A hundred lancers were a terrifying sight, and they looked a lot more imposing from ground level than from fifty feet up. Big men on big horses, steel and tossing plumes and blazons and the twinkling sharp-honed menace of the lanceheads above the colorful flutter of pennants. The long block of horsemen walked out from the roadway and aimed itself at the hundred bowman who'd come out of the woods to lure them. Then the curled brass trumpets screamed and a long ripple went through the men-at-arms as they lifted the butts of their lances free of the scabbards and brought them to rest on the toes of their right boots, slanting slightly forward. In the same instant the horses took their first pace, stepping high, heads tossing beneath the spiked steel chamfrons. The big kite-shaped shields came to the front as the riders pulled on the leather guige straps that hung around their necks and slid their left arms into the loops. All the shields carried the Lidless Eye; most also had their own or their liege-lords' blazons quartered with it, the heraldry of knight and baron and their vassals and paid men. There was an arrogant splendor to the sight, one that roused hate and grudging respect at the same time. There was no fear in those young men, even though they knew they might be going to the Dread Lord in the next handful of minutes. They'd been told they were the lords of human kind, and they believed it.
Well, like them I might be heading for the Summerlands today, she told herself. And I've got less to worry about when I set to discussing my deeds with the Guides. Wait. Breathe in, breathe out. Ground and center, ground and center.
Even across double bowshot the beginnings of a trot from four hundred hooves could be felt through the earth, a thuttering through the soles of her feet. The lancers would try to hit a hand gallop just at extreme bowshot, to get them through the killing ground as fast as possible. Against a hundred archers, it would work. Against eight hundred:
She filled her lungs and then shouted, her singer's voice filling the tense, waiting stillness of the woods: "At them, Mackenzies!"
With the word she dashed forward, the banner-bearer and signaler beside her. The Horns-and-Moon flag of the Clan went up, a breeze from the south streaming the green-and-silver silk out ahead of her, and the horn made its dunting huuuu-huuuu-huuuu. Seven hundred archers followed her, sprinting forward into their three-deep harrow formation, a staggered row that left each a clear shot to the front. As they halted a shaft went to the cord of every bow, and every cord was drawn to the ear. Behind them the bagpipers set up their catamount screeching, and the Lambeg drums sounded with a boom-boom-boom that rumbled like thunder through the trees.
The lancers were at full gallop now, but their line checked and wavered as they saw the trap sprung. Beside her she could hear Cynthia chanting under her breath.
"We are the point-we are the edge We are the wolves that Hecate fed!"
And the words ran up and down the line, louder and louder-.
"We are the point-we are the edge We are the wolves that Hecate fed!"
"On! On!" Piotr shouted, and thumped the trumpeter riding beside him with the flat of his shield to get the man's attention. They were at the point of a blunt wedge now, centered on the flag. "On! Charge!"
The trumpet sounded, without even a preliminary blat or squeak despite the ghastly surprise ahead. The lancers booted their horses back into a full gallop after that moment's involuntary check, realizing from years in the saddle that no matter how deadly the peril ahead was, stopping would be worse.
You couldn't stop a charging destrier quickly.
Doubly so with another man-at-arms galloping boot-to-boot on either side and another right behind you; there was just too much mass and momentum involved. Trying to do a full-stop in a tight formation of a hundred lances was asking for a disaster of collisions and fallen mounts and men crushed under ton-weights of rolling barded horse. It would take the better part of a hundred yards to halt the formation safely, and more time to turn around without blocking and fouling each other; at best they'd be stalled for a full minute under the deadly steel-and-cedarwood hail of the arrows. If they could just cover that two hundred yards ahead, the lightly armed archers would be helpless before their ironclad violence at close range. Piotr braced his feet in the stirrups and brought his shield up, covering the whole left side of his body between neck and knee; his lance jutted out over the chamfron spike that pounded up and down with the destrier's speed. Clods of earth flew head-high as the steel-shod hooves tore open the damp sod, the pennants fluttered with a snapping crackle, and a great shout went up:
"Haro!"
The air whistled "We are the point-we are the edge We are the wolves that Hecate fed!"
The foremost knight passed the split wand planted at precisely two hundred and fifty yards-planted with the inner white side towards the woods and the dark, concealing bark towards the enemy. Up and down the line the bow-captains' voices broke into the chant, and it turned into a wordless shrieking snarl of fury as they shouted: "Let the gray geese fly! Wholly together- loose!"
Juniper let the string roll off the three gloved drawing fingers of her right hand. Eight hundred bowstrings struck the smooth hard leather of the bracers in a simultaneous crackle like some monstrous whip falling on rock. Over it rose the high, keening whistle of eight hundred shafts as they rose at a forty-five degree angle into the air, paused for an instant, then turned and plunged downward nearly as fast as they'd left the bows. Her hand was by her ear as she released; it went back to the quiver and snatched out a shaft, her movements smooth and economical with long practice. Even so several of the First Levy were ahead of her; sixteen hundred more of the bodkin-pointed lengths of cedar were in the air before the first struck, and more followed at a rate of two hundred each second. It would take the Protector's men-at-arms less than a minute to cross the beaten ground between them and the Mackenzie archers, but in that time ten thousand arrows would be aimed at one hundred men and horses.
She let her eyes blur a little out of focus then; you didn't need to see every detail when you were shooting at a massed target. The screams were bad enough, and the horses more pitiable than the men, for they were brought unwilling to the field of war without understanding why their flesh must be torn and pierced.
"Heads up!" Cynthia shouted in her ear.
A lancer had broken through the hideous tangle of thrashing horses and dying men. An arrow dangled from the nostril of his horse, and it was wild with terror, running blind as only a frightened horse could do. Unfortunately it was running right at her.
The bannerman and the horn-caller threw themselves aside with a yell. Juniper dropped flat under the point of the lance, rolling frantically; one hoof landed close enough to take a sliver of skin from the tip of her nose, and another struck her in the stomach as she threw herself across the grass. The metal plates of her brigandine and the padding of the arming doublet beneath kept it from rupturing organs or splintering bone, but the shock was like being hit in the gut by a swinging battering ram, and all the breath came out of her in a single agonized whoosh.
She lay paralyzed, struggling to draw in another breath. Cynthia Carson had been behind her; she spun aside from the lance-point and smashed the boss of her buckler into the horse's injured nose with dreadful precision. The same motion brought her around again and she plunged twelve inches of her short-sword into the horse's belly just behind the saddle at the junction of body and haunch, where no bone protected the body cavity. The animal screamed like a woman in childbirth, stunningly loud even on a battlefield. It went over with a crash of metal, landing on the knight's shield-side leg; he screamed himself, at the pain and as Cynthia launched herself snarling over the horse's body and onto his, red blade raised to kill.