The High King of Montival: A Novel of the Change (29 page)

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Authors: S. M. Stirling

Tags: #Fiction - Science Fiction, #Alternative histories (Fiction), #American Science Fiction And Fantasy, #Alternative History, #General, #Regression (Civilization), #Science Fiction, #Science Fiction - General, #Dystopias, #Fiction

BOOK: The High King of Montival: A Novel of the Change
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Over the crest of the hill behind Astrid poured a stream of soldiers on bicycles, puffing as they pumped at the pedals in low climbing gear. Their leader was on horseback; he spurred over to the Grand Constable, then stood in his stirrups and waved to his command, about six hundred men. They skidded to a halt, laid their cycles on the kickstands and ran to deploy between the Portlanders and the smaller group of Dúnedain. One carried a red-white-and-blue flag on a tall pole; it streamed out in the cool breeze, showing . . . she blinked.
“Ah, they
did
make it,” Astrid said. “And in time, too, for a wonder. Thanks be to the Lord and Lady.”
“Hazards of coalition warfare . . . Is that a bloody
teapot
on their flag?” Alleyne asked. “Surrounded by seven stars? I call that cheek!”
Their eyes went immediately to their own banner; the silver tree on black, surmounted by the winged crown of the Sea-Kings and surrounded by seven stars also.
She fought down a stab of irritation, and went on: “It’s . . . yes, that’s Zillah’s banner. One of the Seven Free Cities of the Yakima League. Manwë and Varda alone know why they use a teapot. Wait, wait, there’s a famous building there
shaped
like a teapot. Quite an old building, as Men of these later ages count years. Tourists used to come and see it.”
“They’re rather out of the way there. Doubtless some story behind it originally.”
“Yes, they’re a little like the Marish beyond the Eastfarthing,” she said, running a soothing hand down the silky dapple neck of her horse, Arroach. “Full of odd notions and queer customs. I wouldn’t mind paying them a visit after the war. I understand it’s very pretty country, and the wine is certainly good.”
Astrid watched with interest as the infantry deployed; the Yakima valley’s prosperous but rather insular little cities—towns, by the old world’s standards—hadn’t come in her way much before. Their close-settled, intensively farmed irrigated countryside didn’t need the Rangers to put down bandits or beasts or guard caravans or convey messages and parcels through dangerous territory, and they were surrounded on all sides by Portlander fiefs anyway; they’d fought valiantly in the wars against the Association in Norman Arminger’s time. The troops were armored catch-as-catch-can, brigandines mostly, with mail shirts and some leather jackets sewn with washers; reasonable for infantry, though a bit old-fashioned except for the modern turtlelike sallet helms, which were probably recent issue and looked as if they’d been bought en masse from a Portlander arsenal, or someone else who had pneumatic presses.
About what you’d expect from a prosperous farmers’ militia.
The weapons were more standard, sixteen-foot breakdown pikes, glaives, and sword-and-buckler at their waists. There was a long rattling clatter as the two sections of each long polearm were fitted together in their metal collars, and then a shout as the pikemen raised them in unison. Suddenly what had been a collection of anxious tillers of the soil a long way from home was a bristling hedge of foot-long steel points each on an ashwood shaft more than twice a tall man’s height; the formation was six men deep and ninety wide. A bugle called, one of the type that high school marching bands had used before the Change.
“Pike points . . .
down
,” Alleyne murmured to himself, reading the notes.
Another shout, and the front four rows of pikes swung downward; the first two rows held underhand, the third at chest height, and the fourth overarm at shoulder height slanting down. That put four rows of overlapping steel points in front of the formation; the last two rows of pikemen held theirs upright, ready to step forward if a comrade before them in the file was struck down.
The rest of the Yakimans were armed with glaives or billhooks, six-foot shafts topped with heavy pointed single-edged blades, each with a vicious hook on the reverse side, capable of stabbing or yanking a horseman out of the saddle or a roundhouse chop. They formed up in columns to either side of the rectangle of pikes, making the formation like a thick I shape. The bugle beside the flag at the center blew again, and a quartet of snare drums beat:
rat-tat-tat-tat, rat-tat-tat-tat.
