Legacy (21 page)

But Sarnac had stopped listening after the words, "the events we're going to be witnessing." He had begun to wonder if he really wanted to witness what he knew must happen.

It was just past dawn when they set out for the north, a full
cuneus
of five hundred heavy cavalry with their grooms and other support types, leaving the village and its ghosts behind, and swinging to the east, out of sight of the Maine. The Artoriani kept up as good a pace as they could without wearing out their horses. Those horses were as much a part of Riothamus' striking force as the men, for they were a special breed that could carry heavily armored and equipped men, plus the hardened leather armor that protected their own forequarters. It wasn't really too grueling, although Tylar protested piteously, if only to stay in character.

Kai clucked about the inadequacy of Sarnac's armor and offered to finagle him something better, but Sarnac assured him that he was used to what he had. Then the column rounded a curve in the decaying Roman road, and the Saxons appeared.

Sarnac's first warning was the nerve-tearing series of war cries from the hillock the road curved around, followed immediately by a shower of throwing-axes, most of which clattered off hastily raised shields; only a few found their mark in human or equine flesh. A nearby horse reared and whinnied in pain, throwing their part of the column into confusion as the Saxons began bounding down the slope.

Kai turned his horse away, shouting the nearby men into formation. Sarnac drew his
spatha
, letting his implanted reflexes act for him. Tylar had vetoed any special embellishments for the straight, three and a half foot cavalry sword—blows glancing off a helmet or cloth armor could be attributed to luck, but boulders severed by a micromolecular-edged blade would have taken some explaining. Still, the weapon's balance and heft were good.

"Get back," he yelled at Tylar, who was already taking shelter behind the column, when the first Saxons appeared among the still-disorganized horsemen. They were the first live specimens Sarnac had seen—bareheaded, and clad in heavy cloth tunics and cross-gartered leggings except for a few leaders who had helmets and mail shirts, wielding the short
seax
that had given them their name. To Sarnac, it looked like a large Bowie knife. They rushed in, trying to get in under the riders' weapons and disembowel the horses. The Artoriani responded with practiced efficiency, reining their mounts aside and striking downward with their
spathas
.

A Saxon appeared just below Sarnac, holding aloft his shield. Sarnac got a glimpse of wild blue eyes and contorted ruddy features as he brought his
spatha
down, smashing the shield aside with an impact he could feel up through his right shoulder. Before the Saxon could return his shield to position, Sarnac's
spatha
whirled and bit, sundering the florid face. He looked around through the melee, spotting Riothamus up ahead, just around the bend where the attackers had probably hoped to isolate him. The High King turned his horse on its haunches, swinging his sword in powerful figure-eight sweeps that kept a ring of Saxons at bay.

Sarnac spurred his horse forward, just as a half-naked Saxon leaped down at him off the ridge to his right with a scream. Without thinking, Sarnac stood in his stirrups, grasped the
spatha
with both hands—it wasn't designed for it—and put all of his strength into a vertical slash that caught the Saxon across the abdomen in midair. He fell to the ground, squalling in agony and rolling about in the dust trailing ropes of gut until he vanished beneath the thundering hooves.

Sarnac spurred on toward Riothamus just as a throwing axe struck him in the side. The impact armor rigidified at the split second of impact, without interrupting the tunic's fold pattern. The axe spun away, dented. He caught sight of the Saxon who had hurled it. The man stood stock-still and openmouthed for an instant, until a horseman came up from behind and split his skull. Sarnac rode on, emerging from the press of struggling figures just in time to see a Saxon get in under Riothamus' guard, and deal his horse a vicious hamstringing cut.

Riothamus managed to roll free of the falling horse and was on his feet and fighting. Sarnac spurred his horse into a gallop and was suddenly among the High King's attackers, bowling over two who were coming up behind the High King, then bringing his
spatha
down on the helmet of one of the wealthy armored warriors. It glanced off, but the blow staggered the Saxon backward, exposing his throat. Sarnac brought the
spatha
around and thrust it into the man's head from under the lower jaw. It was primarily a slashing weapon, but it had more of a point than later medieval swords. That point continued inward until it scraped on the inside of the cranium. The Saxon died in the almost bloodless way of those killed instantly.

