Hansen would have had doubts in any case.
Hansen saw Malcolm’s brilliant suit on the left edge of the encampment, closely accompanied by Shill and Maharg.
Low status warriors could be identified as a class—as cannon-fodder—by the amateurish detailing of their armor. That would be easy to cure: buff all the suits down to bare metal and let the artificial intelligence separate friends from foes.
Hansen should’ve thought of that sooner. It was too late to change for this battle. And it was beginning to look as though that made it simply too late. . . .
He slid from his pony and left the animal to wander as it chose while he opened his armor. He tossed his fur cloak onto the bundle a slave had made of his bedding, then stripped off his fur breeches.
The wind was cold, but the interior of Hansen’s battlesuit would be colder than hell until it came up to operating temperature in ten minutes or so. Delaying wasn’t going to help matters. Hansen clambered inside and latched the suit over him.
The technological ambiance calmed and reassured him more than he’d expected. Hansen didn’t belong in the feudal museum that was Northworld society, but he’d lived the most important parts of his adult life in a battlesuit of one sort or another.
And maybe he was kidding himself about the society as well. He belonged here a lot more clearly than he had on Diamond.
“Remote, quarter, Malcolm,” he said, putting his suit through its paces before he needed to use them for real. The upper righthand quadrant of his display showed Hansen, on a reduced scale, what the veteran warrior was seeing.
Malcolm faced Lamullo, the commander of Golsingh’s left wing. Lamullo’s father had left him an excellent battlesuit, painted in candystripes of bronze and black; but the son had inherited little of his father’s aggressive drive. Hansen suspected that Lamullo’s lack of ambition was as much the reason Taddeusz supported him as the suit itself was.
It was snowing harder. Hansen pursed his lips and glanced around him—then said, “Mark Golsingh,” and let his AI do the work.
A carat pulsing on Hansen’s display indicated where the king was hidden at the center of a group of twenty-odd warriors, most of them well equipped.
“Remote quarter Golsingh,” Hansen said as he started in that direction. Golsingh and his warchief were listening to Brian say, “. . . and a lot of ’em been at Frekka, Thrasey must’ve hired ’em away in the last week or two.”
The freeman’s left arm was in a sling. One of his fellows was standing nearby, ready to support him if needed. Hansen hoped they’d used the—hopefully—sterilized cloth for a bandage, but there was only so much you could do. . . .
The error in the scout’s report had no tactical significance, but it made all the strategic difference in this world. The Lord of Thrasey hadn’t hired mercenaries from Frekka; they’d been sent as a gift. Hansen was willing to bet his life on that.
Of course, he wouldn’t have a life to gamble with further unless things worked out better today than they were likely to.
“That doesn’t matter,” said Taddeusz contemptuously. “Nobody who’d take service with merchants is of any concern.”
Hansen reached the back of the circle of high-ranking warriors. He put a gauntlet on the shoulder of a man, hoping the fellow would make room. The man turned slightly and shoved Hansen away.
“I remember Tooley,” Golsingh replied, sounding thoughtful. “He was here a few years ago. Terrible temper, but . . . Not a warrior I would dismiss lightly.”
“Command channel,” Hansen directed his artificial intelligence.
He shouldn’t have access to a commo frequency intended for top-ranking personnel, but there was nobody except Hansen in the whole army who knew how to activate the push, much less lock out middle-rankers like himself.
“Don’t worry about—” Taddeusz was saying when Hansen’s voice broke in on his earphones with: “Lord Golsingh, I’m sorry to interrupt—”
“Who!” Taddeusz shouted. They all used amplified voice communications instead of the excellent radios built into their suits. “Hansen? Is that—”
“—but I’ve viewed the battlefield and there’s a way we can win this, I think pretty easily, especially with the low light conditions.”