Lord of Mountains: A Novel of the Change (30 page)

“No!” Rudi said sharply, at the rattle of gear behind him.

Mathilda looked a question, pausing as she drew her sword.

“There’s more urgent work to hand,” Rudi said grimly. “Get me the Grand Constable.”

She wasn’t far away; the dust was subsiding, and the falling sun turned it into a mist of gold out of which she and her knights loomed. For a moment they were like figures in a tapestry in a castle solar, until the reality of blood and sweat-stink and battering showed.

“Your Majesty, we have a victory,” she said, bringing her sword up to salute.

There was fresh blood on it. Rudi was spattered all along his left side, and further. He glanced at the Sword of the Lady, and blinked slightly to see it shining as if fresh from an armorer’s care…though in fact it never needed to be polished or sharpened that he’d been able to detect, even when it had just slammed through metal armor. Nothing clung to it, either.

Unlike my hands
, he thought with grim amusement, feeling the sticky salt that soaked his gauntlet and jelled against the callused skin.

The feel of the whole battle flowed through him, a balance of forces like two huge beasts grappling through a thousand tentacles and jaws.

“We have a budding disaster on our hands too,” Rudi said briskly. “The Boiseans are pushing home an attack with all they have left on the Corvallans south of here and they’re close to breaking through, breaking the line between the Bearkillers and the regiments from the Free Cities.”

He raised the Sword a little as an answer to the question he saw in their eyes, though it was a bit more complex than that.

“That doesn’t make any sense!” Mathilda said; at the madness of it, not the manner by which he’d gotten the information. “They can’t win now, that’ll just put them in the bag! They should be
retreating
.”

Tiphaine nodded—she’d been one of the military tutors who’d taught both of them and the logic was irrefutable—but Rudi shook his head.

“It makes perfect sense from Sethaz’ point of view; it means he can get more of
his
forces out, because I cannot order a general pursuit until the Boiseans are dealt with. And the army of the United States of Boise has shown itself most unreliable today…from his point of view. Better to sacrifice them to preserve men he
can
count on. And to kill as many of ours as he may, to weaken us.”

“It’s suicide for the Boisean forces,” Tiphaine observed neutrally. “If I were Martin Thurston…”

For all the blood and flecks of hair and brains that coated half her armor, her voice still had that cool impersonal observer’s tone. She might have been discussing a battle fought centuries ago.

“Martin Thurston’s mind has not been his own for some time now,” Rudi said. “D’Ath, I need thirty or forty
conroi
of lancers; more if you can, but that number at least and quickly. Get them together from whatever’s to hand; don’t stop to match vassal with liege if they’re separated. Strip the barding from the destriers, cut the buckles and let it lie. We need to move
fast
. Matti, you’ll be with me. Rigobert, I’m leaving you in charge here.”

He extended his left arm and swung it slowly from left to right.

“If the Prophet is leaving us a prize we can’t refuse, we’ll take as big a bite of it as we can. You swing in like this with the rest of the men-at-arms as soon as you can get them organized again. Probably
some
of the Boisean commanders will disregard orders and retreat as fast as they can, but we’ll put those who don’t into the bag. Use the men-at-arms for the outer tip, and the Association foot for the rest of it. Our light horse can press what’s left of Sethaz’ cavalry. More will get away than I’d hoped, but we need to deal with this.”

D’Ath had been rapping out orders while he spoke to the Baron of Forest Grove, and her
menie
had already dissolved into a mass of messengers, directed at the first clumps of knights and men-at-arms to hand. The nearest were already turning and cantering towards the High King’s standard.

“Now we
ride
.”

Epona’s breath was harsh; foam coated her forequarters and spattered on his leg-armor, the smell heavier than the blood drying on his armor. Downslope with the setting sun a huge disk of red behind him he could see the standards of seven or eight battalions of Boise infantry, but the ranks were inextricably mixed, and they were more like clumps than precise formations as they heaved against the thinning line of Corvallans.

Knots of men stumbled and hacked and stabbed, and a circular hedge of pikes held out around the wreck of two field-pieces with crossbowmen standing and shooting from the tumbled machines. The war cries were croaks and grunting now, but the hard rattling clatter of steel on wood and leather and steel still sounded, and the dull pounding of boots on soil moistened by the blood of the corpses that almost covered the ground.

