The Pixilated Peeress

XI – A Sufficiency Of Slaughter

The Plain of Formi, a checkerboard of green and brown fields, stretched away to the range of hills that rose against the blue spring sky. The brown was that of lately plowed earth; the green that of newly sprouted crops. Across the plain the army of Ganeozzi, Duke of Aemilia, advanced in three phalanges of a battalion each.

Each phalanx was a hollow square of pikemen, twenty men on a side and, when up to full strength, three hun­dred soldiers plus officers. The officers marched inside the square along with drummers, buglers, and adju­tants. At each corner of the square marched a formation of crossbowmen. From a safe distance, peasants shouted curses at the damage to their crops.

Each phalanx tramped beneath a forest of pikes, held vertically with little flags on some of the pikes for the subordinate units. The sergeants of each of the four companies in the battalion marched outside the square with halberds over their shoulders. As sergeant of Al­pha Company, Thorolf Zigramson tramped in steel cui­rass and burganet on the extreme right of the formation, growling:

"Close up there!'" 'Pick up your feet!'" 'You're get­ting out of line!" "Watch the stones lest you trip!" "Sigman, your pike wobbles! Straighten up!"

A quarter-league ahead, the Brandescan Army lay on the rising ground of the saddle between two hills. At that distance it was merely a dark, formless mass, var­iegated by the banners rising at intervals and sending out little gleams of sun on armor. As the Aemilians neared, Thorolf could begin to make out the forms of individuals. Shouts of command and cheers came faintly across the diminishing distance, mingled with drum beats and bugle calls.

"Battalion, halt!" roared the major from the middle of the square. The underofficers and noncommissioned officers repeated: "Battalion, halt!" Bugle calls and drum beats reinforced the command.

The phalanx stumbled to a halt, with lurching and shoving. Pikes rattled as they struck one another with a clatter like that of storks' bills.

"Dress ranks!" cried the major. This command, too, was repeated. The sergeants bustled about, shouting and shoving to align their men. The colonel trotted by on his horse, followed by several mounted adjutants. He exchanged shouts with the majors commanding the three battalions.

Vulkop, the sergeant of Beta Company, also with hal­berd on shoulder, wandered around the corner of the phalanx to Thorolf. During a lull, Vulkop said softly: "I like it not, Thorolf." He jerked a thumb toward the Brandescan Army. " 'Tis said the foe have a mort of thunder tubes yonder, of a new and deadlier kind."

"One of those stone balls may strike down a few," said Thorolf, "but we shall be upon them long ere they can reload."

"I hear they shoot, not stones, but balls of iron," persisted Vulkop. "That makes these 'guns,' as they call them, nimbler and farther-reaching. I've warned the officers, but I might as well have bespoken the deaf."

"I, too, have told them we shall need a new plan of battle, to no avail," replied Thorolf. "The push of the pike, quotha, will ever rule the field. And where the devil's our cavalry?"

"Late as usual," snarled Vulkop, trotting back around the corner of the formation.

After an eternity of waiting, while officers conferred and noncoms nagged their men, the major commanded:

"Attention! Front rank, lower pikes!"

The pikes of the first rank came down to horizontal.

"Second rank, slant pikes!"

The pikemen behind those in front lowered their pikes to an angle of thirty degrees, holding so that they passed between the heads of the soldiers in front of them.

"Arbalesters, cock your weapons!"

The crossbowmen at the corners each placed the muzzle of his device on the ground and put a foot into the stirrup in the nose. They squatted, seized the bow­string in both hands, and bent the bow as they straight­ened up with a grunt and a heave.

"Prepare to charge!"

Thorolf pushed his way between the men to the inner side of the square. His r61e was to continue to com­mand and discipline the men from the inner side. If the enemy threatened to break into the square, he would stiffen the resistance with swings of his halberd.

