Robert Adams - Champion of the Last Battle

Sir Ahrthur flushed dark red, his eyes narrowed and his lips thinned beneath his mustaches. “Yes, you’re big enough to have been that bast ... ahhh, to have been that man. What do you know of the sword I was using that day?”

Grasping the weapon carefully by the scabbard so as to give no slightest appearance of drawing steel, Bili showed the hilt to the brigadier, whose lividity deepened in hue.

“That was my father’s sword, sir duke. You stole it from me!” There was clear fury in the old man’s tone and demeanor.

But Bili just continued to grin, further infuriating the Skohshun commander. He shrugged, saying, “I’d not call it so, Sir Ahrthur, not at all. I was, shall we say, in dire need of a sword just then, because you had broken mine. I took yours because, as I now recall, you were in no present need of one. Or do I misremember, Sir Ahrthur?”

“Now, damn you, you mercenary bastard,” snarled Sir Ahrthur, “I’ll have my sword back!” He extended his right hand.

Bili just laughed. “If you win, today, you’ll get it back ... one way or the other.”

Led by southern Kuhmbuhluhners who knew the northern plain well, with Whitetip ranged far out ahead to detect any parties or patrols of Skohshuns, Sir Geros’ force had been moving at a slow, cautious, horse-saving pace for two days and nights and now were nearing the chosen battleground. King’s Rest Mountain now loomed close enough to differentiate certain larger details of the city built into its flank.

When the young knight was assured by men who well knew whereof they spoke that his command was within a half hour’s easy, ambling ride of the projected battle site, he ordered a halt and had his command dismount, loosen girths and rest, cautiously throwing out a staggered perimeter guard of keen-eyed Ahrmehnee dartmen and Freefighter archers with orders to loose or cast first and check identities afterward.

Raikuh smiled to Guhntuh, Bohluh and himself at the completely unprompted string of orders, remarking, “Our young war leader is fast learning his trade. Those months in the field against the Ganiks were at least good for that. I think that our dear lord Duke Bili will be pleasantly surprised at how well our Sir Geros has turned out.”

Some miles to the left of Sir Geros’ halted command, yet another warband was on the march, this one completely unbeknownst to Bili, the Kuhmbuhluhners, the Skohshuns or Sir Geros. But there were a few within the Skohshun camp who knew ... and said nothing.

Late on the preceding afternoon, a lone rider had come from the west, reined up at the rear gate of the stockade and, upon being recognized—him and his mount, both—had been admitted.

Disarmed and marched before the grim old brigadier, Counter Tremain had firmly, flatly denied having purposely stolen that officer’s favorite horse or deserted, swearing over and over again that he had mounted the near-hysterical animal in an attempt to calm him down, that the gelding then had bolted and run so far in the darkness of the night that the dawn had found the Ganik with a spent horse in an area with which he had been completely unfamiliar and from which it had taken him this long to find his way back to the camp.

The mere fact that the man had returned with a valuable animal was, to the brigadier, reason enough to believe his story, so he formally thanked Counter, had his arms and effects returned to him and sent him to rejoin Erica Arenstein and her other followers. There, as soon as he was certain that they would not be overheard, Counter took the woman and Horseface Charley aside and told them the exciting truth of the matter.

The transceiver hung to the near side of the saddle pommel of General Jay Corbett’s mount buzzed, signaling an incoming transmission on its wavelength. Lifting it to his mouth and activating it, he answered, “Corbett, here. Over.”

“Oh, Jay, Jay,” came Erica’s well-remembered voice, “you can’t believe how good it is to hear your voice again, to hear the voice of any civilized human being again. Christ, I’ve been afraid I’d live out this body and die in this stinking wilderness, with only gibbering barbarian apes for company.”

“So, Tremain made it back safely, eh? And managed to snocker those Skohshuns, too? Over.”

“Yes, Jay, that old fool of a brigadier is convinced he has a monopoly on brains. Hah! Just because Counter brought his pet horse back, he’s convinced that Counter never even tried to desert, but rather did something almost heroic.

“Not only that, but this tinpot Napoleon thinks he has all but won his asinine little war because he has persuaded a numerically inferior enemy to come down out of a damned near impregnable fortified city and fight him on the plain. He thinks—hell, I don’t think the old fart knows how to think.

“You know and I know that those New Kuhmbuhluhners—who have cost these Skohshuns hundreds of casualties and almost burned down their whole fucking camp some weeks back with catapults throwing fireballs and boulders—wouldn’t just file down out of that city and bare their necks for the sword. They’re bound to have a few dirty tricks in store for Sir Ahrthur and his damned pikemen, you can bet on it.”

“Did you tell your suspicions to this brigadier, Erica? Over,” asked Corbett, thinking that if the senior Skohshun officer happened to feel himself in Erica’s debt, he might let her and the others go without a fight.

“Oh, yes, I tried to,” she answered wryly. “The arrogant old pig, he let me know that he considers war to be an exercise in machismo and that the only function of women is to bear sons to fight wars and, just possibly, nurse wounded soldiers. I hope he gets the ferrule end of a pike jammed up his arse today!”

One good look at the “porcupine” formations in which the Skohshuns were formed this day warned Bili of the folly of once more essaying the dismounted attack with the nets. Not only did the pikes now project in all four directions, the ranks were formed around a spine of men better armored and armed with an assortment of shorter, handier weapons—poleaxes, beef-tongues, partizans, greatswords and various types of flails and war hammers. Such troops would make bloody mincemeat of such an attack as Bili and his squadron had so successfully undertaken at the previous battle.

So he adopted the favored tactic of the late King Byruhn—leading his horsemen at a fast ambling gait along the front of the four schiltrons, while the Kuhmbuhluhn mountaineers cast their deadly little hatchets and the Ahrmehnee of his own squadron cast their equally deadly darts. On those occasions when the Skohshuns armed with the shorter weapons ventured out to close, Bili refused them combat, galloping his force off beyond their range at a pace too fast for them to follow afoot.

When the axes and javelins were expended, he mindspoke Captain Frehd Brakit and the archers commenced their deadly rain on the scantily armored pikemen—Freefighters with their short, powerful hornbows, Kuhmbuhluhners with hardwood self-bows as long as the archers were tall, loosing arrows three feet in length and tipped with tempered steel.

Twice during this phase of the battle, units of mounted and armored Skohshun lancers made to charge the lines of dismounted bowmen who were wreaking such deadly havoc on the helpless schiltrons. But each time these Skohshuns were met and bloodily stopped in their tracks by Bili and a portion of his heavy-armed squadron, reinforced by the Kuhmbuhluhn nobles.

As the archers expended their initial stocks of arrows and slacked off their death-dealing sleet of shafts, an armored man bearing an unpointed lanceshaft from which fluttered a white banner paced his horse slowly forward into the empty, hoof-churned space between the two forces. A brace of other armored horsemen followed him.