Though not, he suspected, to Golsingh.
“We’re gonna get there late, though,” Shill said with an undertone of . . . `satisfaction’ might be too strong a word. Might be.
Hansen crashed on. So long as the others’ suits didn’t have to power their arcs or electronic defenses, they could match his more efficient unit stride for stride. It can’t have been a pleasant march, but it wasn’t for their leader either.
They were getting out into the prairie, where herds of mammoths had kept the grassland open with their destructive feeding. The stream banks were a little deeper.
Hansen could see nothing directly beyond the reeds and alders. His quadrant of Malcolm’s display showed the main line of Golsingh’s army straggling up the hill which overlooked the chosen battlefield. Their footing had been much better, and they were, as Shill had said, well in advance of Hansen’s unit.
They didn’t look like an army, though. The warriors were in blobs and clumps, with potentially dangerous gaps all along the line. They had no more organization than bits of popcorn strung into a necklace by a kindergartner.
Taddeusz, with a dozen or so followers, was far in the lead on the right flank. Just as he had been during the battle against Count Lopez.
Taddeusz hadn’t learned a damned thing. Which figured.
Hansen used his artificial intelligence to identify the players. Even without the compression of the remote display, he would have found it difficult to tell one set of painted armor from the next.
The sky hadn’t brightened since dawn, and the snow was falling thicker.
“Mark friendlies blue,” Hansen muttered, watching tags flicker across the quadrant. If he looked behind him, he’d see the same markers of blue light on the helmets of Shill and Maharg.
“You two,” he ordered. “Say `Mark friendlies blue’ the way I told you in training.”
“We did that,” Shill grumbled. “Back to the camp.”
Good lord, they were learning!
“Any chance we could siddown and rest?” Shill asked abruptly. The microphone in his helmet picked up his panting breath. “I won’t be good fer shit if I don’t get a breather.”
“When were you ever good fer shit, Shill?” Maharg gibed.
“If we rest now, there won’t be anything to do but count the corpses by the time we get where we’re going,” Hansen said. His body felt as though he’d spent the morning as a tackling dummy.
“Suits me,” the older man muttered; but he kept up, and they all kept going despite the fact that the water was now knee deep. Occasionally they broke through the ice, then tripped on hidden rocks.
The banks were waist high and slightly undercut. Willow roots provided solid handholds for Hansen and his men when their feet slipped.
Malcolm had reached the top of the hillock. Through the veteran’s eyes, Hansen saw freemen shout thinly and charge in the center of the plain. The Thrasey riders were badly outnumbered. They fell back immediately behind the oncoming row of warriors.
Crossbowmen banged bolts toward the freemen and occasionally at the warriors as well. Hits sparkled vainly on the battlesuits.
The forces of the Lord of Thrasey outnumbered Golsingh’s by at least twenty warriors.
On the far right flank, a knot of men under Taddeusz charged the Thrasey line at a lumbering run. They were a good hundred meters ahead of the king’s more regular array in the center, while Lamullo’s left wing was echeloned back about the same distance behind Golsingh’s division.
And, thanks to the rough going and the way the creek meandered, Hansen’s pitiful unit was just about that far behind the left wing. It made good geometry but bad war.
“Come on,” Hansen snarled. He started running. If that stupid bastard of a warchief could do it, so could he.
Shill fell headlong. Hansen turned, but Maharg was already helping the older warrior to his feet. They pounded down the creek like enraged hippos, striking sparks from the rocks and cursing monotonously into their microphones.
The Thrasey right wing was thrown forward also, so the forces engaged along their full lengths more or less simultaneously. Rippling arc weapons reflected between the ground and the low clouds.