Eric Larsson spoke: Havel couldn't hear it under the pulsing beat of the sound, but he was pretty sure it was you selfish glory-hound son of a bitch! shouted in tones of deepest sea green envy.
Havel grinned at his brother-in-law and tossed him the stump of the lance. Eric caught it, then reached behind, pulled his own free of the scabbard and tossed it to his commander in a casual display of strength-it took a lot of muscle to treat one of these barge poles as if it was a garden rake. Havel caught it neatly, hiding the grunt of effort under the smack of leather on wood, and slid it into the tubular socket.
Beside Eric, Luanne rolled her eyes and made a remark of her own; probably You idiot! Or Men! Why does everything have to be a pissing match?
"Because in this life everything, absolutely everything, is either a challenge or a reward," he said to himself, and turned his horse and cantered back to the Outfit's banner.
"Don't say it," he said, as he reined in and most of the staff crowded around to pound him on the back.
One handed him a canteen of water cut with a little wine that was more like vinegar; he took a mouthful, swilled it around his mouth and winced as it hit the cuts, then drank down a dozen long swallows. Sweat was running down his face in rivulets, and the padding of his mail collar was already chafing a little under his chin, despite the coolness of the day and the silk neckerchief tucked inside it.
"Why shouldn't I say it, when we both know it's true?" Signe snapped. Dammit, Mike, this business is dangerous enough without-"
"That wasn't showing off," he said, and at her glare added: "All right, it wasn't just showing off. I knew whoever it was, it was probably some dick-with-legs first-timer type I could take without breaking a sweat."
"And if it had been Stavarov sending out his best lancer to mousetrap you?" she hissed, when they were close enough for the remark to be less than totally public. "You know, I'd like my children to have a living father-and not grow up hiding from the Protector in a cave in California, either!"
I'd have beaten his best lancer, too, Mike didn't say aloud. Instead he went on reasonably: "But he didn't. It was like stealing candy from a baby. We won some time, our troops' peck-ah, tails are up, and the enemy's men are feeling half beaten already. Stavarov must be chewing on the rim of his shield. I wouldn't like to be Sir Jeff when the lord baron gets around to him!"
Signe snorted, but changed the subject. "I wonder how Dad's doing over at the bridges?" she said. "At least he's old enough not to try the Achilles-before-the-walls-of-Troy stuff."
"That's geek to me," Havel replied, grinning like a wolf.
And yeah, I am feeling pretty pleased with myself, he add silently. So it's atavistic. Whoopee-shit.
Then he looked south again, and worry returned with a rush, like cold water trickling up his spine. That was the problem with losing yourself in action; like booze, the oblivion was temporary and the troubles came right back, often worse than before.
And where are the rest of my troops, goddammit? He tried not to wonder if they'd be enough when they did get here.
Snap. Snap. Snap.
Ken Larsson ducked involuntarily as the metal bolts from the war-boat flicked towards him, mere blurred streaks at better than four hundred feet a second. They struck the row of heavy sheet-metal-and-timber shields his crew had rigged along the northern edge of the railway bridge. The sloping surface shed the impact with a tooth-gritting sound halfway between a bang and a squeal; the bolts flickered and tumbled upward, still moving so quickly they were barely visible, leaving an elongated, dimpled dent in the quarter-inch steel.
Ouch, Larsson thought. Glad I thought of the shields and didn't just rely on the ones on the engines themselves.
The nearest of the turtle boats was well under a thousand yards away now; they were coming on in a blunt wedge, slowly, no more than walking pace- probably because they'd diverted the power of the pedals to the weapons rather than the propellers. The open hatch snapped down again as he watched, and he turned to one of the engines mounted on the railway cars.
"They're probably too far away for our bolts to penetrate yet," he said. "Let's see how good their sealing is. Number Three, let 'em have it."
The catapult crew nodded, and two of them used a scissorslike clamp to raise a big ceramic sphere into the metal throwing cup. Its coarse clay surface had an oily, glistening sheen to it, and the sharp petroleum stink of the gooey stuff oozing through the thick pottery was pungent enough to carry several yards. Firebombs of this size were kept empty, and filled from steel barrels only a few minutes before action. Ken repressed an impulse to step back; there were fifteen gallons of the stuff in there, and sometimes-not often, but every once in a while-the container shattered when the machine cut loose, with very nasty consequences. If you made the pottery thick enough that that never happened, you cut down on the payload too much and sometimes it didn't break at all when it struck at the other end, if it hit a soft target like dirt or brush.
The aimer sat in a chair behind the sloping shield of the war-engine, peering through a telescopic sight and working traverse and elevation wheels with her hands. The aimer's chair and the throwing-groove and arms rose and turned smoothly, with a sound of oiled metal moving on metal.
"Range five hundred," she said crisply. "Ready-"
One of the crew lit a wad of tow on the end of a stick and touched it to the napalm bomb. Blue-and-yellow flames licked over the surface of the porous clay, and wisps of black smoke began to rise. The rest jumped down, and a hose team stood by.
"Ready!"
"Shoot!"
The aimer squeezed a trigger. The machine's throwing arms snapped forward with a hard, flat brack! sound and thudded into the rubber-padded stop plates. The clay globe snapped out, trailing more smoke as the wind of its passage fanned the flames. Ken leveled his binoculars eagerly; the shot had the indefinable sweet feeling of a mechanism working perfectly:
Crack!
The sound came sharp and clear despite the distance; a gout of flame enveloped the turtle-boat, the tulip-shaped orange blossom rising from its curved steel deck. A cheer went up from the crews on the railroad bridge. It died to a grumbling, cursing mutter as the war-boat slid forward through the smoke, the fire running down its sloping carapace to burn on the surface of the water, hurried along by water gushing from a valve near the view-slits of the bridge.
Ken tried again to imagine what it had been like inside, in the dim hot sweat-and-oil stench of the interior, the slamming impact making the frame groan, the sudden roaring through the thin plates, the heat and the sharp acrid stink sucked in through the ventilators-and all the while having nothing to see but the back of the man ahead of you, knowing you could burn and drown at the same time at any instant.
Serves 'em right, he thought grimly. If they want to be safe, let them stay home.
Which wasn't quite fair-probably most of them had no say in the matter, unless they wanted to face the Lord Protector's men who wore black hoods, or provide the tiger-and-bear-feeding halftime spectacle at the next tournament.
On the other hand, I'm not feeling like being fair right now. Aloud: "Three, Five, Seven-rapid fire, and concentrate on the lead boat! Fry the fascist sons of bitches!"
As a student rebel in the sixties, he'd made Molotov cocktails.
"OK, now we get serious," Havel said, as the Protectorate's host began its advance.
Lessee. Spearmen on the far west wing, call it three hundred of 'em, opposite our A-listers, then crossbows, more spears, more crossbows, and so forth, until they end up with spearmen again on the far east end next the river. The heavy horse behind the center, but not far enough behind. They'll overlap us on the west unless we do something. So: