clowns next time, we put them under our officers. They make my old gangers look like fucking Marines."
The scout saluted. "My lord Marchwarden," he said. "We've located the enemy."
"How many, and where?" Emiliano asked, unfolding a map glued on stiff leather from his saddlebag; it was pleated accordion-style, and he held it open across the saddlebow.
The scout brought his horse close and sketched with a fingertip. "This road we're on, South Drake, it goes right east past the orchard where the cowboys got suckered this morning, till it hits Cascade Highway about three miles from here at this little town-town called Marquam. The town's empty, looks like the people ran for Mount Angel. Cascade Highway runs south from there, angling back west a bit too, down to Butte Creek, about a mile and a quarter. The Mackenzies and the cora-boys are there at the southern end-they've got their left anchored on the bridge there where Cascade Highway crosses the creek, Jacks Bridge, and then up the road north and east."
"How many? How close you get?"
"I got within long bowshot for better than ten minutes, and I had some of my boys over the road on the north for a while until the cora-boys ran them out. Nine hundred kilties more or less, my lord-that's the archers, and they're right along the road here, past these old school buildings. Another hundred, hundred and fifty with axes and spears in back of them, east of the road. Then the cora-boys on their right, north, about four hundred or maybe a little less now."
Emiliano looked at the map, then up to turn it into real fields and trees, then down again. "OK, I think they made a mistake," he said. "They get their peckers up after they take Piotr and underestimate us."
Jabar rumbled deep in his massive chest. "They got hills back of them."
"Yeah, but they're low and open. You gotta go, por Dios, ten miles east of there before you hit heavy forest. That right?"
The scout nodded. "I've ridden all the way to Missouri Ridge and beyond since we got here, my lord. It's five miles to the edge of cultivation and then another four, five to what I'd call real cover that would stop cavalry."
"There's no fucking road heading right back east from there, either," Emiliano said. "So they can't bike away from us. They fight us straight up, they got nowhere to run."
"Could be more of them," Jabar said. "That's how they got Piotr's ass in a crack, my lord. Suckered him into thinking they weren't as many as they really were."
"No, a thousand, maybe a little less or more, is all they got. My lord the Count, he's seen at least that many in Sutterdown and they only got two thousand five hundred total when they call out everyone for field service, tops. A thousand here, a thousand there, that just don't leave no more. These pandilleros, they're the First Levy, their best, but it's all they got."
Jabar looked over his shoulder, westward towards Mount Angel. "We don't have enough back at the base camp to stop a breakout."
"Yeah, but we can see troops coming down that switchback into town. We can't stop them, but we can sure see them. That'll take a while and we'd get the message. The monks aren't going to come out in the open where our cavalry can get at them."
Emiliano's own finger moved on the map. "We'll keep going east until we're just north of them, here." That was about another three miles. "Then we deploy facing south, cavalry on the left, stickers and shooters on the right, and move straight down at them." His finger slashed across the page.
"That means we've got this big orchard on our right and this other one on our left, with those woods along the creek," Jabar said. "Like a fu
Emiliano shrugged. "If we try to get fancy, they'll just fuck off again and leave us holding our dicks, maybe get behind us and get on our supply lines, maybe even raid our manors-they've done that before. We got the numbers, and we got the lancers, and even with those orchards and shit we got enough room there to get everyone into the fight. If they had a line of spearmen to hold off the knights, it'd be different, but they don't. We got eight hundred foot and five hundred heavy horse with us here. Let's use 'em."
Boom. Boom. Boom-boom-boom-boom:
The hammer of the huge Lambegs massed behind them was soul-shattering, which had been precisely the intent of her ancestors, when they made them echo over moors and down the glens; to break the heart of an enemy and then charge home with claymore and Lochaber ax to break his head. Juniper Mackenzie let them echo in hers, until they were like the beating of her own heart; even the green-and-silver silk fabric of the Clan's flag shivered in rhythm with the sound, like the tympanum of an ear.