Lord of Mountains: A Novel of the Change (29 page)

Rudi’s snarl widened. The Sword of the Prophet was a weapon that had been forged for war in the far interior, in what had once been Montana. Against light cavalry with little or no armor they were supremely effective because they were far more flexible than the Association’s knighthood, able to shift instantly from missile fire to shock action with disciplined precision, like Bearkiller A-Listers though not as heavily armed. They couldn’t be pecked to death by a lighter opponent, and they could hit very hard at need.

All that the Associate nobles of the north-realm could do was one thing, really. Charge home with the lance and finish the matter, smashing away toe-to-toe with sword and war hammer.

But they do that one thing very, very
well.
And here the Prophet’s men have no choice but to meet them on my chosen ground. Trying to match that one thing on its own terms.

Seconds now. He jammed his feet hard into the long stirrups, brought the lance fully down and couched the weighted butt tightly beneath his left arm, the pennant behind the point streaming and flapping and popping as he clamped his hand behind the shallow metal bowl of the guard on the shaft. The big horses were stretching their legs all-out now as the last hundred yards flashed by, fast as racing mounts when they had time to build their full shattering momentum.

Epona recognized the moment and gave it her last magnificent effort, drawing a little ahead despite the best efforts of the Protector’s Guard knights around Rudi and Mathilda.

A leveled spear faced him. His lance punched past it. Into and through a breastplate, with an impact that wrenched him out of a trance of concentration as the weight of man and armor and galloping horse on both sides all struck behind the point. His torso slammed back into the high chair-like cantle of the knight’s saddle, and harder still as the spear struck his own shield and glanced off it and bent him back. Epona stumbled for a single pace, and the Cutter went over his horse’s crupper with a violence that snapped the tough ashwood of the lance across and left him lying with four feet of it through his torso.

Rudi Mackenzie threw the broken stub aside and swept out the Sword
of the Lady. The action felt like perfection in his own mind. Diving into the crest of an ocean wave and flying landward, riding forces huge and terrible like a sea-otter tumbling fearless and utterly alive within the storm-surge. Epona turned beneath him as nimble as a colt, though her sides were heaving against the barding like a great bellows. He could see her eye rolling wild behind the wrought steel of the chamfron, and there was blood splashed across it.

“
Morrigú!
” he shrieked, and cut, and ruin fell away.

Black wings enfolded him, bore him up. He danced with them, amid clouds and lightnings…

Dust hid his surroundings, a cloud of it from tens of thousands of hooves. Time had passed; he knew that somehow. Knew that the chevaliers had ridden through the enemy line, and that three times out of four it had been an Easterner who went hurtling to the ground wounded or killed by the longer spear and the greater skill and the heavier armor. There were knights with him, and Matti, the Protector’s Guard and some of her
menie
. And not far away a clump of men in armor the color of dried blood, the Sword of the Prophet, grouped around a great banner of the rayed Sun.

And among them a man with a shaven head and a tuft of chin-beard. A man who had been young recently and now looked as if he’d watched the world cool from molten rock.

Sethaz.

Their eyes met.
That
was like a blow from a mace felt through armor; Epona threw up her head and neighed, and beside him Ignatius grunted and flung up his own sword. Time froze, thick as amber honey on a cold morning. He could see—

Bjarni Ironrede, King in Norrheim, corked his canteen. “Time, now, oath-brothers,” he called. “The shield-burg walks.”

Beside the Norrheimers the greater array of the Mackenzies were moving too. Each of them walked forward and pulled out their swine-feather. Those were two sections of ashwood a yard long that clipped together, one tipped by a narrow-bladed shovel and the other by a spearhead.
The archers twisted them free of the joining collars, slipped them into the loops beside their quivers, put an arrow on the string of their bows and went forward to the attack.

That meant hopping and scrambling over the litter of arrow-bristling corpses, men and horses both, that lay where the line of points had stalled them in the unmerciful killing ground of the longbows’ point-blank fire. Beyond that the bodies didn’t lie so often atop one another, but they nearly carpeted the ground in straggling lines where attacks had crested and fallen back like the surge of a retreating tide.