Shouts arose from the phalanx. Out from the ends of the Brandescan line streamed squadrons of cavalry. As they neared, Thorolf saw from their baggy garments and turbans that they were Saracens, brandishing scim­itars, javelins, and bows. He had heard that Brandesco, weak in cavalry, had hired these foreign horsemen to make up the lack. Yelling, the Saracens galloped toward the Aemilian phalanxes.

"Hedgehog!" screamed the major. "Hedgehog! Hedgehog!" came the shouts of his subordinates.

The outermost ranks and files of the phalangites faced outward, knelt, and jammed the butts of their pikes into the soft earth. Behind them, the second ranks slanted their pikes as the second rank of the front had done before, thus presenting a spiky obstacle all the way round the formation.

The arbalesters at the corners discharged their cross­bows with a rattle of thuds. Although they could hardly miss at that range, they did no visible harm.

Along the Brandescan line, puffs of smoke bloomed to cauliflower shape. Half a heartbeat later came the crash of cannon fire. Cannon balls sailed overhead or plowed up the soft earth on either side. The men of the battalion set up a jeering outcry:

"Couldn't hit the side of a mountain!"

"Attention!" came the command. Again the pikes were raised to vertical, while the kneeling soldiers rose. Delay followed as officers conferred and sergeants cursed their men to get them lined up. The colonel and his adjutants galloped past, throwing up clods of mud. At last came the command:

"Prepare to charge!"

Along the Brandescan line in the nearer distance, Thorolf glimpsed men rushing about, swabbing out gun barrels and hefting iron balls and bags of powder.

"Charge!" yelled the major. "Charge! Charge!" cried the others.

The phalanx started forward at a trot. As the Bran­descan line came closer, the Saracens hovering out of crossbow range swept in again, whooping and yelling.

"Halt! Hedgehog!"

The men obeyed, more raggedly than the first time. Then the Brandescan cannon opened up again. Two balls plowed into Thorolf's phalanx, with a crash that mingled the crackle of shattering spears with the din of breaking men in armor. Pikes toppled; screams arose.

"Close up! Close up!" bellowed the sergeants.

"Attention! Prepare to charge! Charge!" came the commands.

Again the formation started forward, leaving the wounded and slain sprawled on the brown earth. Again came the Saracen charge, the hedgehog, and the cannon volley. Several cannon balls plowed into the formation; more pikes toppled. In addition, a crackle of handgun fire ran down the Brandescan line. Commands were drowned out by a rising chorus of screams and yells from the wounded. Sergeant Vulkop shouted in Thorolf's ear:

"Another volley like that and we shall be down to half our strength! The men are wavering!"

"Where's the major?"

"There he is, what's left!" Vulkop pointed to a head­less body in half-armor, lying with several others with­in the square. All the officers had fallen or disappeared.

The Saracens whirled past as the crossbowmen got their weapons cocked and let fly. Thorolf stumbled over a mess of spilled entrails. He told his two surviving fellow sergeants:

"There's something feigned about those Saracens. They shoot their arrows or cast their darts not; and our arbalesters' bolts go through them and their horses without harm."

"Sorcery!" said Sergeant Herminus.

"Aye; the Saracens are but an illusion cast by their wizards, to halt us in range of their tubes. If we can get the men moving again, one good charge, ignoring the illusions—"

"Too late!" said Vulkop. "Look yonder!" He pointed to the middle one of the three phalanxes. It was breaking up; men were leaving their shattered ranks and streaming back across the plain. Most of them dropped their pikes to move faster.

"And yonder!" said Herminus, pointing toward the Brandescan line, from the ends of which rode more cavalry. These were no phantom Saracens but armored lancers bearing the eagle flag of Brandesco on their lance tips.

Thorolf, tripping over a severed leg, hurried around the square, bellowing: "Get back in line! Get in line! Hold your posts, if you would not be stuck like pigs! It's your only chance!" Where a couple of men dropped their pikes and started off as the men of the other pha­lanxes were doing, he pushed through to the outside and drove the men back into ranks with blows of the shaft of his halberd.

