Robert Adams - The Coming of the Horseclans

At Captain Beem’s courteous but, nonetheless, flat refusal to impart them an iota of information regarding his liege, King Mahrtuhn, or aught concerning him or his army, one of the chiefs suggested that they build a fire and construct a torture frame. Lord Alexandras shook his head. “That man possesses every bit the courage that you and your people do. You might take him apart, bit by bit, and—ere he allowed the agonies you inflicted to render him false to his word—he’d bite out his own tongue and spit it in your faces! I know his breed of old; they are honorable and worthy opponents.”

So, they drugged his wine and Milo—through Horse-killer—entered his mind. This exercise rilled all the gaps in the information which the mercenaries had supplied. It was quite evident that Lord Alexandras did not entirely approve so dishonorable a method of obtaining intelligence, but he and his staff were quick to compile and begin to evaluate it, albeit.

It seemed that King Mahrtuhn had laid his last ounce of silver on this one throw of the dice. He had virtually stripped his own personal lands and cities—even to the extent of cleaning out prisons and offering amnesty in return for military service in this venture. He had squeezed his vassals as hard as he dared and hired every condotta he could contact. Furthermore, he was leading his army—huge to the point of being a bit unwieldy—himself! His heavy and light infantry numbered some five thousands—the heavy being mercenaries and the light being well-equipped, but mostly ill or untrained jail-scrapings and impressed civilians. He had hired eight thousand mercenary dragoons (Kahtahphraktoee to the Ehleenoee) and these, with the armed nobles and their personal troops, gave him a force numbering something over sixteen thousand men. In his haste to reach the vicinity of Kehnooryohs Atheenahs before Alexandras and the nomads, he had recklessly divided his forces and Milo and the Strahteegohs immediately came to agreement on a way to give the kinglet cause to regret his rashness. “Divide et Vincit!”

Count Normun was seething with suppressed anger and felt himself to be much put-upon. It was most unfair, he felt, for his cousin, King Mahrtuhn, to go galloping off and leave him in nominal command of the foot-troops and baggage-train. Realizing that anything vaguely resembling honor or glory or loot would be over and done long before he and his “command” came up, and sulking in consequence, he had allowed the interval—originally about a day’s march—between the head of his column and the tail of the bulk of the cavalry to nearly double. The heads of the drums were covered and the troops sauntered along the roadway at whatever pace suited them. Their pikes were carried slanted at every angle and, as the weather was quite warm, many had removed their helmets and unlaced their brigandines. The lack of any semblance of discipline or order was contagious and was even beginning to spread into the ranks of Captain Looisz Klahrk’s twelve hundred mercenary heavy infantry.

Count Normun sat slouched in his saddle, one knee crooked around the pommel. He was discussing various aspects of the hunting of deer with Captain Klahrk, who—though the younger son of a younger son and, consequently, landless—was nobly-born and spoke the same “language” as his titular commander.

Although his own hard-bitten troops—despite the best efforts of their brutal but effective non-coms—were commencing to break ranks and straggle in emulation of the light infantry, Klahrk felt little cause for worry. The two columns of cavalry, which had preceded this one, were sure to have gone through this country like a dose of salts and any living human beings left in their wake were probably still running. Seasoned campaigner that he was, he had taken certain precautions, ordering three tens of the hundred dragoons, originally detailed as baggage-wagon guards, to position at point and flanks, and yet another ten to remain several hundred yards behind the last of the lumbering wagons and the gaggle of camp-followers.

Captain Klahrk was in the process of regaling Count Normun with the story of an exceptionally exciting shaggy-bull hunt in which he had taken part some years before in the Principality of Redn. All at once, both his horse and the count’s screamed and reared. Klahrk managed to retain his seat, but the count was hurled onto the stones of the roadbed and only his helmet saved him from a fractured skull.

As Klahrk fought to control his maddened mount, the woods on both sides of the column began to resound the deadly thruuummm of bowstrings and the ah- was abruptly thick with hard-driven arrows. Twenty-five yards back, a pair of huge-boled trees crashed down on the already-disordered infantry, squashing them like bugs. And the arrows continued to ssiisshh their song of death, coming in on a flat trajectory and—seemingly of their own volition—cunningly seeking out every gap of unlaced brigandine, every helmetless head or unprotected throat, skewering arms and legs and faces. No sooner had Klahrk brought his arrowed horse under control, than the poor beast was struck again. At that point, Klahrk gave up, slipped his feet from the stirrups and leaped onto the roadway. There, he drew his sword and, seemingly heedless of the feathered death hissing around him, commenced to try to whip his troops into a formation of sorts, to repel the cavalry charge which was sure to follow the arrow-storm.

Impelled by his valiant example, those of his sergeants still on their feet emulated him, and soon the familiar curses and threats lulled the men’s panic somewhat Shortly, his condotta had begun to form—their twelve-: foot pikes properly slanted and faced toward the south, the only feasible route for an attack of cavalry. As the fire of the arrows abated to some degree, the kneeling front rank announced that they could feel the vibration of many hoofs, transmitted by the road-stones; Klahrk and his non-coms redoubled their efforts, for the more depth the formation possessed, the better then- chances were of stopping the horsemen.

Soon everyone could feel the thud-thudding of the approaching attackers. Then, war cries became audible and the veteran pikemen braced themselves, their earlier panic dissipated. The horses and then” shouting, screaming, cursing riders drew closer and closer and, at any moment, Klahrk and his condotta expected to see the first fours come galloping around the bend in the road. They waited, every man’s nerves drawn tight as a bowstring. Then came an unfamiliar bugle call.

It was the crackling and crashing in the dark, roadside woods that first announced to Klahrk that he was about to be flanked.

“Porkypine!” he roared to his underlings. “Column one, right, FACE, Column ten, left, FACE. Columns one and ten, KNEEL! Columns one and ten, low slant, PIKES!”

And the discipline of drill-field and battlefield did the rest. In short order, the survivors of Klahrk’s condotta presented a facade of bristling pike-points, very reminiscent of the animal the formation emulated. But it was all in vain, for—when at last delivered—the charge was not against Klahrk’s dangerous veterans, but, rather, against the milling, all but helpless light infantry, who clogged the road behind them.

The heavy-armed Grey Horse Squadron wreaked truly fearful casualties among the already-terrified amateur soldiers. Hundreds went down under the dripping swords (and those who did not ran squalling in every direction—pursued relentlessly by the grim, iron-scale-armored men Jon the big grey horses. Discarding everything which might, in any way, retard them, the fugitives ran northward toward the comparative safety of the baggage-train. Some reached it, only to discover that they had fled the fangs of the wolf and escaped into the jaws of the panther! For, by then, the nomads had already slain the wagoneers and their guards and most of the camp followers, had looted what they could carry, and were commencing to set fire to what they could not transport. They fell on the light infantrymen with gusto!