S. Stirling - The Protectors war

Two and a half tons of horseflesh, human bone and muscle and steel armor hurtled at each other. He slanted the lance across Pommers's neck, clenching his legs against the horse, locking himself into the high-cantled saddle.

And I don't much care whether I live or die, he knew. Alleyne and Hordle escape in either event. If Maude's waiting for me: and if there's nothing beyond: then sleep.

Suddenly the other armored lancer was close. Loring clenched his legs and leaned forward, the lance tight under his arm, the point unwavering. At the very last instant his knees pressed, and the yellow horse swerved slightly, leaning away. Loring's lance head stayed glued to its target, the narrow spot where the bevoir laced to the breastplate:

Crannng! Then crack! like a miniature roll of thunder as the tough ashwood of a lance shaft broke.

Nigel Loring swayed drunkenly in the saddle at the massive impact hammering on his shield and smashing his hips backward against the cantle; the curved sheet metal shed most of it, cunningly held to glance the point, but it was enough to tear him half out of the saddle and lose one stirrup; the warhorse itself staggered and nearly fell. The taste of iron and copper filled his mouth as his head snapped violently forward and back, rattling his brain in the skull and cutting his lips against his own teeth. He threw aside the broken stub of the lance before he realized what had happened to his opponent.

Knolles's black horse galloped on. Loring sprang down from the saddle, fell flat on his face, levered himself erect and staggered over to the spot where the other man lay fallen. For a moment he thought he was dead-gone gray-pale, with blood flowing from nose and mouth and one ear. The helmet was gone completely, the laces burst by the terrible leverage when Loring's lance head caught it under the bevoir. One of the captain's archers dashed up and fell on his knees on Knolles's other side, dabbing at his face with a square of linen soaked from a canteen.

"Oh, hell. Oh, bloody hell, sir, you shouldn't have done it-"

Knolles's eyes fluttered open; they were green, and wandered vaguely for a moment. Then he turned his head to spit blood and what was probably a bit of tooth, and the archer gently raised his head to let him drink from the canteen. He spat the first of that out, tinged pink, then drank thirstily and moved feet and hands and fingers to check that they still functioned.

"Glad you're all right, old chap," Loring said; the relief was genuine, a warm surge that melted some sliver of the glacier within.

"All right? You nearly tore my ruddy head off, Nigel!" Knolles said, then winced in pain at his own voice. "I think you've broken my collarbone, too, damnit. This isn't nearly as much fun as doing it with blunted practice lances, is it?"

Nigel put a hand gently on the battered armor of the other's shoulder. "The harness will hold it until you get to a doctor," he said. "And we're even for Armagh, eh, what?"

" I have to explain this to His Majesty," Knolles grumbled.

"Your collarbone will argue for you," Loring said. "And Tony: I meant it about looking out for the princes."

He rose, feeling a stab in his back and a ringing in his ears. I really am getting a little old for this, he thought. It was hard enough to learn a whole new way of war in my forties.

The pain seemed to make him feel better, somehow. Alleyne came up, leading Pommers by the reins. "Do you need a hand mounting, Father?" he said, as Knolles's men carried him away.

"You insolent pup: of course I do, boy!"

Hordle came up and made a stirrup of his hands, lifting with gently irresistible strength as Nigel swung into the saddle again with a grunt.

"That was a joy to be'old, sir," he said. "Fe, fi, fo, fum, bang in the oc-u-lari-um!"

Nigel snorted. "We're not out of England yet," he said. "It's a long wet way to the Wash, and longer still to: wherever we're going."

Alleyne looked around. "I know we have to do it," he said. "Still, leaving England forever: "

"Better than looking over our shoulders at Osborne House," Nigel said stoutly. "And there's nothing more English than leaving England and finding land elsewhere."

Larsdalen, Willamette Valley, Oregon

March 17th, 2007 AD-Change Year Nine

Gunpowder Day

"Sometimes you have to break heads," Michael Havel said.

"To be sure, Mike, that's the way of it in this wicked world," Juniper Mackenzie replied.

She gave him an urchin grin, and tossed back curls whose bright copper glinted in the fresh morning sun. More of the lilt and burble of her mother's people crept into her voice as she went on: "But I'll be pointing out once more that it's cheaper to break them open from the inside. And they're of more use afterward that way, sure. We'll find ways to tweak his nose, never fear, but this grand alliance you've been wanting won't happen soon."

Havel gave a snort of unwilling laughter. "Ah, the hell with it, Juney, I'd rather subvert the bastard than kill his grunts too. I just don't know if we can. Anyway, we've been talking politics for days. Now I've got some gunpowder to test."

The other visiting dignitaries formed up, in no particular order: Abbot Dmowski from Mt. Angel in his brown Benedictine robe; a group of self-appointed SCA nobility from just east of there; Finney and Jones from the Corvallis Faculty Senate a raggle-taggle of the smaller communities. He sighed and put on the helmet he'd carried tucked under one arm; it was a plain steel bowl with a riveted nasal strip in front, hinged cheek guards and a leather-lined chain-mail aventail behind to protect the neck. This particular one had a tanned bear's head mounted on it, the snarling muzzle shading his eyes.

His wife, Signe, came up on his right side, ignoring Juniper's friendly nod. She flicked at the capelike fall of fur that spread back from the bear head, to settle it on his mailed shoulders. Even though he'd killed the bear himself-with a spear, right after the Change-he still felt mildly ridiculous wearing it; it had been Signe's younger sister, Astrid Larsson, who came up with the idea.

The first of her crimes against common sense, he grumbled inwardly. But not the last.

The crowd below cheered at the sight of the ceremonial helm, and started chanting; some drew swords and waved them in the air to the beat of the words.

"Lord Bear! Lord Bear! Lord Bear!"

"You deserve it, O Lord Bear," Signe Havel said, smiling at his tightly controlled embarrassment. "And so do I-I was shooting arrows into it while you shish kebabed its liver, remember? Sort of our first date: "

"I remember it better than I like," he said, with a smile that drew up one corner of his mouth.

He touched a finger to the scar that ran up across his forehead from the corner of his left eye, remembering the hoarse roaring that sprayed blood and saliva in his face, the blurring slap of the great paw and the glancing touch of one claw tip, agony and black unconsciousness coming up to strike him like the ground itself.

Just an inch closer, and there'd've gone my face and eyes.

"Let's get on with it," he went on, his voice a 'little rougher, letting his left hand fall back to its natural position on the hilt of his backsword.

She put on a helmet that sported a crest of yellow horsehair from brow to nape, almost the same color as her own wheat blond mane. An attendant handed her a small metal tray with half a dozen smoldering pine splints on it, and they stepped out. The skirts of their knee-length chain hauberks clashed musically against the steel splints of their shin guards, and the plate of the vambraces on their forearms met with a dull tink as they linked hands, his right to her left.

Their path led down the broad staircase that led from the upper garden to the great lawn where the ceremony would be held, between banks of Excel early lilac already showing a froth of lavender blossom. Militia with sixteen-foot pikes lined the route, their mail shirts and kettle helmets polished for dignity's sake. The crowd was hundreds strong and good-natured, cheering as they saw the leaders, ready for the barbeque and games and entertainments that would follow throughout the day-it seemed a little odd that they'd turned the memorial day of humanity's worst disaster into a holiday, bat things had turned out that way. It was a brilliant spring morning, the air washed to crystal by yesterday's rain, and cool.