H. Piper - Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen

The abatis was finished, and he cantered forward for a final look at it. He couldn't see a trace of any of the guns, and it looked, as he had wanted it to, like the sort of thing a lot of peasant home-guards would throw up. At each end, between the abatis itself and the short barricades of carts, was an opening big enough for cavalry to sortie out. The mounted infantry horse-lines were back of the side road, with the more poorly armed militia holding horses.

Away off, one of the Narza Gap bombards boomed; they were still holding out. Then he began to hear the distant, and then not-so-distant, pop of small arms. Cavalry drifted up the road, some reloading pistols as they came. The shouts grew louder; more cavalry, in more of a hurry, arrived. Finally, four of them topped the rise and came down the slope; the last one over the top turned in his saddle and fired a pistol behind him. A dozen Nostori cavalry appeared as they were splashing through the brook.

Immediately, a big 8-bore rifled musket bellowed from behind the abatis, and then another and another. His horse dance-stepped daintily. Across the hollow, a horse was down, kicking, another reared, riderless, and a third, also empty saddled, trotted down to the brook and stopped to drink. The mercenaries turned and galloped away out of sight into the dead ground beyond the rise. He was wondering where Harmakros had put the rest of the riflemen when a row of smoke-puffs blossomed along the edge of the bench above the stream on the left, and shots cracked like a string of firecrackers. There were yells from out of sight across the hollow, and musketoons thumped in reply. Wasting Styphon's good fireseed-at four hundred yards, they couldn't have hit Grant's Tomb with smoothbores.

He wished he had five hundred rifles up there. Hell, why not wish for twenty medium tanks and half a dozen Sabre-Jets, while he was at it?!

Then Klestreus's mercenary cavalry came up in a solid front on the brow of the hill-black and orange pennons and helmet-plumes and scarves, polished breastplates. Lancers all in front, musketoon-men behind. A shiver ran along the front as the lances came down.

As though that had been the signal, and it probably had been, six four-pounders and four eight-pounders went off together. It wasn't a noise, but a palpable blow on the ears. His horse started to buck; by the time he had him under control the smoke was billowing out over the hollow, and several perfect rings were floating up against the blue, and everybody behind the abatis was yelling, "Down Styphon!"

Round-shot; he could see where it had torn furrows back into the group of black and orange cavalry. Men were yelling, horses rearing, or down and screaming horribly, as only wounded horses can. The charge had stopped before it had started. On either side of him, gun-captains were shouting, "Grapeshot! Grapeshot!" and cannoneers were jumping to their pieces before they had stopped recoiling with double-headed swabs, one end wet to quench lingering powder-bag sparks and one end dry.

The cavalry charge slid forward in broken chunks, down the slope and into the hollow. When they were twenty yards short of the brook, four hundred arquebuses crashed. The whole front went down, horses behind falling over dropped horses in front. The arquebusiers who had fired stepped back, drawing the stoppers of their powder-flasks with their teeth. Spring powder flasks, self-measuring, get made and issued soonest. He also added cartridge paper to the paper memo.

When they were half reloaded, the other four hundred arquebuses crashed. The way those cavalry were jammed down there, it would take an individual miracle for any bullet to miss something. The smoke was clogging the hollow like spilled cotton now, but through it he could see another wave of cavalry coming up on the brow of the opposite hill. A four-pounder spewed grapeshot into them, then another and another, till the whole six had fired.

Gustavus Adolphus's four-pounder crews could load and fire faster than musketeers, the dry lecture-room voice was telling him. Of course, the muskets they'd been timed against had been matchlocks; that had made a big difference. Lord Kalvan's were doing almost as well: the first four-pounder had fired on the heels of the third arquebus volley. Then one of the eight-pounders fired, and that was a small miracle.

A surprising number of Klestreus's cavalry had survived the fall of their horses. Well, not so surprising; horses were bigger targets, and they didn't wear breastplates. Having nowhere else to go, the men were charging on foot, using their lances as pikes. A few among them had musketoons; they'd been in the rear. Quite a few were shot coming up, and more were piked trying to get through the abatis. A few did get through. As he galloped to help deal with one of these parties, he heard a trumpet sound on the left, and another on the right, and there was a clamor of "Down Styphon!" at both ends. That would be the cavalry going out; he hoped the artillery wouldn't get excited.

Then he was in front of a dozen unhorsed Nostori cavalrymen, pulling up his horse and aiming a pistol at them.

"Yield, comrades! We spare mercenaries!" An undecided second and a half, then one of them lifted a reversed musketoon. "We yield; oath to Galzar."

That, he thought, they would keep. Galzar didn't like oath-breaking soldiers; he let them get killed at the next opportunity. Cult of Galzar; encourage.

Some peasants ran up, brandishing axes and pitchforks. He waved them back with his pistol, letting them have a look at the muzzle.

"Keep your weapons," he told the mercenaries. "I'll find somebody to guard you."

He detailed a couple of Mobile Force arquebusiers; they impressed some militia. Then he had to save a wounded mercenary from having his throat cut. Dralm-damned civilians! He'd have to detail prisoner-guards. Disarm these mercenaries and the peasants'd cut their throats; leave them armed, and the temptation might overcome the fear of Galzar.

Along the abatis, the firing had stopped, but the hollow below was a perfect hell's bedlam-pistol shots, clashing steel, "Down Styphon!" and, occasionally, "Gormoth!" Over his shoulder he could see villagers, even women and children, replacing militiamen on the horse-lines. Captains were shouting,

"Pikes forward!" and pikemen were dodging among the branches to get through the abatis. Dimly, through the smoke, he could see red and blue on horsemen at the brow of the opposite hill. Uniforms; do something about. Brown, or dark green.

The road had been left unobstructed, and he trotted through and down toward the brook. What he saw in the hollow made his stomach heave, and it didn't heave easily. It was the horses that bothered him more than anything else, and he wasn't the only one. The infantry, going forward, were stopping to cut wounded horses throats, or brain them, or shoot them with pistols from saddle-holsters. They shouldn't do that, they ought to keep on, but he couldn't stand seeing horses suffer.

Stretcher-bearers were coming forward to, and villagers to loot. Corpse robbing was the only way the here-and-now civil population had of getting a little of their own back after a battle. Most of them had clubs or hatchets, to make sure that what they were robbing really were corpses.

There were a lot of good weapons lying around. They ought to be collected before they rusted into uselessness, but there was no time for that now. Stopping to do that, once, had been one of Stonewall Jackson's few mistakes. Something was being done toward that, though: he saw crossbows lying around, and each one meant a militiaman who had armed himself with an enemy cavalry musketoon.

The battle had passed on eastward; unopposed infantry were forming up, blocks of pikemen with blocks of arquebusiers between, and men were running back to bring up horses. Away ahead, there was an uproar of battle; that would be the two hundred cavalry he had posted on the far right hitting another batch of Gormoth's mercenaries, who, by now, would be disordered by fugitives streaming back from the light at the hollow. The riflemen on the bench were drifting eastward, too, firing as they went.