An arc blazed up from the center of the group of warriors.
“Taddeusz?” the king said doubtfully.
The circle broke outward like a ripple spreading.
Hansen also began backing away. “Lord Taddeusz, please,” he said. “The terrain—”
The warchief’s weapon slashed down.
Hansen jumped back. The arc, though attenuated by three meters’ distance when it struck him, screeched in Hansen’s ears and blurred his display into hash. He fell over.
Taddeusz shut his arc down instead of stepping closer. “If I hear your voice again this day,” he said in a distinct tone more threatening than a bellow, “I will kill you. Begone!”
The circle of warriors closed about the leaders again.
Hansen got to his feet. His suit wasn’t functionally damaged, but the paint had blistered off most of his breastplate.
He’d been this angry before.
He began walking toward Malcolm and the left wing.
He’d been this angry before. He always felt better when he’d killed something. As he would very soon.
Trumpets across the camp blew. A freeman near Lamullo took his own horn out from under his cloak and responded with a two-note call.
Cold and distant as the wind, other trumpets answered from the Thrasey encampment.
The sky was sullen. The upper left arm of Hansen’s suit had been repaired, but he hadn’t thought to replace the suede liner. Each time his skin touched the casing, the steel felt like a burn.
Warriors were moving out in clumps, forming a line of sorts.
“Maharg,” Hansen said. “Shill. Come with me. We’ve got a battle to win.”
Sometimes when Hansen felt the way he did now he slammed the heel of his hand into a wall. His battlesuit would knock over the stump of any of the nearby trees.
He clashed his palms together. The shock of power-driven steel against steel rang through the nearest warriors, turning a dozen faceless helmets toward him.
“For people who don’t deserve it any damn way,” Hansen added bitterly; though the good lord knew he should’ve been used to it by now.
Shill and Maharg swayed in their tracks. Hansen looked at Malcolm and said, “Malcolm. Come with us. You go out there like the rest—”
He nodded, uncertain whether the gesture was distinguishable while he wore armor. “—and you’ll just get yourself chopped up. There’s too many of them.”
“Come along, you lot,” Lamullo called over his shoulder. The gaggle of armored men was drifting into the woods. Freemen on ponies were intermixed with the warriors for the moment.
“No,” said Malcolm. Then, sharply, “No!”
But instead of moving immediately to join the rest of the left wing, he pointed to Shill and Maharg and said, “You two. You can go with him if you want to. You—do what he says, all right? Do what the laddie says. But I can’t.”
Malcolm turned and followed Lamullo with long, clashing strides.
“Remote, quarter, Malcolm,” Hansen ordered his AI. “Local unit, secure communications.”
He grinned invisibly at Shill and Maharg who quivered between frightening alternatives. “Come on then, guys,” Hansen said. “We’ve got a battle to win.”
Chapter Nineteen
Hansen lead his little unit into the bed of the stream. Here, the watercourse was little more than washed stones, ice, and the brown, hollow stems of frozen reeds.
Trumpets called frequently, but Hansen now realized the cries were more generally for the amusement of the freemen with the horns than they were signals or commands. Warriors argued with what their king told them directly—or ignored him, if they had Taddeusz’ stature, at any rate. They weren’t going to take directions passed by members of the lower orders.
One of the hobbled draft mammoths joined in with a series of piercing shrieks, as meaningful and perhaps as musical as the human notes.
“This isn’t taking us toward the battlefield,” Maharg said. They were all stumbling and patting their hands on the bank to keep from falling down. “They’ll . . . Taddeusz, he’ll give us the chop for deserting like this.”
“We’re going to get to the battle,” Hansen said. “The streambed curves around, no problem.”
He hoped it did. If this wasn’t the same creek, he was going to have some explaining to do.