Trumpets brayed among the Protector's forces. With a deep, uniform shout the block of spearmen rushed forward to shelter the catapults, shields up to form an overlapping shell. Arrows slammed into them, some standing quivering in the metal-faced plywood, tock-tock-tock; others punched through, wounding men even though their armor. But behind the shelter the crews of the catapults began to manhandle them around, frantically dragging away dead horses, driving the survivors out, wrestling the heavy steel frames and four-wheel bogies into position by sheer desperate effort.
The Bearkillers' own horns sounded. The A-listers reined around; suddenly they were all galloping away from the shield-wall protecting the enemy catapults, turning in the saddle to shoot behind Parthian-style while they were in range. The spearmen kept their shields up; as soon as the cavalry had galloped out of archery distance the Bearkiller fieldpieces started lofting roundshot and javelins over their heads-now at the conveniently massed spearmen protecting the catapults and their crews:
Metal smashed into metal. Some of the shot flew trailing smoke, and splashed into carpets of inextinguishable fire when they broke on shields. Men ran screaming when gobbets of the sticky flaming liquid ran under their armor, rolling and clawing at themselves as they burned to death; the rest of the spearmen gave back rapidly, not running but wanting to get out from under. Signe turned her head aside slightly, her lips tightening. She'd toughened up a great deal since the Change, but her husband had walked through the results of cluster-bomb strikes before his nineteenth birthday.
Havel gave a long look and a nod, before he turned his head towards the center of the enemy formation. OK, our catapults cancel their catapults, he thought, as bolts and roundshot and fire began to fall around the Protector's machines.
Their crews were struggling to respond, and as he watched, the first ragged volley came back at the weapons that were punishing them so. The Protector's artillerymen could throw heavier weights, but Havel's fieldpieces were protected by the earth berms. All that was to his advantage; shot could break up the infantry and open the way for lancers, and subtracting it from the overall mix favored the Bearkiller defense.
Besides which, when didn't infantry wish the artillery would shoot at each other and leave everyone else alone? Now, what'll Alexi try next?
Around the enemy center files of horsemen were coming forward, walking their mounts through the paths between blocks of infantry. The footmen cheered the knights and men-at-arms, beating spear on shield and fist on buckler, a harsh drumming, booming roar. The horsemen tossed their lances in the air, some of them making their mounts rear and caracole, but that didn't stop them from forming up in a four-deep formation a hundred lances wide. The double-headed eagle and the Lidless Eye came to the front, and the lancers shook their weapons and shouted to see it.
"OK, now Alexis getting impatient too," he said. "Messenger: to Captain Sarducci. Concentrate on keeping the enemy catapults suppressed. Ignore the lancers unless they go for you, or you've got spare firepower or I command otherwise. Trumpets: formation stand to, and prepare to receive cavalry! "
The brass instruments screeched. The Bearkiller foot responded as if the notes were playing directly on their nervous systems, the front rank of the missile troops lying down and bringing crossbows to the ready, the second rank kneeling and aiming over their heads. And in the center, the sixteen-foot shafts of the pikes bristled skyward with a massed, grunting huah! as they were taken in both hands and raised to present-arms height. Ahead the destriers took a single step forward almost in unison. The riders' lances dipped, the barded horses tossing their heads and the curled trumpets toning and dunting.
Then an officer's voice among the Bearkiller infantry barked: "Pikepoints: down!"
A quick bristling ripple as the long poles dropped, presenting a row of knife-edged blades four deep.
"Prepare to receive cavalry!"
The front rank went down on one knee, jamming the butts of their pikes into the sod and bracing their left boots against them to make them even steadier, slanting the great spears out into a savage line of steel at precisely chest-high on a horse. The two ranks behind them held theirs with both hands at waist height; the fourth held theirs overarm, head-high. Behind them the two ranks of glaives stood ready:
Havel's head swiveled left and right. Gonna have to risk it, he thought unhappily.
"Captain Stevenson," he called to the commander of the block of polearms. "Countermarch your glaives out to either side. Back up the missile troops. I think their men-at-arms are going to overlap our pikes."
The rearmost file of glaives hefted their weapons, faced left and trotted out to stand behind the crossbowmen there. The next did exactly the same, but to the right. Havel could see a few helmets turn and show faces among the pike-men, visibly unhappy at having the backing of those two extra ranks taken away.
"Eyes front, Matthews!" one of the file-closers snarled. "If you want to look at something scary, watch the fucking horses coming at you, you quivering daisy!"
"Steady, Bearkillers, steady," their officer said, his voice commendably calm.
A messenger came galloping up behind the line, drawing up beside the bear's-head banners with a spurt of dirt from under her mount's hooves, teenage face alight with excitement as she saluted.
"Lord Bear! Lord Eric requests permission to hit the enemy horse in the flank as they charge."
"Not this time," Havel said, smiling grimly. What was it that Israeli general said? "It is better when you have to restrain the noble steed than prod the reluctant mule"? "The A-listers are to support the artillery and wait for the command."
The Protector's trumpets screamed again, massed, like a chorus of metallic insects worshipping some alien god of war. The horsemen lowered their lances and began to advance at a walk, then a trot, then a canter. The thunder of the hooves grew, shaking the earth beneath their feet, the snap of pennants beneath it, shouted war cries, the glitter of steel and painted shields and plumes. Havel glanced along his lines, saw everything from bored calm to lips gripped tightly between teeth. He swung down from his horse and handed it to an aide, taking a glaive from another.
"Sure look pretty, don't they?" he asked, his voice calm and amused, but pitched to carry. "They'll look even better going away. Hakkaa Paalle!"
"Hakkaa Paalle! Hakkaa Paalle! Hakkaa Paalle!"
The chant grew until it was a hoarse, crashing screech; the Bearkiller pike-men began to sway ever so slightly as they chanted, faces flushed and lips peeled back over teeth. Havel grinned to himself as he shouted with them.
That was the purpose of battle cries; they drove out thought. The same thing happened in the audience at games back before the Change, but this deliberately induced hysteria had a lot more purpose behind it. Four hundred yards, he estimated. Three fifty. Three hundred – He raised the glaive and caught the trumpeters' eyes: that took a second, lost as they were in the roaring chorus.
Chapter Thirteen
Sutterdown, Willamette Valley, Oregon
March 5th, 2008/Change Year 9
"W ell, there it is, my lords," Conrad Renfrew said.
He accepted a cup of hot coffee from a servant and inhaled the welcome scent that had been a haunting memory for so many years. Coffee was unimaginable luxury, available only to the Protector and a few great nobles even now that a square-rigger from Astoria was on the run to Hawaii.
The command pavilion stood about a mile north of the Mackenzie town called Sutterdown, in open country out of catapult range, with good water from a creek running westward out of the hills. The cloth walls drawn up on the southern side gave the assembled officers a good view; the noise of two thousand troops pitching camp around the great tent came clear, the clink of shovels, hammers driving in pegs, the bawling of livestock and from the other chambers of the command tent the rattle of an abacus and the ca-ching! of a manual adding machine. They'd finally managed to duplicate those, and very useful they were-he didn't know how medieval commanders had managed, since most of them probably couldn't have counted past ten without taking off their hose and looking at their feet.