The soldiers began to mark time, marching in place; they counted cadence too,
heep-heep-heep
, but it took half a dozen paces before they were all keeping step.
“Not bad, for amateurs.” Alleyne chuckled and stroked a knuckle across his mustache, which was corn-yellow with the first few gray hairs hidden in it.
The long Portlander trumpets—the oliphants, a name she’d always liked—gave a high silvery scream, and the formation of men-at-arms swung behind the Zillah infantry, split into two, and began to deploy on either flank. The pennants on their tall lances flickered and fluttered out as the destriers paced into the wind from the north.
His smile grew a little cruel: “That Boisean commander is going to be a very unhappy fellow; he thought we were digging in to defend Walla-Walla.
And
he’ll be wishing he’d had his own men out on over-watch, not the Prophet’s.”
“We’d have killed them just the same,
bar melindo
,” she pointed out. “He wouldn’t have known a thing then, either.”
“Yes,” he drawled, sounding something a little more like
yaaaz
. “But
he
won’t believe that. They’re none of them very happy with each other in that alliance. Oft evil will—”
“—will evil mar,” Astrid said happily, and they grinned at each other.
Eilir and John Hordle came up with their troop. Hordle had his greatsword out, looking like a yardstick in his massive paw; there was blood on it, and on the side of his face and neck.
“Nothing,” he said to their questioning looks. “Just an arrowhead grazed me, loik. We got them going in the right direction, and I don’t think they’ll be back anytime soon.”
Eilir leaned over in the saddle to deal with it; Hordle swore mildly as she wiped away the blood with a square of cloth soaked in alcohol, then ripped open a package of glazed paper with her teeth and slapped the adhesive edges of the sterile bandage to the shallow slice-wound on his neck behind the ear, under the tail of his sallet.
“Glad I’m not ’
im
,” he grunted in Sindarin heavily accented with Hampshire yokel, nodding at the Boisean position. “Thanks, luv. You’ve got it corked.”
A final rattle came from behind them as a six-machine battery of catapults came up, and then rocked up to a gallop. The field artillery were Corvallan demi-scorpions, six-pounders on spoked rubber-tired wheels pulled by four strong cobby horses each, the type used by farmers who preferred them to oxen. Each machine had the scowling beaver’s-head blazon of that rich city-state painted on its shield in brown on an orange circle; those of the crew not riding on the teams were on mountain bikes. Astrid estimated heights, and her lips moved in a small smile.
“They can shoot over the pikemen with that slope to help,” she said. “And they can get into position to cover the whole ground between them and the earthwork of that marching fort. It’s really not a very good position; he should have stayed inside, even before he saw the infantry.”
“Boise’s commanders still tend to underestimate how dangerous heavy horse are,” Alleyne said. “Especially when you can’t get out of their way.”
Another bugle call and rattle of snare drums from the League’s levy, and they began to advance at the quickstep, a hundred and twenty paces to the minute, thirty inches to the pace. The honed edges of the pike heads caught the early sun in a continuous blinking ripple as the shafts flexed to the pounding half-trot, glittering as if on wind-ruffled water.
The Boisean commander evidently thought he’d made a mistake too; he looked over his shoulder as the fieldpieces slewed around. Their crews let the bicycles fall and sprang into action; one leading the horses back, two opening and spreading the legs of the trails behind the weapons, another attaching the armored hose to the outlet of the hydraulic jack built into the mount. The remaining four in each set up the pump, a rocker beam with handles on either side. Smoke rose as thick glass globes of napalm were set in the launching troughs and the gunners’ mates set their lighters to the wicks of oiled rope wrapped around them. Pale flame ran over the hemp. Faint with distance she heard the shouted orders of the battery commander:
“Elevation thirty—” Hands spun the aiming wheels and the troughs rose. “Ready . . . battery . . .
shoot
!”
Tunnnggg- whack!
