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The pasture for three hundred yards in front of the Clansfolk bristled with goose feathers at the ends of cedarwood shafts, enough to give a silvery-gray sheen to the whole patch of land-save where bodies lay, or twitched and writhed, or tried to crawl back.
"Yeah, that was why I sent the infantry in first," Emiliano said. "They'll do to soak up arrows."
Jabar pulled his coif back up, fasting the mouth-protecting flap by the thongs to the brass studs riveted through the mail on the right side. His squire came up with a fresh lance as he lifted his helm and set it on his head.
Emiliano nodded and waved to the trumpeters; the long, curled instruments sang and screamed. His ba
Emiliano slapped down his visor. Hey, I wonder if I can get Mount Angel tacked on to Barony Dayton? Or at least a couple-dozen manors here. Young Julio is going to need an inheritance too.
The world turned into gray shadow, the eyeholes windows into a place narrowed to little more than the chamfron of his destrier. The big horse moved beneath him as he turned and reached out his hand for the lance that his squire thrust into his gauntlet. It had taken him years of practice before he could do anything more than knock himself out of the saddle with these things, and then more years to stay level with the young dickheads coming up who started with their first pimples: and it was time to mix it in.
Two days after the Change someone in the Lords had tried to move in on him with a fire-ax, figuring there weren't any rules anymore because guns didn't work. Emiliano had used a shovel on him, then cut his head off with the ax and hung it in a hairnet over the door. Guns, knives, chains, swords, lances: it was all a matter of your 'tude, how much of a pair you had.
He swung the point down. "Haro!" he shouted. "Haro, Dayton! Haro, Portland! Holy Mary for Portland!"
The answering roar of the men-at-arms came in like surf on a windy day.
Juniper licked dry lips. The earth shook beneath her as five hundred leveled lances came across the meadows, and the rain of arrows hadn't done more than slow it a little: two hundred yards: a hundred and seventy-five:
"Now!" she shouted, and the horns coughed and blatted.
Juniper turned and ran, the flag beside her. That was the easiest hard decision she'd ever made; when you saw that mass of armored men and barded horses coming at you behind the cruel spikes of the lanceheads, and thought what they and the pounding hooves could do to your own precious, irreplaceable self, you wanted to run away. Never mind that ru
Every Mackenzie did the same. A long surge of them swarmed over the fence, over the road, over the second fence and dashed past the swine-feathers, panting. And then they stopped and turned, each with bundles of arrows ready to their hands, most working their drawing-arms and shaking out the wrist for an instant before they reached down and picked up a shaft.
"That's a relief," she gasped, reaching for a shaft herself. "I was a bit worried they'd keep going."
The earth trembled, and the knights came up the slight rise on the other side of the road. Their plumes and lanceheads were bright against the thi
"On, brothers, on!" Abbot Dmwoski said.
He stood at the exit of the tu
An aide held the reins of his horse, though almost all Mount Angel's host would be on bicycles, save for a few messengers. And the ba
"Good boy, Sobieski, sooo, brave fellow," he crooned, stroking the big beast's arched neck; it was sweating, sensing the tension of the men about.
He swung into the saddle, armor clanking; each knight-brother slid his poleax into the carrier beside the rear wheel and bestrode his machine. The ba
Those who lined the streets were the first rank of the town and country militia, who would follow him. The second and third ranks-women, the old men, all commanded by the Sisters-would hold the town walls, and the Abbey. He didn't think the enemy could take the town, even so. He was absolutely certain they couldn't take the Abbey, but if he lost this force, there would be little left:
The faces of the men waiting to follow were tight and grim for the most part; they were fighting for their homes-for their families, the fields that they worked and the workshops where they labored, and for freedom in a most immediate and concrete sense.
And because they trust me, they follow me as I hazard everything on one throw of the dice. Lord who blessed the centurion, if Head these Thy people astray, let mine alone be the fault and mine the punishment. Give them victory, O Lord, I beseech You, he thought one last time. They fight for all that a man rightfully holds dear: for their women and children, for the graves of their fathers and for Your Church. Yet Thy will be done, not mine: for Thy judgments are just and righteous altogether.
Signing himself: Mary, pierced with sorrows, all those who fall today are born of woman. Mado
At the gate, the keepers waved to show the road was still clear and the enemy still in their camp to the north. He raised a steel gauntlet to give the signal. Within the blockhouse and towers, gears ratcheted as the portcullis and its mate went up. The i
As they did, one of the militiamen suddenly shouted, breaking the thick silence: "For Father Dmwoski! Jesu-Maria!"
As he rode out onto the drum-hollow boards of the drawbridge, the cry broke from twelve hundred throats: "Jesu-Maria!"
The first fence went over with a long crackling as the steel-clad chests of the barded destriers struck it. The boards meant to confine cows and sheep were little hindrance to the heavy horse, but it slowed them; here and there a mount went down, a brief shriek of man and beast under the pounding hooves. Then they struck the asphalt of the roadway, more slippery than bare ground beneath steel horseshoes.
It wasn't until they hit the second fence that even the first rank were really aware of what awaited them-and it wasn't the backs of the broken, fleeing rabble they expected to ride down and skewer like lumps of meat. Instead long steel points bristled towards their horses beyond the fence, and near nine hundred bows were drawn to the ear, at a range where shafts would smash through shield and armor. Despite the roaring clamor, a silence seemed to fall for an instant that stretched like winter taffy.