Kingmaker (12 page)

She hit them hard, burst through that tough shell, and found herself in target heaven—the middle of a pike phalanx where her opponents were unable to bring their weapons to bear against her at all.

Pikemen aren't stupid. Most of them carried shortswords as a secondary weapon. Those near her dropped their pikes and pulled their swords, turned to face the more immediate threat.

But a pike phalanx depends on cohesion, on coordination. The dropped pikes meant opportunities for the bayonet-wielding dragoons and they took it. Facing only the front row pikemen, they could finally take advantage of their shorter weapons. All up the line, the musketeers surged forward.

"Charge.” Arnold's voice sounded a bit pitched but he'd seen the momentary confusion in the phalanx. The thirty knights he still had active hit the pikemen from the side opposite Ellie. And carved into them like an electric knife into a Thanksgiving turkey.

Of the thirteen hundred infantry and cavalry they'd faced, Ellie calculated they killed more than three hundred. They captured five hundred, half of whom were wounded. It would take a long time before the soldiers who got away could be reequipped and reformed into a confident pike phalanx. They had been shattered emotionally as well as physically.

Sergius's main army's arrived just in time to take over guard duty from the exhausted knights and dragoons, and the army camped in what had been the enemy stronghold.

The good news was they had captured plenty of food. The bad news was, Sullivan clearly knew they were coming, had outguessed them on tactics, and had ample time to prepare for their arrival at Dinan.

Mark collapsed next to where Ellie was gathering the magic stones she'd scattered during the backwash. “I should be feeling happy,” he said.

"Your dragoons saved the day."

Both Sergius and Arnold had been humble and quiet versions of themselves. The King had apologized to the sergeants and knights for his moment of panic and seemed anxious to put it behind him. Nobody had repeated any vainglorious calls for
no quarter
and the prisoners were being treated fairly.

"I guess so."

Ellie could understand Mark's feelings. It's one thing to think of tactics and strategy in academic terms. It's another to see death, blood, and severed limbs.

Their camp echoed with sounds of the wounded and stank of the funeral pyres where their army burned the dead—their own and those of their enemy, indiscriminately mixed in the funeral rites as they'd been in battle.

She found the last stone half-buried in the turf and replaced it in the velvet bag her mother had kept them in. “I could send you back, you know."

"With the time distortion, it might be hundreds of years here before you could get back. You'd never avenge your parents."

"My parents would still be dead."

Her answer surprised her as much as it did Mark. She still missed her parents, would always miss them. But she'd killed enough now to know that more killing wouldn't bring them back. How many of the soldiers she'd killed that afternoon had been parents? How many new orphans had she created?

During the fight, her mind had switched into another state. As she'd slashed her way through enemy soldiers, she'd been fully in the moment, one with her sword.

But that moment had faded and her memory now played back every moment of the fight. Every sword that had stabbed at her, every cut she'd made with her katana. Every one of the men she'd sent to an early grave.

"They would have killed us if we hadn't fought,” Mark reminded her.

"I know.” She did know, but it didn't really help. “Come on, let's get something to eat."

"Ah, there you are. The King has been looking for you.” Dafed had been angry he'd been left out of the fight but he was smiling now. “We're holding a council of war."

She nodded, looked at the loaf of bread in her hand, decided to bring it with her. She needed to eat and she wasn't going to worry about manners any more. If Sergius didn't like it, he could find himself another mage.

He didn't seem to mind. He slapped her on the back, gave her a seat by his side, and then addressed the group of captains and sergeants.

His hair was still plastered to his head with dried sweat and blood from his magically healed injury stained his jersey, but he looked more the King than Ellie had ever seen him. Good. Because they needed a King, not a comic-book hero.

"It seems that our uncles know we are coming,” Sergius admitted. “Continuing on to Dinan is a more dangerous choice than we had anticipated."

"He has half a thousand fewer soldiers to defend it with,” Dafed said. “And if we retreat after such a victory, what would we do after a defeat?"

