“Ah, so?” remarked Prince Byruhn, one side of his single reddish eyebrow rising sharply. “How deep is this stream, and what is the bottom like downstream of the pike line?”
“I’d advise that your grace forget that line of attack,” answered Bili. “These Skohshuns seem to be most astute at warfare. They’ve felled trees and constructed an abattis to block any approach up the streambed. Moreover, their lines of formation seem to run directly through the stream in as deep ranks as those on dry land.”
“Well, at least that much is a point to remember,” the prince remarked a bit grumpily. “Those bastards belike have near-frozen feet already, if that stream runs as cold as do most hereabouts, and I doubt me they’d have gone to the trouble to throw out any abattises behind them. So, if we somehow manage to flank them or to hack through to their rear, those unlucky swine knee-deep in cold water will be slow to turn on numbed feet and therefore the logical ones to attack from the rear.
“Now, young cousin, you had best ride back to your force and notify those two Freefighters of their imminent takeover of command of the foot.”
Bili smiled. “No need, your grace. Even while we two were in converse here did I mindspeak Frehd Brakit on the matter. By now, he has certainly notified Sergeant Behrdyn.”
Prince Byruhn sighed. “It’s right often I’ve wished that I were a mindspeaker, for yon’s a damned convenient talent in war. Usually, of course, I have my Kleesahks to use their own mindspeak and communicate with others of their ilk; but what with my father leaving all of them in New Kuhmbuhluhnburk, for fear that their outre talents might give us an edge over the Skohshuns ... “He sighed again and shook his head sadly. “If I could bring myself to truly believe such things, I’d swear that that thrice-damned Skohshun herald ensorceled my father and my nephew. Honor or no honor, it simply defies all reason to deliberately forgo the use of one’s natural assets in battle, for battles are chancy enough exercises even when one is armed with every asset or weapon one can muster.”
King Mahrtuhn was the first man across the narrow ford, which, though fast-currented, was shallow enough to provide quick, easy passage even to the trailing infantry. Once over, however, the monarch halted and waited until his battle was all on the north side of the river and once more in column behind him before pushing on toward the ridgeline. But he and they deliberately retarded their rate of march until Prince Mahrtuhn and the second battle were all across and advancing behind them. Then the king set his mount at the base of the ascent to the ridge crest.
As the column began the progress toward that crest, a single line of unmounted men were seen—black shapes against the blue sky—to arise from the places where they had been kneeling or crouching and, after a last, unhurried look at the oncoming horsemen, retire from view.
Whitetip, the prairiecat, beamed to Bili, “Those twolegs who spent the night up here on this ridge have all left it and are trotting back toward where the men with the long spears wait in the vale,”
“You have done well, cat brother,” Bili beamed back. “Wait where you are until you can see me and Prince Byruhn nearby. Come you then to our folk and someone will buckle you into your armor and put on your fang spurs. We soon must fight.”
III
The road widened a bit at the crest of the ridge, and it was there that the king, his grandson and his son, along with their principal lieutenants, sat their restive mounts staring down at the valley-spanning formation of the Skohshuns, their foemen. Of them all, only Prince Byruhn and a couple of his nobles had ever seen a formed-up Skohshun pike line, but as this one was almost twice the size of the one against which they had so vainly flung themselves last autumn, even they were impressed, mightily impressed.
The big men stood a bit over a yard apart, it seemed, in lines that stretched unbroken from half up the slope of one of the flanking hillocks to half up the slope of the other. And there were a hellacious lot of them. Bili’s quick, battlewise eye told him of at least a hundred pikemen in each line and as many as ten of those lines, one behind the other in ordered ranks.
The overlong pikes were all grounded and stood up from the lines like a narrow forest of branchless saplings, with the near-nooning sun a-sparkle on the honed, polished, foot-long points that capped the eighteen-foot hafts. Also reflecting the bright sunlight were the scale breastplates and simple steel caps of the Skohshuns and the gold and silver and brass animal figures that capped the staffs of the line of standards at the rear of the formation, while the standards themselves rippled slightly in the breeze that blew fitfully down the vale from the north.
Shrunken with the distance, a few mounted men—nobles and officers, probably—could be seen riding up and down the forefront, ceaselessly dressing the formation, assisted in this by men on foot bearing shorter polearms and wearing more armor than the common pikemen.
From their elevation, the New Kuhmbuhluhners could see that though the front ranks were straight and unbroken—like lines carved accurately in soft wood by a sharp knife in a sure hand—the formation was more jagged in the rear. More depth existed at the road and in level areas which might prove a good location for a full-scale charge of the New Kuhmbuhluhn horsemen, while the lines were reduced in depth in other places—such as behind the abattis in the streambed and on the brushy, steep slopes of the flanking hillocks.
The pickets who had quitted the ridgeline upon the approach of the first battle were to be seen between the foot of the ridge and the formation, formed in a precise column and running easily toward the slope of the western hillock. Even as the king and his party watched, a Skohshun horseman spurred from a point at the foot of that hillock leading a riderless horse. As the other pickets continued on afoot, their leader paused long enough to swing up into the empty saddle, then followed the first rider upslope and into the hilltop camp.
For all his understandable impatience, the brigadier saw to it that Sergeant Winchel, who had commanded the advance observers, had a pint of foaming beer before officially rendering his report to the waiting knot of officers.
Still redfaced and streaming sweat from the long run in the heat of the sun, the broad-shouldered, thick-bodied man stood at rigid attention, his eyes fixed unwaveringly on a point directly ahead of him, and rendered his report in short, terse, toneless sentences.
“Sir! The enemy are all across the ford. There are three mounted units and one of foot. Only some half of the horsemen are heavy-armed ... ”
There were sighs of relief and a few exchanged grins amongst the officers at this, all silenced and wiped off by an imperious wave of the brigadier’s horny hand.
“I’ll have silence, gentlemen, if you please. We’ve damn-all time, as it is. Go on, sergeant.”
The sergeant continued in the same dehumanized voice. “There seem to be no bowmen or dartmen or slingers among the foot, and no horse-archers. The numbers of the horsemen are a total of fifty to fifty-five score; the foot are half that number or less.”
“Could you see any units that appeared to be dragoons—mounted men armed with infantry weapons, sergeant?” rasped the brigadier.
“Sir! A few, perhaps ten score, in the third mounted unit might have been such, but all in both of the leading units were cavalry—either heavy or light.”