Robert Adams - Champion of the Last Battle

“ Sir !” The pink-cheeked boy stamped, spun about, and set off at a run for the picket lines, his armor rattling, his left hand holding his scabbarded sword free of his churning legs.

Even as the ensign set his big gelding down the hillock, a lieutenant of foot reined in a foaming, hard-ridden mount before the headquarters and flung himself from the sweaty saddle to salute Sir Djaimz, then relay the question of his colonel.

“Of course not!” snapped the senior colonel brusquely, “Any hot pursuit of mounted foemen is always undertaken by our own mounted troops. Colonel Phipps knows that. He is to stay where he is, maintain the pike line. Dismiss! ”

As the lieutenant remounted, Sir Djaimz once more turned to and looked along the nearer, western flank of the lines ... and felt his blood run cold! The line had been severed, not just battered, but severed. Even as he watched in horror from his eyrie, armored New Kuhmbuhluhn horsemen were riding right through Farr’s regimental lines, hacking down pikemen as they went, to engage the short-haftmen in the rear and spread out to take other units in the flank. Where in thirteen hells was the brigadier?

Colonel Sir Edmund Grey, father of Ensign Thomas Grey, had died of wounds after the big battle with the New Kuhmbuhluhn heavy horse, last autumn. Thomas, his eldest living son, had then been in training. This was the fourteen-year-old boy’s first battle ... and his last.

Even as he spotted the riderless horse of the missing brigadier hitched with several other saddled mounts to a low, spreading bush, a yelling, screaming horde of armored New Kuhmbuhluhners chopped and slashed their way through the last two lines of Colonel Fair’s regiment, then split into three integuments—one to savagely attack a force of short-haftmen and the officer leading them, one to ride against the rear and right flank of the next regiment east—that of Colonel Herman Taylor, Ensign Grey’s godfather—one to do likewise against the next regiment west, which meant that that unit was riding directly toward Thomas Grey.

The oncoming enemies looked huge, far larger than men should rightly be, monstrous; their weapons were splotched and smeared with fresh, bright-red blood, their armor and horse housings splashed with it. Young Ensign Grey’s mouth was suddenly dry as ashes and his tongue seemed cloven to his palate, and breathing was exceedingly difficult. He seemed all at once to be suffering a flux of his bowels, and a painfully distended bladder did not in any way help matters. But he never even considered flight. He drew his sword, after lowering and securing his visor, and rode on.

Earl Devernee, technically the overall commander of the Skohshun army, as well as the hereditary leader of the Skohshun people, usually and wisely left decisions of a military—and especially of a battlefield—nature up to the brigadier and his staff,

Just before this battle, however, he had been urgently approached and bespoken by his first cousin, Colonel Harry Potter, and convinced by the officer that his understrength regiment stood in more danger of attack in their stream-spanning position than the brigadier was willing to credit or admit. The earl had used his seldom-invoked personal authority to strip several regiments of most of their short-haft fighters, then had assigned the lot of them to reinforce his cousin’s pikemen. In the cases of at least three of the affected regiments, this unexpected abrogation of the painfully detailed planning of the brigadier and his battlewise staff was to result in a very high butcher’s bill.

While Prince Byruhn and a few score of his mountain axemen took on the hastily formed ring of poleaxes and other short polearms, two of his most trusted counts led the bulk of his Third Battle in crashing, crushing charges against the now-exposed flanks of the two regiments to either side of that unfortunate one chosen by Bili Morguhn as the target for his new, unorthodox tactics.

Utterly lacking the customary screen of flexible and better-protected short-haftmen, the long-pikemen—hampered with a necessarily tight formation and heavy, unwieldy arms—were as helpless as fish in a barrel and went down in droves, spitted on lances and spears, hacked by swords and axes, their skulls sundered or bones crushed by maces or warhammers. Those few who escaped death or serious injury were the less disciplined men who dropped their pikes and fled. All of the well-trained, veteran pikemen died or fell in their assigned places.

Senior Colonel Sir Djaimz Alpine, completely unaware of the earl’s ill-advised last-minute reassignments of personnel, could only assume that the force of New Kuhmbuhluhn cavalry was larger and stronger than it appeared at the distance to have ridden over and downed the well-armed and -armored flank screens of the special troops.

To one of the waiting officer-gallopers, he said, “My compliments, please, to Colonel Powell. He is to bring up his regiment at the double with all pikes presented and, when he has cleared the way, his regiment will plug the gap in the line where Colonel Farr’s regiment was posted.”

The first galloper was barely on his run toward the picket lines when Sir Djaimz was rattling off instructions to another and inwardly cursing the absence of the brigadier, even while blessing the old man for his years of patient tutelage and often impatient and profane example.

With the Third Battle actively engaging most of the still-standing Skohshuns within reach, the withdrawal of Bili’s condotta was quick and easy. Mahvros and those few humans assigned as horse holders brought up the horses promptly. Bili and the others first saw all the wounded mounted and those unable to mount tied securely onto their mounts before themselves mounting and drawing back a hundred yards or so.

Standing in his stirrups, Bili could see the entirety of the pike lines, and what he saw was in no way heartening. To his right, the First Battle still seemed to be attacking, hacking fiercely if generally ineffectually at the unbroken pike hedge, King Mahrtuhn’s Green Stallion banner waving at the forefront of the fight.

On the other side of the stream, however, there was no battle. The pike hedge stood firm behind uninterrupted lines of glittering steel points. Of the New Kuhmbuhluhner force which had attacked them—Prince Mahrtuhn Gilbuht’s Second Battle—only the bodies of dead or dying men and horses remained on the field before the pikes.

Then, Rahksahnah, sitting her big mare beside him, touched his steel-sheathed arm, mindspeaking, “Bili ... the king!”

The young chief of Clan Morguhn snapped his gaze back to the area of the First Battle’s unavailing engagement to see King Mahrtuhn—recognizable by his richly embellished armor and gear—lolling limply in his saddle, supported at either side by members of his bodyguard, neither of whom looked sound and whole themselves. As they led the monarch’s limping charger from proximity to the dripping pikepoints, the horse bearing the Green Stallion Banner followed in its accustomed place, despite its empty saddle.

However, few if any of the remaining bulk of the First Battle seemed to be aware of the wounding of the king. They continued to vainly hack away at the Skohshun formation, losing man after man and horse to precious little avail.

None of it made any sense to Bili. Spotting the chief hornman of the royal trumpeters on the outward fringes of the broil, the young thoheeks galloped Mahvros over to the man.

“Blow the recall!” he ordered shortly.

The middle-aged musician turned slightly in his saddle and, with a ghost of a sneer, stated, “My orders come from King Mahrtuhn, alone, my ... lord mercenary.”

A big, powerful hand in a blood-tacky gauntlet grasped the hornman’s richly embroidered surcoat and half-dragged him from his saddle, slowly shaking him the while.