Robert Adams - The Death of a Legend

The young thoheeks leaned back against the merlon, refusing to allow his face to mirror his pain, while his orderly folded the slit leg of the blood-caked breeches over the bulk of the bandage, then pulled the boottop back up and secured its straps.

A nearby Freefighter remarked, “My lord, Captain Raikuh is coming back.”

Bili opened his eyes and levered himself into a sitting posture on the parapet of the inner works and took one more pull at the canteen, then resolutely corked it; it would not do to have fuzzy wits if push came to shove and he was forced to have another shouting match with Sub-strahteegos Kahzos Kahlinz, now senior Confederation officer in the conquered salient.

Pawl Raikuh strode across the carnage he had helped to make, stepping around the bodies, where possible. All at once he stopped, bent to peer closely, then drew out his dirk and sank to squat beside a dead rebel; after he had wiped his blade on the dead man’s clothing, he sheathed it, dropped something shiny into his belt purse, arose and continued on his way.

When he had climbed the ladder, he paced deliberately over to Bili’s place, removed his helmet and saluted. The padded hood which still covered most of his head was sweat-soaked, and there was a crust of old blood on his upper lip and around his nostrils; his scarred face was drawn with fatigue.

Bili waved to the stretch of parapet on his right, saying, “Pawl, sit down before you fall down. And here, try some of this brandy-water; most refreshing, it is.”

After the briefest of hesitations, the captain sank with a sigh onto the proffered seat and gratefully accepted the canteen. He took one mouthful, swished it about in his mouth and spit the pink-tinged fluid downhill, then threw back his head and upended the bottle, his throat working.

“What,” asked Bili, “did our esteemed colleague have to say when you transmitted my message that his troops could now begin clearing the field, Pawl?”

Raikuh grinned. “Very little of a respectable nature, Duke Bili. His remarks tend to leave the distinct impression that he has little use for Freighters and even less for Middle Kingdoms-trained country noblemen who fail to give him and his pack of brainless pikepushers the full degree of respect he feels they and he deserve.”

Bili snorted. “The bastard is mad, must be. Brought in his companies on the tag end of the battle—most of them never even blooded their steel, except to dispatch some rebel wounded—and then expected us to bow low and give him and his the first pick, the top cream of the loot! If he’s a fair example of the kind of officers the High Lord is raising up these days, then Sun and Wind help our Confederation, is all I can say.”

Extending his hand, he poked at a bejeweled hilt peeking out from under Raikuh’s boottop. “Found some goodies yourself, did you, Pawl?”

His grin broadening, Raikuh rubbed his hand along the bulge. “It be a genuine Yvuhz, my lord, with a real gold hilt, but it’s not mine. It’s equal shares in my company; whatever the lads and I find goes into a common pot, and the proceeds will be evenly split.”

Bili nodded gravely. “There’s a good decision, Pawl. Too many companies end up hacking each other over scraps of loot.” He smiled teasingly. “But we’ve the intaking of a city ahead of us. How are you going to apply your rule to female loot?”

“Share and share, I suppose, my lord… within reason, of course. But we’ll just have to ford that particular river when we come to it.”

Raikuh took another deep pull at the dwindling contents of the canteen, then said, “My lord, we took the time to measure that man who knocked you down; that bugger was over eight foot tall, and I’d not be surprised if he weighed more than six hundred Harzburk pounds! He must have had the thews of a destrier, too, for it took three men to even lift that log that he was swinging like a staff. I wonder he didn’t break your back with it, my lord, cuirass or no cuirass.” Gingerly, Bili shifted his position. “I’m still not sure he didn’t, Pawl. But you mean that our Geros slew such an ogre single-handed, with only his sword?” “No, my lord.” Raikuh shook his head. “First he tickled the big bastard’s guts with the point of the standard staff—to the full length of that brass blade, and just below the navel. My own belly aches just to think of such a wounding.” “And where is Geros now, Pawl?”

“I sent him and a detail back to our camp to fetch horse litters for our wounded. And pack mules for our dead.”

“BILI!” Milo’s powerful mindspeak burst within the skull of the young thoheeks suddenly and with terrifying intensity. “You and every other living man must get off that hill at once—you’re all in the deadliest danger!”

The assault on the other salient, headed by the High Lord, had proved almost a textbook exercise in how such a maneuver should be done, and, where Bili’s experience on the left bad been an exposition of the weaknesses of the Confederation Army, that on the right had been a strong testament to that army’s positive qualities.

Honored to have their supreme sovereign in their van, men and officers alike had gone about their prescribed actions in a strict, regulation manner—archers and engineers taking excruciating care in providing maximum cover for the advance up to and through and past the widely gapped abattis, the attacking units quickly and precisely forming their hill-encircling front behind their cat banners, with the High Lord and his plate-armored guards in the interval between two units. At the roll of the massed drums, the engines had switched over to high-angle fire directly into the stone-walled fort atop the salient and the archers had confined their efforts to well-aimed loosings at clearly defined targets well ahead of the serried ranks of infantry.

On the second drumroll, every heavy shield came up to battle-carry, every spear sloped across right shoulder at an identical angle, all performed under the critical eyes of halberd-armed sergeants and officers with their bared broadswords at the shoulder-carry.

With the third roll of the drums, a deep-throated cheer was raised and the lines started forward, up the slope and into the hail of death hurled down by the rebel defenders, dressing their lines at the jogtrot as missiles took their inevitable toll.

Leery of appearing cowardly in the eyes of the High Lord, the commander of the second wave kept his men close upon the heels of the first—as Sub-strahteegos Kahzos Kablinz had not—so that relatively fresh units were always on hand to replace those rendered ineffective through losses. Thus stiffened, the ranks simply swept over the outer ramparts, leaving precious few of those rebels alive to retreat to the main fort atop the hill. Ten yards from the bristling stone walls, under the fiercest of the rain of stones and darts and arrows, Milo’s mindspeak to the surviving senior officers gave the order which proved to make the final assault far easier and less costly to the Confederation troops.

Halting, still in aligned and ordered formations, the fore ranks knelt behind the secure protection of their big shields. As one man, the rank behind them grounded their spears and employed the small tool carried for just such a purpose to extract the removable pins securing the heads of their dual-purpose spears. Then, to the timing of the drumroll, their brawny arms drew back and hurled the heavy missiles with a much-practiced accuracy which was not really necessary, for so very thick was the press up on the walls that even a tyro could scarcely have helped fleshing his spear.

While the men of the first volley drew their wide-bladed shortswords and knelt, in turn, the line in front of them rose as one man and hurled their own spears. Then the drums once more rolled their bass thunder, and, cheering, the companies swept forward, their living wavecrest breaking over and then engulfing the little fortification before the defenders could recover from the bloody shock of the two spear volleys.