“King Avram!” the southrons shouted back. “King Avram, and to the seven hells with provincial prerogative!” Other cries rose, too, wordless cries of pain as crossbow quarrels from both sides began finding targets.
A soldier near Ormerod went down. His feet drummed and thumped on the pine needles, but he wouldn’t be getting up again, not with a bolt between the eyes. Ormerod looked again at the sword in his hand. If the enemy charged, it would do him some good. Meanwhile… Meanwhile, he scrambled over and scooped up the shot man’s crossbow and pulled the sheaf of bolts off his belt. By the time he got back to his own tree, the soldier had realized he was dead and stopped kicking.
Ormerod set a quarrel in the crossbow’s groove, yanked back on the bow to cock it, and steadied his finger on the trigger. Sticking some part of his head out to look for a target gave him a certain amount of pause-supposed one of the gray-clad southrons was waiting for him to do exactly that? He would kick mindlessly for a few heartbeats and then stop, too.
This is your duty to King Geoffrey, he told himself, and made himself do what was required. A quarrel slammed into the tree trunk a couple of inches from his head. He jerked back, cold sweat springing out on his brow. When he peered out again, it was from much lower down.
He shot at an enemy soldier. The fellow didn’t shriek, so he supposed he missed. Cursing under his breath, he loaded and cocked the crossbow as fast as he could. He wished he were ambidextrous, so he could have put the bow to his left shoulder and pulled the trigger with his left hand. That would have let him look out from behind the tree on the side enemy sharpshooters didn’t expect.
But no such luck. Like most men, he was doomed to predictability. “Forward!” he called to his men-at the same time as an officer on the other side was also shouting, “Forward!”
Ormerod’s men had learned in a hard, bloody school. They knew how to advance through woods. Some of them shot at the enemy and made him keep his head down while others actually moved forward. Then the two groups traded roles, the ones who had been shooting now leapfrogging past the men who, in new cover of their own, kept the southrons busy.
Against raw enemy troops, such tactics were almost bound to succeed. But the third company of the Twenty-Sixth New Eborac proved to consist of veteran soldiers who fought the same way as the men from Palmetto Province whom Ormerod commanded. The southrons offered his soldiers few targets as they worked their way forward-only the occasional glimpse of a gray tunic or a dark head or, now and again, a blond one.
Blond heads… When Ormerod realized what that meant, he let out a great, full-throated bellow of rage. “They’ve got runaways fighting for ’em, the bastards!” he shouted when he finally found words. “Now we really have to make them pay!”
He wanted to throw aside the dead man’s crossbow and charge the enemy swinging his sword, as if he were a conqueror from the heroic days not long after the Detinans first crossed the Western Ocean and cast down the kingdoms the yellow-haired men had made hereabouts. But the blonds who fought for King Avram didn’t lumber around in ass-drawn chariots and wield cumbersome bronze-headed axes. Their weapons were as good as his, and they had real Detinans alongside to help stiffen them if they faltered. The sword stayed in Ormerod’s scabbard.
As he ran forward, he wondered if any of those blonds there on the other side had escaped from his estate. Maybe we’d do better coming after them with whips, to make them remember they serve us, he thought. Then another crossbow quarrel snarled past him. He shook his head. The blonds had been serfs, but some of them were soldiers now.
“Avram!” they shouted. He recognized their accent-not so very different from his own, not much like the clipped tones most proper southrons used. “King Avram! Avram and freedom!”
“Avram and ass piss!” Ormerod yelled back. Freedom, he thought. As if the serfs deserve it. Not likely. We made Detina what it is by conquering them. What would it be if we let them pretend they were as good as we are? He didn’t know what it would be. He did know it wouldn’t be any place where he cared to live. He grimaced. Without serfs to work his fields and harvest the indigo, it wouldn’t even be any place where he could make a living.
“Forward!” the southron officer shouted again.
“Forward!” Captain Ormerod echoed. As if from far away, he heard other company commanders from Colonel Florizel’s regiment shouting the same thing, and other southrons as well. He paid them only scant attention. They weren’t directly affecting him, and so he didn’t worry about them. He had plenty to worry about right here-in these woods, he couldn’t tell what most of his own company was doing, let alone anyone else’s.
He ran for a pine up ahead. Somebody else was running for it, too-somebody in a gray tunic and pantaloons. Out came the sword he’d resheathed not long before. He set the crossbow down on the ground. Once he settled with the foe, he would pick it up again.
Had the enemy soldier had a bolt in the groove of his own crossbow, Ormerod might not have had such a good time of it. But the fellow’s crossbow was also empty. He threw it aside and yanked out his own shortsword to defend himself against Ormerod’s onslaught.
Steel belled on steel. Sparks flew. Ormerod’s lips skinned back from his teeth in a fierce grin. He had a proper blade, and knew what to do with it. The southron’s sword was intended for use only after all else failed. By the way the fellow held it, he hadn’t had to use it very often up till now.
“Ha!” Ormerod said. The slash would have split the southron’s skull, but the enemy trooper jerked his head aside at the last instant. The blade hacked off most of his left ear. Howling, dripping blood, he turned and fled, throwing aside the shortsword so he could flee the faster.
Ormerod took two steps after him, then checked himself. Any farther and he risked running into the gods only knew how many southrons. He snatched up his crossbow again, slid a bolt into the groove, and cocked the piece.
“Forward!” the southron captain, or whatever he was, shouted again. His voice didn’t sound as if it came from very far away. Ormerod froze into a hunter’s crouch, as he might have done going after tiger or basilisk in the swampy near-jungle of the woods of Palmetto Province. The enemy officer went on, “We can lick these bastards-they aren’t very tough.”
“No, eh?” But Ormerod’s lips shaped the words without the slightest betraying sound. Sure enough, there stood the southron, behind an oak not fifty yards away. Ormerod brought the crossbow to his shoulder. He pulled the trigger. The bowstring thrummed. The stock kicked against him.
And the enemy captain clutched at his ribcage and slowly crumpled to the ground. “Take that, you filthy, fornicating robber!” Ormerod yowled. “King Geoffrey and victory!”
The gray-clad soldiers cried out in dismay as their leader fell. But they had no quit in them. “Come on!” someone else-a lieutenant? a sergeant?-yelled. “We can still whip these bastards!” And, instead of falling back as Ormerod had hoped, the southrons surged forward more fiercely than before.
Some of them had their shortswords out, as did some of Ormerod’s men. Usually, one side or the other gave way in a fight like this. That didn’t happen here. Both Ormerod’s troopers and the southrons wanted to get their hands on their foes, and both kept coming despite everything their foes could do to them. It wasn’t an enormous fight, but it was as fierce as any Ormerod had seen.
A big blond fellow swinging his shortsword rushed straight at Ormerod, yelling, “King Avram and freedom!” at the top of his lungs. His slash would have taken off Ormerod’s head had it connected.