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Piotr stared at him incredulously. "Retreat from a force smaller than our own? Knights and men-at-arms of the Association retreat from half-trained peons? And retreat when better than a third of them are women? Of course not! They think they can shoot at the spearmen in safety: but I have more than enough lancers to overrun them. Sound the advance."
The knight sighed and crossed himself, and spoke to the trumpeter. Piotr gri
The kilties got overconfident, he thought. I have them pi
Juniper Mackenzie gripped the rope between locked boots and in her gloved hands and stepped off the branch of the tree, letting Earth pull her homeward. The downward swoop took seconds, leaving her palms tingling-warm beneath the leather when she landed. Cynthia Carson was steadying the rope and waited tensely for the word; her face was a Gorgon mask of black and gold and scarlet behind the gauze mask of the war cloak, painted with the wolf-head emblem of her totem. Most of the younger Clan warriors painted their faces before a fight these days, despite Sam's grumbles that it reminded him too much of football hooligans back home:
"They're moving," Juniper said grimly. "Pass the word to be ready." "We're ready, Lady of the Clan," Cynthia Carson. "Ready and eager." She looked it; Cynthia was a tall, fair woman of twenty-eight who'd lost father and brother to the Protector's men in skirmish and raid over the years since the Change, and her blue eyes were as cold and grim as any wolf's. She followed Juniper forward, with the signaler and ba
A hundred lancers were a terrifying sight, and they looked a lot more imposing from ground level than from fifty feet up. Big men on big horses, steel and tossing plumes and blazons and the twinkling sharp-honed menace of the lanceheads above the colorful flutter of pe
Well, like them I might be heading for the Summerlands today, she told herself. And I've got less to worry about when I set to discussing my deeds with the Guides. Wait. Breathe in, breathe out. Ground and center, ground and center.
Even across double bowshot the begi
She filled her lungs and then shouted, her singer's voice filling the tense, waiting stillness of the woods: "At them, Mackenzies!"
With the word she dashed forward, the ba
The lancers were at full gallop now, but their line checked and wavered as they saw the trap sprung. Beside her she could hear Cynthia chanting under her breath.
"We are the point-we are the edge We are the wolves that Hecate fed!"
And the words ran up and down the line, louder and louder-.
"We are the point-we are the edge We are the wolves that Hecate fed!"
"On! On!" Piotr shouted, and thumped the trumpeter riding beside him with the flat of his shield to get the man's attention. They were at the point of a blunt wedge now, centered on the flag. "On! Charge!"
The trumpet sounded, without even a preliminary blat or squeak despite the ghastly surprise ahead. The lancers booted their horses back into a full gallop after that moment's involuntary check, realizing from years in the saddle that no matter how deadly the peril ahead was, stopping would be worse.
You couldn't stop a charging destrier quickly.
Doubly so with another man-at-arms galloping boot-to-boot on either side and another right behind you; there was just too much mass and momentum involved. Trying to do a full-stop in a tight formation of a hundred lances was asking for a disaster of collisions and fallen mounts and men crushed under ton-weights of rolling barded horse. It would take the better part of a hundred yards to halt the formation safely, and more time to turn around without blocking and fouling each other; at best they'd be stalled for a full minute under the deadly steel-and-cedarwood hail of the arrows. If they could just cover that two hundred yards ahead, the lightly armed archers would be helpless before their ironclad violence at close range. Piotr braced his feet in the stirrups and brought his shield up, covering the whole left side of his body between neck and knee; his lance jutted out over the chamfron spike that pounded up and down with the destrier's speed. Clods of earth flew head-high as the steel-shod hooves tore open the damp sod, the pe
"Haro!"
The air whistled "We are the point-we are the edge We are the wolves that Hecate fed!"
The foremost knight passed the split wand planted at precisely two hundred and fifty yards-planted with the i
Juniper let the string roll off the three gloved drawing fingers of her right hand. Eight hundred bowstrings struck the smooth hard leather of the bracers in a simultaneous crackle like some monstrous whip falling on rock. Over it rose the high, keening whistle of eight hundred shafts as they rose at a forty-five degree angle into the air, paused for an instant, then turned and plunged downward nearly as fast as they'd left the bows. Her hand was by her ear as she released; it went back to the quiver and snatched out a shaft, her movements smooth and economical with long practice. Even so several of the First Levy were ahead of her; sixteen hundred more of the bodkin-pointed lengths of cedar were in the air before the first struck, and more followed at a rate of two hundred each second. It would take the Protector's men-at-arms less than a minute to cross the beaten ground between them and the Mackenzie archers, but in that time ten thousand arrows would be aimed at one hundred men and horses.