“He won’t,” Bili attested. “He and his fire-eaters can impale themselves and such of their horses as they can force to it on the Skohshun pike hedge if they must, but this unit will not be beside them.
“Fil, d’you recall the tale of how one of my maternal ancestors, a duke of Zunburki devised a way to deal with the supposedly invincible Klahrksburk pikemen?”
The captain’s face suddenly split in a broad grin. “That’s it, lord duke! The dim recollection of that tactic has been nibbling at my memory since first we all heard of these Skohshuns and their way of war. Such was always the inherent weakness of overlong polearms—they’re worse than useless in a really close encounter with dismounted opponents, while they weigh so much that your average pikeman simply cannot bear the added weight of decent armor. Few of them will wear more than some kind of helmet, maybe some variety of metal reinforcement on the backs of their leather gauntlets and perhaps a skimpy breastplate.”
“Just so,” agreed the young thoheeks. When he had explained the winning tactic of his ancestor to the two women, Kahndoot asked a question.
“But why our squadron alone, Duke Bili? Why not go to this king we now serve and tell him what you have just told the Brahbehrnuh and me? It makes good sense, if fight he must.”
Bili sighed and beamed back, even while using his knight to bring Rahksahnah’s king into check, “It is as Fil and I have said, Kahndoot—the king and all of his court are very old-fashioned in their outlook. They will allow us to do something new, innovative, but they would not do such themselves. In their blind, senseless pursuit of that which they deem to be honor, only riding out, cap a pie, to try to come breast to breast with this enemy whose leadership is obviously more modern and practical than archaically honorable is all that will apparently suit him and the court.
“My present position considered, I have said all that I can as regards the king’s overall strategy. I like him and his heir—they are bluff, hearty warriors—and I will hot like to watch them die, but I fear me much that that is just what I’ll have to do, unless…”
He paused for a long moment, his mindshield erected as he thought hard. “Unless… ? Unless I can somehow persuade his majesty to allow us to charge first. Perhaps I can convince him that he owes us this “signal honor” as a boon for our service against those poor primitive farmers, last year.
“Can we go first, using the Zunburk attack, mayhap we can sufficiently roil the pike hedge to give the heavy horse an aiming point, a broken spot in the hedge through which they can ride and attack these Skohshuns at such close range that those overgrown pikes will prove a hindrance rather than a defense or a weapon.”
Erica and her Ganiks stayed in the area around the low cave in which they had wintered far longer than any of them would have preferred to do. As Ganiks had always done, they had not cared for or sheltered the horses through the long months of cold, but had simply left the mountain ponies to their own devices to live or die or stray far away. In the more southerly area from which she and the bullies had ridden, there were numerous large and small herds of semidomesticated ponies roaming hill and vale, and they were easily caught by even an unmounted man, were he good with a rawhide lariat—and few bunch-Ganiks but were proficient.
But such feral herds were obviously not a feature of these northern reaches, as they quickly discovered. The only ponies sighted and run down by the roving horsemen were easily recognized to be animals brought into the area by themselves last autumn. Wary of the large and murderous hunt that had driven them all out of the settled farming lands of their “relatives,” the Kuhmbuhluhnized Ganiks, they were loath to raid there for the needed mounts.
However, it soon became obvious to all that if the entire party was to be mounted as they traveled on, such a raid was a necessity. But they took no chances on this raid. They set no fires, they murdered every man, woman and child quickly, then stole only small, valuable, easily transportable loot— foodstuffs, weapons, jewelry, clothing, blankets and the like— along with the horses, ponies, mules and few head of cattle the two neighboring farmsteads had afforded them. Reunited with those who had stayed behind for lack of a mount, the whole party immediately moved on westward, angling toward the north, traveling very fast for the first week or so.
Of course, they had no way of knowing that the bulk of the men of fighting age were not in the least likely to pursue them this time, being already on the march toward New Kuhmbuhluhnburk in obedience to the summons of King Mahrtuhn. Nor had they any means of being aware that their present course was leading them directly and inexorably into the very midst of a hot little war which would include another meeting with the very condotta that had destroyed the power of the Ganik outlaw bunches during the preceding year and thus set these few surviving leaders on the run.
Two weeks of travel brought the small party into a region profusely covered with huge-boled, high-thrusting oak trees, almost grassless for long stretches due to the acid quality of the tannin-laden leaf mulch underfoot. Scattered, overgrown stumps showed that once, long ago, someone had harvested oaks as large as or even larger than the biggest of the presently existing forest giants, but there was no recent sign of mankind. Not even when they chanced across a once-wide trail leading southwest did they espy any tracks but those of the beasts of the wildwood.
Therefore, since pursuit had not materialized this time, since game seemed abundant hereabouts and their plundered stores were almost expended, the Ganiks scattered to seek out a grassy area, if possible, near to a source of water. It was Horseface Charley’s group that found an almost ideal spot.
Invisible from the disused trail, at some long-ago time the woodland glade had obviously been the abode of sentient beings. All that now remained of their shelters was the oval or circular pits—all eroded and fallen in, true, but too regular in outline to have been the work of nature—the rotted stumps of the posts and the deep beds of ancient charcoal between now-mossy stones. An icy-clear spring and the burbling brooklet it fed lay nearby.
The flatter portion of the glade grew thickly with what Horseface had reported to be grass. Erica, however, was quick to note that the growth was, rather, wild grain—oats, from the look of the still-green ears. And a partial excavation of one of the larger of the old dwelling sites in preparation for readying it for new occupancy brought to light a sickle wrought of decayed bone but still mounting a few teeth of flint and jasper, all sharp as the day they had been knapped.
There were a few other stone tools, mostly broken, and a vast quantity of chips near to one end of the former shelter, but not a single scrap of metal.
None of the Ganik bullies displayed even a smidgen of curiosity, simply accepting the partially prepared site and quickly adapting it to their uses, and in answer to Erica’s deluge of questions about the previous occupants of this latter-day neolithic site, Bowley replied shortly.
“Hell, Ehrkah, I don’ know! Could been Ganiks, mebbe. Lotsa real religious Ganiks won’ use no metal of eny kin’,
‘count of Plooshun. But it don’ matter none, enyhaow; whoevuh it wuz, they been done gone a lowng tahm.”
They stayed over for the best part of two more weeks, feasting on elk and deer and shaggy-bull, smoking more meat to take with them and rough-curing the hides to patch boots and jerkins and to fashion, according to Erica’s instructions, bandoliers for loaded magazines and stripper clips of rounds for the rifles, as well as a belt and holster for her pistol.
Then they all set out again, riding the old trail, since it angled rather more south—the direction they wanted to go— than west at this point. After a couple of days of traveling, they began to flank a chain of high, tree-grown hills on their right, with the trail now leading almost due south but, disturbingly to them, showing signs of fairly recent use by men, beasts and wheeled conveyances. Visible signs of logging lined the trail, too, none of the stumps dating from any earlier than last autumn or early winter.