The scrim in front of the Norrheimers was more concentrated, where the CUT’s spearmen had piled up in front of the shield-wall and been stabbed and hacked to ruin with point and blade and swinging ax. They clambered over it, Bjarni watching where he put his feet and occasionally thrusting downward to put a foeman out of their pain. They hadn’t dared turn in against the Mackenzies, not while the living fortress of Norrheim had stood.

Beyond, the dead were scattered rather than piled on each other, and there was room for ordered lines. If enemy horse made a dash at the archers, his men would meet them.

“Swine-array!” he called.

Shield to shield, the Norrheimers fell into a blunt wedge like the head of a boar, ready to gore and crush and utterly destroy. His own banner went up at the point, the black raven with its AA blazon seeming to flap its wings on the triangular surface with its stiffening batten at the top edge and its fringe of tassels. His mother had made that banner in the days just after the Change with her own hands, and his father had carried it north through the wreckage of a dying world to the founding of Norrheim. Bjarni had won the throne beneath it at the Six Hills fight. The sun behind them threw the shadows of men and spears long on the ground before, monstrous and troll-like amid the hard stink of death.

It’s a long way to come to spill your blood on this dry ground
, he thought.

A bitter longing for the pine-scented breezes of the homeland seized him for a moment, and for the faces of his wife and daughter and the son who would take his first steps without him there to see. He shook it off,
shrugging his bear-like shoulders into the weight of his hauberk and the padding beneath, and working aching fingers on the grip of his shield and the hilt of his broadsword. Aloud he shouted in a bull bellow:

“The
trollkjerrings
of the CUT came to Norrheim with their army of wild-men and foreign reavers. Artos Mikesson aided us. With his might and main he fought for us, spilled his blood and that of his sworn men, when we did battle to defend our homes, our wives, our children and our land. Now we repay all our oaths!”

Another deep breath; he was a man of medium height but stocky-strong, and he could outshout the thunder like his friend Thor:

“
Forward, Norrheimer men!
”

To himself:

Without him Norrheim might not have survived, my hall would lie in ashes. And I would not be King. A man pays his debts, and only the lighter ones can be met with a golden arm-ring.

His followers were picked fighters from all the Norrheimer tribes, his own Bjornings, the Hrossings, Wulfings, Kalkings, Verdfolings, Hundings. He saw them stiffen and stride out when they heard his words, despite the long day’s weariness and the wounds many bore.

“Thor with me!” he shouted. “
Ho La, Odhinn!
”

Feet pounding, the Norrheimer array trotted towards the retreating enemy.

Lioncel de Stafford cursed and hauled at the half-conscious body of Sir Rodard where it lay with one leg under the body of his dying horse. There was an arrow through the chain-mail grommet under the knight’s left arm, and he shrieked feebly as the squire pulled. Blood rivuleted over the armor, but it was a risk of death against a certainty; there were still Cutters around, those willing to sell their lives for the chance to kill one last time. The dust settled a little, and he saw armored figures looming out of it; he almost sobbed with thankfulness as he saw that it was Lady d’Ath and Rigobert de Stafford and their
menies.
Less the dead and fallen, but those still in the saddle were the most of those who’d started.

“Sir Ivo, see to it,” the Grand Constable snapped.

Men dismounted and completed the task Lioncel had begun, their hands impersonally gentle as they pulled off armor and applied a pressure bandage; one took a hypodermic out of a boiled-leather tube and injected the fallen knight. Lioncel staggered back and bowed, then snatched up a canteen. Drinking the tinny-tasting water heavily laced with wine was the most pleasurable thing he’d ever done; he coughed some out, drank again and began to feel like a human being. He also felt the sting of sweat in minor cuts, the ache of bruises and a sharp pain in his side that
might
be a sprung rib or just a bone bruise. The brigandine would hold it either way, and he could breathe without coughing blood. A coolness in his hair made him realize that his helmet was gone, and he caught himself looking around for it before he realized it was probably lost forever and possibly trampled into scrap.

