Mitchell Smith - Kingdom River

Only big, bearded men – and what seemed to be a few women – in polished cuirasses, black-plumed steel helmets, brown wool, leather, and black thigh-boots. Two long rows of these people, all holding short, square shields grounded, and gripping twelve-foot lances like pikemen, heavy straight sabers sheathed at their sides.

There were two more ranks behind them. Those, Light Cavalry – men, and many more of their godless northern women – in hauberks, and armed with lighter lances, curved sabers.

And all on foot, drawn up as infantry.

Clever, if they're up to it… don't miss having horses under them. Rodriguez wanted a moment to think, to consider the situation, but Major Moro was not a thinker. First Squadron's trumpeter sounded two bright notes, then a long silver third – and more than two hundred huge horses sprang from the trot to the gallop, kicking stones, sending red dirt flying. They launched themselves and their riders as one, so chain-mail shook and rang like bells above the drumroll of hooves. As they passed, Rodriguez smelled coppery dust, horse sweat, oiled steel.

The first rank of cataphracts leaned to the right in their saddles, lifting their battle-axes free. And as if in a dance agreed upon, the northerners' long lances swung down in response into a glittering needled hedge, the men crouched low behind them, shields braced.

For a few moments that seemed more than moments, the space of air and light between the gallopers and those waiting ranks contracted, grew shadowy… then collapsed as the ground jarred and shook.

They came together in a great splintering crash that smothered trumpet calls. Bright steel shone through roiling red dust, and horses screamed – not men, not yet, though the cataphracts' own furious armored weight drove them to impalement, even through their draperies of chain-mail. Their battle-axes, flailing down right and left, struck with the solid sound of woodsmen's axes into ripe wood – or rang skidding off shields set slanting.

A black charger – all Moro's squadron rode blacks – exploded out of confusion riderless, bucked and raced away, kicking at its dragging entrails as it went. Under red dust, horsemen spurred in, shouting as they hacked with heavy axes, while the northerners, fighting silent, caught these men and mounts on ranked lance points that rose and fell in rippling lines.

"Column!" Rodriguez shouted for that fool, Reyes. "Second Squadron to form column!"

"Yes, sir!" And there Reyes was. A fine horseman.

"Second Squadron into column – and advance!" There was an extraordinary amount of dust now… clouds of it, hard to shout through.

"Sir!" Reyes turned his horse – and seemed to meet an arrow come down out of nowhere, that rang off his chest's steel and whined away. "Look!" He pointed up.

Rodriguez looked up and saw infantry – no, more fucking dismounted cavalry, Light Cavalry by their mail shirts – high on the steep slopes of the Boca. Not many, perhaps thirty of them on each side, but they were using bows – those fucking longbows with the short lower limb. Barefoot, too – most of them he could see – to keep from stumbling and falling into the pass.

Using their bows – as I should have had each squadron's archers deploy to do. Too late now. Rodriguez waved Reyes away. "Into column! Column!"

"Sir!" Reyes spurred – and galloped into another arrow. This one took him in the belly by worst chance, just where the heavy fall of mail divided at his saddle-bow.

Dead. Rodriguez looked to see the captain fall, but he didn't. He rode bent over his saddle like an old woman – his fine seat gone in agony – but galloped out to Major Ticotin. Second Squadron was shouted slowly out of extended line… slowly into column of ten.

"Receive these!" Colonel Rodriguez called to the enemy as he rode, intending to go in with Ticotin. "Receive these, you fuckers!" He had no need to see what had happened to Moro's troopers. His ears told him. At the mouth of the pass, under the screams of dying horses, sounded the bright swift hammering of steel… the sobbing, grunting, barely caught breaths of men gutted on the pikes the northerners had made of their long lances.

"Well, you're very clever!" Rodriguez, galloping to Second Squadron's guidon, addressed Sam Monroe. "Now, let's see you stop cataphracts in column!"

"You are not going in with us. Absolutely not!" Major Ticotin looked furious, face pale above his beard. Dust was drifting around them like red fog. "You are staying back, Colonel!"

"I'm going in with you!"

There was a squealing sound – a damned pig somehow mixed up in this – and Rodriguez saw Captain Reyes off a way, saw him quite clearly leaning far back in his saddle, plucking at something. – The arrow shaft, of course, sticking out of his belly. He was making the sound.

"Your ass is staying back!" Major Ticotin reached over with the blade of his saber and sliced through Rodriguez's reins. Almost took his hand off.

"You're under arrest!" Rodriguez laughed at having said something so stupid. He tried to turn Salsa to follow with knees alone, then climbed down to catch the reins and knot them together.

Second Squadron poured past him like a river. Chestnut horses. Trumpets… trumpets.

He found the rein ends – goddamn horse circling around – knotted them, and swung up into the saddle, grunting with the jingling weight of his armor, just as Second Squadron, at full gallop, struck the center of the northerners' line.

Struck it, broke it, and thundered through.

I have him. I have him – thank you, Mother of God. "Reyes!"… No Reyes. Reyes was gone. Rodriguez spurred back up the pass. A long bow-shot down the defile, Third Squadron still waited, facing north, where now no enemy would come. "Orders! Gomez!" His guidon-bearer, not very intelligent, seemed startled to be transmitting orders in place of Captain Reyes.

"Go to Major Davila. Third Squadron to reverse front, and advance! Now, you idiot!"

Gomez hauled his horse's head around and kicked the animal into a gallop as Rodriguez watched him go – watched for a moment to be certain an arrow didn't come down to Gomez, cancel the order. Worse rider than I am. Really a ridiculous figure… bouncing on the goddamn saddle as if he were fucking it.

No arrow for Gomez. It seemed to Rodriguez that fewer arrows were coming down. Harder to mark targets, now, through the dust – and thank God's Mother for it. He turned Salsa back to the noise of fighting, cantered that way… and heard trumpet calls behind him. Third Squadron would be reversing files.

Rodriguez rode to the fighting – glanced back, and saw Gomez galloping down the pass to catch up… saw Third Squadron reforming. The noise of fighting ahead was extraordinary – crashes of metal, shrieks of injured horses echoing off the Boca's narrow walls as if the devil had sent a band from hell to serenade the dying.

Through a haze of dust, Rodriguez saw that the northerners' line was certainly broken. Ticotin's men had driven deep into their center, so the long ranks of dismounted lancers were swinging away to either side of the breach like cantina doors, their dead dotting the dirt and grass behind them.

Swinging away… so Second Squadron, galloping in, cheering, ax blades flashing through red dust, rode deeper between the northerners' ranks. The noise was terrific, the clangor, and thunderous sound of the chargers' hooves.

Then, louder, answering thunder sounded behind him, behind and high above. Rodriguez turned in his saddle, but there was only clear blue sky over the pass's rim, and Third Squadron now in motion, starting down the pass at a steady trot.