By shouting himself hoarse and by blows and kicks, with the help of the other sergeants he got the surviving men back into a ragged hedgehog formation. A squad­ron of Brandescan lancers rode up, then sheered off from the hedge of pikes and galloped away across the plain after easier targets, the backs of the fleeing pha­langites. Then the Aemilian cavalry, long overdue, ap­peared; but at the sight of the two broken phalanxes they turned about and rode off, leaving the Brandescan riders to spear the fleeing foot until the plain was car­peted with bodies.

Thorolf's surviving phalanx tramped its way in a stolid square back across the plain, presenting a ready hedgehog of pikes every time a group of Brandescans came nigh. The walking wounded limped along inside the square. The more seriously stricken had perforce to be left to the mercy of the Brandescans.

Without planning to do so, Thorolf had fallen into command of his group by energy, brawn, and presence of mind. The other sergeants seemed willing to follow his lead.

Night had fallen when the group, down to fewer then two hundred, reached the village of Formi.

Under a sinking half-moon, Formi seemed curiously deserted; no villagers were in sight. Instead, a few men of the Aemilian army, many staggering drunk, moved about the streets, in which lay several bodies in peasant garb.

As Thorolf's battalion moved into the main street in column of fours, the rabble of soldiers moved aside. Some called out:

"Where in hell did you knaves come from? The bat­tle was lost, was it not?"

"Who are you?" asked Thorolf.

"Never mind who I am. I got away with a whole skin, which most of my comrades did not."

"Where are the villagers?"

"In hell or in hiding. When we slew a few who crossed us, the rest thought a little travel good for their health." The man giggled. "Help yourself to the lo­cals' wine; some is not bad. Otmar of the Third caught a pig the locals were not quick enough in getting away; the lads are roasting it."

"Where's the Duke?"

The soldier shrugged. "None hath seen him since the rout. Belike he galloped back to Fiensi with his gentle­men, to shut the gates against our comrades demanding their pay."

"What befell the wagon train, with our rations?"

"Gone on ahead, with the cavalry."

"Then is there aught to eat here?"

"A few loaves and the like in the houses, if the lads haven't eaten them all."

"Stupid oafs," muttered Sergeant Herminus. "Vet­erans know what to do with a village. Don't chase the villagers out; command them to stay and to feed and shelter you and allow you a go at their women, on the promise not to burn their town. There's nought like hunger to touch off a mass desertion."

Thorolf and the other sergeants agreed to divide the battalion, each to take his group to a different part of town to seek quarters, and then to reunite at sunrise.

Thorolf s men at last found a group of houses contain­ing only a couple of fugitive soldiers. The other troop­ers they tossed out and made do with the few provisions left in the peasants' larders. When a fight threatened over a cabbage, Thorolf grabbed the combatants and banged their heads together until they agreed to an eq­uitable division.

The houses of the more prosperous peasants were two-storey structures, the upper storey being the living quarters and the lower a barn for carts, implements, and livestock. The owners of these three houses had driven away their oxen, goats, and asses when they fled.

Thorolf had taken off his boots and, with two others, had lain down on the main bed when female shrieks came to his ears. Pulling on his boots and seizing his sword, he went out and scrambled down the outside stair to the street. The moon had set, but the feeble light from rooms in which lamps or candles burned en­abled him to see his way.

The sounds were coming from the house to the right of that which he and a score of other soldiers occupied. The main room on the second level shed candlelight.

Thorolf mounted the stair of this building, which he had assigned to another score of his soldiers. The door was open, and sound and motion came from within.

Thorolf stepped into the peasant's bed-sittingroom. The soldiers were crowded in the middle and did not notice Thorolf's arrival. He grasped a couple by the slack of their jackets and hauled them away from the ring. One snarled: "How now, thou whoreson—" but fell silent when he recognized Thorolf.

