Robert Adams - Champion of the Last Battle

The brigadier reined up a lathered horse beside where Colonel Bruce Farr sat his own mount. The brigadier’s lined old face was red, and there was frantic haste in his voice.

“Colonel, your drummers must order your left-flanking companies to immediately ground pikes and draw shortswords! They ...” Then he groaned, “Oh, God help us all, now it’s too late.” Then he mouthed nothing save snarled curses as he stood in his stirrups to see over the heads of his embattled pikemen.

The colonel rose himself, and what he saw shook him to the flinty core.

Taking a good grip on the dangling cords, the men and women cast the specially woven nets in such fashion that they ensnared a maximum number of the thrusting points of the third through eighth ranks of pikemen. Then, after hacking down or thrusting into the two ranks of kneeling pikemen, they fell onto their backs and began to swiftly worm their way under the points and hafts of the lengthy weapons. Knowing that their very lives depended upon it, they moved amazingly fast, and soon their already-bloodied blades were chopping, slicing, stabbing at the unarmored, unprotected thighs and loins, hips and bellies, arms and faces of the pikemen.

Skimpily armored and with both hands being occupied in keeping the long, heavy haft of the pike in place, hampered from any easy movement by both the weight of the pike and the close-packed formation, the helpless men could but scream and drop, dead or dying. At length, some of the men whose points were ensnared anyway dropped their hafts and drew their shortswords.

Most of them never even got close enough to blunt their edges on their opponents’ armor-plated bodies, however, for the broadswords and sabers were sufficiently longer to have point in face or throat or an edge hacking at neck or arm before the pikemen’s sidearms could reach striking position.

Bili lopped off an arm still grasping a pike just above the cuff of a mailed gauntlet, then turned to confront a man who had already hacked once or twice at the backplate of his cuirass. But before he could strike, the point of a pike struck hard at his breastplate, slid down the groove of its fluting and plunged into the lower belly of his erstwhile opponent.

A mighty, full-strength hack of Bili’s heavy blade all but severed the haft and its iron-strip reinforcings. The force of the blow did tear the point, sideways, out of the unfortunate’s belly, ripping a wide opening that spilled his intestines out to dangle like a bloody sporran between his widespread legs.

The brigadier slapped at a pikeman with the flat of his sword, shouting, “Damn you, whoreson! Ground your pikes—you had no order to present! Ground pikes, all of you! Thrust into that melee, you’re as likely to spit one of your comrades as any of those Kuhmbuhluhners.”

He turned to the regimental commander and snapped, “Dammit, colonel, where are your short-haftmen? Halberds and warhammers, that’s all that can put paid to those murdering bastards.”

Farr shrugged helplessly. “Sir, the earl ordered almost all of my short-hafts to reinforce the section of the line in the streambed. Only some few sergeants remain with me.”

To the knot of aides who had followed him, the brigadier shouted, “One of you ,.. Lieutenant Bryson, ride to Colonel Pease and bring back all his shorts at the double. The rest of you, dismount, adjust your gear and draw your swords. You too, Colonel Farr, and your staff officers and sergeants. We’ve all got better armor and longer swords than our brave pikemen. I can’t just sit here and watch them butchered out there.”

Suiting his actions to his words, the old warrior swung down from his saddle, lowered and carefully secured his visor, then tightened the knot on his wrist before drawing his long sword. At a limping run, he led his scratch force through a lane opened in the two ranks of uncommitted pikemen.

When there were no more throwing axes, Prince Byruhn drew back some fifty yards from the pike line and surveyed what he could see of the overall combat. The dust and the distance made the area assigned to Prince Mahrtuhn Gilbuht, his nephew, faint and unclear, while to his immediate right, the First Battle was become a swirling mass of mostly mounted New Kuhmbuhluhners and unmounted Skohshuns armed with poleaxes, warhammers, short pikes and greatswords industriously hacking and stabbing and slashing at each other just a bit out from the pike line.

Due principally to the great clouds of roiling dust that this combat had raised, he did not for a long moment notice that just to his left of this broil, there was a jagged gap of some thirty yards’ width in the lines of pikes.

Roaring gleefully, the mighty prince whirled his overlong battle brand high over his helmeted head and led his battle directly into that undefended expanse.

As Bili withdrew his nicked, dulled blade—now cloudy with sticky, red blood from point to quillions—from just below the breastplate of a gasping, wide-eyed pikeman, the back of his helmet was struck so hard that the force of the buffet all but drove him to his knees. Staggering slightly, he turned to face a swordsman in three-quarter armor of an alien pattern.

Shieldless, the Skohshun was swinging his sword with both hands, and his greater than average strength was evident in the crushing, numbing force of his blows. Bili caught and deflected two more sword swipes on the face of his buckler and tried to deflect another down the flat of his blade while fetching his new opponent a shrewd buffet in the exposed armpit with the steel-shod edge of the buckler. But Bili’s much-abused blade shattered and broke off some foot below the quillions.

Gasping a breathless snarl, the young thoheeks slammed the convex center of his smooth-faced buckler full onto his foeman’s visor with all the strength of his sinewy left arm, even as he used his booted right foot to jerk the man’s left leg forward. Despite the flailing of his arms, the Skohshun lost his balance and fell heavily onto his back. His unlaced helmet went spinning off to reveal the red face of an elderly man with flaring white mustache. Before the old man could move, Bili had taken a long, quick stride and kicked him in the side of the head, then appropriated his victim’s sword.

As he straightened, however, he saw a file of men trotting up behind the lines of uncommitted pikemen, led by a mounted officer. These men all wore full helmets and half-armor and were armed with pole weapons of more conventional size than the bulk of the Skohshun army.

“ Withdraw! ” he urgently mindspoke his lieutenants. “All disengage and withdraw, at once!” Then, to his stallion, “My brother, watch close and be ready to bring up the herd as soon as we clear the pike line.”

But it was not to be, not then, not yet. The members of Bili’s condotta had fallen back only a few yards when they first felt the fast-approaching thunder vibrating up through the soles of their boots, then found themselves dodging the galloping horses of Prince Byruhn’s Third Battle.

With swords and lances, with axes, maces and warhammers, the prince and his men smote down any Skohshuns Bili’s force had missed, then rode through the two files of uncommitted pikemen to hotly engage the newcome poleaxemen to the rear.

At the hilltop command post, from which he could see the entire length of the battlelines, Senior Colonel Sir Djaimz Alpine waited far longer than he should have for the return of the brigadier and the four or five staff officers who had trailed him when he had so suddenly called for his horse, mounted and ridden down into the rear areas. At some length, he beckoned over a young ensign.

“Grey, ride down there and don’t come back up here until you’ve found the brigadier or, at least, word of what he’s up to.”