The Gods Return (33 page)

"Your highness, that's pointlessly dangerous!" Attaper said. "Nobody doubts your courage,
nobody
. Unless you distrust your officers to bring you an accurate information, you'll gain nothing from this."

"I'm going, Attaper," Garric said, grasping the horn and crupper of the horse he'd appropriated. He mounted. By now he could probably have made a smooth business of it without his ancestor's reflexes.

A squad of Blood Eagles rode up, each trooper holding the reins of two or more additional horses. Carus, watching through Garric's eyes, said, "
Attaper knew he couldn't argue you out of it, so he made sure he'd have a platoon ready to go too
."

After a moment he added with a mixture of amusement and regret, "
I never had anybody who'd fight me as hard as Attaper does you, lad. I'd have taken their heads off if they tried. Which was all right as far as it went, but it meant people with good sense made sure to keep shy of me
."

A trooper had saddled Waldron's mount while he was scribbling out orders to his subordinates. Tossing the last tablet to a runner, the army commander swung into the saddle. Checking the four troops waiting in neat columns—and the skirmishers who weren't in the least neat but were certainly ready—Waldron snapped to his trumpeter, "Sound the advance!"

The trumpet call and the horns of the line troops—the Sandrakkan unit used a cow horn which sounded harsh and thin in comparison the brass instruments curling around the bodies of the Ornifal cornicenes—set the patrol into motion. Garric's borrowed horse stepped off even before he tapped its ribs with his right heel.

"
A trained soldier obeys commands in his sleep
," Carus said. "
Likewise a trooper's trained mount
."

He sounded wistful. Perhaps the ghost was remembering the time when he too needed sleep.

Lord Waldron rode with the leading troop; so did the squad which had brought the alarm. It'd been remounted, and at least one of the replacement horses was clearly unhappy with his present rider.

Garric smiled faintly. He was sorry for the trooper, but he was very glad that he hadn't borrowed a skittish mount himself. Prince Garric could've ordered somebody else to trade with him—but he wouldn't have.

They trotted into woodland, a mixture of sweet gum and pine that must've sprung up from land that'd been clear within the past generation. The edge of the woods had been a mass of cedars sown too thickly to be of any size. The returning scouts had ridden the trees down as they approached the camp, providing easy entry for the Waldron's troop and the rest of the column.

The forest proper was open enough that the cavalry had little difficulty beyond having to break ranks. The skirmishers hadn't seen any point in ranks to begin with. Here among the tree boles they were the equal of cavalry man for man, and the cheerful way they trotted among the troopers showed that they were well aware of the fact.

Waldron shouted something to a man riding with him, a member of the squad that'd brought the warning. That fellow reined back slightly so that the Blood Eagles just ahead of Garric overtook him.

"Let him through, Attaper!" Garric shouted. "I want to learn about the terrain ahead!"

The Blood Eagles parted, but Attaper himself dropped back with the line trooper. The man was Bresca, the squad leader who'd delivered the message. He leaned toward Garric as they rode along together and said, "It's the next valley and it's mostly cow pasture, sir. There's apple orchards on the north slopes, though, so they won't bloom till it's full spring and they can't catch frost. We'll come out through the apples. The l'tenant, he said he'd keep this side of the crest and not push unless, you know, he had to."

There were challenges and less formal shouts from close ahead. The instinct of King Carus slapped Garric's hand to the hilt of his sword. He drew the long gray blade, either forged by wizardry or by a smith as skilled as Ilna was in her different craft. There didn't seem to be anything magical about the sword, but you couldn't dull its edge even by slashing rock.

"That's the l'tenant, sir!" said Bresca. He hadn't learned that 'your highness' was the correct form of address when speaking to a prince. It wasn't something that line soldiers often had to worry about, of course. "We're up with the rest of the troop!"

"Hold up!" a cavalryman shouted. "Pass it back, hold up!" The call wobbled through the woods, each man turning in the saddle to send it on to those behind him.