In the middle of the crowd, Thorolf now saw, a woman lay on her back on the floor, with her skirt and petticoat pulled up to her chin and four men holding her down, one on each limb. Her outcries were now muffled by a gag. A fifth man, kneeling upright be­tween her spread legs, had just pulled down his breeches, showing a lusty erection.

Thorolf pushed into the circle, grasped the man by his hair, hauled him erect, and dealt him a buffet that sent him falling backward over another soldier, one of the pair holding the woman's ankles.

"Let her go!" Thorolf roared.

"And who in hell be ye?" began the man holding the other ankle. Thorolf's boot caught him in the ribs and tumbled him over.

The men holding the woman's wrists let go and un­certainly got to their feet. The woman pulled out the gag, put down her skirt, and rose likewise.

"You bastards heard your orders!" said Thorolf. "No beating, robbing, or raping. Do you want the country­side hunting us down? Know you what peasants do to stragglers from a beaten army when they catch them? Skin them alive! The next offender shall be hanged—"

A fierce blow with a blade caught Thorolf on the side of the face. The blow staggered him, but he recovered his balance and whirled. The would-be rapist had pulled up his breeches, taken up a sword, and come at Thorolf from behind.

"That for thee, misbegotten swine!" shouted the man.

To escape another slash, Thorolf sprang back, bowl­ing over another trooper. Before the swordsman could close to finish him, Thorolf got his sword out. The blades clanged. Everyone yelled:

"Clear a space! Clear a space!" "That was a foul blow!" "Stop them, somebody!" "Why stop a good fight?" "Tenpence on the sergeant!" "I'll take Frinzl if ye'll give me odds!"

Back and forth, round and round went Sergeant Tho­rolf and Pikeman Frinzl, hacking and thrusting. At last Thorolf got a thrust home on Frinzl's arm. As the wounded arm sagged, Thorolf sent a full-armed lunge into Frinzl's chest. Frinzl, like nearly all the other sur­viving men of the First Battalion, had arrived in Formi wearing either a cuirass or a mailshirt over an acton; but Frinzl's defenses were piled in a corner of the room with others. Frinzl staggered back, coughed blood, and sagged to the floor.

"Anyone else?" said Thorolf to the suddenly quiet crowd, holding his sword with a drop of blood forming on the point. He knew that all they needed was a vig­orous leader to rouse them against him, and he would be pulled down and slain in a trice, like a stag by hounds or wolves. They would be furious at his spoiling their gang rape; but no leader spoke up.

"Then throw this carrion into the street, and the lot of you get out!" he continued, speaking with difficulty because of the gaping wound on his face.

The men shuffled out the door and down the stairs, two bearing the late Trooper Frinzl. Thorolf heard a mutter: "Damned bluenosed Zurshnitters hate to see anyone else having fun ..."

Thorolf turned to the woman, who shrank back. Now that he had a chance to view her more closely, she was young, quite comely, and just a trifle plump.

"How came they to catch you?" he asked in Tyrrhenian.

"I pray you, sir, I had lain down for a nap when the soldiers came. My parents fled with my brothers and sisters in such haste that they forgot to awaken me."

"How could your parents forget one of their own children?"

"I am the eldest of eight; so I ween they lost count. And now what, sir? Am I to be raped by you alone instead of by the whole battalion?"

"You shan't be raped at all, if I can prevent."

"Oh, thank you, sir. Meanst it that ye have lost your member in the wars?"

Thorolf gave a laugh that was half a gurgle because of the blood in his mouth. "Nay indeed. But this cut on my face begins to hurt abominably. Canst wash it and show me what it looks like?"

"Oh, yea, sir. Sit ye down here, and I'll wash it and sew it up."

She brought in a bronze mirror, which gave a wobbly image of Thorolf with a huge gash on his right cheek, through which some of his teeth could be glimpsed. Be­low it his face and garments were soaked with blood.

"This will hurt," she said.