"Mark, Ellie? What say you?"

Sergius didn't ask for opinions often. Ellie knew she should be grateful. Instead she shrugged.

"How has what we learned here changed our situation?” Mark finally said when it was clear that Ellie wasn't going to answer. “Retreating to Morray means giving up. You've got to take the fight to your enemies."

Sergius nodded slowly. He'd caught Mark's use of
your enemies
rather than
our enemies
. “But we have gained time. We could stay here and recuperate. It's a secure camp. It has food enough to last us a week. We could set up our forges and make more of your bayonets."

Ellie had wanted to stay out of the argument but this was ridiculous. “If you sit here, you've lost as surely as if you go back to Moray. Dafed is right. You've got them off balance. The survivors are going to go back and talk about secret weapons, about huge magic, about the great king's overwhelming charge. But they're professional soldiers. How long will it take before they realize that if we aren't pursuing, it's because we can't? They'll send out snipers, burn the fields to keep us from feeding our animals, and ambush our vanguard and our foraging parties. It's what they should have done anyway, rather than risk a thousand men on the trap."

And if they had the spies Ellie guessed they did, they'd be heartened by the King's panic. But she didn't think it wise to bring that to his attention.

"We have wounded men,” Arnold pointed out. “We can't abandon them but many of them can't be moved."

She wondered if he'd be as concerned if many of their wounded hadn't been fellow nobles.

She shrugged. “This is your war, not mine. If you want to fritter it away, that is your decision to make. But you might want to consider how many more will be wounded or killed if you sit here and wait for the Duke of Sullivan to figure out his next step."

"The princess is right.” Sergius heaved a sigh, stood and struck a pose. “We will leave a small force here to care for and defend the wounded. With them, most of our blacksmiths will stay to repair the captured cannon and start making as many bayonets as possible. The rest of us will press on. We agreed to capture Dinan—capture it, we shall."

Ellie would have been inspired by that kind of talk the previous day. Now, though, she merely nodded. “We'll continue tomorrow, then."

There was plenty of grumbling the next morning.

Only ten of the knights were up to scouting. Mark detailed twenty of his dragoons to help, and mounted the rest of the dragoons as rear-guard, giving them an extra hour to rest.

Their numbers, too, Ellie noted, were sorely depleted. Of the two hundred who had stood in line the previous day, scarcely a hundred could ride now. Many of the others would be able to join them in a few days—if their wounds didn't get infected. But forty of Mark's two hundred dragoons had died in that one battle. It wasn't an encouraging thought.

Lawgrave approached her an hour after they'd set out. “Do you want to talk about it, my child?"

He should have looked ridiculous on a small mule, his feet nearly dragging on the ground and his dress-like robes pulled up to show pale calves and knees. Instead, though, he looked concerned and, for the first time since Ellie had met him, almost kind.

"Talk about what?"

"I'm not just a mage, you know. I'm a priest. That means I'm trained to see anxious souls. And your soul is deeply troubled."

She couldn't argue with that. And she needed to talk. Once, she would have worried whom Lawgrave might report to. Now she was past caring. “I realized that I couldn't bring my parents back no matter how many people I killed. All I'm doing is killing other people's parents. Or other people's children."

He nodded slowly. “Our church fathers preached against war for centuries in the early days of the faith. Against all war because the Prophet was a peacemaker. Hundreds of years ago, though, they made an exception. Wars could be fought, but only just wars.” His lips turned down into a frown. “A few argue this exception was a mistake."

Ellie had always thought that war could be just. You had to defend yourself if you were attacked; otherwise the violent and evil get a free ride. Martial artists learn to be gentle, but abject surrender wasn't a part of her nature. Still, the gap between her ideas and reality was too great.

"Is this supposed to be a just war?” she asked. Sergius had seemed more regal, more responsible after the battle than she'd ever seen him before, but she couldn't forget his panic, his readiness to abandon his soldiers to save his own life. After all, this whole war was about whether one man or one of his uncles would sit on a throne. To the dead, that couldn't matter much.

