Even so the fanatical Kormehri had won. A single platoon of them had dismounted, swords in hand, and the pikemen had dropped their long cumbersome pikes to draw their own blades. The Kormehri platoon, greatly outnumbered, had attacked them on foot like wolves assaulting sheep, and the pikemen, previously so firm, panicked and broke, running from the bridge, even jumping armor-weighted into the river. Then Kormehri platoons still on horseback had overrun them, howling and killing; it was once when militiamen had not been allowed to surrender.
Even so, the crossbows and pikes had taken a heavy toll. When it was over, the Kormehri cavalry cohort, already short since that wild first night, reported only 264 officers and men fit for action, hardly fifty percent of those who’d crossed the river.
Actually the militias had fought harder the past two days. Not well, not even doggedly, but they’d stood and fought. He’d questioned prisoners, and they’d told him that the Emperor’s own army was on its way south under General Cyncaidh. They no longer felt abandoned.
The army he looked at now could hardly be the Throne Army; it wasn’t big enough. Mostly these would be garrison cohorts that had withdrawn ahead of him, plus others gathered from east and west and north, with their militia auxiliaries. Macurdy squinted at the sun glinting on distant pikeheads, helmets, and mail. From beneath his own steel cap a trickle of sweat overflowed an eyebrow, but except to swipe at it with a wrist, he ignored it. So far, he told himself, we’ve had a cakewalk, beating up on frightened militias, and on badly outnumbered imperials who didn’t realize what they were up against. Here we’ll learn how good we really are.
He could, of course, have waited another day. The rest of his troops would be there by then. And the enemy seemed content to wait. But Macurdy already had the advantage of numbers, and who knew how many imperial cohorts might arrive tomorrow, or even that afternoon.
Grimly he turned to his bugler. “As planned,” he said. “Mounted archers out by companies.” All his cavalry were mounted archers as needed, but certain units had been assigned the role for this battle. The bugler blew, company buglers responding. Three Teklan cavalry companies trotted out in single file, briskly and without spears, not toward the enemy so much as across the front of its massed infantry. The imperial commander held back his cavalry, unsure what this peculiar move might mean, what might happen next. The course of the southern cavalry took them within seventy yards of the pikemen, within range of the militia crossbows. But the militiamen only gawped, their commander unsure what this meant. Again a bugle blared, and riding parallel to the enemy’s front, the Teklan horsemen began to shoot, irregular flights of arrows hissing into the ranks of crouching pikemen, and the massed crossbowmen behind them. At this, the crossbowmen released their heavy bolts, and when a horseman was hit by one, whether he wore a captured byrnie or not, he fell dead or terribly wounded.
More horses than men were struck, though they went down less often. But cantering horses and their riders were poor targets at that range. The longbowmen continued to ride and shoot, circling back in a broad oval and out again. Macurdy watched, held by the sight, excited instead of horrified, his right fist jerking repeatedly with a short hooking motion. The intensity of crossbow fire had greatly lessened, due partly to casualties, but mainly to the time it took overwrought militia crossbowmen to crank their weapons, then load them if they remembered to. Now Macurdy gave another order; the bugles called the horsemen back, and sent open ranks of infantry out with longbows, jogging slowly enough not to get winded. More than a few fell to bolts before getting the order to shoot, but not till the first rank had come to about seventy yards did they stop, draw their bowstrings, and let their arrows fly. The second rank did the same, at slightly longer range, and the third and fourth, each man shooting not just once, but sending arrow after arrow—four, five, six—in the time a crossbowman took to crank his bow and shoot once.