Sarnac had a moment to see Riothamus—now free of the worry of an attack from the rear—take on another Saxon noble. Their swords and shields met in a clinch. A quick movement by Riothamus sent both spinning around, and the High King, recovering first, brought his
spatha
around in a wide cut that sheared through mail and severed the Saxon's spine. This was nothing like sabre fencing; it was more like a crude
kendo
with shields, aimed at maximizing the force a human body could put behind a sword edge. Whatever you called it, Riothamus was obviously very good at it.

Then a wave front of the Artoriani reached them, riding down the fleeing Saxon survivors. On open ground, it was a slaughter, and as it swirled on past them, he and Riothamus were left among a scatter of Saxon bodies.

Matter-of-factly, Riothamus went to his feebly thrashing horse and administered the mercy stroke. For an instant the High King stood, head lowered, in a silence Sarnac was not about to break. Then he turned, his face as animated as ever. "Bedwyr, I'll thank you to lend me your horse—and I'll be thanking you for more later. I've seldom seen a man fight with greater courage!"

Yeah, and you've seldom seen a man with impact armor and a helmet of power-bonded iron,
Sarnac thought as he swung down and passed the bridle to the High King. He felt a strange depression that he recognized as combat reaction. Oddly, though, he felt no need to yield to the shakes. Later, maybe.

Riothamus rode off, leaving Sarnac alone for a moment. Then Tylar cantered up. "Well," the time traveller said briskly, "
that's
over! Strange—there weren't enough Saxons to have hoped to defeat this entire force. The attack was probably aimed at Riothamus personally. Clearly, the plan was to cut him off at the head of the column and kill him before his men could disentangle themselves from the melee and reach him." He shook his head. "Say what you will of the Saxons, they are not without bravery."

"Fine. Give 'em a medal and then kill 'em." Sarnac knew how surly he sounded but couldn't bring himself to care. Tylar gave him a quizzical look.

"You seem rather subdued, for someone who just made quite an impression. You should have seen the looks you were getting from some of the Artoriani."

"That's the problem, Tylar. It wasn't
me
! If they're going to make a hero out of anybody, it should be whoever made the technology that protected me and enabled me to do what I was doing."

"So you feel you were somehow cheating?"

"It just wasn't me," Sarnac repeated mulishly.

"But it was," Tylar replied gravely. "No implant made you ride to Riothamus' aid. I believe you would have done that with just as little hesitation if you'd had no special advantages at all. In fact, I'm quite certain of it."

Sarnac didn't see how he could be so certain, but he felt the sense of dissatisfaction ebb from his soul. Then the Artoriani began to return from their Saxon-killing in a great noisy crowd.

"Bedwyr!" Kai trotted his horse toward him, motioning a knot of his companions to follow. "There he is! Bedwyr, I was just telling the ones who didn't see it how you practically cut that damned Saxon in two as he leaped at you! Ha!" He suddenly looked puzzled. "But what was it you shouted as you fought? I couldn't understand it."

Oh, God, did I forget and say something in English? I can't recall. But, come to think of it, my throat
does
feel raw; I must have been screaming at the top of my lungs!

"Right," one of Kai's friends said. "I heard it too:
'Oh, shit!'
or something like that. What does it mean?"

"Er, it's the war cry of a tribe called the Vulgarians. I picked it up in the Balkans."

He was saved from further explanations by Riothamus' arrival, in a clatter of hooves and a storm of cheers. "Ah, Tertullian! God be praised, you're all right. I would have had to find another way to supply Sidonius with inspiration!" He gave his disarming smile and swung to the ground. "Bedwyr, here's your horse back. That loan was the least of the favors you've done me this day." He gripped Sarnac's arm and their eyes met.

"Riothamus, it was nothing," Sarnac began, feeling ridiculously inadequate. Not for the first time, he was aware of this man's indefinable vividness that always made whatever setting he was in seem just that—a setting for him.

