"But if he has more magicks—"
"We'll pull back. Ordered retreat—" He had never actually done that, but the gnomes had told him how it should work. "They can't take us with sixty, even with good pikes—"
"Alyanya's grace," said Cob, wincing as someone bumped his foot. He had tried to insist that he could stay. Gird insisted that he go. He wished he could do the same with Rahi, who was perfectly healthy, but he knew better than to try. She had taken all his ideas about women, and her individual situation, and recast them into something that he did not yet understand. It was hard to think of her as his daughter, although the memory of her as a child and young woman still lived in his heart. He knew she had killed, now—he had been told, after Overbridge, about Rahi—but he still thought of her with her bag of herbs, her poultices.
He realized that he was standing there thinking about Rahi because he needed someone to replace Cob, and she was the logical choice—would have been, if it weren't that she was his daughter, and a woman. He had
said
it was the same rule for everyone—had he meant it? His mind flicked over the other possibilities. His senior people already had their responsibilities. There was Selamis, but he was new; he had never even drilled with them. He wondered if he could blame it on gnomes. They had been worse than surprised when he told them that women were in the bartons. But Arranha had said that the magelord women were trained to war—or had been.
He looked around. Cob had never said anything, but Gird knew Rahi had been his chosen second. She was busy now, supervising Cob's unit in raising the breastworks on the downstream side of the bridge. They had no shields that would hold against arrows; they would have to crouch behind their scanty walls and hope. Maybe he wouldn't need to say anything at all. But as if she felt his gaze on her, she looked around, and waved.
The enemy force came in sight now, marching along at a good pace. Gird felt his belly tighten. They looked ordinary enough, and if he'd had real pikes for all his yeomen, he'd have been confident. It was going to be hard, bloody work with wood alone against their armor and steel, but it could be done. Had been done. Gird placed his few bowmen on either side of the bridge, where they would have the broadest target.
They came closer. Behind the soldiers with pikes he could just see the bowmen. He heard a shout, and they halted as neatly as even the gnomes could have wished. Their bowmen drew and released; the arrows flew up and burst into flames. Gird stared, as surprised as if a cow had suddenly grown fleece. Someone in his own lines screamed, then chopped it off.
The flaming arrows landed close behind his lines, but no one was hit. By that time, another flight was in the air; belatedly, Gird told his own bowmen to let fly. The second enemy flight fell closer. One missed Gird by a fingersbreadth; he felt the heat of the flames. His own bowmen saw their arrows angle away from the formation, as if they had struck something.
"What is
that?
" someone asked. Gird had no answer. He was beginning to wonder if his two-to-one advantage was an advantage at all. The enemy bowmen released another flight, the yeomen were looking anxiously up to watch the arrows fall. Two of them were struck full in the face. Another four were struck as well, and all six burst into flames, as if they'd been soaked in grease. The other yeomen backed away from them, and at that moment the enemy pikemen charged across the bridge.
Gird's bowmen tried again, and this time hit some of the enemy, but most of them made it to the breastwork. Even as he rallied his yeomen, Gird realized that he had made more than one serious mistake. They had never fought across a breastwork before, for one thing. Raising it for protection from arrows—which hadn't worked anyway—had meant raising it higher than his people usually thrust with their sticks. They were awkward now, handicapped by the breastwork, unable to coordinate their moves as usual. And although they had practiced against each other, they had never faced a trained polearm unit before. The sier's soldiers knew exactly how to handle their pikes over a wall—Gird's yeomen had no advantage of reach, and the disadvantage of poorer weapons and training.
Worse was to come. Rahi's yell brought his head around, and he saw her pointing downstream, to the north. He could just see the cloud of dust, and the dark dots within it that were men on horseback. One of the gnome warmaster's favorite sayings raced through his head: "War rewards the prudent and farseeing, and punishes the unwary. It is what you do not know about your enemy that destroys you." He had not known horses could ford the Hoor downstream from the bridge; he had not known about that kind of fire arrow; he had not known that he did not know. He was not sure he knew what would get them out of this alive.
