Trailed by his bugler, the squadron colors and a couple of supernumerary junior noncoms, Gaib was leading his charger, which appeared on the verge of throwing a shoe, toward a still-unpacked traveling forge, his lips moving in curses at wellbred bumpkins who carried their feelings ill balanced on their armguards and gave not one damn for his military rank, rendering him what little deference they did only because he was heir to a Kindred vahrohnos.
A mindspoken warning from one of the lancer noncoms caused him to glance back the way they had come yesterday, at the body of mounted men now approaching, a bedraggled-looking lot from what he could see of them. More volunteer irregulars from Morguhn and other duchies, no doubt, though in a larger contingent than usual. And doubtless commanded by still another noble arsehole, who’d marched them all through the rainy night, and-and then he heard the first shouts of fear and alarm, saw the first flight of shafted death arcing upward from the nearest cover, heard-or thought he heard-that never-to-be-forgotten, ominous hissing hum.
Swinging up on his mount, loose shoe or no loose shoe, he roared, “Bugler, sound To the Colors’!” Then he snapped, “Follow me!” to the color bearer and noncoms. Adding, when he realized they had not seen what he had, “Sun and Wind, lower your visors and clear your steel; we’re under attack!”
Promising himself to have that thrice-damned fool of a Danos hanged, Vahrohneeskos Drehkos presented his twelve-foot lance and clapped heels to his charger, shouting a snarled, “Charge, damn it, chargel The goddam archers have loosed too soon!”
Up the road which the camp had straddled they surged, all winking lancepoints and flashing blades, fanning out as the roadsides became clear enough to strike on a broader front Drehkos had schooled them well.