Chapter Fourteen

Near West Salem, Willamette Valley, Oregon

March 5th, 2008/Change Year 9

T he thunder of the knights filled the world as they charged, four hundred strong; Mike Havel could feel it through the soles of his boots, a shaking that quivered through soil and leather into his skin. The great hooves of the destriers pounded the soft turf into a chopped surface like a rough-plowed field, flinging clods and tufts of grass higher than the riders' helmets. Their eyes rolled behind the spiked steel chamfrons that covered their faces, and their nostrils were great red pits above the square yellow teeth that mouthed the bits and dripped foam. The lanceheads caught the noon sun with a quivering glitter, and the pennants snapped behind them-and every one looked as if it were heading for him.

He spat to clear his mouth of gummy saliva and the trace of blood still leaking from the inside of his cheek; the salt-iron taste of it was still on his lips. Facing a single lancer was one thing. Facing this avalanche of steel and flesh was entirely another. Around him the militia were still shrieking the war cry, or in some cases just plain shrieking. He knew some would be pissing or shitting themselves: and that some of those would fight no worse for it. This was the moment when pride and fear of shame before your neighbors and fear for your home warred with the elemental terror of torn flesh and cracked bone and ultimate, unendurable pain and the final blackness.

Closer. Closer. The pikepoints waited, wavering only as much as the tension of the muscles that held the long shafts could account for. Closer, and the enemy were up to a full, all-out gallop, which meant they were about to enter the killing ground. Watch for that piece of cracked asphalt that marked the three-hundred-yard mark "Shoot!" Mike Havel shouted.

Trumpets relayed the order-one low blat and a sustained high note. The great tunng of the steel bows releasing sounded an instant later, six hundred missiles lashing out on either side of the great block of pikes. The bolts flickered in swift, flat arcs. Noncoms screamed rapid fire, rapid fire, pour it on! as they reloaded themselves; a heavy clicking, ratcheting sound ran along the line as the militia pumped the levers of their crossbows. Some bolts missed. Many struck, the hard smacking sound of their impacts lost in the huge noise of the onset.

Men pitched back off their horses; horses fell, screaming and thrashing or sometimes limply silent, or ran out of control, bucking and lashing out at whatever had hurt them. The men-at-arms weren't tightly packed enough to pile into a mass of collisions, or there weren't enough horses down to produce one; a few mounts jumped over the fallen ahead of them, and more swerved skillfully under their riders' guidance, but that made the whole charging mass falter. More fell, and more; the bolts were a steady drumroll flicker, fast and hard:

"They're going to hit!" Signe called; she was still mounted, and had a better view. "Not enough down to stop them!"

The knights loomed above the infantry, looking as if they could ride down mountains. Glaring eyes stared at him on either side of the nasal bars of the conical Norman helmets:

"Hakkaa Paalle!"

"Haro, Portland!"

The onrush of the knights hesitated: and then began to slow, or split to either side. Havel let out a gasp he hadn't been aware of holding; horses wouldn't impale themselves on sharp pointy things, not if they could avoid it. They had more sense than human beings.

Some destriers skidded into the line of pikepoints, unable to stop in time or bolder than most or just fleeing the roweling spurs. The foot-long heads of the pikes sank deep, punching through hide and bone and even the steel peytral plates the destriers wore on their chests. A few ashwood shafts burst under the massive impact, sending splinters and whirling batons flying in all directions,. or cracked as flailing hooves milled in the air. More horses reared and stalled in front of the unbroken line, and the pikemen thrust in two-handed jabs at their bellies and heads, making the riders curse and wrench at the reins to keep them facing the foe. Knights tried to push their lances past the pikepoints, but infantry in the second and third ranks thrust at them. Men-at-arms dismounted when their mounts fell or fled, shoved and heaved forward, catching the points on their shields and cutting at the pike shafts with their swords, trying to push their way into the formation. But long lappets of steel stretched down the sides of the pikes below the heads to prevent precisely that, and showers of sparks showed where metal belled on metal.

Pikemen in the second and third and fourth ranks thrust at chests and faces, the polearms slamming back and forward like pistons. Bearkillers and Association men shoved and heaved and stabbed and hit, cursing and shouting or in sweat-dripping, gasping silence, or screamed in the sudden shock of pain beyond anything they had thought possible. The wounded crawled away, or lay moaning and crying for water or help or their mothers, until hooves or boots trampled across them and bone broke in a stamping urgency that saw bodies underfoot as only a menace to footing.

"Mike, left!" Signe called; her clear soprano cut through the white-noise rush of battle.

Havel looked, cursed and shouted: "Follow me!"

The knights had overlapped the block of pikemen there, some of them ramming into the crossbows. As he watched they spurred their mounts over the bodies of dead Bearkillers and turned to kill from behind, ready to burst the formation open. The seventy glaivesmen rushed after him, swinging like a great door, weapons extended-but a glaive was only six feet long.

