Robert Adams - Champion of the Last Battle

“As you are by now surely aware, my royal sire and I differ in many a way, both in thought and in actions. The royal councilors of that time recognized and feared the possible strife and discontent that might be caused should the kingship pass from my father to me, and with the good of our kingdom in mind, I could not but agree with them.

“It is not mere flattery that he is called King Mahrtuhn the Good, you know; my royal father is a good king, a very good king to his people ... up until now, at least, when he seems firm bent on dragging a number of the best men in all the kingdom down to bloody death with him.

“I now deeply regret that I did what I did to bring you and your force up here to quite probably die with us in this ... this royal madness, young cousin. You and yours had served us well in the Ganik Campaign. You deserved more of a recompense than I saw you served. But what has been done has truly been done and cannot now be undone. However, you and your squadron just might represent the only chance that some few of us might survive the battle toward which we must ride out on the morrow, you and this new tactic in which you have drilled your squadron. Do you truly think it will work, will break the pike hedge enough for horsemen to hack a way through?”

Bili’s thick shoulders rose and fell in a shrug. “Who can say for sure what way a yet-to-be-fought battle will go, Lord Byruhn? I only know that the squadron performs the drills well, that if done properly the exercise has never failed to break a pike formation, and that I am certain that my squadron will perform well ... dead certain, your grace. I have wagered my life upon it. But our own fighting will have been for naught unless heavy horse quickly follows us and consolidates our gains. Can we be certain that the king, your father, will hold his charge for the length of time our work will require for accomplishment?”

Byruhn frowned. “To be frank, no, not if he comes to feel his pride has been pricked. But I hereby assure you that I will hold my battle, the left battle, until the time is ripe to follow up your squadron, no matter what my royal father and my nephew do with their own two battles.”

And despite the occasions on which Prince Byruhn had misled him and misused his squadron to the advantage of New Kuhmbuhluhn, still Bili felt that he could believe the present assurances of the hulking, hairy nobleman. “And I had better be right, in this instance,” thought the young thoheeks, “else damned precious few of us will live to hack a way out of the Skohshun pike hedge.”

After the departure of the prince, Bili mused silently as he went about the chamber snuffing the candles, prior to taking up the last and repairing to the bedchamber.

“Even if he is true to his word, though, it still will be a chancy thing. After their losses last year, all three battles combined number less than twelve hundreds of horsemen, with the left battle—Prince Byruhn’s own—the lightest, three hundred ... maybe, three hundred and fifty men. There’s no doubt that we can gap the hedge, me and mine, but no gap lasts long, not in a disciplined hedge of pikes, and from all that I’ve heard of these Skohshuns, their precision and discipline would put the best professional Freefighter infantry to shame.

“Now if the king and all three battles were to charge together, drive a wedge of steel into that gap before the pikes could close up again, King Mahrtuhn might very well win that field. But with only Byruhn’s battle to back us ... ?” The young man sighed and shook his shaven head. “The very best we can anticipate is stinging the foe sorely, then getting the most of us out alive. And once we—my squadron and I—are out of that hedge, we are through with King Mahrtuhn, Prince Byruhn and their damned misfought little war. If these New Kuhmbuhluhners persist in disregarding good advice and planning suicidal campaigns to no purpose, they cannot expect hired swords to proceed with them to a certain death.”

Fanned by cooling breezes from the north and west, the royal army of New Kuhmbuhluhn moved at a steady pace through most of that first day, covering in excess of thirty miles, despite several longish—and, to Bili’s mind, utterly unnecessary—halts for “conferences” amongst the king, his captains and senior noblemen. That night’s camp was made upon the banks of a swift-flowing stream, just off the corduroy road that paralleled its south bank as far as a ford that lay a couple of miles to the west. There was at least an hour of daylight remaining when the column halted, so Bili was at a loss to explain to himself, much less to his seasoned squadron, why the king failed to press on and make camp where his army might guard that vital stream crossing throughout the night. But the young warrior knew by then the futility of pointing out tactical advantages to the headstrong, stubbornly honor-bound hereditary ruler of the New Kuhmbuhluhners.

But when it became obvious that King Mahrtuhn didn’t intend even to ditch the perimeter of the camp or to post more than a cursory guard throughout the hours of darkness, Bili could no longer restrain himself, and sought out the king in his pavilion.

King Mahrtuhn, whose breath was thick with the heady fumes of the powerful New Kuhmbuhluhn apple brandy, heard his young captain out. But when once Bili had said his piece, the white-haired monarch shook his head and spoke in tones of mild reproof.

“Oh, young, young cousin, you are so suspicious-natured, so very untrusting, and you slander our valiant foemen, the Skohshuns. Those who command the Skohshun pikemen are noble gentlemen all, and of ancient lineage; such men would not stoop to the attack of respected foemen whilst they slept. No, they desire an open, stand-up, breast-to-breast fight every bit as much as do we.

“You have spent the sum of your young life at war with men lacking any save the barest trace of honor, this much is abundantly clear from your actions and attitudes, but our brave Skohshuns are not of that ill-found stripe, we assure you. Our own son, Prince Byruhn, and others of our vassals have warred with these Skohshuns, and we ourselves have entertained their heralds, so we know whereof we speak on these matters.”

The craggy features of the monarch had been firm while he spoke, but now he smiled warmly. “But now, sit you down with us, young cousin, sit you down, we say. Fill you that goblet from the ewer of punch and hack off a bit of the ox, then tell us more of this new-model tactic of yours to break the pike hedge, eh?”

In Bili’s absence, Rahksahnah sat on a low camp stool in the small pavilion they two shared. By the dim, flaring light of a lamp, she was patiently rehoning the edge of her Moon Maiden saber with stone and oil, her sinewy, weather-browned hands moving with the sureness of long practice at their task. She had let down her long hair, and the gleaming, ebon cascade reflected almost as much of the lamplight as did the length of oiled steel she held.

Then, silent as death itself, from the darkness of the smaller, outer chamber of the canvas pavilion, stepped a huge feline. The beast was of a golden chestnut hue, with the ghosts of slightly darker rosettes faintly visible here and there about the body. And that body bulked big-boned and powerful, with smoothly rippling muscles, and large paws housing a full complement of eighteen sharp retractable claws. But his most easily seen armament consisted of his huge white cuspids—long, thick, sharp-pointed fangs the needle tips of which were nearly an inch below his lower jaw when it was shut.

His overall size—he stood almost ten hands at the withers—those fearsome fangs and one other facet of his outward appearance set him and his ilk apart from all other felines of this land; that other facet sparkled in the depths of his wide-set amber eyes, and it was intelligence. True intelligence, not the mere cunning of some beast of prey. And there was yet another, though invisible, quality that he owned: telepathy.