S. Stirling - Sunrise Lands

Thurston grunted. "Sergeant Anderson!"

The tall silent blond man came forward. "Captain?"

"Go see what the hell is happening with Martin and why he's senior man there-or acting like it. Get back here soonest."

The noise to the front died down then, almost to si lence. The wind rose slightly; Rudi could feel trickles of it on his neck, stealing down to leave tormenting bits of comfort in the greasy, itchy sweat that accumulated under armor. He filled his helmet before the water cart trundled off, and then dumped it over his head; it ran down into the padding beneath his brigandine and mail, a flush of delicious coolness. His friends were silent as he handed out the canteens, their eyes fixed eastward.

Dust parted before them, though everything was still blurred by a brown-gold haze. Through it the foot sol diers of the Church Universal and Triumphant could be seen, pulling sullenly back in a thick dark mass of large round shields edged with steel spear points. They parted in the center like a door opening.

Beyond that was a line of glittering metal points of light over red brown… the lance heads of the Sword of the Prophet, three thousand horsemen strong. The line of light rippled and flashed as the butts of the lances were lifted out of the scabbards; it would be cold steel now, not long-distance play with arrows.

Thurston grunted as if he'd been punched in the belly. "Christ! Well, now we know where their reserve was. Courier! Courier! Get spare pila forward-"

Rudi stepped back as Thurston's voice rapped out in a string of orders and men exploded outward like a covey of geese spooked from a pond. Off to the north the dug-in artillery batteries were in a flurry of activ ity too, crews pumping like madmen to send water through the armored hoses to the hydraulic jacks that cocked their actions. More field catapults galloped up from north and south and deployed as he watched, and their loaders dashed back and forth to the ammunition wagons, staggering under loads of four foot javelins and hundred-and-twenty-pound rope bags of round shot. Others broke out bundles of beehive-wicked-looking six-inch finned steel darts, needle-pointed and heavy.

His friends tightened girths and set their helms on their heads; you left that for the last minute if you could. Wearing a helmet for hours at a time gave you a headache, as sure as a blow from a mace.

"For what we are about to receive-" Ingolf said.

"— may the Lord make us truly thankful," Odard fin ished, then kissed his crucifix, tucked it back under his hauberk and crossed himself; Mathilda and the big easterner followed suit, and Odard's servant Alex.

"Lady of the Ravens, fold me in Your wings," Rudi murmured. "Antlered One, God of my people, You whose voice is heard on the mountainsides, lift Your hand over us. To both of You I dedicate the harvest of the unplowed field."

His skin was prickling as he stripped the cover off a shield to let the world see the antlers and moon blazon of Clan Mackenzie. Edain gave him a grim nod as he strung his longbow and then started working his right arm in circles, loosening the thick muscles; he looked very much like his father just then, which was comforting.

A silence fell along the line-silence save for the screams of those too hurt for anything but the rending of their bodies to have meaning. The dust drifted westward, and they could hear the low endless rumble of twelve thousand shod hooves striking the ground; hear it, and feel it through the soles of their feet, first as a low vibration and then a shaking like a stationary earthquake as thousands of tons pounded the flesh of the Mother in every instant.

Epona tossed her head and snorted, ears forward; the other horses shifted uneasily, and Macha Mongruad squealed in rage, the leather-backed steel plates of her barding clattering.

Odard thought having two destriers ready was being extravagant. I don't think so.

A human sound rose through the hooves. The Sword of the Prophet were chanting as the lance heads fell level: "Cut! Cut! Cut! Cut!"

The fighting men of the Republic replied, a long Ooooooo-rah that rolled up and down the ranks, a deep snarling shout full of guttural defiance and threat. A sharp bull bellow of "Come, ye Saints!" from the New Deseret troops off southward.

"CUT! CUT! CUT! CUT!"

When ten thousand men shouted in unison it was less a sound than a blow, something that thudded into your face and made your chest sound like a drum. And it struck below that too, and made Rudi's lips curl back from his teeth.

He understood what it was to look into a man's eyes over a blade and know that one of them would die; that was how the Lord and Lady had made the world, as much as the leap of a tiger on a deer, or two buck elk locking horns in the spring. That was strength and speed, skill and luck and nerve against the same. Having a small city coming towards you with nothing but murder in its heart was something else again, and as impersonal as being caught in a mudslide… or lying strapped to the latest log in a sawmill.

"CUT! CUT! CUT! CUT!"

Thurston shouted to someone, loud enough to be heard above the stunning roar: "I don't care what they're doing; get the reserve up here now. All of them, and on the double!"

The catapults of the field batteries cut loose in unison with a multiple crashing of throwing arms against rubber shod steel. Javelins arched out, twirling as their curved fins took the air, seeming to slow as they went, and the steel balls of the round shot. Men fell, their mounts fell-sometimes an entire file of three, where a six-pound steel ball traveling at four hundred feet a second hit the ground and bounced and broke legs like brittle sticks as it spun whirling forward.

The Sword of the Prophet came on at a steady hand gallop, opening out around bodies thrashing and screaming and bodies lying still, closing again like a flood around a rock in a display of horsemanship that would have been beautiful if it hadn't been so frightening. The companions turned their mounts towards the front and raised their shields, barding and the kite shaped lengths of plywood protecting them and the horses against the bale wind of arrowheads whose farthest spray began to fall around them.

Ground and center, ground and center, Rudi thought; not trying to calm himself, but instead channeling the building fear and fury, until they opened doors in his soul.

When you did that Someone was always likely to answer. The world flashed for an instant into black outlines veined across with red, like the feather of a skeletal raven dipped in blood drawn across the surface of existence. Coolness ran across his skin, turning muscle and nerve to silk and fire, balanced and pure, moving to the beating heart of Earth that was his own pulse. Talons gripped all creation, and wings beat a wind whose dust was stars.

Doubt flickered out of him, like a candle flame's in stant death in a gale. This is right, it is, he thought. This is just where They wanted me to be.

Arrows whickered up from the rear ranks of the Cutters, black against the tired fading blue of the afternoon sky, snapping down faster and faster as they arched over the huge blunt wedge. Rudi's mind saw their course through the air, the weft of a single great loom, each etched like a thread of diamond through the world.

The lancers seemed like men without shadows as they charged into the setting sun, the heads of their horses driving up and down above the dust mist that half hid them. The catapults switched to the canister rounds, the bundles of darts sweeping forward, spreading out like the claws of leaping cats as the bands that bound them snapped.

They crossed the arrows in flight, warp to their weft, and the world shook to the thump of the loom's hed dle; the Weaver's face hung over it, ancient, terrible, sooty and single-eyed, scored with grief and anger huge enough for the death of suns. The massed grunt of the Boise footmen as they launched their spears made an undertone to it, part of the song the worlds sang. So was the endless flicker of their swords as they drew and crouched behind their big shields, shoulders tucked into the inner surfaces and strong muscled legs braced.