"Hakkaa Paallel"

A man-at-arms stabbed down at him, lance held overarm. Havel ducked, and felt the ugly wind of the steel head punching by his face. He spun the glaive like a quarterstaff and it slammed into the lance, throwing the lighter weapon high, vibrating in the lancer's hands. Before he could recover, the Bearkiller leader stepped forward, swinging the glaive again, this time in a circle like a horizontal propeller, letting his hands slide down to the end. The broad, curved cutting edge of the head hit the horse's leg just above the knee. Edged metal went into muscle and then bone with an ugly, wet slap-crack, and a jolt that ran painfully up into his arms and shoulders.

The horse screamed, a deafening sound, rearing and falling in a kicking heap. The rider kicked his feet out of the stirrups, riding the fall down and landing on his feet with astonishing skill, shouting: "Runner! Runner!"

Probably the horse's name, Havel thought in a moment's astonishment.

Then the man was rushing at him, screeching: "Bastard!"

The Norman broadsword swung down at his head. Havel caught it on the thick hook welded to the back of the glaives blade, and let the impact pivot the heavy shaft around so that the metal-clad butt whipped at the man's face. He raised his shield and stopped it with a thud and hollow boom, but at the cost of blinding himself for a crucial instant. Havel kicked at the inside of his leg, just where hauberk and steel-splint shin-guard met, and the joint went side- ways in a manner not suited to the construction or nature of knees. The Association soldier shrieked between clenched teeth as he toppled over backward, and then nearly killed Havel with a hocking stroke as he fell. The Bearkiller managed to hop over it, testicles pulling up at the lethal hiss of steel just under his boot-soles; then he snapped the business end of the glaive down, and thrust with a grunt of effort and all the power of shoulders and torso behind it. The heavy point split the mail and gambeson and the breastbone beneath; a crunching and breaking and popping sensation ran back up the ashwood beneath his palms. Blood burst out of the dying man's mouth and nose, spraying Havel from the thighs down.

He planted a boot on the corpse and wrenched the weapon free. Not five yards from him a lancer killed a Bearkiller with a thrust to the throat, then went down with his hamstrung horse. Another was lashing around him with his sword, until two glaives darted in and caught their hooks in the chain mail of his hauberk and yanked him out of the saddle as if he'd run into bungee cords. The destrier ran free to the south, stirrups flopping and reins loose:

Havel skipped backward a half-dozen paces, his head whipping back and forth to try to gain some picture of what was happening. The block of glaives-men was stepping in, mingling with the other infantry as the last knights who'd gotten through the line died. On the right a hundred of the crossbows had pulled back into the soft ground, to where they sank ankle-deep; the lancers there had unwisely tried to follow them, and two score or better were in over their fetlocks, heaving and scrambling as the crossbow bolts flickered out at them at point-blank range. To his left the surviving missile troops were swinging farther forward, shooting into the stalled mass of horses and men in front of the line of pikes:

"Stevenson!" he shouted, trotting behind their backs, judging what he could see over their heads; the knights and men-at-arms were still trying to move forward, but they'd gotten tangled up good and proper. "Push of pike!"

The commander of the phalanx nodded, and shouted orders of his own.

The file-closers took it up: "Push of pike! One: two: three: step!"

The bristling mass of pikes took a uniform step forward, jabbing. "And step. And step!"

Then the curled trumpets wailed. A few of the horsemen were too transported to listen; they stayed, and died. The rest reined in, turning their destriers and spurring back towards the Association lines, with the deadly flicker of crossbow bolts pursuing them. The noise of battle faded with the drumroll of their hoof-beats, until individual shouts and screams could be heard; Havel cursed mildly to himself as he saw Alexi Stavarov's banner going back as it had come forward.

"Halt!" the pike commander cried.

In a story, Alexi and I would have ended up squaring off sword-to-sword, the Bear Lord thought, pausing to pant some air back into lungs that seemed too dry and tight, against the constriction of armor and padding. Suddenly he was aware that he'd picked up a cut on his left arm just below the sleeve of his hauberk, and that it stung like hell and was dribbling blood to join the sweat soaking his sleeve. Pity it doesn't usually work like that.

Signe led his horse over. He grounded the glaive point-down in the earth and mounted, grateful for the extra height. Stretcher parties and friends were helping the wounded back towards the ambulances and the aid station; he saw Aaron Rothman glare at him for a moment as he knelt beside one that couldn't be taken that far, then go back to his work.

"Casualties," he rasped, reaching for the canteen at his saddlebow.

"Eighty dead or as good as," Signe said. "One hundred thirty too badly wounded to fight. Let me see your arm."

"Well, shit," Havel said.