"I'm thinking it was a deal more than nothing," Riothamus said in the British tongue, suddenly serious. Then he turned to Tylar and the smile was back, as was the Latin. "Tertullian, Bedwyr seems to be doing more guarding of me than of you, so let's make it official. I'll assign someone to you, if you'll let him join my personal guards. I think I want him near me at Angers. What say you, Bedwyr?"

Sarnac looked at Tylar, whose expression said "Well, after all, I can hardly refuse, my dear fellow!" as clearly as his voice could have, then at the circle of Artoriani that had formed around them, and then at Riothamus. And he heard himself speak, in words whose absolute rightness he knew with a certainty beyond mere knowledge.

"Aye . . .
Pan-Tarkan
."

Belatedly he realized what he had said and glanced around at the Artoriani, braced for he-knew-not-what reaction. But none came.

Kai, as usual, was grinning.

They hadn't needed to make cold camps since fording the Maine and coming into position north of Angers. A range of low hillocks shielded them from the Saxon siege lines, and the Saxons were too sloppy to patrol the area's outskirts—at least this was the unvarying experience of the Artoriani. But the ambush they had undergone had shaken their certainty, and they had maintained constant patrols of their own to take out any Saxon scouts.

But there had been no such scouts, and the Artoriani had settled in to await the word of Syagrius' approach. The word had finally come, by way of their own scouts, and their contacts among the local Andecavi, who had suffered at the hands of the Saxons since Odovacar and his brood had fastened their rule onto the lands south of the Loire estuary. So tomorrow morning they would ride to battle—but at least for now they had campfires to warm them against the waning summer's nighttime chill.

Sarnac walked among those campfires with Tylar, who was in full lecture mode. "Yes, the battle tomorrow will be most interesting; in fact, it may settle a vexed question concerning this period. You see, as a last resort the Saxons always fall back on the shield wall. And the lay of the land at Angers suggests that Riothamus will be faced with the task of charging
uphill
against such a shield wall. Shades of Hastings!"

"Hastings?" Sarnac blinked a couple of times. "Oh, yeah. Norman conquest of England. 1066. Who was it who said that was one of the two really memorable dates in history? It must be, if I remembered it!"

"What was the other one?" Tylar asked, interested.

"I don't remember," Sarnac admitted.

"Well, at any rate, you know that Hastings lies six hundred years in the future. And William the Bastard—whom flatterers will later rename William the Conqueror—will need indirect fire support by his archers to break
that
Saxon shield wall with his heavy cavalry. Admittedly, he will face a better shield wall than Riothamus will tomorrow. But Riothamus will have
no
archers, unless he waits for Syagrius to supply them; and attempting a rendezvous in the presence of the enemy is risky in any age. Yes, it will be most interesting to see how Riothamus handles this."

"I'll try to give you all the details—assuming that I don't take one of those Saxon throwing-axes in the face!"

"The probability of that is low enough to make the risk quite acceptable," Tylar said serenely.

I'm so glad
you
think it's acceptable!
Aloud: "Just don't joggle my elbow with too many questions via implant communicator. You'll have no way of knowing when I'm in a tight spot where distractions could be fatal."

"Understood." Tylar had an implant that was compatible with Sarnac's subdermal communications equipment. But they had intentionally limited their use of the capability—habitual dependence on it might have put them into hard-to-explain situations.

Their stroll carried them past a campfire surrounded by an exceptionally large number of Artoriani. "Old Hamyc must be holding forth," Tylar remarked.

"So he is. Let's listen; he tells some good stories."

Hamyc, like Kai, had a name of Iranian origin. But unlike Kai, his looks matched his name, with a dark, hawklike face and thick black brows, which grew together above his long, narrow hooked nose. He was in his fifties, and rated respect just for having had the competence, divine favor, or plain good luck to survive so many years of deadly warfare and deadlier medical attention. But his special status among the Artoriani went beyond that, for he was the hereditary storyteller. It was not an official position, but it was nonetheless real. He and his forefathers had preserved, among these almost uniformly illiterate men, an oral tradition that had enabled them to maintain their identity for centuries, on an island far indeed from the steppes.

And yet whenever he opened his mouth, Sarnac was reminded that he, like all of them, was by now more Celtic than anything else.