"Go ahead," said Thorolf. "A soldier must expect such dolors. Ouch!"

While the stitching and the pains associated with it took nearly all of Thorolf's attention, he became aware that the young woman was silently weeping. When the last bit of thread had been tied, he took his mind off the ache long enough to say:

"Why weep you—and what is your name, by the way?"

"Ramola, sir."

"Very well, Ramola, why weep you? Your family seem to have gotten clean away, and you've been res­cued from a gang rape."

The tears trickled silently. "I do think on what will befall me, for now I shall never get a decent husband."

"How so?"

"No local swain will ever believe I was not flittered by the soldiers; and they are fussy about virgin brides, not­withstanding that they all go to the city to tup the whores. I see nought ahead but a short life of city whoredom."

"You want a husband, then?"

"Oh, certes, good sir. In Aemilia, a woman's nought without one."

Thorolf remained silent for a space, dabbing at his cheek with a cloth Ramola had given him. At last he said: "In good sooth, it happens that I need a wife. Would the post beguile you?"

"Why, sir, I never thought of wedding a foreigner. But in view of your acture tonight, ye cannot be all evil, even if a foreigner and a soldier. Suffer me to think on the matter. Think ye we should come to love each other, as do the luckiest couples?"

"Belike. There is but one way to find out."

"Whilst I think on the matter, that dried blood on your garments doth begin to stink. Let me wash them!"

A year after his departure from Rhaetia, when the last snow of spring was melting and dripping from eaves, Captain Thorolf Zigramson knocked on the door of Di­rector Berthar's chamber of office in the Zoological Park. When he entered, Berthar leaped up, crying:

"Thorolf! I feared you dead! What hath befallen? I see ye have a new scar."

Thorolf touched his right cheek, where the ridged purple-and-white scar showed above the edge of his beard. "No great matter; I lost no teeth, albeit I was bedded for a fortnight in the lazaretto at Fiensi by a fever. How about you?"

Berthar grinned. "I made the Board at last. Lust ye still after your professorship?"

"By Kemun's antlers, indeed I do! I've seen enough soldiering for a lifetime."

"What happened? I heard your Duke's forces were routed."

"So they were, and soundly. The Brandescans had a mort of Serican thunder tubes, or 'guns' as they call them nowadays. We were advancing by battalions in phalanx formation ..." Thorolf narrated the Battle of Formi. "I saw that this Saracen horse were but illusions cast by the Brandescans' wizards; but by then our for­mations were breaking up."

"I heard ye heroically saved the remnant of your bat­talion."

Thorolf shrugged. "After our officers had fallen, I saw no way to survive save an orderly retreat, and by shouting and beating with the flat I kept them in ranks and brought them off."

"Bravo! How didst keep your head in the confusion?"

"Simple logic. If a group of men afoot are assailed by horsemen, which gives them the better chance of survival: to present a steady line of pikes, or to flee, presenting their defenseless backs? That's why I am now captain. The Duke offered a colonelcy if I would stay, but I declined."

"Wherefore?"

"Not how I wish to spend my life."

"What next, then?" asked Berthar.

"The regulars will take me back with a captain's rank, now that old Gunthram has retired. I might ac­cept, if I get no academic appointment."

"Fear not for that post at Horgus!" cried Berthar. "Betwixt my advocacy and your war record, it's as cer­tain as the sun's rise. Tetricus is back and will help."

"Good; but I will rejoice when 'tis in my grasp. And how wags your world?"

"Excellent! My lady dragon hath egged, and all do eagerly await its hatch. My colleagues have accorded the mountain salamander the rank of species, which I have named Salamandra thorolfi in requital of your sav­ing me from those bravos."

Thorolf grinned. " 'Twill not make me as famous as Arnalt of Thessen; but 'tis earthly immortality of a sort."

Berthar unhooked a watch the size of his fist from his belt, held it up, and stared at its single hand, while it emitted an audible clank-clank, clank-clank. "Time to close shop. Wilt dine with us?"

