David Weber - Wind Rider's Oath

He grimaced at the thought. Some of his men had already balked at finishing off Trianal's wounded. Indeed, one sergeant had flatly refused to obey the order, and his own captain had cut him down for mutiny. Fahlthu understood the necessity, and he was prepared to be as ruthless as his orders required, but he didn't much care for them himself. And he detested what a campaign like this was likely to do to Third Company's discipline.

And now that we've begun slaughtering the enemy's wounded, he thought grimly, it would be a very good idea not to lose. Funny how it's the armsmen who carry out the orders, not the lords who gave them the orders in the first place, who always seem to end up paying the penalty for "atrocities" after the campaign. Still, the money's good, and I can always use the kormaks.

"What the hell does Captain Hathmin think he's playing at?" he growled aloud, shrugging aside his morose thoughts in favor of fresher irritation as he watched the captain's troop go charging up a steep slope toward the enemy's left.

"I don't know, Sir," his standard-bearer replied to the rhetorical question, then cringed under the look Fahlthu gave him for his temerity. The company commander glared at him for a moment longer, and then turned the same glare on the distant Hathmin. It wouldn't do any good, but at least it made him feel a little better.

He could see why Trianal had been willing to weaken that flank, for the hillside was wet, watered by a series of springs the seasonal rains had filled brimfull. Its sodden grass had been largely churned to slick mud by the Balthar and Glanharrow horsemen who'd already ridden over it two or three times, and Hathmin's horses' footing wasn't good. They floundered, forced to move at little more than a walk, and two troops of Festian's men poured fire into his flank as his advance slowed. And then at least another troop worth of archers, all in Balthar's colors, came sweeping up from the back side of the hill and sent a horizontal hail of arrows sleeting into Hathmin's face.

The Sothōii horsebow was a powerful, deadly weapon, and men screamed as point-blank fire punched pile-headed arrows through leather armor, and even breastplates, at such short range. Horses shrieked as they took arrows of their own, and kicking, writhing warhorses went down on the awkward slope as Trianal's men closed with the saber to finish off the remnants. None of Hathmin's troopers got free, and Fahlthu swore vilely as the last of them fell, dead or wounded, in a pointed illustration of why pushing ahead too recklessly was . . . unwise.

Still, the other side had expended a lot of arrows massacring Hathmin, and that was the other side of the equation. When their arrows were gone, they were doomed, for why should Fahlthu close to saber or lance range when his bows could still fire and theirs couldn't? And at this rate, it might take even less time than he'd originally hoped.

He watched the reserve which had finished off Hathmin pull back across the crest of the hill. Then he grunted and sent his horse cantering forward, his chastened standard-bearer and bugler at his heels, following the carpet of dead or writhing men and horses back the way Trianal Bowmaster had retreated.

"Sound the gallop!" Trianal commanded as the main body of his dwindling command topped the line of hills and headed down their western face towards him.

The bugle calls rose perfect and forceful, as if their insistent beauty had nothing to do with the carnage and stink and blood littering the ground between the hills and the Bogs. But the officers his messengers had reached understood what he intended, and they wheeled their men quickly. Their horses were less fresh than they'd been when the engagement began, but they answered to their riders' demands and came pounding down the hillside dangerously quickly. At least one horse and rider went down with a smashing impact and rolled in an ugly, mutually lethal heap. But most got clear, and he exhaled a deep breath of relief as he watched his winnowed troops following the narrow, forked banners of their guidons clear of the slope at last. Only the very front ranks of the enemy's skirmishers had topped the hills behind them by the time his men were settling back into formation, reorganizing on the run as they thundered into the west.

"And now," he told Sir Yarran, swinging his own horse and urging the stallion to a gallop, "we see how fast Golden Vale horses are!"

"They're up to something," Fahlthu heard someone say, and turned his head. "Master Brownsaddle" had appeared out of the chaos, like the proverbial bad kormak, and the knight glowered at him.

"Of course they are!" he snarled back. "They're trying to get out of the chamber pot they shoved their heads into! And," he continued in a grimmer voice, "to kill as many of my lads as they can in the process."

"That's not what I mean." Darnas Warshoe grimaced impatiently, cantering along at Fahlthu's side. "They started out fighting a serious rearguard-now they're galloping away like hares before hounds, when they must know our horses are fresher than theirs are."

"Do you always have to look for the crookedest possible answer to any question?" Fahlthu demanded disgustedly. "Did it ever occur to you that they may simply have had enough? That they've seen enough of their friends killed that they're breaking at last? Men who finally panic and rout seldom stop to think about whose horse is freshest!"

"Milord," Warshoe said as patiently as he could, "if they were going to panic, they should have done it at the outset. And if their morale's finally broken, why in all the gods' names did it happen simultaneously for their entire formation? Hasn't it been your experience that when a force routs, it usually at least begins breaking one subunit at a time?"

"And just how in Phrobus' name do you know they didn't start breaking that way?" Fahlthu demanded harshly. "I couldn't see through the solid top of a hill to watch the exact pattern of it-could you ?"

Warshoe ground his teeth together and managed not to scream at the idiot. Gods above, this fool wouldn't have lasted three months in the King's Own! He's made his mind up about what's happening, and he's not about to let any inconvenient little facts interfere now.

"Milord," he tried once more, "what if it's a feigned retreat?"

"And what if it's Hirahim Lightfoot's long-lost mother?" Fahlthu shot back sarcastically. "No, Master Brownsaddle. You tend to your responsibilities-whatever they really are-and I'll tend to mine. And right now, mine are to go finish off an overconfident young whippersnapper who let guts and determination get the better of good sense!"

He urged his horse from a canter to a gallop, and Warshoe let his mount fall back. He watched Fahlthu spurring up the hill, waving his sword and shouting at his more laggardly men, and shook his head.

It was always possible Fahlthu's analysis was correct and Warshoe's was wrong. In that case, the cavalry commander had more than enough men to finish off Trianal and Yarran, and Warshoe could leave the brute labor up to him. Even if Fahlthu was wrong, it didn't necessarily follow that Trianal's plan-whatever it was-would succeed. But whether it did or not, Warshoe had no desire to find himself embroiled in the sort of melee that was going to ensue when Fahlthu finally closed for the kill. He was a specialist these days, not a common trooper. And if Fahlthu failed-or even if he succeeded, but Trianal himself escaped death-a specialist in the right place might accomplish more later on than all of Fahlthu's cavalrymen put together in the wrong place could manage now.

Or, for that matter, a specialist might be required to see to it that Fahlthu himself wasn't around to . . . discuss his orders with Lord Festian or Baron Tellian. It would be most inconvenient for Baron Cassan if the Golden Vale captain were to be taken alive, and Darnas Warshoe wasn't in the habit of inconveniencing his patron.