He planted a boot on the corpse and wrenched the weapon free. Not five yards from him a lancer killed a Bearkiller with a thrust to the throat, then went down with his hamstrung horse. Another was lashing around him with his sword, until two glaives darted in and caught their hooks in the chain mail of his hauberk and yanked him out of the saddle as if he'd run into bungee cords. The destrier ran free to the south, stirrups flopping and reins loose:
Havel skipped backward a half-dozen paces, his head whipping back and forth to try to gain some picture of what was happening. The block of glaives-men was stepping in, mingling with the other infantry as the last knights who'd gotten through the line died. On the right a hundred of the crossbows had pulled back into the soft ground, to where they sank ankle-deep; the lancers there had unwisely tried to follow them, and two score or better were in over their fetlocks, heaving and scrambling as the crossbow bolts flickered out at them at point-blank range. To his left the surviving missile troops were swinging farther forward, shooting into the stalled mass of horses and men in front of the line of pikes:
"Stevenson!" he shouted, trotting behind their backs, judging what he could see over their heads; the knights and men-at-arms were still trying to move forward, but they'd gotten tangled up good and proper. "Push of pike!"
The commander of the phalanx nodded, and shouted orders of his own.
The file-closers took it up: "Push of pike! One: two: three: step!"
The bristling mass of pikes took a uniform step forward, jabbing. "And step. And step!"
Then the curled trumpets wailed. A few of the horsemen were too transported to listen; they stayed, and died. The rest reined in, turning their destriers and spurring back towards the Association lines, with the deadly flicker of crossbow bolts pursuing them. The noise of battle faded with the drumroll of their hoof-beats, until individual shouts and screams could be heard; Havel cursed mildly to himself as he saw Alexi Stavarov's banner going back as it had come forward.
"Halt!" the pike commander cried.
In a story, Alexi and I would have ended up squaring off sword-to-sword, the Bear Lord thought, pausing to pant some air back into lungs that seemed too dry and tight, against the constriction of armor and padding. Suddenly he was aware that he'd picked up a cut on his left arm just below the sleeve of his hauberk, and that it stung like hell and was dribbling blood to join the sweat soaking his sleeve. Pity it doesn't usually work like that.
Signe led his horse over. He grounded the glaive point-down in the earth and mounted, grateful for the extra height. Stretcher parties and friends were helping the wounded back towards the ambulances and the aid station; he saw Aaron Rothman glare at him for a moment as he knelt beside one that couldn't be taken that far, then go back to his work.
"Casualties," he rasped, reaching for the canteen at his saddlebow.
"Eighty dead or as good as," Signe said. "One hundred thirty too badly wounded to fight. Let me see your arm."
"Well, shit," Havel said.
Christ Jesus, we lost over a fifth of our effectives in fifteen minutes – He checked his watch; it had actually been more like an hour. All right, an hour. It's barely noon. And we barely killed more of them than they did of us; we lost a lot of crossbows when they made that breakthrough. I can't afford to trade at that ratio.
"Messengers," he said. "To company commanders: consolidate to the right."
Which would leave a great big gap between the far left of his line and the artillery and the A-listers, but they had to do it; one in five of the people he'd had standing in the line to begin with were gone now. The line had to be shorter if it wasn't to be thinner, and it had been too thin to start with.
"To Lord Eric, close in on the infantry's left. Prisoners-I want prisoners, the men-at-arms as well as the knights. And to Dr. Rothman, get all the wounded who can be moved onto the railway and out of here."
Because we may not have time later, he thought grimly.
Squads ran out onto the field, checking for living enemies. Where they found them, they began dragging them back, in a few cases subduing those still showing fight with a flurry of well-placed kicks first.
"See that they get care," he said, looking back at the aid station.
"What's next?" Signe said, as they watched the formation shift rightward.
Havel pulled his binoculars out of their leather-lined steel case. Left, two of the catapults were out of commission, smashed, smoldering wreckage in their pits. Three of the enemy's were destroyed likewise, which meant they'd suffered proportionately more, and their unprotected crews had taken heavy losses. And Alexi Stavarov's banner was going along the front of the enemy formation; as he passed a cheer went up, guttural and savage. The cavalry were reforming behind the footmen. They looked as if they would be glad to try where their betters had failed: and they hadn't suffered much at all, yet.
"To Captain Sarducci, concentrate on the infantry as they advance-raking fire from the center of the enemy formation to the left. To Lord Eric, don't charge until you get the signal. Their cavalry is still in the game."
"What next?" Signe said, her horse stepping sideways as an auxiliary leading a mule loaded with panniers of crossbow bolts went by.
Havel kept his voice soft. "Next they send in their foot, and we see how good we are at a fighting retreat. We can't take another attack like that, and we didn't kill enough of them to rock them back on their heels. We'd have done better if they hadn't pulled back in time, but Alexi was too smart to keep them face-first in the meat grinder after we didn't break."
Signe nodded soberly, her eyes worried. Her voice was calm as she went on: "Report from the bridge-"
"They're burning!" Ken Larsson shouted.
"Keep down," his wife screamed in his ear.
She grabbed him by the collar of his hauberk and hauled him bodily from the box he'd been standing on for a better view. He staggered, windmilling his arms and trying to keep erect on the rough footing of the railroad track, then went to one knee. Bolts went snap-snap-snap through the air above. They might have missed, but then again, they might not. And hurled by the flywheel-powered throwers of the turtle boats:
As if to underline the point, a bolt flashing through the space above an engine on one of the railroad cars didn't miss. Larsson swallowed thickly as a loader's head disappeared in a spray of red mist, and the body toppled backward to land bonelessly limp. The helmet he'd been wearing spun away with a painful bwannggg harmonic, and landed like a flung Frisbee in the river a hundred yards south of the bridge.
But that one is burning, he thought, ducking for a better look through the slit between two of the metal shields.
The lead boat that had taken three of the napalm canisters at once had smoke pouring out of the ventilators and the eye-slits of the bridge. Suddenly hatches popped open and smoke billowed up in earnest, along with yellow-orange flames. A half-dozen men jumped out and threw themselves into the blue-gray water of the Willamette. The last two were burning; one more tried to crawl out and then fell back, and the boat drifted away northward in a fog of sooty smoke.