“Forward!” he shouted, and spurred his own unicorn toward the southron soldiers. Roaring as if the Lion God spoke through them, the riders of Colonel Biffle’s regiment followed him.
Avram’s soldiers were marching in blocks of pikemen and crossbowmen. They wouldn’t have anywhere near the time they needed to put up a proper line in front of the archers. If Ned’s men could get in among them, they would work a fearful slaughter.
If. The southrons were veterans. Ned could see as much by the way they turned from column into line, by the way their first rank dropped to their bellies and their second to one knee so the third, standing, rank could shoot over both of them. And he could see as much by the volley of bolts that tore into his men.
Unicorns fell. Men crumpled in the saddle and crashed to the ground. And the first three ranks of enemy footsoldiers moved back to the rear of the line while the next three stepped forward. They poured in a volley as devastating as the first-if anything, more devastating, because the unicorn-riders were closer and easier to hit.
Easier to hit, yes, but they couldn’t hit back. Ned cursed again. This time, though, he cursed himself, for folly. He’d been annoyed at having his ploy thwarted, and he’d gambled on putting a scare on King Avram’s men. It wasn’t the worst of gambles. Charging unicorns, their iron-shod horns and their riders’ sabers gleaming in the sun, were among the most terrifying things in the world. But King Avram sometimes led brave men, too.
How many men will I have left if they take another volley? Enough to drive the southrons off the road? Enough to hold it if I do? Neither seemed a good bet to Ned. And so he shouted, “Back! Back, gods damn it! We aren’t going to do what we came for, and there’s no point to doing anything less.” He wheeled his own unicorn back toward the forest without a qualm. Unlike some of King Geoffrey’s officers, he didn’t fight for the sake of fighting. If he couldn’t win, he saw no point to it.
As the unicorn turned, a crossbow quarrel caught it in the throat. Blood gushed, spurted, fountained-a big artery must have been cut. Ned leaned forward and thrust a finger into the wound. With it plugged, the unicorn galloped on. It even had the spirit and strength to leap over another unicorn that lay dead on the grass of the meadow.
Back under the trees, Ned pulled his finger out again. The unicorn took a couple of steps forward, then sank to the ground and finished its interrupted job of dying. Ned scrambled off. He looked around for another mount. He didn’t have to look long. More than a few unicorns had been led back to the forest without their riders.
“If we can’t do it here, we’ll have to do it at the real fight,” he told Colonel Biffle. Then he shouted, “We’re going back!” to Captain Watson.
Watson was busy bombarding the southrons with firepots and hosing them down with darts. “Do we have to leave?” he shouted back.
“Yes, gods damn it, we do have to leave,” Ned answered. “We can’t do what we came to do-fool bad luck, but no help for that. So we’ll go back and give the rest of King Avram’s bastards a hard time.”
His men rode hard. More often than not, they didn’t take their unicorns straight into battle, but fought dismounted. That let them push the pace when they were on the move. They tied their mounts beside those of the rest of Ned’s riders and hurried back to the fight on Merkle’s Hill.
“General Ned!” someone called in a battlefield bellow. “General Ned!”
“I’m here,” Ned shouted back. He advanced toward the call, sword in hand. If any southron wanted to meet him man to man, he was more than ready to oblige. The gods would judge one of them after the fight was done, and Ned didn’t intend that they should judge him for a good many years to come.
But it wasn’t a southron. It was Baron Dan of Rabbit Hill. Ned hadn’t had much to do with him since his quarrel with Count Thraxton back in Rising Rock. Dan thrust out his hand. As Ned took it, the other general saw the bandage on his right arm and exclaimed, “You’re wounded?”
“Just a scratch, and I’m a lefty anyways,” Ned replied. “What can I do for you?”
“Not so long ago, Doubting George’s men made a counterattack here, and they had some numbers while they were doing it,” Baron Dan said. “I saw some of our men most bravely holding them back, and I asked whose footsoldiers they were. The answer I got was, `We’re Ned of the Forest’s unicorn-riders.’ I salute you, sir, for their magnificent behavior.” He suited action to word.
“Thank you kindly.” Ned returned the salute. “Thank you very kindly indeed. You’re a gentleman, sir.” He did not use the word lightly, or often. Perhaps sensing as much, Dan of Rabbit Hill bowed. Ned returned that compliment, too, and said, “Now let’s whip these southron sons of bitches clean out of their boots.”
“Right you are, Lord Ned,” Dan said with a laugh. They went up the hill toward the fighting together.
“Come on, boys!” Captain Ormerod shouted. “One more good lick and those stinking southrons’ll run like rabbits.”
At his side, Lieutenant Gremio said, “In the courts back in Karlsburg, sir, I would object to a statement such as that on the grounds of insufficient evidence to support it. The southrons not having run up to this point in time, why should they commence now?”
“Because we’re going to hit them that one good lick, that’s why,” Ormerod answered in a voice everyone around him could hear. For Gremio’s ear alone, he went on in quieter tones: “And because I want the men to fight like mad bastards, and I don’t care a fart about evidence. Have you got that?”
“Yes, sir,” the lieutenant said. In thoughtful tones, he said, “This does make a certain amount of practical sense, I admit.”
“And to the seven hells with practical sense, too.” Ormerod started toward the west, where the sun was sinking. “By the gods, we’d better drive King Avram’s men off this hill before nightfall. Otherwise, they’ll have time to get their reinforcements into place tonight, and the battle will be that much harder tomorrow.”
“True enough.” But Gremio neither sounded nor looked worried. If anything, he looked sly. “I hear tell we have reinforcements coming, too.”
“Where from?” Ormerod demanded. “And what’s the evidence for that, Master Barrister, sir?”
“Oh, it’s hearsay,” Gremio said. “No doubt about it, it’s hearsay: I heard Colonel Florizel talking about it with another officer in the brigade.”
That was hearsay, sure enough. But it was hearsay at a high level, which made it seem promising to Ormerod. One obvious problem still bothered him, though. “Where in the seven hells would these reinforcements come from?” he repeated. He paused a moment to turn out the pockets of his pantaloons. “I haven’t got any on me, that’s sure.”
Gremio smiled the dutiful smile of a junior officer who had to acknowledge a senior officer’s joke. Then he said, “I heard-I can’t prove it, mind-they’d be coming from Parthenia Province.”
“By the gods, that’d be fine if it was so,” Ormerod said. “About time King Geoffrey figured out that what happens over here in the east is important, too. The war’s bigger than just the fight to keep the southrons away from Nonesuch.”
Before the war, he’d cared little about the east. Karlsburg lay on the Western Ocean, and his estate was just a few miles outside the oldest city in Palmetto Province. Had Colonel Florizel’s regiment gone into the Army of Southern Parthenia rather than the Army of Franklin, he probably still wouldn’t care very much about the east. But his horizons had broadened since.
“King Avram!” shouted the southron soldiers in front of Florizel’s regiment. “King Avram and justice!”
“King Avram and thievery,” Ormerod muttered under his breath. He turned to Gremio. “Where in the seven hells is the justice if that scrawny little toad who calls himself king in Georgetown wants to take my serfs away from me without my leave? Answer me that.”