"
Waldron isn't using the horns because the rats are just over the hill
," Carus noted with grim approval. "
They'll have spotted the scout troop unless rats are stone blind, but horn calls will tell them to expect more company."

He paused, then added, "
I could've used more officers like Waldron
."

Garric joined Waldron and an officer he didn't think he'd met—

"
You have
," snapped Carus. History claimed Carus had known the name of every man in his army. From what Garric had experienced in the years that his mind had been haunted by his ancient ancestor, history hadn't exaggerated very much. "
Monner, of course
."

—along with the four troop leaders of the reaction force, and a grizzled fellow with a silk sash over his goat-wool tunic—the commander of the skirmishers. Though on foot and as old as Waldron, he'd kept up with the trotting horsemen.

"Your highness," Waldron said with a bare nod to royal authority. "Monner's been keeping watch. The enemy's scattered through the valley, rounding up the livestock. The horse will charge the length of the valley in line so that the rats don't have a chance to form ranks, with Ainbor here's—"

He gestured with his left hand to the skirmishers' commander. There was no love lost between cavalry and light infantry, but Waldron had always used the latter intelligently.

"—men following to mop up those we don't kill in the first pass."

The ghost in Garric's mind gave a curt nod of approval.

"Carry on, milord," Garric said. He managed a smile to show that his approval was more than formal.

The troop leaders trotted toward their guidons, snarling orders as they tried to align their men despite the broken forest. Waldron spoke quietly to the trumpeter; he nodded, holding his instrument ready.

Garric's blood trembled with anticipation of the coming battle. He started to draw his long sword. Attaper touched his elbow.

"No, your highness," he said. "You're not wearing armor, and you'll see
nothing
beyond the point of your sword if you rush down into a melee. If you're an honorable man, you'll watch from the brow of the hill."

"
The bloody man's right!
" snarled Carus. "
But by the Lady! if it was me
—"

Which fortunately it wasn't, as Carus knew as well as his descendent did.

"Yes, of course, Attaper," Garric said mildly. "We'll find a suitable vantage point. Though I reserve the right to defend myself if the rats attack me."

Attaper looked startled, then nodded agreement and removed his hand from Garric's arm. He wasn't a man who could laugh about his duties as a bodyguard.

The trumpeter sounded Advance, followed instantly by the horns of the cornicenes; they'd been waiting for the signal. The reinforced squadron, about a hundred and fifty troopers, trotted up the last of the rise and over it.

"
Not a man of them but thinks they could do the job themselves without any infantry
," Carus said. "
I'd think the same. But speaking as a commander, I'm just as glad of those javelins. If the rats keep their heads and hamstring the horses . . . and who knows how good troops rats turn out to be?
"

You and I are going to know in a few minutes
, thought Garric as he clucked his horse over the crest.
Which is why we're here
.

The trumpeter signaled Charge. Again, the horns echoed him—four deep, mellow calls and the blat on the cow horn. The Ornifal cavalrymen had their long swords drawn; on the right of the line, the Sandrakkan troop couched short lances that were light enough to have thrown if they'd been facing a shield wall.

The troopers started downhill, disarrayed at first by the apple trees but not slowed. The javelin men whooped and began loping along after them.

Garric and his guards trotted through the orchard. Beyond spread a broad valley several miles long, with a right dogleg extending it unguessibly farther. Instead of individual homesteads, there'd been a hamlet straggling along both banks of the stream in the middle.

A neck-roped coffle of the human residents, fifty or sixty of them, was almost out of sight to the southeast. A score of ratmen guarded the prisoners. Hundreds more of the creatures were scattered by tens and handfuls throughout the valley, rounding up brindled cattle.

The horn signals had drawn the narrow muzzles of all the ratmen toward the northwest slope down which the cavalry charged. Lord Waldron was in the center of the line; Ornifal's golden lion on a red field flapped above the standard bearer to his left.

