Mitchell Smith - Kingdom River

A second rank of many more hundreds was emerging from the trees behind them.

Colonel Loomis, wiping her blade, paced across the hillside a little higher, with Doyle hurrying behind, arrows flirting past them through moonlight and shadow. As they went, a thousand of her men and women – waiting buried or half-buried in fallen-branch rambles, in clearing drifts, on snowy slopes – stirred slightly, so she could mark their places as she passed.

At the line's west, anchor end, more than half around the hill, Colonel Loomis stopped and looked back across the moonlit breast of the slope. To Doyle, she seemed – in a shifting wind that blew snow-powder swirling – a copybook witch, so tall, angle-faced, and fierce, her long black hair sailing free… her sword's sharp, slender yard the brightest part of her.

She stood waiting and watching, until soon the first screams were heard with the snap of light crossbows, the harder twang of the tribesmen's weapons. Then, like anticipated music, the clash of steel rang through the night, and Kipchak war horns sounded their deep, bellowing notes.

… Sam spurred Difficult up the main-ridge rise, through wet snowflakes barely visible in the dimness before dawn. His trumpeter, Kenneth, followed, and six horse archers, at Howell's insistence, paced along. Arrows nocked to the strings of their odd longbows, they trotted guard in shifting order beside, before, and behind him. To the west, the uneven voices of battle sounded, softened by falling snow.

Both regiments of heavy cavalry were standing dismounted, each trooper by his horse, in long ghost rows along the ridges, their armor dimly lit to gleaming here and there by wind-blown torches. Two thousand big men – with a number of big women – waited in silence, but for the stamping of impatient chargers.

Sam found Howell, torch-lit, beneath the scorpion banner – and stayed mounted so the people near enough could see him.

"It's slippery, Sam." Howell looked up at him, squinting snowflakes away from his good eye. "Falling footing."

Sam leaned from the saddle to answer. "Footing enough for down-slope charges. If men and horses fall then, they fall into the enemy."

"True."

"Where's Carlo?"

"Down the line."

"He knows to move without your order?"

A nod. "If the Kipchaks get through."

"Right. If the Light Infantry breaks on our left flank, Howell, they'll fall back up these slopes. If that happens, if you see it's happening – "

"Charge as they clear."

"No. If Charmian's people start breaking, start backing up the ridges, you and Carlo are to take both regiments – at the charge – down those slopes and into the Kipchaks. That's my order, and that's what you will do."

"We'd be riding our own people down!"

"Yes, Howell, you would. You'd have to go over them to strike the Kipchaks as soon as possible, as hard as possible, to give Phil time to pull out of the center and march his people west."

"Dear Jesus…"

"Howell, am I right in this – or wrong?"

"… You're right."

"Then be sure Carlo also understands that order."

Howell nodded, and they both listened to the battle sounds, west. No cheering, of course, from their people, only shouted commands, shouts of warning. The Kipchaks were noisier fighters, calling battle cries, war horns sounding their mournful notes… Still, there was in that dull, shifting roar, a sort of music to commanders, and they heard in it no advantage yet, either way.

"Holding," Howell said.

"And probably will." Sam reached down, shook Howell's hand, and found reassurance in that grinding grip.

… Beside being a painful trotter, and uncertain in response, Difficult almost always lunged out a start – did so now, only touched by the spurs, so Sam had a moment's vision of being dumped into the snow in front of his soldiers, the battle's loss beginning with that comic humiliation. But he found his balance, settled the beast smartly between the ears with the butt of his quirt, and managed to ride along ranks of cavalry… then down the far-western slopes in a reasonable way, with Kenneth following. Three of the horse archers rode before them, three behind.

As if they'd entered a different country deep in the draw, dawn-light darkened almost to night again, and the battle's sound grew louder, so that screams of dying men and women, grunts of effort for savage blows, and officers' shouted orders all became individual under countless strokes of steel on steel.

Sam rode to angle across the hillsides, and soon, high in a rise's deep shadow, he looked down and saw a roiling motion beneath him, as if the dark forest below the hillsides had come alive, writhing like one of the great far-southern serpents, coiling up and up to reach the dawn's light. The noise rose terrific with clashing steel, shouts, the Kipchaks' yelping battle cries. Sam could hear the tribesmen's bowstrings twang – and as if hearing made fact, one of his flanking guards grunted and fell, white fletching at the side of his chest.

Another dismounted to him, as the four still mounted bent their longbows, shooting down into shadow. Kipchak arrows hummed around them, and the escort's sergeant, a man named McGee, rode to crack Difficult across the hindquarters with his bow-stave. The charger leaped forward and bounded across the slope like a deer, Sam only a bundle hanging on.

He'd found nothing more unusual in battle than laughter. On campaign, of course, and even in maneuver under threat. But rarely in the heart of slaughter. Now, Sam was treated to that sound as he saw, in dawn's light, Charmian Loomis – with two officers, and blood down her side – leaning on the staff of a battle pennant and laughing at him amid a flickering sleet of arrows.

"Never saw a man so eager!" she called to him. "Damn near flew down the line!"

Sam wrestled Difficult to a skidding halt, swung down – and resisted temptation to draw and take off the animal's head. McGee'd followed, and Sam tossed him the charger's reins as the other bowmen rode up.

"And what are you doing on the line?" He had to shout. "You're the fucking commander here!"

"Came down to listen to the fighting."

"You get your ass up on the ridge!" And to the officers standing by, both crouching a little as if arrow flights were pressing them down: "Get her out of here!"

Charmian grinned. "Listen…" An arrow passed almost between them, a slight disturbance in the air.

"Your wound – "

"I've had worse." Still smiling, a happy woman in battle. "Listen, something's wrong with the fighting here." Supporting herself a little on her rapier's springing blade, she turned, slightly stiffly, to look back down the slope. The light was good enough, now, for Sam to see clearly the tide of Kipchaks coming against the supple, almost silent formations of Light Infantry all along this hillside and another beyond it. The dismounted tribesmen attacking in a surf of slaughter… then slowly, slowly easing back down the slopes to gather and come again.

Between these advances and withdrawals, men and women fought stranded on the snow in sudden knots, wrestling at knife-point, slashing with swords and yataghans. But Sam saw it was the short Kipchak bows that were hurting his people most. The Light Infantry crossbowmen were overmatched.

"See?" Charmian pointed with her rapier's blade. "We need to keep close!" As if to prove it, an arrow came whisking past her throat, touched her long hair like a lover fleeting past. "And we can keep close, and hold them. They hit us and hit us hard – "

"But they're not pushing your people back."

"Right. There's no weight to this attack."

A surprising smacking sound, and the younger officer – Sam hadn't known his name – pitched down into the snow with an arrow in the side of his neck, just beneath his helmet's edge. The officer grunted, kicked at the snow, and died.