Christ Jesus, we lost over a fifth of our effectives in fifteen minutes – He checked his watch; it had actually been more like an hour. All right, an hour. It's barely noon. And we barely killed more of them than they did of us; we lost a lot of crossbows when they made that breakthrough. I can't afford to trade at that ratio.

"Messengers," he said. "To company commanders: consolidate to the right."

Which would leave a great big gap between the far left of his line and the artillery and the A-listers, but they had to do it; one in five of the people he'd had standing in the line to begin with were gone now. The line had to be shorter if it wasn't to be thinner, and it had been too thin to start with.

"To Lord Eric, close in on the infantry's left. Prisoners-I want prisoners, the men-at-arms as well as the knights. And to Dr. Rothman, get all the wounded who can be moved onto the railway and out of here."

Because we may not have time later, he thought grimly.

Squads ran out onto the field, checking for living enemies. Where they found them, they began dragging them back, in a few cases subduing those still showing fight with a flurry of well-placed kicks first.

"See that they get care," he said, looking back at the aid station.

"What's next?" Signe said, as they watched the formation shift rightward.

Havel pulled his binoculars out of their leather-lined steel case. Left, two of the catapults were out of commission, smashed, smoldering wreckage in their pits. Three of the enemy's were destroyed likewise, which meant they'd suffered proportionately more, and their unprotected crews had taken heavy losses. And Alexi Stavarov's banner was going along the front of the enemy formation; as he passed a cheer went up, guttural and savage. The cavalry were reforming behind the footmen. They looked as if they would be glad to try where their betters had failed: and they hadn't suffered much at all, yet.

"To Captain Sarducci, concentrate on the infantry as they advance-raking fire from the center of the enemy formation to the left. To Lord Eric, don't charge until you get the signal. Their cavalry is still in the game."

"What next?" Signe said, her horse stepping sideways as an auxiliary leading a mule loaded with panniers of crossbow bolts went by.

Havel kept his voice soft. "Next they send in their foot, and we see how good we are at a fighting retreat. We can't take another attack like that, and we didn't kill enough of them to rock them back on their heels. We'd have done better if they hadn't pulled back in time, but Alexi was too smart to keep them face-first in the meat grinder after we didn't break."

Signe nodded soberly, her eyes worried. Her voice was calm as she went on: "Report from the bridge-"


****

"They're burning!" Ken Larsson shouted.

"Keep down," his wife screamed in his ear.

She grabbed him by the collar of his hauberk and hauled him bodily from the box he'd been standing on for a better view. He staggered, windmilling his arms and trying to keep erect on the rough footing of the railroad track, then went to one knee. Bolts went snap-snap-snap through the air above. They might have missed, but then again, they might not. And hurled by the flywheel-powered throwers of the turtle boats:

As if to underline the point, a bolt flashing through the space above an engine on one of the railroad cars didn't miss. Larsson swallowed thickly as a loader's head disappeared in a spray of red mist, and the body toppled backward to land bonelessly limp. The helmet he'd been wearing spun away with a painful bwannggg harmonic, and landed like a flung Frisbee in the river a hundred yards south of the bridge.

But that one is burning, he thought, ducking for a better look through the slit between two of the metal shields.

The lead boat that had taken three of the napalm canisters at once had smoke pouring out of the ventilators and the eye-slits of the bridge. Suddenly hatches popped open and smoke billowed up in earnest, along with yellow-orange flames. A half-dozen men jumped out and threw themselves into the blue-gray water of the Willamette. The last two were burning; one more tried to crawl out and then fell back, and the boat drifted away northward in a fog of sooty smoke.

The war-engine crews along the railroad bridge gave a brief, savage cheer. A replacement for the luckless loader stepped up and grabbed the forged-steel bolt he had dropped. She slapped the giant metal arrow into the machine's trough; it was four feet of hard alloy, tipped with copper and with metal vanes like a real arrow's fletchings at the rear, as much like a tank's long-rod penetra-tor as he'd been able to manufacture with the machine tools he could salvage and rig to run by waterpower.

The engine traversed a little on its turntable, and then shot with a huge, almost musical crinkling. The bolt flashed out and struck almost before the thud of the throwing arms hitting rubber-sheathed metal sounded; the range was close now, no more than thirty yards. The ptink of its impact was so much like a BB hitting a soda can that it made him feel a little nostalgic, until he remembered what it must be like inside, with that fragment of high-velocity metal bouncing around in the dark. Two more struck, and one skidded off the curved plates but the other punched through as well. The turtle boat lost way and began to slip back northward, downstream, turning slowly as it drifted. When it came back under control it continued to retreat, moving slowly to avoid taking on water; those holes would let liquid fire in as easily as the river.

That left the rest. "Pour it on!" Ken shouted. "Let them have it!"

"Easier said than done," Pam noted grimly.

