Harry Turtledove: Sentry Peak

Rollant pushed his way to the edge of the company so the farmer could see him. “Say that again!” he called to the northern man. “Go ahead-try and make me believe it. I could use a good laugh.”

“You!” The fellow shook his fist again. “Wasn’t for your kind, we wouldn’t have no trouble. I hope the Lion God bites your balls off, you stinking runaway.”

Rollant started to bring up his bow and pull back the string, then checked himself and laughed instead. “What’s funny?” Smitty asked him. “Nobody would’ve blamed you for shooting that bugger.”

“I was just thinking-he hasn’t got any serfs of his own,” Rollant answered. “He couldn’t dream of a farm big enough to work with serfs. Look at his homespun tunic. Look at those miserable pantaloons-out at the knees, a patch on the arse. But he thinks he’s a duke because his hair is brown.”

“A lot of these northerners think like that,” Smitty said. “If they didn’t, Grand Duke Geoffrey would have to fight the war by himself, because nobody would follow him.”

“Conquerors,” Rollant muttered darkly. His own people had had real kingdoms in the north when the Detinans landed on the coast. They’d had bronze spearheads and ass-drawn chariots-which hadn’t kept them from going down to defeat before the iron-armored, unicorn-riding invaders, whose magecraft had proved more potent, too. In the south, blonds had been thinner on the ground, and more easily and thoroughly caught up in the kingdom that grew around them.

Such musings vanished from his head when a troop of unicorns ridden by men in blue burst out of the pine woods behind the farmer’s fields and thundered toward his company. “Geoffrey!” the riders roared as their mounts galloped over and doubtless ruined the crops of the northerner with the ragged pantaloons and the lordly attitude.

General Guildenstern’s army had unicorn-riders, too. They were supposed to keep enemy cavalry off King Avram’s footsoldiers. But Geoffrey’s riders had proved better all through the war. They looked likely to be better here, for no gray-clad men on unicornback were in position to get between them and Rollant and his companions.

“In line to the right flank! Two ranks!” shouted Captain Cephas, the company commander. “Shoot as you find your mark-no time for volleys.”

Close by, another officer was yelling, “Pikemen forward! Hurry, curse you! Get in front of those unicorns!”

The pikemen did hurry. But the troop of riders had chosen their moment well. Rollant could see that the pikemen wouldn’t get there fast enough.

Because he’d gone over to the side of the road to shout at the farmer, he was among the crossbowmen closest to the on-thundering unicorns. That put him in the first rank. He dropped to one knee so his comrades in the second rank could shoot over him. Then it was the drill swearing sergeants had pounded into him: yank back the crossbow string, lay the quarrel in the groove, bring the weapon to his shoulder, aim along the two iron studs set into the stock, pull the trigger.

The crossbow bucked against his shoulder. Other triggers all around him clicked, too. A unicorn crashed to the ground. Another fell over it, sending its rider flying. A northerner threw up his hands and slid off his mount’s tail, thudding to the ground as bonelessly as a sack of lentils. A wounded unicorn screamed and reared.

But most of the troop came on. They smashed past the pikemen before the wall of spearheads could fully form. Rollant had time for only two shots before he had to throw down his crossbow and snatch out his sword. He might not be very good with it, but if it wouldn’t save his life, nothing would.

A unicorn’s horn spitted the crossbowman beside him. The fellow on the unicorn slashed at Rollant with his saber. Rollant got his own sword up just in time to turn the blow. Sparks flew as iron belled off iron. The unicorn pressed on. When the northerner slashed again, it was at someone else. He laid a crossbowman’s face open, and shouted in triumph as the fellow shrieked.

Rollant stabbed the unicorn in the hindquarters. Its scream was shrill as a woman’s. It reared, blood pouring from the wound. While the rider, taken by surprise, tried to fight it back under control, Rollant stabbed him, too, in the thigh. More blood spurted, astonishingly red. Rollant could smell the blood. That iron stink put him in mind of butchering day on Ormerod’s estate. The rider bellowed like a just-castrated bullock. Then a pikeman ran up and thrust him through from behind. Ever so slowly, he toppled from his mount.

Surviving northerners broke free of the press and galloped away. King Avram’s unicorns came up just in time to chase them as they went. Smitty said, “They paid a price today, by the gods.” He had a cut over one eye, and didn’t seem to know it.

“That they did.” Rollant rammed his shortsword into the ground to clean off the blood. Baron Ormerod had always screamed at his serfs to take care of their-his-ironmongery. Rollant looked at the bodies strewn like broken dolls, and at the groaning wounded helped by their comrades and by the healers. Even as he watched, a healer cut the throat of a southron too terribly gashed and torn to hope to recover. “They paid a price, sure enough,” Rollant said. “But so did we.”

General James of Broadpath was a belted earl. The northern noble needed a good deal of belt to span his own circumference, and had to ride a unicorn that would otherwise have made a career of hauling great jars of wine from hither to yon. Despite his girth, though, he’d proved a gifted soldier; few of the commanders who fought under the Duke of Arlington had done more to keep Avram’s larger host from rampaging through the province of Parthenia and laying siege to Nonesuch, the town in which Grand Duke Geoffrey-no, King Geoffrey-had established his capital.

With a little more luck , James thought, just a little more, mind you, we would have been laying siege to Georgetown, and hanging Avram from the flagpole in front of the Black Palace. We came close . Sighing, he stroked his beard, which spilled in curly dark ringlets halfway down his broad chest. Close counted even less in war than any other time.

Now the struggle in Parthenia seemed stalemated. However much mead the southron commander swilled, he’d beaten back Edward of Arlington’s invasion of the south and followed him into Geoffrey’s territory when he had to retreat. Neither army, at the moment, was up to doing much.

Which meant… Earl James studied the map pinned down to the folding table in his silk pavilion. He rumbled something down deep in his chest. His beard and soup-strainer mustache so muffled it, even he couldn’t make out the words. That might have been just as well.

He shook his head. He knew better. And what he knew had to be said, however unpalatable it might prove when it came out in the open.

Muttering still, he left the tent and stepped out into the full muggy heat of late summer in Parthenia. He’d known worse-he’d been born farther north, in Palmetto Province-but that didn’t mean he enjoyed this. No one of his build could possibly enjoy summer in Parthenia.

The sentries in front of Duke Edward’s pavilion (rather plainer than James’; Edward cared little about comfort, while the Earl of Broadpath relished it) stiffened into upright immobility when they saw James drawing near. Returning their salutes, he asked, “Is the duke in?”

“Yes, your Excellency,” they chorused. One ducked into the pavilion. He returned a moment later, followed by Duke Edward.

James came to attention and tried to make his chest stick out farther than his belly-a losing effort. Saluting, he said, “Good evening, sir.”