Roland Green - Great King_s war

By this time most of the dragoon pikemen had formed their hedgehog and were moving back to the Hostigi line. Harmakros gave the final signal, two sharp trumpet blasts, and about half the original force of Hostigi cavalry broke off and drove towards the Hostigi lines. The artillerymen, suddenly shorn of protection and support, were the last to leave. Harmakros hoped that someday Alkides would forgive him.

Waving and gesturing, Leonnestros directed his men toward the abandoned Hostigi redoubt. Harmakros was pleased to note that the Ktemnoi Pistoleers saw little honor or profit in chasing gunners and allowed most of them to evade and retreat.

The Pistoleers rode past and around the loaded field pieces and came to a halt. For a moment it mass confusion, then it appeared the Harphaxi cavalry were reforming ranks to charge the Hostigi center! Harmakros couldn't believe that that they would stop, but not turn the guns on the Hostigi center. A few of the Pistoleers pointed excitedly at the piled barrels of fireseed the cowardly Hostigi had left behind. In his mind's ear, Harmakros could hear Leonnestros mentally rehearsing his victory speech and gloating over the praise and gold he would receive from Styphon's House and Great King Cleitharses.

Enjoy the moment while you can, you strutting capon! Harmakros thought. If by some undeserved miracle Leonnestros survived this battle, the only reward he was going to get for disobeying Soton's orders would be the sharp end of the Grand Master's tongue-if not the blunt end of his mace!

Grand-Captain Phidestros began to wonder if it had been a good idea after all to make his mad rush to join the Holy Host, when he saw Prince Leonnestros dash madly off toward the Hostigi battery. Grand Master Soton knew his craft, no doubt about it, but his lesser captains from High Marshall Mnephilos on down left much to be desired.

To do him justice, Phidestros had no idea of what he himself would have done in Leonnestros' boots, not with the Hostigi building an artillery redoubt from which they could hammer the left wing of the Holy Host at will! Great King Kalvan had turned what had once been a straightforward and honest profession into something that made the head hurt as much from thinking as the arse did from riding!

It was bad enough that the Hostigi seemed to have an improbably large number of heavy guns in the center. Worse still, the Knights' battery was too close to the left wing for even a drinking man's comfort. One of the former Beshtan companies under his command had already lost its banner-bearer and three troopers to friendly fire.

What was he supposed to do now that Leonnestros had all but deserted his post? Being Grand-Captain of the largest band in the left wing, Soton had put him in nominal command of the mercenary horse under Leonnestros. As he watched Kalvan's musketeers butcher the Royal Guard, he decided that it would be best to stay where he was. Men newly raised to Grand-Captain and given charge over five thousand horse did not make changes in Grand Master Soton's battle plans without a damned good reason.

Yet, everyone else-Leonnestros and the Kings Pistoleers, the Sacred Squares and even the Zarthani Knights on the right wing-were engaged with the enemy. Here he sat with Kalvan and more horse than he liked to think about only a march away. What is Kalvan waiting for? Leonnestros to piss his men away against the new battery? Something else that only Kalvan could imagine?

Phidestros watched as the Hostigi suddenly began to retreat to behind the battery. They had hammered Leonnestros' cavalry: why retreat now? Meanwhile, Leonnestros was trying to regroup his Pistoleers and the surviving Royal Guards. Leonnestros was going to have to take out the battery quickly before all the Hostigi departed and the guns had an open lane of fire on Leonnestros' horse. If he didn't, he was in for a surprise; there wouldn't be enough of him and his command left for Soton to punish. Kalvan-style guns were like nothing any Ktemnoi army had ever faced.

He was surprised at how quickly the Hostigi pikemen formed into a hedgehog formation and retreated before Leonnestros' Pistoleers. Suddenly the Ktemnoi were at the enemy battery. He was surprised-and uneasy…something was wrong. He'd never seen Hostigi foot retreat so quickly after they had shot the Styphon out of their opponents, neither at Fyk nor at Chothros Heights.

It's a trap! He had to get a warning off to Leonnestros before he committed his command.

"Uroth!"

"Yes, Grand-Captain."

"No time for a dispatch. Warn Leonnestros to examine Kalvan's demicannon. I suspect treachery; the Hostigi yielded that battery far too easily. Ride like the wind!"

"Yhoo!"

As he watched the last of Kalvan's artillerymen run away and Leonnestros' men swarm over the deserted battery, Phidestros felt a hollow sensation in his stomach. Not only had he just ordered a good man to a needless death, but he was about to watch the Holy Host come apart at the seams.

"Great Galzar's Ghost!" He wildly signaled his trumpeter-caught his attention and shouted. "Play retreat!"

Xykos turned around warily, Boarsbane raised toward the sky. Other than the twisted heaps of what had once been living men, some piled three and four deep, there was no one standing in any direction for a good twenty paces. He set his sword down and tried to clear his head of the battle-madness that possessed him when he fought. His lungs labored like bellows. For the first time, he noticed that his breastplate was dented in a score of places and there was a trickle of blood from above his eyebrow falling into his left eye. With this realization came the ache of bruised ribs and weary arms pushed far beyond ordinary duty.

He said a quick prayer to the Wargod; he knew this unexpected and unasked-for sanctuary would not last for long. Above the pikes and flailing bills, he saw the trees of the Grove of the Badger King. From where he stood, it appeared that the battle had passed over him and the surviving Veterans of the Long March.

Within moments he had located a dozen Hostigi stragglers and battle-stunned. Three or four had risen from the piles of dead and wounded like Hadron awakening in the tale of the Lost Mountain. One of the stragglers was the banner-bearer of the Veterans, still carrying the ripped and slashed flag bearing an iron boot crushing a red winged serpent. With the help of some of the other Veterans, he had soon assembled a force of some fifty to sixty men, most with minor wounds but good spirits. Those who were battle-shaken he sent to aid the gravely wounded.

The main battle was far now far enough away so that Xykos could see what was happening. The troops of the right and left flanks had held, while the center had given way. The two Great Squares were no longer in any sort of recognizable formation and had been hammered badly by the Hostigi flanks. The Royal Square had shifted to the weakest point in the Hostigi center and was slowly chewing its way toward the Great Battery.

The Great Battery itself was eerily silent, with only an occasional flash showing that was still Hostigi-held. Xykos supposed that the two armies had become so entangled that the Hostigi gunners were afraid to fire on the Holy Host for fear of hitting their own men.

It would be sheer folly to attack the Ktemnoi with only thirty men, especially since that meant going against Styphon's Red Hand. Instead he decided to move quickly through the fallen tangle of friends and foes until they were in a position to help relieve the Great Battery. He hastily explained this plan to his little company. There were no arguments; indeed they moved out eagerly, when they saw a squadron of horse under a Ktemnoi banner looking curiously in their direction.