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Nigel recovered, catching a spearpoint on his shield and then throwing the man behind it back by tucking his shoulder into the curve of it and pushing with all his weight. An ax flashed past him and broke a man's shoulder; he stabbed at another's face and gashed open a cheek. He panted to draw air into lungs that seemed stiff and dry and reluctant to move. The clamor around him was enormous, a white-noise cataract of screams and shouts, trampling, weapons beating dully on shields and with a harsh scrap-metal clangor on the steel bucklers of the Mackenzies, and now and then the dull thudding of edged metal ramming home in meat and bone.
He slid forward, hooked his heater-shaped shield inside a spearman's bigger kite-shaped one and heaved it aside with a twisting wrench of body and shoulder and arm. The man's eyes went wide with fear as he was dragged off-balance, and the spear in his right hand was far too long to strike at close quarters like this. The Englishman's longsword punched up under the Protectorate soldier's chin; the man convulsed as the long point rammed through his mouth and brainpan. Nigel grimaced as he yanked it free and bowled the man over, sending him backward to disrupt the others. Three more spearheads probed for him; he caught one on his shield, but the other two glanced off his breastplate and the fauld that protected his right thigh. The suit of plate wasn't invulnerable, but it gave him a terrible advantage.
The triple impact staggered him back; a spearman who tried to pursue lost the top right quarter of his shield to a two-handed swing from a Lochaber ax that sliced it the way a knife would a hard-boiled egg, and ducked back cursing.
And here we are, back where we started, he thought.
The noise of combat died down for an instant, as warriors stood and panted and glared at each other in one of those odd little momentary truces that broke out spontaneously in this kind of fighting; perhaps it was because nobody could keep up the effort needed for hand-to-hand combat for long without rest. Wounded on both sides crawled back behind the front lines, or hobbled or were dragged or carried by their comrades. Dead men lay sprawled, their blood making the asphalt slick underfoot. Nigel Loring controlled his breathing with an effort, dragging air down into the bottom of his lungs, holding it for an instant until they'd had a chance to get all the oxygen out of it. He didn't let himself bend over and wheeze-that was less efficient, and besides, it showed weakness. He'd been in his early forties when the Change occurred, and he was fifty-three now; most of the men facing him were two decades younger or more. No matter how fit you kept yourself, a little endurance drained away every year.
But age and treachery beat youth and strength, he told himself, snatching a mouthful of water from a canteen someone was passing around. Until they don't, at least.
He could hear officers and noncoms among the Protectorate spearmen shouting at them to get back at it, see them rearranging their lines and occasionally shoving men into place, or holding a spearshaft horizontally and straightening a line by pushing it against men's backs. That was another difference from war before the Change. Then battlefields had been empty, lonely places swept by fire. You were alone, or with a small knot of your comrades; usually the fallen didn't see the man who killed them, and you rarely had more than a fleeting glimpse of the target.
Now when you fought you did it shoulder-to-shoulder with your comrades, under your leaders' eyes, and close enough to see who you were killing-with spear and sword, close enough to look him in the eyes and smell his sweat and the garlic on his breath and see that flare of disbelief when he felt the bite of the steel.
Changes the whole mental dynamic, he thought with professional interest. Though some things -
The spearmen had been spitting on their hands and hefting their weapons, while the Mackenzies around him growled or cursed and tightened their grips on their own polearms. Then they froze, their heads turning to the east, Nigel's right and their left. Eyes went wide in shock, and the next yells were alarm and dismay, not war shouts.
– stay the same. Surprise, for instance, is a wonderful thing if you're not on the receiving end. Bless you, my fiance!
Piotr Stavarov could hear his men shouting Haro! Haro, Portland! as they walked towards the Mackenzies and their green horn-and-moons ba
This won't be too difficult. The Bearkiller A-listers are real fighters, but these kilties are just peasants in fancy dress.
The spearmen were in a compact block facing their Mackenzie equivalents; as he watched their weapons came down with a uniform snap and the big shields came up, the men crouching slightly. The rear ranks brought their own up, to present an overlapping surface like a snake's scales. To their right the crossbowmen spread out, their weapons spa
He heard Sir Ernaldo take a sharp breath as the fifty Mackenzie archers on the far right stood and raised their bows. He gave the man a sharp glance, but the flat, narrow-eyed olive face was impassive.
"That's long range," Piotr said. "Just a little under three hundred yards, I'd say."
"About that, my lord," Ernaldo said.
The front rank of his crossbowmen stopped and knelt just then; the second rank stood behind them. Both leveled their weapons just as the kilted warriors loosed their arrows. Faint and far he could hear the rushing sleet sound of the shafts, and then the deeper tu
Three more sleeting ripples fell on the crossbowmen before they were ready to fire again; they took their losses stolidly, closed ranks and kept shooting while the spearmen tramped forward. The archers had to keep their aim on the force that could hurt them from a distance, leaving no spare shafts to slow the advance to contact of the spearmen.
"Yes," Piotr murmured. "Excellent. Most excellent."
"My lord!" Ernaldo said sharply, grabbing at his armored arm and pointing.
Piotr bit back a curse as his head pivoted left; you had little peripheral vision with your helmet and mail coif on. More archers were appearing from the woods to the left of the road, seeming to spring from nowhere. One minute a fringe of brush and saplings stood still and empty; the next it writhed and sprouted armed Mackenzies, along with birds and a deer fleeing the sudden movement. His heart lurched, and then steadied as he studied the saw-toothed line the kilted warriors made.
"How many? A hundred? That many could have fooled the scouts; they're good at camouflage, from all I hear."
"Yes, my lord; about a hundred. Probably ninety-nine, they use a nine-man squad. Shall I sound the retreat? Our foot are going to be in range soon and the numbers are nearly equal now. We don't have any missile infantry on that side of the action, either. They can take the spearmen in defilade."