“Yes, sir!” Excitement glowed on Watson’s face. “I’ll see to it, sir. You can count on me!” He went back at a gallop, shouting for his catapult crews to hustle their deadly machines forward. Ned grinned and shook his head. Like a lot of common soldiers, Watson was young enough to imagine himself immortal as a god. Ned wished he were still that young. He knew the southrons could kill him-unless he killed them first.
So did Colonel Biffle. “Sir, they’re still pushing on us. We’re going to stop more bolts if we don’t pull back a bit.”
“Right you are,” Ned said. As he and Biffle rode back toward their own line, he saw Captain Watson and the catapult crews bringing their engines forward. In minutes, stones and darts and firepots started coming down on the southrons’ heads. Ned whooped. “That’s the way to give it to ’em!”
But the southrons had engines of their own, and punished his dismounted riders with them. And they had footsoldiers in great numbers. They kept on storming forward, ready to fight. A captain called out to Ned in some alarm: “Sir, I don’t know how long we can hold ’em unless we get some more men here.”
“Do your best, gods damn it,” Ned answered. He slammed a fist-his left fist-down on his thigh. “Where in the seven hells is that low-down, no-good son of a bitch called Leonidas the Priest? If he really has turned coward on us, we’re going to have to get out of here, and I’m cursed if I want to do it. We can lick the stinking southrons, if only we get to work and do it.”
But General Guildenstern’s men came on like a gray wave of the sea, always looking to lap around the edges of Ned’s line and roll it up. At last, he couldn’t bear it any more. He spurred his unicorn back toward the rear. If I catch Leonidas back there praying when he ought to be fighting, I will sacrifice him to the Lion God, he thought. But to the seven hells with me if I think his lion would much care to gnaw on his scrawny old carcass.
That thought-and maybe Colonel Biffle’s spirits coursing through him, too-made him laugh out loud, his own spirits almost completely restored despite the wound. And then he took off his hat and waved it and whooped out loud: up the road marched a long column of crossbowmen in indigo tunics and pantaloons (some in gray pantaloons, taken from dead southrons). Leonidas might not have been quite so fast as Ned would have liked, but he’d got his soldiers on the move.
“Come on, boys!” Ned yelled, and pointed to the south. “We’ve got plenty of southrons up there for you to kill!” When Leonidas’ troopers cheered, they sounded like roaring lions themselves. Ned rode forward with them. Going forward, going toward the fight, was what he did best.
A crossbow quarrel slashed the bushes behind which Rollant hid. He flattened himself even lower to the ground. He wished he could burrow his way down into it, like a mole or a gopher. Something-a shape in blue?-moved out there among the trees. He shot at it, then set another bolt in the groove to his crossbow and yanked back the bowstring as fast as he could. He had no idea whether he’d hit the enemy soldier. He wasn’t altogether sure there had been an enemy soldier. The only thing he was sure of was that he dared not take a chance.
Smitty crouched behind an oak not far away. “How many traitors are there, anyway?” he asked, reloading his own crossbow.
“I don’t know,” Rollant answered. “All I know is, there are too many of them, and they all seem to be coming right at us.”
This was different from the savage little skirmish his company had fought a few days before. Now all of Lieutenant General George’s soldiers were in line together-and all of them, by the racket that came from both east and west of Rollant, were being pressed hard. The traitors roared like lions when they came forward, as if to say they were the true children of the Lion God.
The sound made the hair prickle up on the back of Rollant’s neck. The Detinans had roared when they smashed the blond kingdoms of the north, too, back in the days not long after they crossed the Western Ocean and came to this land. Iron and unicorns and catapults and magic had had more to do with their triumphs than the roaring, but no blond to this day could hear it without wanting to flinch.
They won’t capture me, Rollant thought. I won’t let them capture me. If they let him live, they would haul him back to Ormerod’s estate in chains. I should have killed him. I had the chance. He shook his head. He knew he was lucky his former liege lord hadn’t killed him.
Somewhere not far away, the din rose to a peak-and then started coming from farther south than it had. Smitty and Rollant both cursed. “They’ve broken through, Thunderer blast them,” Smitty said. Then he said a worse word: “Again.”
“What do we do?” Rollant looked nervously in that direction.
“Hang on here till we’re ordered back,” Smitty answered. “What else can we do?”
Rollant shrugged. Hang on here till the traitors flank us out and roll over us, went through his mind. He couldn’t say that. An ordinary Detinan trooper might have, but he couldn’t. He didn’t think Smitty would start going on about cowardly blonds, but he wasn’t altogether sure. And he was altogether sure some of the other Detinans in the squad would go on about exactly that.
“Hold your places, men!” That was Lieutenant Griff, still in command of the company. His voice was high and anxious. Had Captain Cephas been there, the identical order from his lips would have heartened the men. After Griff gave it, plenty of Detinans started looking back toward the rear, to make sure their line of retreat remained open. Rollant wasn’t ashamed to do the same.
Great stones and firepots started landing close by. A stone that hit a tree could knock it flat, and the soldier beside it, too. “Curse the traitors!” Smitty howled. “They’ve found a road to move their engines forward.”
In country like this, engines could move forward only on roads. Hauling them through the woods was a nightmare Rollant didn’t want to contemplate. He had other things he didn’t want to contemplate, too. “Where are our engines hiding?” he asked.
“They’re back there-somewhere.” That was Sergeant Joram, pointing back toward the rear. “You wouldn’t expect the fellows who run them to come up here and mix it with the traitors, would you? They might get their fancy uniforms soiled.”
That was unfair: catapult crews fought hard. But none of them seemed close by right now, when the company needed them. And Joram’s sarcasm did more to steady the men who heard it than Lieutenant Griff’s worried command to stand fast. Why isn’t Joram an officer? Rollant wondered.
Then he cheered like a man possessed, and so did the soldiers close by, for Doubting George’s army did have some engines hidden up a tunic sleeve. Stones smashed down on the enemy soldiers pushing forward against Rollant’s company. A bolt from a dart-thrower transfixed two men at once as they ran forward. A firepot landed on them a moment later, giving them a pyre before they were quite dead.
“See how you like it!” Rollant shouted. Another crossbow quarrel tore leaves from the bushes behind which he lay.
“Don’t be stupid,” Sergeant Joram said. “Just do your job. Everybody does his job, everything will turn out fine.” He sounded calm and confident and certain. By sounding that way, he made Rollant feel guilty. Captain Cephas had had the same gift, but who could say when-or if-Cephas would return to the company?
No sooner had Rollant started reflecting on how calm he felt than a storm of crossbow bolts came, not from ahead of him, but from off to the left. The traitors gave forth with their roaring battle cry.
“Flanked!” Half a dozen men shouted the same thing at the same time. Rollant wasn’t the least bit ashamed to be one of them. He scrambled away from the bushes, trying to find a couple of trees that would protect him from the left and from the front at the same time. It wasn’t easy. It was, in fact, next to impossible-trees didn’t grow so conveniently close together.