It was not easy, but he had done other things that were not easy. He had seen his mother die, and Mali that he loved, and his daughter near death at his feet. He had seen the best friend of his youth trampled under the lords’ horses; he had seen wells poisoned and fields burnt barren. He took a deep breath, holding all these things in his mind, all the pain he could remember, all the love he’d had for family and beasts and trees and land—love that no one else ever knew, because he could not speak it. He tossed it high, with his hope for life. And felt it taken, a vast weight he had not known he carried.
The petals vanished, though he could feel their softness yet, and their perfume eased his breathing. He was all alone on the hilltop, though he heard someone crashing through the bushes on the upward trail.
“Gird! Marshal-general!” One of the newer yeomen, to whom that title came naturally. Gird took a breath, and hoped his face did not show all that had happened.
“What?” he called back, hearing in his voice a curious combination of irritation and joy.
“They’re coming! They’re already out of the wood!”
Gird swung to look north, and they certainly were. Horsemen first, the low sun winking on polished armor and bit chains, gleaming on the horses themselves, gilding the colors of banners and streamers and bright clothing. Some of those were surely magelords. Behind them, shadowy in the dust already beginning to rise at the edge of the wood, were the foot soldiers, rank after rank. His mouth dried. How many hundreds did they have? He had thought he had more—one thousand, two thousands, three. . . . The horsemen halted just far enough out on the meadow to let the infantry deploy behind them. Gird searched the wood on the far slope for the archers they would surely have sense enough to send out in a flanking movement. His own archers were supposed to be up on the end of the ridge, guarding against archers getting into his rear. He hoped they were alert. He had no fear of the horses or foot soldiers getting back there; the ridge behind him to the south was safe as a wall.
Below him, he heard his own army coming into order. He started down the hill, hoping the enemy had not spotted him atop the hill. He put his hand up to his hair, thankful that he hadn’t put on his salvaged helmet yet.
At the foot of the hill, the gray carthorse stood as if it were waiting for him. Someone had found a saddle for it, and a bridle. Even so, the horse had positioned itself beside a rock. Gird climbed on, wondering even as he did why he found it so natural that the horse was making itself useful. Cob came running up with his helmet, and offered a sword. Gird shook his head. He hadn’t learned to use a sword yet, and a battle was no time to try something new. The horse was new enough.
His cohorts had formed; he rode past them, checking with each marshal. The faces blurred in his eyes; his mouth found the right names by some instinct, but only Rahi’s stood out distinctly. She gave him her broad smile, and the gray horse bobbed its head. Rahi’s cohort laughed. He wanted to tell her, and no one else, what the god had told him, but he could not. That kind of knowledge had to be borne alone. He noticed, without really thinking about it, that over half of his yeomen had managed to find a blue shirt to wear; it was beginning to look like a uniform.
For a time it seemed that the enemy might simply stand on the far side of the field and stare at them, but after a time they moved forward. On the north, the broad-topped wooded ridge sloped directly into the meadow, but on the south, Gird’s side, three distinct low hills lay between the sharp southern ridge and the more level grass, with the sluggish creek running east to west along it.
Gird had done what he could in the limited time he had to make this ground as favorable as possible. He had archers on the north face of all three hills, as well as the blunt end of the southern ridge. He had had pits dug, in the mucky ground near the creek, lightly covered with wattle and strewn with grass. This would, he hoped, make both cavalry and foot charges harder, and prevent easy flanking of his troop. His main force was arrayed before and between the two more eastern hills; the western hill seemed undefended, but in addition to archers had several natural hazards. Against the lords’ reputed magicks, he had no defense but Arranha’s comment that a mage could not counter what he did not expect. He hoped they would not expect the small, doomed, but very eager group that he had left well hidden on the south face of that north slope, directly in the enemy’s rear, with orders to stay hidden until the lords were busy with their magic elsewhere.
Now the king’s army moved; for the first time, Gird saw the royal standard that he had heard about, a great banner that barely moved in the morning breeze, then suddenly floated out, showing its device. Gird had been told it was a seadragon; by himself he would have thought it was a snake with a fish’s tail. Each of the lords with the king had his own banner, his or her own colors repeated in the uniforms of the soldiers—and, if the gnomes were right, his or her own separate battle plan. That was supposed to be another advantage to his side. They looked pretty enough, like the models the gnomes had shown him: one hundred all in yellow and green, then two hundreds in blue and gold, then a block of orange, and a block of green and blue. Gird assumed that the lords were in the rear, those mounted figures in brilliant colors that seemed to glow with their own light. Even as he watched, he saw bright-striped tents go up, servants hanging on the lines. Smoke rose from cookfires newly lit. For some reason, that show of confidence infuriated Gird. Win it before you celebrate it, he told them silently.
The cavalry screen drew aside on either flank, and the foot soldiers advanced. Most of them still carried sword and shield; some units had pikes; a few had long spears. Gird frowned; those could cause him a lot of trouble. But watching them advance, he realized that they were not accustomed to that extra length. Evidently someone had decided to make a weapon that would outreach his pikes, but the men carrying them had not had enough drill. Behind the swordsmen and pikemen came the archers. Over the winter, Gird had tried many versions of a shield that would stop arrows but be light enough to carry, and easily dropped when both arms were needed for the pike. Nothing worked perfectly. His foremost cohorts had small wooden shields that might protect their faces from arrows near their utmost range, but most trusted to their stolen—no, salvaged—helmets and bits of body armor.
The first enemy flights of arrows went up; Gird’s marshals shouted their warnings, and all but the stupidest looked down. The enemy made a rush forward, discovering a moment too late the pits Gird’s army had dug. These were not deep enough or large enough to keep the enemy back, but they slowed the rush just as the archers, following it, came within range of Gird’s archers.
More angry than hurt, the enemy foot soldiers floundered through the mud, hauled themselves out of the pits and flung themselves on at Gird’s unmoving cohorts. The enemy lines were no longer lines, and behind them their own archers were falling to Gird’s. They did not care; they looked, to Gird on his old gray horse, like any young men who have made fools of themselves in public. Their officers, bellowing at them from the rear, didn’t seem to have much effect; a second and third line staggered into the pits, tried to jump across and failed, and fought their way out, to storm up the gentle slope toward Gird’s cohorts.
The marshals watched Gird; he watched the straggling but furious advance. Those few seconds seemed to stretch endlessly, as if he had time to notice the expression on every face, whether the oncoming eyes were blue or grey or brown. Then the first ones reached the mark he had placed, and he dropped his hand, with the long blue streamer that served as their banner.