"Gramercy; but where?"

"At my home. I'm wed again."

"So am I, to a Tyrrhenian lass. We're looking for quarters for us, our expected, and my father, who must vacate the palace for loss of the election."

"Fetch her along!"

An hour later, Thorolf knocked on the door of Berthar's house, with a stocky, black-haired young woman on his arm. As the door opened, Thorolf suppressed a gasp. Yvette, beautiful as ever, stood in the doorway, clad like a decent bourgeois housewife. Berthar loomed be­hind her, saying:

"'Thrice welcome, Thorolf. You know my wife."

"Ah—yea indeed," said Thorolf, turning to the woman beside him. "Darling, these are Doctor Berthar and his wife, Yvette of Grintz. I present my wife, Ramola of Formi."

"I am honor to know you," said Ramola in slow, heavily accented Rhaetian. "Excuse, please; I no speak you language much yet."

Dinner came, with all four acting circumspectly. Thorolf retold the tale of his campaign: "... and the sad thing was that Formi was burned down after all; some drunken soldiers upset a lamp. We heard about it in Fiensi."

Yvette asked: "Didst ever find any of those rascals who slew the old iatromagus?"

"A curious thing, that. A month after the battle, I sat in a mughouse in Parmiglia, when a blind beggar came up, feeling his way with a stick. I gave him a few pence, whereat he asked in a Carinthian accent if he might sit for a spell to rest his feet. Although his face was dreadfully scarred and pitted, there was something familiar about him. With a little prodding he told his tale.

"He'd soldiered for the Brandescans and had been set to mixing the devil-powder for their guns. Some­thing went awry; the stuff exploded in his face and de­stroyed his sight. He thought 'twas the gods' revenge for having slain an old magician not long before.

"When I asked if the magician was Bardi in Zursh­nitt and if his name was Offo, he gave a squawk of terror and made for the door, stumbling in his haste."

"Didst slay him as planned?" she asked.

Thorolf shrugged. "What good? The gods—if in fact 'twas gods and not blind chance—had punished him more cruelly than ever I could. So I finished the wine I'd bought him and let him go, tapping his way and muttering. Who am I to judge the gods' revenges?"

Afterward, Berthar took Ramola off on a tour of his terraria of frogs and salamanders, lecturing her in fluent Tyrrhenian. Yvette took Thorolf aside, saying:

"I knew nought of this. Art happy?"

"Within reason. And you? What of your country and your blue blood?"

"My expedition to Grintz collapsed like a ruptured bladder. Word came that Gondomar had died in some silly skirmish; the King of Carinthia appointed a new Duke of Landai and a new Count of Grintz. These raised powerful forces to resist my restoration. So my loyal subjects melted away like the snows of spring, and I faced the alternatives of marriage, whoredom, or star­vation. Oh, curse it all, if only I were not a woman and a little wisp of one at that! Were I a man with your thews, I'd get my title back, fear not!"

After a pause she continued: "I am sorry for Gon­domar in a way. He was not truly a wicked man—dull, pompous, and insistent on his own way, but not vicious like Parthenius. I suppose he did love after his fashion. I've wondered ..." She paused again.

"So," she resumed, "seeing no hope of resuming my rightful place, and with you away in Tyrrhenia ..." She spread her hands. "I like Berthar well enough. He's sweet-tempered, kind, and gentle, albeit he spends so much time with his stinking beasts and slimy reptiles that I see but little of him. Moreover, he's nearly old enough to be my sire; so his blood runs not so hotly as mine."

"Meaning he can no longer futter all night every night, eh?"

"Thorolf! Such language to a—but I forget I'm no longer a peeress."

"I've heard blunter from you."

"Yea, but that's the privilege of the nobly born. You commoners should use it only amongst yourselves, never to us of noble blood."

Thorolf smiled. "I'll essay to remember, your High­ness. Dost keep Berthar's house?"