"Signal, artillery open fire, priority target enemy cavalry," Havel said. It was long range, but when you hit someone, you hit them where it hurt.
The trumpets called. Seconds later a ripple of tunngg: tunnggg: tunnggg repeated four times over sounded from his left as the batteries fired. The basic principles were those of Roman or Greek ballistae, but the throwing arms of the catapults were carefully shaped steel forgings rather than wood, and the power was provided by the suspensions of eighteen-wheeler trucks, not twisted skeins of ox sinew. The javelin-sized arrows they threw were visible, but only just-they traveled at half the speed of a musket ball. The six-pound spheres of cast iron that followed were almost as swift.
Havel tracked them with his field glasses. One ball struck short, bounced and slammed rolling into a file of spearmen. The first three went down in a whiplash tangle as the high-velocity iron snapped their legs out from beneath them; then it bounced high again and came down on an upraised shield. He couldn't hear the shield's frame and the arm beneath it crack, but he could imagine it. The screaming mouths were just open circles through the binoculars, but he could imagine that as well. Two more struck at waist height; a broken spear flipped fifteen feet into the air, pinwheeling and flashing sunlight as the edges twirled.
The big darts lofted entirely over the block of infantry-heads twisted to follow them as they flashed by about ten feet up. The cavalry formation behind them exploded outward as four of the heavy javelins came slanting in, punching through armor as if it were cloth, pinning men to horses and horses to the ground.
"Good work, Sarducci!" Havel called, and waved at the man. At the enemy he muttered the names of the engines as they fired:
"Hi there, you bastards! Knock-knock, guess who! you sons of bitches! Eat this! motherfuckers! And Many Happy Returns, Alexi!" he said, pounding his right fist into the palm of his left hand with every greeting.
He got a thumbs up from Sarducci; seconds later the tunnngg: tunnngg: began again. The teams behind the fieldpieces were pumping like madmen, sending water through the armored hoses to the cylinders under the firing grooves-compressed gases didn't work the way they had before the Change, but hydraulics still functioned the way the textbooks said they should. Water filled the cylinders and pushed out the pistons; the piston rods rammed at the steel cables that linked the throwing arms, bending them back against the ton-weights of resistance in the springs until they engaged the trigger mechanisms. The crew chiefs snapped their lanyards to the release levers, and the aimers on seats on the left trail spun the elevation and traverse wheels, while the loaders slapped fresh darts and roundshot home, ready for launching.
Havel turned the field glasses back to the enemy lancers. They were trotting back out of range, some of them shaking their fists at him as they went. He laughed aloud, and Signe gave him a quizzical look.
"I can tell what they're saying," he said. "Something like no fair throwing things! And then why don't you fight like a gentleman, you peasant!"
His laughter grew louder, and her corn-colored eyebrows rose further over the sky blue eyes as the troops took it up and it spread down the line, a torrent of jeering mockery directed at the backs of the Protectorate's lancers. He shook his head and went on: "What's really funny is that some of them actually mean it!"
After a moment she chuckled as well. Then: "Oh-oh," she said. "Here comes their artillery."
Havel nodded. "Yup, right on schedule. That's heavy stuff for mobile field use-looks like light siege pieces, really. Six horse teams; six, eight, ten of them all up. Tsk-they should have more and it should be as easy to move as ours. They've certainly got the engineers and the materials. Arminger's a: what did the Society people call guys who had a hair up their ass about getting historical details just right instead of mixing and matching?"
"Period Nazi," Signe supplied.
"Yeah, his fixations are getting the better of him again. William the Conqueror of Normandy didn't use field artillery, so Norman the Magnifolent of Portland doesn't like doing it either. Signalercavalry engage enemy engines with firing circle."
Off to the west, he saw Eric Larsson nod and wave acknowledgment. Ahead the enemy formation parted to let the heavy throwing engines through, and then the infantry lay down in their formations; which was sensible of Stavarov, though not as sensible as pulling back out of catapult range and waiting for his engines to silence their opposite numbers.
Of course, that would take all day, Havel thought. And without infantry support: well, what a frustrating dilemma for Alexi Stavarov, you Slavo-Sicilian wannabe, you!
The A-listers were moving, but their lances stayed in the rests, and their shields stayed slung. Instead, two hundred horn-and-sinew recurve bows were pulled from the saddle-scabbards by their left knees, and two hundred hands went over their shoulders for an arrow. The long column of horse-archers moved in a staggered two-deep row, rocking forward from a canter into a gallop. The thunder of hooves built, until it was a drumroll over the half-mile distance. Near as loud came the crashing bark:
"Hakkaa Paalle! Hakkaa Paalle!" And from the watching Bearkiller foot: "Hakkaa Paalle!"
"This is where it pays off," Havel muttered as he adjusted the focus of his field glasses. "Hack them down!"
Bearkiller A-listers could play armored lancer just as well as the Protectorate's knights: but they could also shoot as well as Mackenzies, and do it from a fast-moving horse, twelve times a minute, and actually hit what they were aiming at half the time-more, if it was a big target. Six heavy horses pulling a large-ish catapult with a twenty-man crew running beside the team qualified as a very big target indeed, and there were ten of them moving out into the open beyond the Protector's infantry. They'd just begun to turn, swinging the business-ends of their massive weapons towards the Bearkiller field-pieces, when the charge of the A-listers brought them into range. Havel's cavalry masked the fire of their own catapults now, but they didn't need it.
Eric's scarlet crest showed as he stood in the stirrups and drew his bow to the ear. Havel's fingers tingled in sympathy, and his shoulders remembered the heavy, soft resistance. The arrow flickered out from his bow, covering the two hundred yards in a count of one: two: three:
The first of the draught-horses reared and screamed, immobilizing a team; the catapult's crew killed the thrashing animal with a poleax, cut it loose and dragged the rest of the team into motion again, ducking their heads and holding up shields as they pushed forward. Commendable courage; so was that of the crossbowmen off to their right, who stood and volleyed at the riders. An A-lister fell, and another collapsed limply across the withers of his horse. But arrows were falling in a continuous sleet on the catapults now as the A-listers dashed across their front from right to left, and the infantry right behind them were spearmen; the Bearkiller formation bent back into a moving oval of galloping horses, each horse-archer turning right to come around for another firing pass at the target.
"And Stavarov pulled his cavalry too far back to countercharge us," Signe said.
Havel noticed that the military apprentices-A-list understudies-were leaning forward, their ears practically flapping as they heard the leaders talking. Well, they were supposed to be learning:
"Yeah, it's paper-scissors-rock," he said, making the three gestures with his right hand. "Now, young Piotr, from what the spies say and what Will Hutton did to him last year up by the Crossing Tavern, he would have just barreled straight up the road at us, taking the losses to get stuck in. The catapults couldn't have killed enough to stop them."
"But charging straight in is all Piotr ever does," Signe pointed out.
"Even a stopped clock is right twice a day," Havel pointed out. "Whereas Alexi thinks things through: yup!"