The Baron of Forest Grove looked around himself, at the bodies of horses and men and lone figures wandering or calling for comrades, lords, followers. More and more of them trickled in to the banners of the two nobles by the minute, some with more presence of mind than most leading strings of horses they’d gathered up, and dismounted men eagerly swung into the saddles. Sometimes they had to scrabble at it; vaulting into the saddle in full armor was one of the tests of knighthood, but that was when you were fresh and the horse knew you.

“What was that favorite expression of yours, my lady d’Ath?” Lioncel’s father said.

She seemed amused. “No, for once it
isn’t
a cluster-fuck, Rigobert. We’ve broken them; they were fools or desperate to try and meet us lance to lance, but it’s disorganized us as well, we’re all over the place. Hear that?”

The oliphants were screaming again, and kettledrums; Lioncel let the sound penetrate his mind, and suddenly it made sense:
Rally. Rally. Rally…

“Where’s the rest? Where’s the King?”

“Probably mostly within catapult-shot, once the dust settles, getting together catch-as-catch-can the way we are. And believe me, we’d know it if the King were down. Time to get this tidied up; the destriers can’t
push a pursuit anyway. Let
our
cowboys handle it, we just have to see off any remnants who feel like being heroic.”

Hands linked to make a step and helped Lioncel into the saddle of a horse, from the unfamiliar feel of the saddle an animal that had belonged to an enemy until a little while ago. The stirrups were slightly long but they would do, and the height and feeling of a willing horse beneath him immediately made the world seem more controllable. Then a stir went through the knights and men-at-arms, a growl like a satiated tiger threatened while lying-up on the body of its kill. A ragged band loomed up, in dark red-brown armor. A snarl rose as they hefted heavy shetes and plainsmen’s bows.

Rigobert laughed and let the steel haft of the war hammer in his right hand slope back over his shoulder. Lioncel’s liege smiled, a slight and terrible expression that showed teeth white against the dust and blood on her steel-framed face. She drew her sword, a delicately precise motion like a hummingbird drinking from a flower, and raised the blade to point as her followers and Rigobert’s settled their shields and knocked down visors.

“My name is Tiphaine d’Ath,” she said, in a voice that started out cool as water in a mountain brook.

Then it rose to an astonishing soprano lioness roar. “And…
you
…are…
in…my…way!
”

“We can’t hold them!” a voice bawled in Peter Jones’ ear. “It’s like trying to wrestle a mill-wheel with your bare hands!”

The commander of the Corvallis Field Force coughed and spat and wrestled his bent visor up. His body felt as if his blood had all been replaced with lead just on the point of melting.

Christ, fifty-five is too old for this.

He hacked up dust and spat phlegm mixed with blood from a cut where his mouth had been struck against his own teeth. With the visor out of the way, his first sight was of the butt of a glaive, coming far too close as the wielder drew it back and then slammed the heavy weapon forward. The Boise soldier just beyond couldn’t get his shield up in time
because two pikes were embedded in it and pushing hard, and the point of the blade crunched into his face just above the bridge of his nose with a sound that carried even over the roar of shouting and the clash of metal and trampling of thousands of feet.

More dust cut visibility to a few dozen yards, but all he could see anyway was a tangled heaving confusion; many of the first rank of pikemen had dropped their long weapons and were fighting with sword and buckler. And not doing very well at it, against men whose primary weapon was the gladius and shield. If it hadn’t been for the remaining pikes and glaives slamming forward over their shoulders…

“
U-S-A! U-S-A!
” the Boiseans barked.

You could feel the momentum in it, and they shoved forward in a stabbing, chopping mass.

“Hold them!” Jones shouted. “Just fucking
hold
them!”

But we can’t. Not for much longer.

Time began again. Sethaz smiled, and for an instant Rudi felt an almost irresistible impulse to slam his fists into his own face simply so that he wouldn’t have to see that expression for another second. Sethaz’ eyes blinked, and for that single moment the pupils were black and enormous, filling them from lid to lid, windows into an emptiness where matter had decayed to nothingness in a final squeal and even space itself grew tattered.

Then it passed, and they became almost human once more. The Prophet turned and spurred away with his followers behind him, their speed rocking up to a gallop.