Repeated six times, as the throwing arms slammed forward against the rubber-padded steel of the stops, driven by massive coiled springs taken from the suspensions of heavy trucks. The globes flew up the elevated launch troughs and on long arching trajectories, farther than granite or cast-iron round shot would have carried, though not as far as finned bolts. The Zillah men stayed steady, though some helmets turned as they followed the flight of burning globes overhead, for which she didn’t blame them. Astrid winced at what came next. Two landed short and cracked on the ground, sending sudden gouting tendrils of flame towards the Boisean soldiers.
“Brave men,” she admitted, as none of the Boiseans flinched, only hunched a little behind their shields as liquid fire spattered the surfaces. “Very brave men.”
Fire may not kill you more dead than steel, or even be more painful than a pike point through the kidney, but it’s harder to face somehow.
“Magnificent discipline,” Alleyne said.
“Got brass balls, that lot,” Hordle added; all of which meant much the same thing.
Ouch
, Eilir said in Sign.
The next two came down in the middle of the enemy formation, and shattered on upheld shields. There were only a few pints of liquid in each missile, but that was enough to spatter onto half a dozen men and run blazing under their armor. The stuff clung like glue, too.
Not even the Republic’s army had discipline enough to keep still under
that
; men rolled shrieking on the ground, until their comrades smothered the flames or gave them the mercy-stroke. Orderlies ran out through the gate to drag the wounded back, but the last two of the balls had slammed into the side members of the gateway itself. It was heavily built, but of green pine timber without the metal sheathing they would have added if they’d had a bit more time. The edges caught at once.
The battery’s pump teams had started swinging their levers madly as soon as the first volley lifted, and in twenty seconds the water had forced the bottle-jack plungers forward against the resistance of the springs, until the trigger mechanisms caught at full cock. Gunners adjusted the aiming screws as hands passed more globes from the limbers and fuses were lit. Then:
Tunnnggg- whack!
Tunnnggg- whack!
Tunnnggg- whack!
Tunnnggg- whack!
Tunnnggg- whack!
Tunnnggg- whack!
Another flight of napalm globes soared over the advancing pikemen; this time all six burst in and around the gateway and threw a savage orange barrier across it. The whole framework of the gate began to burn as well, crackling and sending flame licking up towards the watchtower above.
“Charge! Zillah forever!
” the commander of the pikemen roared, and pointed his sword forward.
The trumpets screamed, the snare drums sounded a long quick roll, and the pikemen broke into a pounding run behind their leveled weapons, shrieking wordlessly. Even with their tower burning beneath their feet the Boisean crews above the fort’s gate fired their two scorpions. Their deeper note sounded beneath the growing white roar of the fire, and two twelve-pound cast-iron shot streaked out at point-blank range. The Zillah commander was running forward beside his city’s banner when one of them smacked off his head in a spray of blood and fragments of hair and bone, and threw them and his helmet bounding behind the body that took two more steps and pitched forward. The other struck short, bounced and whipped forward at knee height, and an entire file of pikemen went down screaming as their legs snapped with a crackle like chicken bones in a dog’s jaws.
“Hooo-rah!
USA! USA!
Hooo-rah!”
The guttural shout sounded again. Three ranks of the Boisean soldiers cocked their six-foot javelins back and then threw in perfect unison. Fifty yards away the charging block of League pikemen had just enough time to hesitate before the missiles slanted down out of the air at them. Pikemen didn’t carry shields; they needed both hands for their unwieldy weapons. A hundred and twenty of the throwing-spears punched into their formation; about half of them hit rather than landing in earth or bouncing off pike shafts or glancing away from smooth pieces of metal, and men went down screaming as the hard narrow points punched through armor and flesh. Then another volley, and another.
It was a ragged line of pikes which rammed into the big shields of the Boisean troopers. But the Zillah men were still moving at a flat-out run, either brave enough to keep in mind that the way to get out from under a shower of spears was to close with the enemy as fast as they could, or simply too frenzied to think of anything but killing. The front ranks of the Boiseans snapped out their stabbing-swords and took the pikes on the faces of their shields or knocked them up, or hacked to cut the heads free from the shafts. Men ducked forward, shoving and pushing to get within reach of the Zillah pikemen. At arm’s length they would be helpless against the stabbing-swords held underarm for the gutting stroke, but in the meantime men were going down with pike points in the face or throat or belly.

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