Already some of the sier's pikes were atop the breastwork, forcing a wedge into his line. If they divided his force, all was lost. Gird raised his voice over the din, calling them back to rally around him. Rahi looked over her shoulder, nodded, and got her unit rearranged into a tight mass, backing away from the breastwork one careful step at a time. Keris, on the upstream side, did the same, not quite as neatly. The sier's pikes overran the breastwork and pressed them hard, but the yeomen managed to come together and sort themselves into rows and columns again.
Gird could just see the approaching cavalry over the heads of the fighters. Would they surround his force, or attack one side? And how would the sier's commander order the pikes? He felt no fear, only disgust with himself for leading his people into this trap—a mistake from start to finish—and the stubborn determination to get them out if possible.
The sier's commander (Gird had finally picked out the dapper little man in a helmet decorated with streamers) had no doubts at all. He disengaged abruptly what had been the front, shifted his pikes sideways, and left Gird's flank open to his bowmen. Gird's own archers, gifted for once with both initiative and skill, let fly before Gird even realized what had happened, and skewered the front rank of enemy bowmen. But the second rank sent fiery arrows into Gird's closely-packed troop—and anyone hit was instantly engulfed in flame. Gird himself tripped one victim and tried to roll him, but the man was dead—consumed—after the second scream. Gird hardly felt the blisters rising on his arms for the cold chills that raced down his back. It had to be more magicks—no fire burned like that. His formation rolled; he could feel their terror. Frantic, his bowmen tried again, downed four more of the enemy.
And the enemy pikes slammed into what had been their right flank.
Gird struggled with his own fear and confusion, shouted orders he only hoped were right. Their poles were as long as the enemy pikes—just longer—they
could
hold them off if they made no mistakes. He threw himself into that line, giving his yeomen his own energy, his own strength. His line stiffened, straightened . . . and behind him, he heard the cavalry coming, a thundering roar.
War is full of mistakes; it forgives none. The gnomes had said that, too. Sometimes the winner was the commander who made the fewest mistakes, or managed to correct them. Gird spun, with a final slap on the shoulder to one of the line facing pikes, and bellowed encouragement to those facing horses.
This, so apparently dangerous, they had done before. The yeomen braced their sticks and pikes, ready to prod the riders off balance. The horses, as usual when faced with an obstacle too large to jump, slowed, shied, ducked away from the line. Their riders spurred them on, whacked them with the flats of their blades, but the horses refused. Gird would have called his line to attack, but he could not do that with the pikes opposite. He heard a yell from the remaining enemy archers, and several horsemen turned aside, to return with archers riding double.
"Look out!" someone yelled, as if there were anything they could do. The archers grinned—six of them, Gird counted. The riders backed off slightly; those with archers mounted turned their horses' heads away, so that the archers had the best possible angle. Gird sent up a wordless prayer to any god who might be paying attention—though he suspected he had been stupid enough to make them all turn their backs—and received no miracle. The archers made a slow and elaborate dance of taking arrows, nocking them—
"Front two,
now
—second two, reverse!" It was outrageous, hopeless, and impossible, but better than standing like sheep in a pen. The front two ranks on that side of Gird's formation followed him in a ragged charge at the horsemen; the second two—who had been supporting the two on the pike side—spun and faced outward to replace them. Gird did not stop to see if it worked, or how neatly they turned. He was running straight for the mounted archers, screaming as loud as he could; when he saw one archer draw, the arrow aimed at him, he threw his stick, end over end, and dove for the ground.
He felt the heat of the flames, but the arrow missed him. The horse, alarmed at an attack from the rear, crowhopped and whirled, fighting its rider; the archer grabbed too late for the rider's belt and slid off, landing hard on his back. He heard screams: one of his men had been hit by a fire arrow. But more had followed Gird's lead; horses squealed and bucked, spun and reared, and all but one archer fell off.
The other riders tried to cut Gird and his yeomen off from the fallen archers. Gird ducked under one horse's neck, got his arm under the rider's leg and heaved; the man fell off the opposite side, cursing, and cut his own horse trying to strike at Gird. The horse squealed, shied, and collided with another in time to spoil that rider's stroke. Gird had his hauk out, and popped the next rider hard on the knee. He heard it crunch. Then he saw one of the archers, standing, with his strung bow over his shoulder, reaching up for a lift onto horseback. The rider was leaning out and the archer took his wrist. Gird's hauk got the archer in the angle of neck and shoulder just as he left the ground. The man sagged, pulling the rider down and sideways; before the rider realized his danger, Gird had yanked back on the archer, and dragged both off the horse. He put a deliberate heel on the bow as he smashed the archer's head, and then the rider's.