The rats were the size of short humans and wore bronze caps and breastplates. They stopped what they'd been doing and drew short swords, then began to trot forward to meet the attack.

The nearest clot of ratmen was only two furlongs south of the apple trees through which the cavalry rode. They were directly in front of Lieutenant Monner's troop, but the Sandrakkan unit on the far right of the line was edging over to snatch the kill. Lord Waldron stood in his stirrups screaming abuse at the lancers, and King Carus' hot rage snatched the sword from Garric's scabbard before intellect could restrain him.

Nobody seemed to notice. Garric grinned faintly. Drawing your sword while you watched a battle swirl wasn't the sort of thing that aroused comment.

Monner was on the right of his troop and slightly ahead of his men. He held his sword vertical, ready to slash down at the rats, but he was trusting his mount to find its own course as he bellowed at the lancers crowding him.

The horse suddenly planted its feet in the cropped turf. Monner went over its head—
nobody
could've kept his seat. The horse had stopped as abruptly as if it'd charged into a stone wall, then nearly somersaulted over its rider.

Other mounts were going wild also, pitching and bucking. A pair of Sandrakkan geldings collided as they turned toward one another while both trying to flee back uphill; one had already thrown off its rider.

Chittering in delight, the rats—there were six or eight of them—rushed the sudden chaos. They ran on their hind legs, but the way they bent forward suggested they were about to drop onto all fours. Their swords were short, deep-bladed, and almost square-tipped.

Several horsemen dismounted or regained their feet after being bucked off. They poised to meet the oncoming rats, but the rhythm of the battle had shifted to the beastmen.

A mare reared, then pitched forward; her rider managed to land on his feet though momentum flopped him on his face an instant later. Freed of her burden, the mare charged into the ratmen, whinnying and kicking with all four hooves. A rat went down, its skull crushed, and another flew backward with a dent in the middle of its breastplate.

The surviving rats slashed at her, one carving a line of blood all the way down the mare's ribs. The saddle rolled off her back when the cinch was cut. She squealed and twisted back to clamp the rat's muzzle with square, strong teeth. With jerk of her head, she sent the rat flying. Its limbs twitched spastically, and its head lolled from a broken neck.

Rats and dismounted cavalrymen met in a clanging melee. One of the humans went down, but thanks to the mare's berserk attack the remaining ratmen were easily dispatched. Bleeding from a dozen stabs and slices, that horse continued to stamp and pivot on what had once been a dangerous enemy.

"May the Sister suck my marrow!" Attaper said in furious amazement. "What's happening? It's wizardry! They're bewitching the horses!"

The first skirmish was the model for those to follow. Every time cavalrymen bore down on the rats, their horses went out of control—either panicking or—in a handful of instances—attacking the ratmen in a foaming rage. Generally the dismounted cavalry were able to defend themselves until the infantry reached them, but sometimes the rats hacked down a horseman who'd been stunned in mind as well as body by the unexpected turn of events.

"
It's not wizardry!
" Carus said. The face of the ghost was sallow with cold anger. "
It's the smell! The stink of the beasts sets the horses off. I've seen it with camels, and it's the same with these
bloody
rats!
"

There'd been no wind in the forest. A fitful westerly blew on this side of the ridge, bringing not only the high-pitched chatter of the ratmen but their rank odor.

Garric's mount shied. Carus' reflexes clamped his knees tight against the horse's barrel and sawed the reins savagely when the beast tried to pivot to its right.

The Blood Eagles around him were in similar straits. Attaper and some of the others were horsemen by birth or training, but half the detachment came from infantry regiments and rode by dint of single-minded determination. That wasn't enough when their mounts began to pirouette and buck.

Garric's horse made a sound that was more a scream than a neigh. It thrust its head forward like a battering ram despite Garric trying to haul back on the reins. They thundered downhill with the suddenness of eagle stooping.