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She let her eyes blur a little out of focus then; you didn't need to see every detail when you were shooting at a massed target. The screams were bad enough, and the horses more pitiable than the men, for they were brought unwilling to the field of war without understanding why their flesh must be torn and pierced.
"Heads up!" Cynthia shouted in her ear.
A lancer had broken through the hideous tangle of thrashing horses and dying men. An arrow dangled from the nostril of his horse, and it was wild with terror, ru
The ba
She lay paralyzed, struggling to draw in another breath. Cynthia Carson had been behind her; she spun aside from the lance-point and smashed the boss of her buckler into the horse's injured nose with dreadful precision. The same motion brought her around again and she plunged twelve inches of her short-sword into the horse's belly just behind the saddle at the junction of body and haunch, where no bone protected the body cavity. The animal screamed like a woman in childbirth, stu
Juniper forced her lungs to work, drawing in a shaky, shallow first breath, and then another. The spike of pain in her stomach was almost welcome, after the first numbness. She blinked her eyes clear, and saw that the remnants of the men-at-arms were in full retreat, some on foot, more falling with shafts in their backs as she watched. The arrowstorm ceased as the last of them moved out of range; the spearmen had retreated in a solid phalanx, covered by their overlapping shields. Here and there along the Mackenzie line at the edge of the forest a scrimmage rippled where a lancer had reached the Clan's position. Dozens swarmed each one under, working together like wolves pulling down an elk. From the rest came a cry directed at the Protector's men, high and mocking and shrill.
Juniper wheezed and forced herself to her knees, groping for her bow and then leaning on it as she came to her feet. A clanking sounded as Nigel Loring ran up, moving as lightly as a man in ru
"Are you all right, my dear?" he asked.
Juniper nodded. "Just: winded: " she managed to gasp.
"You're wounded!" he said.
A knot of men followed him, the broad blades of the Lochaber axes glistening-wet and slinging sprays of red drops as they dipped and jostled above the heads of the ru
"Just a scratch," she said. "We'd better-"
She looked around for her signaler. Sam Aylward came trotting up, mounted and leading their horses. She caught his eye.
"Sound the retreat," she called.
The boy with the ox-horn trumpet put it to his lips and blew, a droning and snarling combination of rising and falling notes. The Mackenzies turned in their tracks and trotted away, eeling back through the dense brush and into the woods, scrambling upward; their bicycles were on the other side of the ridge. Juniper gratefully accepted Nigel's helpful lift into the saddle.
"Now let's see what they do next," she said.
Nigel Loring nodded, smiling. The warmth of his regard melted a little of the cold control she must keep; it was good to feel his straightforward happiness at seeing her whole, and to know her own matched it.
"It's a judgment on them," he said.
"Judgment, Nigel?" Juniper asked, neck-reining her horse about.
"A judgment for their choice in historical models," Nigel went on, waving northward across the grassy field. "When a man establishes a military force, and then decides to base it not just on the medieval nobility, but on the medieval French nobility: well, really, now: "
Unwillingly, Juniper's mouth quirked. Aylward's laughter sounded like sword on shield as they spurred their mounts into motion.
Conrad Renfrew's horse was panting beneath him like a great bellows between his knees as he reined in; he'd ridden it hard and fast up the road, only to arrive when the battle was over. Gray-faced with pain, Lord Piotr lay propped against a saddle while a surgeon worked on the arrow that transfixed his sword-side shoulder. The wound was a simple in-and-out with a narrow bodkin point, though serious enough; it bled when the shaft was withdrawn, but with none of the arterial pumping that told of death, and from the way he worked his hand it hadn't even crippled him by cutting tendons or nerves.
Unfortunately, Renfrew thought, grimly silent for a moment as the man bit back a shriek as the disinfectant was poured in.
Then he dismounted and knelt beside a man far more gravely wounded. There was a froth of blood on Sir Ernaldo's lips as he gave the Protector's commander an account.
When he stood again, his experienced eyes confirmed what the dying man had said. There was a fringe of bodies along the road and up to the point where it ran between the two hills, but the infantry had come off fairly lightly-no more than a score of dead, and twice that seriously injured. It was the great mass of dead horseflesh and armored bodies lying like a windrow across the meadow to the west of the road that made him breathe quick and hard, panting like his horse as soldiers and laborers dragged men free, laying out the dead and bringing the wounded back on stretchers to where the doctors worked beside the supply wagons.
Spearmen and crossbowmen could be recruited easily enough, there were always more volunteers from the ranks of the tenant farmers than they could use. You could train a spearman in a few months, if he had guts and strong arms; it took only a little more to turn out a decent crossbowman. Skilled men-at-arms took years, and their mounts almost as long, years of effort and sweat and expense:
He walked to his horse and hung the serrated mace thonged from his wrist on his saddlebow, to put temptation beyond reach. Then he looked down at Lord Piotr Stavarov and ground out: "You fool. You cretin. You complete fuckup. You shit-for-brains. You-"
"My lord!" The young nobleman struggled to his feet, ignoring the clucking of the medic. "My lord Count, you ca
"You: no, shit has some use. You're worthless even as fertilizer!"
The bystanders were backing away; the Grand Constable of the Association had a reputation for icy control, and his flushed face and snarling voice were shocking.
"My lord," Stavarov said, drawing himself up. "I: I admit we've suffered heavy losses, but we can inform the Lord Protector that we did drive the enemy from the field. What would you have me do?"
Renfrew struck with the leather-covered palm of his hand, not his ironclad fist, but the blow still sent Piotr spi