Elizabeth Moon - Surrender None

The marshals watched Gird; he watched the straggling but furious advance. Those few seconds seemed to stretch endlessly, as if he had time to notice the expression on every face, whether the oncoming eyes were blue or grey or brown. Then the first ones reached the mark he had placed, and he dropped his hand, with the long blue streamer that served as their banner.

His cohorts moved. One step, two: cautious, controlled, their formations precise, he thought smugly, as any gnome’s. Where the king’s soldiers had expected last year’s sharpened wood stakes, they met instead the steel pike heads that Marrakai gold had bought. The first died quickly, almost easily, a flick of the pike it seemed, from where Gird sat on the gray horse. He knew better, from having been there himself. Then the ragged lines caught up with each other, and the slaughter began.

Pikes outreach swords, but swordsmen and axemen can form a shield wall hard for pikes to breach, if all are brave. Whether it was courage, or the kind of magicks Gird had seen at work at Blackbone Hill, the soldiers of the king were brave. At first Gird’s cohorts advanced, step by step, down that gentle slope, pushing the king’s men back into the trampled mud and treacherous pits. Then the king’s cavalry swept east, toward Gird’s right flank, and back down the near side of the creek, avoiding the pits he’d dug at that end of the meadow.

This was not what he’d hoped they would do. He had hoped they’d be seduced by the apparent gap on his left flank, between that and the westmost hill. It should have looked like an easy way to get right round behind him. But apparently they’d been looking for something more quick than easy. And if he didn’t do something—quickly—they’d be on attacking his flank with only the archers uphill to hinder them.

The gray horse seemed to understand this almost as quickly as Gird; he was picking his way neatly but rapidly across the gap between the center and the eastmost hill without jolting his rider at all. Gird looked around him. There—that cluster of bright colors up under the trees must be the lords and the king. So far they’d done nothing magical, but he had no doubt they would. And there, across the creek and coming his way, were the enemy cavalry.

Gird bellowed loud enough that the gray horse flattened his ears; the nearest cohort marshals turned, and caught his signal, then saw the rushing horses. He would have wheeled the gray horse around, but the gray horse leaped onward, straight at the oncoming cavalry. Gird hauled on the reins, to no avail.

“I know I said it would be nice to slow them down, but we can’t—one horse—one rider—” Was this to be his destined death, charging uselessly an entire wing of cavalry? But they were almost on them; Gird shrugged, and swung the pole his blue banner was tied to.

Pole and rag took one horse in the face; Gird nearly lost the pole, and his seat, but managed to keep both, and duck a swipe from a curved blade. The gray horse swerved under him; he grabbed for mane and hung on. All around were horses, most of them swerving aside and one frankly running backwards before it slipped and fell, rolling on its rider.

Then they were in the clear, Gird with his banner and the gray horse with a disgustingly smug cock to its ears.

“I want to go back,” Gird said between his teeth, as if the horse were a recalcitrant child. It shook its head, blew a long rattling snort, and picked up an easy lope back toward the battle. He saw a dozen or more horses down, some with arrows in them. He saw the back of the enemy cavalry, trying to charge again and again into two of his cohorts of pikes. The armor on the horses, heavy padded canvas, would have protected them from sword-strokes of other mounted fighters—not from pikemen on foot. Gird wondered if they realized that, or simply never thought of it. He felt the gray horse tense under him, and braced himself for whatever it might do.

What it did was outflank the enemy cavalry, working its way up and over the knee of the eastmost hill without putting a hoof wrong, and return Gird to his observation post on the central hill. From here he could see that that particular cavalry sortie would be thrown back without much danger. His own center was not advancing now, holding place to support the right flank under pressure, but that did not concern him. More worrying, some of that bright-clad group of nobles who had been back under the trees were moving forward. Several of them, clustered together, raised their arms.

He had not expected the well to spout water, the year before, and he did not expect the storm that gathered like a boil atop the ridge behind him, and spat lightning into the trees. Wind rushed irrationally down the slope, bringing fire and smoke with it. Shrill screams rose from both sides, louder from Gird’s camp followers, who found themselves caught between a forest fire and a battle. Then the wind stilled, as suddenly as it had started, and Gird saw that the little group of mages had fallen to the ground. Behind him, the fires still burned, but less fiercely, and the new wind direction took the smoke and flame upslope, away from him.

His eyes still stung and watered; he could barely see across the meadow to the king’s party. Had it been his hidden archers who killed those nobles, or someone else? The momentary lull caused by the onrushing fire had given way to renewed din of battle. His cohorts were inching forward again, by the half-step now, the wounded shifting back as they had practiced, the fallen trodden underfoot. He could do nothing about that, not yet.

The enemy spearmen had finally made it to the front of their lines; they proved as clumsy as Gird had hoped.

Even so, they made rents in the cohort they faced, and it could not advance. For hours, it seemed almost for days, the two armies were knotted in battle. Their lines staggered back and forth, gaining and losing an armlength, a footpace. The noise was beyond anything Gird had imagined, so loud that individual screams and blows merged into a hideous roar.

He concentrated his attention on the details of it, sending his own voice above the rest when necessary. The enemy’s reserve archers, mounted, tried a sweep past his left wing. This was the maneuver he’d been looking for: would they support it? At least half the remaining enemy cavalry, and—yes—behind the screen of battle, a cohort or two of infantry. They thought the west hill empty, available; Gird smiled to himself. He might be only a stupid peasant, but he had learned a few things. That trap would spring itself, but he had to set the main one now.

Once before, the arrival of his camp-followers bearing almost useless “weapons” had convinced an enemy that he had vast reserves. The lords had been telling themselves that the peasants were all rebels at heart; they had only to count to know how many peasants were on their own lands, and fear the worst. Gird had taken the chance that the king and his advisors would follow the trails they had followed through the ridges, trails where horses and pack animals could go, where armies could march without fighting their way through prickly undergrowth. Gird marched that way where he could, and he knew they had trailed him back to this meadow. So they would think that what they saw, and what might be behind the little hills, was the worst of what they faced. That was, in fact, the truth, but would they believe the truth when a pretense fit their deepest fears?

He rode the gray horse a little up the slope, above the dust of the battle, to where he had a clear view across the meadow to that forested ridge behind the king. The king would have scouts atop it, for a certainty—if his people had not found them yet. But that would do him no good. Gird waved the pole with its long blue streamer twice. An arrow whirred past his head as the horse neatly sidestepped. Evidently some archers had decided he was worth hitting—well, he’d told his own to take out archers first, and anyone on horseback next.