“Get my people out,” Peter Jones wheezed.

An aide was supporting him; one leg was a mass of red from the knee down, with bone fragments showing pink-white. A medic was trying to administer morphine, but the man waved it away, despite the sweat of pain that was washing blood and dust in rivulets down his stubbled face.

“We held them as long as we could.”

“You held long enough,” Rudi said.

Frederick Thurston’s face was stark-grim as he watched. “He’s thrown away two or three thousand men killed or crippled,” he said bitterly. “That’s the Sixth in the center, they were always closest to him; he served with them as a junior officer and they backed him when…he did it. And now he’s
murdered
them. Them,
too
.”

Rudi nodded, showing teeth in what was not a smile.
War is waste. This is madness and futility and waste thrice compounded.

He turned and looked behind him. There were the better part of seven hundred lancers there; a few score less than he’d started with, less the ones who’d dropped out with foundered horses along the way. Many of them had managed to snatch up fresh lances, and they were in front. Behind were the others with their swords and war hammers ready. The shields were mostly ragged from blows, and the armor dinted and dimpled; the bright colors of heraldic devices scored and broken.

“Edain,” Rudi said.

The commander of his guards was red-faced; bicycles could outrun horses in the long run, not the short, and the distance from here to the northern end of the Montivalan line was just on the cusp between the two. He was streaming with sweat, and so were his followers, but they were all there—less those wounded or killed during the day’s fighting.

“I’m taking the men-at-arms in. You follow on our flanks. We’ve reinforcements moving here as fast as they can, but we’ll have to rock that madman back first. Get the Archers in on either side and give the enemy more pinfeathers than a goose. It’ll be tricky shooting but if anyone can, it’s your lads and lasses.”

“Aye, Chief,” he said, his gray eyes steady; he knew Rudi was accepting
a high risk of friendly fire as a cost of doing business in a crisis. “It’ll be done.”

Rudi turned and raised the Sword. Tired as they were, the men behind him growled at the sight. He could feel their anger, colder than the first flush of exultation that had carried them into the great charge that broke the Prophet’s guardsmen, and all the more dangerous for that. He was one with the battlefield, and with the ones fighting on it.

“One last charge, gentlemen and chevaliers. One last charge and we carry the day. Upon the enemy—
Haro!
”

“
Haro!
” crashed back at him. “Haro, Portland! Holy Mary for Portland!”

“Will you follow me, men of the Association?”

“
Artos and Montival!
Death…death…
death!
”

He brought the Sword off his shoulder and slanted it forward. A clump of the surviving Corvallan signalers were gathered around them; they started to sound
retreat at speed
. Down the slope men tired beyond bearing still heard the familiar notes. The more so as it finally gave them permission to do what everything but sheer willpower and the stubborn pride of their disciplined valor had been screaming for hours: run. Apart from the knot around the field-pieces every Corvallan still fit to move threw down their weapons and took to their heels, most dashing to either side where formed units still held out, a few directly to the rear.

Some of those kept coming, heedless and witless at last as they let panic take them. When they saw the mass of lancers, more swerved or threw themselves down and buried their heads between their knees with their arms wrapped around their heads, trusting to their armor and luck and babbled prayers. The oliphants screamed their high silver shriek once more.

Tired horses stumbled into a trot and then a canter and then a shambling gallop. Epona’s nostrils were red pits and slobber coated her neck as her lungs foamed out, but she drew ahead of the others stride by stride. The Boiseans were lumbering forward rather than pursuing, near the ultimate tipping-point of exhaustion themselves; probably only the fact that their minds were clubbed half-unconscious by fatigue kept them
going. He could see one man making mechanical thrusts one after another at opponents no longer there. Pride and reflex drove them on, until they realized what was coming down the low slope at them.

Even then clumps of them came together and overlapped their shields instead of running, but their spears were gone, and there was nothing to make a hedge of points. Even destriers wouldn’t impale themselves, but they were trained from colthood to run at straw figures of men with shields. The rough wedge struck, lance-points and rearing smashing hooves, a multi-ton mass ripping into the scattered footmen.

