“He won, though?”
“He didn’t lose,” Coll sighed. “He still holds Insol. He held the border, yes, but he didn’t march into Sipar’s lands. At home, he began to become hard as his father, and little by little the scourgings came back, and the days of labor went up again, until we were no better off than before.”
“And his son?” Dirk asked.
“Which one?” Coll said bitterly. “He has a dozen, among our serfs—but never by the woman he loved in his youth, they say.”
“He hasn’t married, then?”
“Only two years ago, and long we had to labor to provide his feast! His wife’s with child at last, so mayhap there will be a son soon.”
“And his lady?” Gar asked. “Has she come among you to cure your ills, or asked her lord to lighten your burdens?”
“Lighten them! She’s calling for another day’s labor every fortnight, to build the new tower she fancies!” Coll shook his head slowly. “Yes, some of them are noble enough when they’re young, sir knights—but power changes that. In all of them. I’ve never heard of a one who used it to help his serfs—not one.”
Dirk gave Gar a lugubrious look. “It is worse than home!”
They had only two weeks to weld the king’s forces into a single army. His Majesty employed Gar and Dirk as couriers, riding from one knight to another to take them the king’s orders and bring back information. It took Gar only one day to figure out that the king expected him to coordinate the bands, inducing them to work together somehow. He left it to Dirk to soothe ruffled feathers and convey orders without being too insulting, while Gar devoted himself to calming and flattering the king while he provided him with advice on tactics under the guise of guesswork. Coll rode first with the one, then the other, amazed at the number of details they gave him to work out, and even more amazed to discover that he could do every job they gave him.
In spite of it all, he still managed to squeeze in a couple of hours of drill with the king’s spearmen every day, and quickly discovered that he and his friends had worked out more ways to use the weapon than the professionals had been taught. He undertook the task of teaching them, without letting them know. “Foul? I’m sorry. I never thought it would be a foul blow to strike at the belly with a spear butt. We do that at home in Mélange, all the time. How did I do it? Well, you stab with the blade, but as you draw the spear back, you swing the butt down, like this…”
Gar watched them drill and was pleasantly surprised. “Well done, Coll, well done indeed! It seems we chose better than we knew when we recruited him, Dirk!”
“Oh, well, I always had an eye for talent,” Dirk drawled, with a gleam in his eye—and a manner so droll that Coll shouted with laughter. It felt good to laugh again, even once.
Then they were marching, and the time for laughing was done.
The king himself led the crossing of the ford on the main road. He led a charge with a dozen knights behind him in the grey light before dawn, out of the water and into the earl’s camp. Insol’s army was just waking, just beginning to stumble out of their tents to throw kindling on their banked fires and blow them to life. The king’s army swept in among them, clubbing unarmed men aside with contempt. Knights came running from their pavilions with swords already drawn and only mail coats for protection, shouting and haranguing their men into some semblance of order and bullying their soldiers into catching up spears. But the king’s troops parried their thrusts, then stabbed in return, and men died. Death screams filled the air, and some of them came from king’s men, for the earl’s soldiers came awake quickly with the surge of fear. But they were too few and too late; the king’s knights swung from horseback and struck the swords out of the hands of the earl’s knights, though here and there an earl’s man thrust upward and slipped his blade between gorget and helm; there and here, a king’s man struck, not caring where, and a knight lost an arm or fell with blood pulsing from his throat. But most of the earl’s troops fled, and in less than an hour, the king’s soldiers were rounding up prisoners.
“An excellent action, Majesty,” Gar told the king. Coll, overhearing, thought that Gar should have known if anyone did—after all, the plan had really been his.
“Thank you, Sir Gar.” The king fairly beamed—pleased; he had won his first battle. “I trust Sir Hildebrandt and Sir Hrothgar have fared as well as we.”
“I’m sure they have, Majesty,” Gar told him. Coll wondered how the big man could be so certain of it. Nonetheless, the couriers came riding at the gallop to tell of victory, and that before they were more than a mile farther down the road, with the prisoners already on their way to the king’s dungeon. The king was beside himself with glee. “A triumph! A wonderful triumph!”
“It is indeed,” Gar agreed, “but when we chase Earl Insol on his home estates, I trust Your Majesty will be more careful of your person—and more thrifty with your men.”
The glee vanished on the instant. “What do you mean?”
“We must find some high place,” Gar counseled, “so that you may look down on the battle, and direct it. I know it will be hard for you to give up leading the charge yourself, but our chances of winning the battle are greater if our tactician can see the enemy’s movements and counter them during the battle, rather than setting everything in motion and hoping he was right.”
The king had started nodding before Gar was more than halfway done. “Yes. A most excellent idea, Sir Gar. You will stay by me, though, to guard me.”
Coll fancied he caught an undertone of relief in the king’s words—and he thought Gar’s sigh was entirely false as he said, “I must do as Your Majesty wishes, of course.” After all, Coll reflected, Gar hadn’t said who the tactician was.
So it was that, when they met Earl Insol’s army, the king was no longer at their fore. Instead, he sat atop a hill with his bodyguards, Gar at his right hand, and directed the battle. There was a fair amount of grumbling about it, covering outright fear: How sure of victory could the king be, if he was so anxious to be far from his own army? But Dirk rode from knight to knight, explaining in very loud tones how the king’s being away from the battle improved their chances of winning, and each knight nodded as though he had reasons of his own for agreeing. The troopers, seeing how thoroughly their masters were of one mind, began to relax and gain heart.
The earl, marching his main army to join the advance guard he had sent to the ford, had met and rallied the routed soldiers, gathering them in. Spies in the enemy camp sent word to the king that the nobleman was shocked and angry to find the king had already attacked and had captured half his advance guard to boot. “Not necessarily a good thing,” Dirk explained to Coll. “He knows he has a real fight on his hands now, and is out for revenge besides.”
Soldiers who overheard him exclaimed with delight, but Coll felt a cold pool of apprehension growing in his belly. It would be a harder fight than the last, much harder.
It was. The earl borrowed the king’s technique from the reports of the battle at the ford, and charged at first light. The king’s men were ready and waiting for him, though, and gave ground at the center of the line, fighting desperately as they retreated—desperately, because the earl’s knights fought with the energy of anger, driving their footmen all the harder, and because the earl himself laid about him with furious strokes of his sword, calling for the coward king to come out and fight. The troopers could only try to parry his blade and retreat before him and his huge armored horse, because only another nobleman was allowed to battle him. Any knight who had been so rash as to try it and win would have been hanged for his pains.