Tibold grinned at Stomald behind their backs, and the priest smiled back despite another tiny stab of envy. It was easier for Tibold, for whatever else he was, Lord Sean was a born soldier. Tibold took paternal pride in him, and Lord Sean seemed to return his regard. He certainly listened attentively to anything Tibold had to say.
Lord Sean was murmuring to the Angel Harry in that other odd-sounding language they often spoke. Stomald suspected they sometimes forgot no one else understood it (Lord Sean always fell back into Pardalian whenever he remembered others were present), and the young war captain’s ability to speak it awed the heretic priest. To be so close to the angels he spoke their own tongue almost unthinkingly must be wondrous, indeed.
Lord Sean stood back from the map at last, and his eyes were pensive. “Tibold, I think they’ll hit our forward pickets this afternoon. Do you agree?”
Tibold studied the map a moment and nodded.
“Then it’s time,” Lord Sean sighed. “I’ll speak to Tamman again, but you have a word with the under-captains. Make sure they keep their heads. We’re fighting for survival, not honor, and we don’t want any wasted lives.”
“I will, Lord Sean,” Tibold promised, obviously pleased by the Captain-General’s concern for his men, and Lord Sean turned to Stomald.
“I expect to hold them, Father, but are we ready if we can’t?”
“We are, Lord Sean. I’ve sent the last of the women back to safety, and the nioharqs will be in the traces by dawn, ready to advance or retreat.”
Lord Sean nodded in satisfaction, then nodded again as the Angel Harry murmured something too soft for any other ears to hear.
“Father, Captain Tibold and I will be unable to release the troops for services this evening with the enemy so near at hand, but if you’d care to send the chaplains forward—?”
“Thank you,” Stomald said. Lord Sean was always careful about such things, yet the priest wondered why neither he nor Lord Tamman nor even the angels attended the services. Of course, such as they had their own links to God, but it was almost as if they stood aside intentionally.
“In that case, I think I’ll go find lunch. Will you join me?”
Stomald nodded, and noted the amusement in the Angel Harry’s eye. She smiled on the captain, and a surprising thought flickered in Stomald’s mind. Lord Sean was as homely as the Angel Harry was beautiful, and the angel, for all her height, seemed tiny beside him, yet there was something…
It was the eyes, he thought. Why had he never noticed before? Lord Sean’s strange, black eyes, darker than night, were exactly the same shade. And the hair, so black it was almost blue. That, too, was the same. Why, aside from Lord Sean’s homeliness, they might have been brother and sister!
Like everyone else, Stomald knew Lord Sean and Lord Tamman were more than human—one had only to watch their blinding reflexes or see them occasionally forget to hide their incredible strength to know that—but it hadn’t occurred to him they might share the angels’ blood!
The thought was somehow chilling. Lord Sean and Lord Tamman were mortal. They both insisted on that, and Stomald believed them, and that meant they couldn’t be related to angels. Besides, Holy Writ said all angels were female, and how could mortal blood mingle with divine? And yet … what if—?
He thrust the idea aside. It was disrespectful at best, and, a hidden part of him knew guiltily, it sprang from an unforgivable yearning that would have appalled him had he faced it squarely.
Tamman leaned against the thyru tree, watching the road to the east, then glanced back up at the man perched in the branches with his mirror. Pardalian armies had surprisingly sophisticated signal systems, but both mirrors and flags were “daylight-only,” and the afternoon was passing.
He wanted to pace, but that would never do for an angelically chosen war captain. Besides, he was out here instead of Sean expressly to win his men’s confidence, which might be important tomorrow, so he contented himself with crushing dried thyru husks under his heel. The thyru resembled an enormous acorn, but its soft, inner tissues produced an oil which filled much the same niche as Terra’s olive oil, and he wondered how the Pardalians dealt with its thick shell. Now there was a messy thought!
He realized his mind was straying and tinkered with his adrenaline levels. He didn’t really know why he was watching the road so hard. Unlike his scouts, he had a direct link to Israel’s scanner arrays via Sandy’s cutter. He knew where the enemy was, and glaring at an empty piece of road wasn’t going to get them here a moment sooner.
He gave himself a shake and moved along the line, patting shoulders and exchanging smiles. Pardalian armies knew about mounted firearms—indeed, most Pardalian cavalry were dragoons—but they’d never been a real threat. While handy for scouting and harassment, dragoons could wear only light armor, their shorter muskets had neither the range nor rate of fire to stand off pikemen, and you couldn’t put pikes on branahlks. But these dragoons were something new, for their joharns were rifled. Not, he reminded himself, that this was the time to show the Holy Host all they could do. That would come tomorrow.
He reached the end of the line and strolled back to his tree, then rechecked his uplink. Well, how about that?Looks like I spent just about exactly the right time with the troops.
“Rethvan?” He glanced up at the signaler once more.
“Yes, Captain?”
“I expect their point to round the bend in about five minutes. Get ready to pass the signal.”
“At once, Lord Tamman.” Rethvan couldn’t see around that bend, but he sounded so confident Tamman grinned. Now all we have to do is never ever make a mistake—’cause if we do, that confidence could turn around and bite us right on the ass.
The westering sunlight turned steadily redder, and a corner of his mind looked down through the scanner arrays. Just … about … now.
The first mounted scout rounded the bend exactly on cue.
“Send it, Rethvan.” He was pleased by how calm he sounded.
“Yes, Captain.”
The flashing mirror alerted the outposts to the west, and Tamman heard branahlks whistle behind his hill as their holders got them ready, but it was only a distant background. His attention was on the advancing company of Temple Guard cavalry, and his eyes slipped into telescopic mode.
They looked tired, and little wonder. Lord Marshal Rokas had moved fast once he started. The logistic capabilities of Pardalian armies amazed Tamman; he’d expected something like Earth’s pike-and-musket era, but Pardal had nioharqs. The huge, tusked critters—they reminded him of elephant-sized hogs—could eat almost anything, which made forage far less of a problem than it had been for horse-powered armies, and their sustained speed was astonishing. True, their low top speed made them useless as cavalry, but they let Pardalians move artillery, rations, tents, portable forges, and mobile kitchens at a rate which would have turned Gustavus Adolphus green with envy.
Even so, Rokas’s troops had to be feeling the pace. Sean had sealed the borders, and the Temple didn’t know diddly about their deployment—their remotes couldn’t penetrate the Temple itself, but they’d eavesdropped on enough of Rokas’s field conferences to prove that. Yet the lord marshal had made a pretty fair estimate of their maximum possible strength, and he wasn’t worrying about subtle maneuvers. He was going to throw enough bodies at them to plow them under and bull right through … he thought.
Tamman’s smile was evil as he watched the scouts advance. They might be tired, but they seemed alert. Unfortunately for them, however, they were watching for threats inside the range they “knew” Pardalian weapons had.