Rudi slashed. The Sword of the Lady cut through the staff of the Sixth Battalion’s flag standard. A man picked up the six-foot stub of it and threw it at him as if it were a javelin; he caught it on his shield and slammed the mass away. Epona’s forehooves flashed out, and something broke where they struck. A
snap
went through Rudi, clicking his teeth together. Then she leapt off her haunches once more, with something of her old strength and grace.

Rudi shouted, raising the Sword again, and men began casting down their weapons or turning to run, or simply falling to their knees with the blank beaten expressions of those pushed beyond all human endurance. One stood, wolf-snarling at him. He snatched up a fallen pila and threw. Rudi knew that pure arch even as it left the Boisean’s hand; it had the cold inevitability of certainty. All he could do was drop his shield and pull his feet out of the stirrups as the sharp steel thudded into the base of Epona’s neck.

The labored grace of her charge turned into a wheeling fall. Momentum threw him clear of the saddle, and he was turning through the air; then the ground hit him in the back and side, hard enough to stun through the armor. Men were running at him, the hard core who wanted revenge more than a chance to get away, or who’d adopted the Prophet’s faith. The Sword was still in his hand, and it seemed to pull him up even while his lungs were straining to take the first breath as he came to one knee. A man raised a spear above him before he regained his feet, but something flicked between them; then he was falling backward with a cloth yard shaft in his throat, coughing out a gout of blood past an expression of agonized astonishment.

Men died in a sleet of arrowshafts that punched right through hoop armor and shields. An instant later only one was on his feet, a dark man in armor that had the distinctive sheen of high-strength alloys. His eyes were pools of blackness as he poised his blade.

Rudi rose, and the Sword of the Lady drove forward. There was a crisp popping sensation up the hilt, Martin Thurston jerked to a stop with Rudi’s sword-hand only an inch from his breastbone and two feet of not-steel jutting out shining furnace-bright from his back.

The dying man’s eyes flared open. Everything fled from them except pain and the knowledge of death. Rudi came fully upright and grabbed him under the arm, ready to ease him down and pull the Sword free and let the lifeblood out to end his suffering. That put their faces close together for an instant, and even then Rudi was conscious of his astonishment as the other man spoke in a breathy whisper that sent red bubbles swelling and popping on his lips.

“Thank…you…”

The eyes lost their focus on Rudi, and the voice went thinner:

“Juliet…Larry…I’m sorry. Dad.”

Mathilda was kneeling beside him when he came to himself. Rudi was vaguely conscious of voices—Fred Thurston’s, taking a surrender; Tiphaine d’Ath tongue-lashing some nobleman into granting quarter. It was all distant as he touched Epona’s neck. She snorted very quietly and rolled her eye towards him, but her head only left the ground for an instant as she recognized him. There was a blind questioning in the glance, as if she asked him what kept her from rising to her feet and carrying him once more and what he meant to do about it.

“Goodbye, girl,” he said. “I’m—”

She gave a final sigh and he felt the huge muscles of her neck go slack. Then he let the tears flow from beneath clenched eyelids. Matti’s hand closed on his shoulder, more sensed than felt through the steel.

“Rudi, I’m so sorry,” she said gently. “She was with you so long.”

“She…”

A wail escaped him, the high Mackenzie keening for the dead. He
throttled it off before it could take him into the full rhythmic surge of grief.

Instead he rose dry-eyed, though his Clan didn’t account tears shameful in a man.

“I am the King,” he said to Matti’s glance of concern. “And there is King’s work yet to do this day.”

He raised his voice: “Signal to the balloons, transmit to all units:
general pursuit!
”

The flames of the funeral pyre burned hot, so hot that there was little scent save a darkness that curled in the throat with each indrawn breath; it was most of a rough barge of Douglas fir wood made for the campaign, broken up like many others this night to serve a final need and stacked in a lattice of timbers stuffed with brush for kindling. The resin-soaked wood exploded upward and the wind carried the tower of red-gold southeastward, towards the river far below, sparks like stars in the gathering dark. More pyres starred the edge of the waters, for a mile and more downstream; the contingents would bring the ashes of their fallen home to rest among their own.