"Dress ranks!" cried the major. This command, too, was repeated. The sergeants bustled about, shouting and shoving to align their men. The colonel trotted by on his horse, followed by several mounted adjutants. He exchanged shouts with the majors commanding the three battalions.
Vulkop, the sergeant of Beta Company, also with halberd on shoulder, wandered around the corner of the phalanx to Thorolf. During a lull, Vulkop said softly: "I like it not, Thorolf." He jerked a thumb toward the Brandescan Army. " 'Tis said the foe have a mort of thunder tubes yonder, of a new and deadlier kind."
"One of those stone balls may strike down a few," said Thorolf, "but we shall be upon them long ere they can reload."
"I hear they shoot, not stones, but balls of iron," persisted Vulkop. "That makes these 'guns,' as they call them, nimbler and farther-reaching. I've warned the officers, but I might as well have bespoken the deaf."
"I, too, have told them we shall need a new plan of battle, to no avail," replied Thorolf. "The push of the pike, quotha, will ever rule the field. And where the devil's our cavalry?"
"Late as usual," snarled Vulkop, trotting back around the corner of the formation.
After an eternity of waiting, while officers conferred and noncoms nagged their men, the major commanded:
"Attention! Front rank, lower pikes!"
The pikes of the first rank came down to horizontal.
"Second rank, slant pikes!"
The pikemen behind those in front lowered their pikes to an angle of thirty degrees, holding so that they passed between the heads of the soldiers in front of them.
"Arbalesters, cock your weapons!"
The crossbowmen at the corners each placed the muzzle of his device on the ground and put a foot into the stirrup in the nose. They squatted, seized the bowstring in both hands, and bent the bow as they straightened up with a grunt and a heave.
"Prepare to charge!"
Thorolf pushed his way between the men to the inner side of the square. His r61e was to continue to command and discipline the men from the inner side. If the enemy threatened to break into the square, he would stiffen the resistance with swings of his halberd.
Shouts arose from the phalanx. Out from the ends of the Brandescan line streamed squadrons of cavalry. As they neared, Thorolf saw from their baggy garments and turbans that they were Saracens, brandishing scimitars, javelins, and bows. He had heard that Brandesco, weak in cavalry, had hired these foreign horsemen to make up the lack. Yelling, the Saracens galloped toward the Aemilian phalanxes.
"Hedgehog!" screamed the major. "Hedgehog! Hedgehog!" came the shouts of his subordinates.
The outermost ranks and files of the phalangites faced outward, knelt, and jammed the butts of their pikes into the soft earth. Behind them, the second ranks slanted their pikes as the second rank of the front had done before, thus presenting a spiky obstacle all the way round the formation.
The arbalesters at the corners discharged their crossbows with a rattle of thuds. Although they could hardly miss at that range, they did no visible harm.
Along the Brandescan line, puffs of smoke bloomed to cauliflower shape. Half a heartbeat later came the crash of cannon fire. Cannon balls sailed overhead or plowed up the soft earth on either side. The men of the battalion set up a jeering outcry:
"Couldn't hit the side of a mountain!"
"Attention!" came the command. Again the pikes were raised to vertical, while the kneeling soldiers rose. Delay followed as officers conferred and sergeants cursed their men to get them lined up. The colonel and his adjutants galloped past, throwing up clods of mud. At last came the command:
"Prepare to charge!"
Along the Brandescan line in the nearer distance, Thorolf glimpsed men rushing about, swabbing out gun barrels and hefting iron balls and bags of powder.
"Charge!" yelled the major. "Charge! Charge!" cried the others.
The phalanx started forward at a trot. As the Brandescan line came closer, the Saracens hovering out of crossbow range swept in again, whooping and yelling.
"Halt! Hedgehog!"
The men obeyed, more raggedly than the first time. Then the Brandescan cannon opened up again. Two balls plowed into Thorolf's phalanx, with a crash that mingled the crackle of shattering spears with the din of breaking men in armor. Pikes toppled; screams arose.
"Close up! Close up!" bellowed the sergeants.
"Attention! Prepare to charge! Charge!" came the commands.
Again the formation started forward, leaving the wounded and slain sprawled on the brown earth. Again came the Saracen charge, the hedgehog, and the cannon volley. Several cannon balls plowed into the formation; more pikes toppled. In addition, a crackle of handgun fire ran down the Brandescan line. Commands were drowned out by a rising chorus of screams and yells from the wounded. Sergeant Vulkop shouted in Thorolf's ear:
"Another volley like that and we shall be down to half our strength! The men are wavering!"
"Where's the major?"
"There he is, what's left!" Vulkop pointed to a headless body in half-armor, lying with several others within the square. All the officers had fallen or disappeared.
The Saracens whirled past as the crossbowmen got their weapons cocked and let fly. Thorolf stumbled over a mess of spilled entrails. He told his two surviving fellow sergeants:
"There's something feigned about those Saracens. They shoot their arrows or cast their darts not; and our arbalesters' bolts go through them and their horses without harm."
"Sorcery!" said Sergeant Herminus.
"Aye; the Saracens are but an illusion cast by their wizards, to halt us in range of their tubes. If we can get the men moving again, one good charge, ignoring the illusions—"
"Too late!" said Vulkop. "Look yonder!" He pointed to the middle one of the three phalanxes. It was breaking up; men were leaving their shattered ranks and streaming back across the plain. Most of them dropped their pikes to move faster.
"And yonder!" said Herminus, pointing toward the Brandescan line, from the ends of which rode more cavalry. These were no phantom Saracens but armored lancers bearing the eagle flag of Brandesco on their lance tips.
Thorolf, tripping over a severed leg, hurried around the square, bellowing: "Get back in line! Get in line! Hold your posts, if you would not be stuck like pigs! It's your only chance!" Where a couple of men dropped their pikes and started off as the men of the other phalanxes were doing, he pushed through to the outside and drove the men back into ranks with blows of the shaft of his halberd.
By shouting himself hoarse and by blows and kicks, with the help of the other sergeants he got the surviving men back into a ragged hedgehog formation. A squadron of Brandescan lancers rode up, then sheered off from the hedge of pikes and galloped away across the plain after easier targets, the backs of the fleeing phalangites. Then the Aemilian cavalry, long overdue, appeared; but at the sight of the two broken phalanxes they turned about and rode off, leaving the Brandescan riders to spear the fleeing foot until the plain was carpeted with bodies.
Thorolf's surviving phalanx tramped its way in a stolid square back across the plain, presenting a ready hedgehog of pikes every time a group of Brandescans came nigh. The walking wounded limped along inside the square. The more seriously stricken had perforce to be left to the mercy of the Brandescans.
Without planning to do so, Thorolf had fallen into command of his group by energy, brawn, and presence of mind. The other sergeants seemed willing to follow his lead.
Night had fallen when the group, down to fewer then two hundred, reached the village of Formi.
Under a sinking half-moon, Formi seemed curiously deserted; no villagers were in sight. Instead, a few men of the Aemilian army, many staggering drunk, moved about the streets, in which lay several bodies in peasant garb.