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"Hakkaa Paalle! Hakkaa Paalle!" And from the watching Bearkiller foot: "Hakkaa Paalle!"
"This is where it pays off," Havel muttered as he adjusted the focus of his field glasses. "Hack them down!"
Bearkiller A-listers could play armored lancer just as well as the Protectorate's knights: but they could also shoot as well as Mackenzies, and do it from a fast-moving horse, twelve times a minute, and actually hit what they were aiming at half the time-more, if it was a big target. Six heavy horses pulling a large-ish catapult with a twenty-man crew ru
Eric's scarlet crest showed as he stood in the stirrups and drew his bow to the ear. Havel's fingers tingled in sympathy, and his shoulders remembered the heavy, soft resistance. The arrow flickered out from his bow, covering the two hundred yards in a count of one: two: three:
The first of the draught-horses reared and screamed, immobilizing a team; the catapult's crew killed the thrashing animal with a poleax, cut it loose and dragged the rest of the team into motion again, ducking their heads and holding up shields as they pushed forward. Commendable courage; so was that of the crossbowmen off to their right, who stood and volleyed at the riders. An A-lister fell, and another collapsed limply across the withers of his horse. But arrows were falling in a continuous sleet on the catapults now as the A-listers dashed across their front from right to left, and the infantry right behind them were spearmen; the Bearkiller formation bent back into a moving oval of galloping horses, each horse-archer turning right to come around for another firing pass at the target.
"And Stavarov pulled his cavalry too far back to countercharge us," Signe said.
Havel noticed that the military apprentices-A-list understudies-were leaning forward, their ears practically flapping as they heard the leaders talking. Well, they were supposed to be learning:
"Yeah, it's paper-scissors-rock," he said, making the three gestures with his right hand. "Now, young Piotr, from what the spies say and what Will Hutton did to him last year up by the Crossing Tavern, he would have just barreled straight up the road at us, taking the losses to get stuck in. The catapults couldn't have killed enough to stop them."
"But charging straight in is all Piotr ever does," Signe pointed out.
"Even a stopped clock is right twice a day," Havel pointed out. "Whereas Alexi thinks things through: yup!"
Trumpets brayed among the Protector's forces. With a deep, uniform shout the block of spearmen rushed forward to shelter the catapults, shields up to form an overlapping shell. Arrows slammed into them, some standing quivering in the metal-faced plywood, tock-tock-tock; others punched through, wounding men even though their armor. But behind the shelter the crews of the catapults began to manhandle them around, frantically dragging away dead horses, driving the survivors out, wrestling the heavy steel frames and four-wheel bogies into position by sheer desperate effort.
The Bearkillers' own horns sounded. The A-listers reined around; suddenly they were all galloping away from the shield-wall protecting the enemy catapults, turning in the saddle to shoot behind Parthian-style while they were in range. The spearmen kept their shields up; as soon as the cavalry had galloped out of archery distance the Bearkiller fieldpieces started lofting roundshot and javelins over their heads-now at the conveniently massed spearmen protecting the catapults and their crews:
Metal smashed into metal. Some of the shot flew trailing smoke, and splashed into carpets of inextinguishable fire when they broke on shields. Men ran screaming when gobbets of the sticky flaming liquid ran under their armor, rolling and clawing at themselves as they burned to death; the rest of the spearmen gave back rapidly, not ru
Havel gave a long look and a nod, before he turned his head towards the center of the enemy formation. OK, our catapults cancel their catapults, he thought, as bolts and roundshot and fire began to fall around the Protector's machines.
Their crews were struggling to respond, and as he watched, the first ragged volley came back at the weapons that were punishing them so. The Protector's artillerymen could throw heavier weights, but Havel's fieldpieces were protected by the earth berms. All that was to his advantage; shot could break up the infantry and open the way for lancers, and subtracting it from the overall mix favored the Bearkiller defense.
Besides which, when didn't infantry wish the artillery would shoot at each other and leave everyone else alone? Now, what'll Alexi try next?
Around the enemy center files of horsemen were coming forward, walking their mounts through the paths between blocks of infantry. The footmen cheered the knights and men-at-arms, beating spear on shield and fist on buckler, a harsh drumming, booming roar. The horsemen tossed their lances in the air, some of them making their mounts rear and caracole, but that didn't stop them from forming up in a four-deep formation a hundred lances wide. The double-headed eagle and the Lidless Eye came to the front, and the lancers shook their weapons and shouted to see it.
"OK, now Alexis getting impatient too," he said. "Messenger: to Captain Sarducci. Concentrate on keeping the enemy catapults suppressed. Ignore the lancers unless they go for you, or you've got spare firepower or I command otherwise. Trumpets: formation stand to, and prepare to receive cavalry! "
The brass instruments screeched. The Bearkiller foot responded as if the notes were playing directly on their nervous systems, the front rank of the missile troops lying down and bringing crossbows to the ready, the second rank kneeling and aiming over their heads. And in the center, the sixteen-foot shafts of the pikes bristled skyward with a massed, grunting huah! as they were taken in both hands and raised to present-arms height. Ahead the destriers took a single step forward almost in unison. The riders' lances dipped, the barded horses tossing their heads and the curled trumpets toning and dunting.
Then an officer's voice among the Bearkiller infantry barked: "Pikepoints: down!"
A quick bristling ripple as the long poles dropped, presenting a row of knife-edged blades four deep.
"Prepare to receive cavalry!"
The front rank went down on one knee, jamming the butts of their pikes into the sod and bracing their left boots against them to make them even steadier, slanting the great spears out into a savage line of steel at precisely chest-high on a horse. The two ranks behind them held theirs with both hands at waist height; the fourth held theirs overarm, head-high. Behind them the two ranks of glaives stood ready:
Havel's head swiveled left and right. Go
"Captain Stevenson," he called to the commander of the block of polearms. "Countermarch your glaives out to either side. Back up the missile troops. I think their men-at-arms are going to overlap our pikes."
The rearmost file of glaives hefted their weapons, faced left and trotted out to stand behind the crossbowmen there. The next did exactly the same, but to the right. Havel could see a few helmets turn and show faces among the pike-men, visibly unhappy at having the backing of those two extra ranks taken away.