“Control yourself!” Justiciar Demansk snapped, shading his eyes with a hand; when that proved inadequate he swung up onto his velipad and stood in the stirrups.
Something had happened to his cavalry, and that was a fact. There was a huge cloud of dust; extraordinary noises were coming out of it . . . and so were Southron mercenaries, some of them lashing their velipads, others lumbering on foot, all of them in utter screaming witless panic.
“Runner,” he said. “If those imbeciles attempt to interfere with the formation, give them a volley of darts.”
An order which his regular infantry would follow with zeal and enthusiasm. Nobody liked Southrons.
Demansk’s eyes scanned as much of the battlefield as he could see. “And a general order,” he went on. “The enemy has some sort of incendiary weapon.” The pirates of the Isles used those, naphtha and seabeast oil and quicklime, compounds that would burn even under water. “Remind the officers that it can’t do more than kill them.”
One could get away with a good deal in the Confederacy, in these degenerate days. Even his own class was not safe from the rot anymore. But running away in battle wasn’t among the pardonable offenses, thank the gods.
* * *
“Here it comes,” Adrian said, licking dry lips.
look for a line of retreat, Center’s passionless voice said.
What?
Do it, lad. This is a disaster waiting to happen, Raj confirmed.
“Esmond,” Adrian whispered. “We should be preparing a line of retreat.”
His brother looked back at him, his eyes sapphires in his dust-caked face. “Adrian,” he said, “there are times when I think the Gray-Eyed gave you the general’s gifts. All right, let’s see.”
He thought for a moment, called a pair of his underofficers, gave low-voiced instructions. They trotted off to the rear.
The Emeralds were on the right of the rebel position, at the junction between Audsley’s brigade of fully-equipped troops and the shapeless clot of the volunteers. The dust had died down a little, and out of it Demansk’s army came marching. Light sparkled and rippled down their line, sunlight off the points of the darts they held in their right hands, off helmet crests and standards and the gray gleam of oiled links of mail.
“My, aren’t they pretty,” Esmond said.
Adrian found himself joining in the chuckle that ran down the ranks of the Emeralds. I wonder if the rest of them are as nervous as I am, he thought.
Most of them, Raj murmured. The ones who aren’t are stupid, overconfident, or very experienced.
Adrian licked his lips, tasted the sweat running down his face from the light helmet, and spoke: “Pick your targets. Aim for officers and standards—standards, and the ones with the transverse helmet crests. Wait for it, wait for it.”
* * *
“Now!”
The slingers were loosing as fast as their loaders could put lighted grenades into the pockets of their weapons. The projectiles arched out towards the first line of Confed regulars, and eyes went up nervously under the helmet brims. Horns screamed harsh bronze music, and the whole formation speeded up into a trot—not a solid line, but a sinuous bronze-and-steel snake that advanced in pounding unison, keeping its alignment across the slight irregularities of the barley fields.
Crack. Crack. Crackcrackcrackcrack—
The bombs exploded, and a two-hundred-yard stretch of the Confed line vanished in smoke and malignant red snaps. Screams sounded louder than the explosions, as sharp metal and ceramic sliced into human flesh.
. . . and out of the smoke marched the survivors, still moving at the same steady trot. Men double-timed up from the second and third ranks, and the whole formation rippled and closed as the gaps were plugged and the replacements effortlessly fell into alignment. Adrian could hear the harsh clipped commands of the officers and file closers, but no screams apart from the wounded men—and not all of those.
“Shit,” Esmond swore feelingly. Then louder: “What a target! Give ’em more, lads.”
Adrian whipped his own staff-sling around his head, aiming for a standard in the fourth rank of the nearest Confed battalion borne by a man with the tanned head of a direbeast over his helmet. The bomb flew faultlessly, exploding at waist level before the standard-bearer had time to do more than flinch. Smoke kindly hid what happened next, but he could see the pole with the upright gilded hand totter backwards and fall. Then the standard rose again; a trooper had scooped it up, bracing it on his hip as he trotted forward.