"Gird! Here!" He followed that yell and found a tight cluster of his men, protected by their sticks, holding off a milling crowd of horsemen. Gird dived into that protection just as a sword opened a gash across his shoulders.
"We got the archers," said one of the men proudly.
Without archers, the horsemen could not quite reach and kill the yeomen; Gird was able to maneuver the survivors of his raid back into the main group. These had recovered enough control to withstand the pressure from the sier's pikemen, though Gird realized he no longer outnumbered the enemy by anything like two to one.
Time passed, with sweating, grunting, miserable fly-bitten flurries of effort and equally sweating, miserable, and fly-bitten stretches of exhaustion, when both forces had run out of breath and will. The sun moved on towards evening, and Gird had not been able to move his yeomen anywhere. But no reinforcements had come for the sier's troops, either. They were locked together like two stubborn bulls that have shoved head against head without yet establishing dominance.
What broke the stalemate was Gird's twenty other yeomen, coming back from the distant campsite to find out why they had had no orders. They came marching along, singing "The Thief's Revenge" as loudly and unmelodiously as twenty men could do, while behind them came such of the noncombatants as wanted to flourish a shovel or pick and learn to march in step. In actual numbers, they were too few to matter, but as fresh troops coming onto a field where all are exhausted, they had an effect beyond their numbers. The sier's men withdrew a step, and then another. Gird did not order a charge; he was near falling down himself, and knew his yeomen did not have strength left for a charge. The sier's pikes withdrew an armslength, a pike's length—the horsemen rode between, and the sier's pikes turned to march away. Gird let them. He was glad enough to see them go.
There was no question of holding his position. Too many had died, demonstrating that he did not have what he needed to hold it. Gird watched the low evening sunlight gild the backs of the sier's men as they withdrew to the far side of the bridge, and formed again. His own yeomen gathered the bodies of their dead, ignoring the sier's fallen. It would be foolish to strip the bodies in sight of their companions. Too many, too many: Gird cursed his foolishness, his stupidity, and even the time he wasted cursing them.
"At least you got us out of it," Rahi murmured, as he gathered them again to march away.
"No thanks to me," Gird said. "I got us into it."
"You always said a lesson that leaves bruises is never forgotten."
He looked at her, but her steady eyes did not reproach him. "I said that?"
She grinned, a white flash out of her dusty face. "Often and often. When that witch of a dun cow kicked me. When Gori hacked his ankle with the scythe—" Gori, her older brother, his first son, who had died of a plague. Rahi went on. "One of your favorites, that was, along with 'Think first, and you won't bleed after.' "
Gird snorted. "I didn't remember that one, did I? Gods above: I thought about what I would do, not what they would do."
But if Rahi did not reproach him, others would. He would reproach himself for this day's stupidity. He would learn from it—he had to, to make the deaths worthwhile—but he would not forget that he could have chosen differently, and those men and women would still be alive.
In this chastened mood, Gird spent the next hand of days ensuring that his camp was as safe as it could be. He examined those who wanted to train as yeomen, and assigned them to units to replace those who had died. He visited the wounded, steeling himself to endure criticisms which no one actually voiced. He was sure they said more behind his back.
To his surprise, his recent defeat brought in as many recruits as his earlier victories. Hardly a day passed without one or three or six men or women straggling into camp, asking a chance to train and fight for "the new day." Some had traveled hands of days from distant farmsteads; others came from villages and towns only a few hours away. Some were enthusiastic youths, children—as Gird saw them—hardly off their mothers breasts. They stared wide-eyed at his veteran yeomen; he could practically see "glory" written on their foreheads. When he tried to explain how hard a soldier's life could be, they hardly listened, their eyes wandering to the alluring strangeness of campfires, women in trousers carrying pikes, men practicing archery. Gird sighed, turned them over to one of the more dour yeoman-marshals, and tried to ignore their eager glances when next he passed them as they scrubbed pots or dug jacks trenches.