"We are fighting for the rightful King, united with the land through magic,” Lawgrave said. “What could be more just?"

Ellie shook her head. “I don't know. What I do see is that Sergius and his uncles are fighting over power and it's the ordinary people who are getting killed."

"Is it different in the world you were sent to?” Lawgrave didn't make that a challenge. He wanted to know. As a priest, he probably hoped it was different, that humans could have found a better way.

"I guess not."

He sighed. “I feared as much. Even in the holy Church, there have been bitter disagreements. Even bloodshed. Mankind is a violent beast."

Ellie drew her horse closer to Lawgrave and lowered her voice. “Answer me this one question, Father."

"I'm listening."

"Is it right for me to seek the people who killed my parents? Do I have the right to kill those who get in my way on this quest?"

Lawgrave stared at her as if seeing her for the first time. “Do you want to be a human or a saint? A leader or a hermit?"

She wanted to scream. “I don't know."

"Then I don't know how to answer your question. But I will say that the people who murdered your parents did wrong. Hunting down those who have sought sanctuary is a great evil."

Ellie nodded. But she wasn't particularly reassured.

Two hours later, they emerged from the forest.

Ellie was a city girl and an Angelino, so she wouldn't have recognized good farmland if it stood up and bit her. But this looked like it had been the breadbasket of Lubica. Plowed fields stretched more than a mile on either side of the narrow roadway and substantial outbuildings gave evidence of the region's affluence.

Or rather, the still-smoking ruins of homes, outbuildings, and cornfields did.

Dafed had been ahead with the main body of their small army, but he'd stayed behind to meet her when she and the remnants of the dragoons finally emerged from the forest. “It's ugly here."

"Sullivan did this to his own people?"

"It's what people do in war."

She knew that. She'd seen a T.V. show on the German invasion of Russia and knew that scorched-earth tactics had worked there. But she hadn't really thought about the way that destruction would hurt the locals, probably more than their enemies.

"But—"

Dafed shrugged. “War is the game of nobles. Peasants pay the price."

He was trying to sound nonchalant, but he failed miserably.

If she'd thought about Dafed's background at all, she would have guessed that he'd followed his father into the military. The way he looked at the burned land made her realize she'd misjudged him.

He bent, picked up a clod of plowed earth, and crushed it in his strong hands. The dirt ran through his fingers back to the ground.

"You come from a peasant family, Dafed."

"Once."

"What happened to them?"

"The Rissel, years ago. It was a border raid. Nothing serious. Not even a war. There were a few dozen drunken nobles looking for some loot. They burned the farms they came across."

"Your parents?"

"Both killed. I don't think they raped my mother first."

Ellie hoped so. “How old were you?"

He shrugged. “Six. Old enough to remember but young enough to be adopted into a mercenary company."

"We've got to do something about this, Dafed. There's got to be some way of stopping it."

He looked at her with a look that almost seemed to hold pity. “This is the way it's always been, Ellie. Armies march, nobles loot, and peasants suffer."

He gestured to one of the dragoons who had ridden away from the group and now returned with a chicken flapping at his belt. “If the Duke of Sullivan hadn't burned the fields, our own army would have stolen their livestock, raped their women, and abducted their children into arms."

That wasn't what Ellie had wanted to hear. She wanted a clear moral distinction, a battle between good and evil.

Reality, she was discovering, didn't play fair.

"Where are the people?” she finally asked. “Did they drive them back to Dinan?"

Dafed shook his head. “They would never do that. They wouldn't have trusted the peasants and wouldn't have wanted to feed them."

She noticed he hadn't answered her question.

Ellie let her horse wander across the burned fields.

Dafed watched her, then spurred after her, trying to head her away from the farmhouse. She ignored him. She had a sinking feeling that she was going to find something terrible but she had to know.

When she finally got up the nerve to look into the smoldering ashes of the farmhouses, she found what she'd feared. Human skeletons.