The boats were closer now. The snap-snap-snap of their dart throwers sounded again and again, and the dents they made in the shields were deeper; then one punched through in a shower of sparks and went ktinnng off a wheel of one of the railroad cars. Smoke-trails cut through the air north of the bridge, drifting backward along with the fumes from napalm burning on the water to make the air hot and acridly choking. Ken turned angrily when one of his engines paused overlong before firing. His mouth closed when it did fire, the canister catching a turtle boat just as the hatch was raised for a volley of bolts, cracking on the edge and sending its load of burning jellied gasoline shooting through the entrance with hideous perfection. Something inside caught as well, and in an instant flame shot out of every opening in the hull in white-hot jets.

Then the three remaining warcraft were too close to shoot at; the engines on the railcars could not depress far enough to bear on them. Ken and his escorts jumped up on the railcars themselves. A moment later a three-round volley of the darts came up from below, one of them smashing its way through the railway ties. The crews of the engines looked at each other:

"OK," Pamela shouted. "You two pump!"

She picked up what looked like a gun, connected to a metal tank by a hose. Two of the crew sprang to a plunger-pump and began to rock it back and forth.

Ken bit back: What do you think you're doing? His wife knew exactly what she was doing, and she was far more of a warrior than he.

His teeth were still on edge when she hopped casually off the railcar and looked down through the ties and the open framework of the railway bridge at the boats maneuvering below. Another snap-snap-snap came loud; Ken felt something hard smash into the floor of the car beneath his feet. Pamela's teeth showed in her lean face as she jammed the muzzle of the weapon down through the decking of the bridge and pulled the triggers set into the handgrips. One opened the valve, and a stream of amber-colored fluid as thick as a man's thumb began to jet down into the girders and open space below, scattering into a mist of droplets. A second later the other worked a spark-wheel set at the end of the long metal tube.

Whooosh!

The liquid stream turned into a banner of fire; smoke and hot air shot upward around the woman's feet. Ken blinked and rubbed his single eye, then peered over the edge of the car. One of the remaining turtle boats was burning itself, held by the current against a bridge pier. The others turned and started northward, white foam showing at their sterns where the propellers churned at maximum power.

"Many good-byes, you sons of bitches!" he roared after them.

Exultation brought a flush to his face as Pamela carefully raised the flamethrower and plunged the muzzle into a big metal tub of water lashed to the side of the railcar. The crews broke into cheering as well, hopping up and down and hammering each other on the back.

"Well, what are you waiting for?" Ken said. "You going to let them get away?"

They dove back to the throwing engines. Ken hopped back to the deck of the bridge. Two of Pamela's A-lister guards saluted him; he eyed them with some surprise. Not that the Outfit's elite had ever treated him with anything but respect; he was the bossman's father-in-law, and Eric's father, and Pamela's husband, for that matter. He'd been there from the beginning, when Mike Havel's Piper Chieftain crashed into a river in Idaho's Selway-Bitterroot National Wilderness, and the long trek back to Oregon started. That was myth and legend now, and equivalent to having relatives on the Mayflower.

But those salutes were a little different:

"What?" he said to them. "It was Pamela who toasted that boat."

They grinned back at him; both were young men. "But you designed the stuff and built it and commanded this action, Lord Ken," one of them said.

"So: " the other continued, and they both saluted again.

He shook his head in wonderment, then looked up sharply at a hammer of hooves on the westward end of the bridge. A military apprentice was there; the youngster's horse didn't want to come onto the bridge, with its uncertain footing and stink of chemicals and hot metal and burning, for which he didn't blame it. Instead Larsson walked over, noticing that the hauberk was starting to get seriously unpleasant.

"Yes?" he said. Uh-oh. That's a serious-news face, if I've ever seen one.

"My lord, the Lord Bear's compliments, and get your teams hitched."

"We lost?" Ken said sharply, looking over to his right. The battlefield wasn't visible from here, but they'd heard some noise.

"No, my lord. We beat off their attack and sent them running. Lord Bear says that you should remember the words of: " She hesitated, frowning over the unfamiliar syllables. "Phyross of Ipi-something?"

"Pyrrhos of Epiros," he said. "Thank you: message acknowledged, will prepare for departure."

He turned, thinking through the orders necessary to get his railcars headed south once more; he might not be a soldier, but scheduling was something he was good at.

One of the A-listers who'd saluted him said: "Pyrrhos? Who's that, Lord Ken?"

"A Greek general who fought the Romans," he said, which apparently satisfied the man's curiosity.

And who's most famous for beating a Roman army at hideous cost and then exclaiming: "Another victory like this, and we're ruined!"

His eyes went east over the river. His daughter Astrid was there, and good friends, and they were fighting the Protector's men too.

There are just too damned many of them! Damn Corvallis anyway. Can't they see that if we go down, they're next?

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