Kingdom River

northerners' line.

Struck it, broke it, and thundered through.

I have him. I have him – thank you, Mother of God. 'Reyes!'… No Reyes. Reyes was gone. Rodriguez spurred back up the pass. A long bow-shot down the defile, Third Squadron still waited, facing north, where now no enemy would come. 'Orders! Gomez!' His guidon-bearer, not very intelligent, seemed startled to be transmitting orders in place of Captain Reyes.

'Go to Major Davila. Third Squadron to reverse front, and advance! Now, you idiot!'

Gomez hauled his horse's head around and kicked the animal into a gallop as Rodriguez watched him go – watched for a moment to be certain an arrow didn't come down to Gomez, cancel the order. Worse rider than I am. Really a ridiculous figure… bouncing on the goddamn saddle as if he were fucking it.

No arrow for Gomez. It seemed to Rodriguez that fewer arrows were coming down. Harder to mark targets, now, through the dust – and thank God's Mother for it. He turned Salsa back to the noise of fighting, cantered that way… and heard trumpet calls behind him. Third Squadron would be reversing files.

Rodriguez rode to the fighting – glanced back, and saw Gomez galloping down the pass to catch up… saw Third Squadron reforming. The noise of fighting ahead was extraordinary – crashes of metal, shrieks of injured horses echoing off the Boca's narrow walls as if the devil had sent a band from hell to serenade the dying.

Through a haze of dust, Rodriguez saw that the northerners' line was certainly broken. Ticotin's men had driven deep into their center, so the long ranks of dismounted lancers were swinging away to either side of the breach like cantina doors, their dead dotting the dirt and grass behind them.

Swinging away… so Second Squadron, galloping in, cheering, ax blades flashing through red dust, rode deeper between the northerners' ranks. The noise was terrific, the clangor, and thunderous sound of the chargers' hooves.

Then, louder, answering thunder sounded behind him, behind and high above. Rodriguez turned in his saddle, but there was only clear blue sky over the pass's rim, and Third Squadron now in motion, starting down the pass at a steady trot.

'Sir… Sir!' Gomez rode up, shouting, miming listening, his hand cupping his ear. Rodriguez thought he meant that odd sound of thunder – then heard a trumpet call out of the fighting, an imperial call. The rally.

Why?

Rodriguez spurred Salsa to a gallop, drew his saber, and rode into the hammered dust of fighting, his guidon- bearer still calling after him.

There was, he thought, as he leaned to strike one of their wounded cuirassiers staggering past – there was an odd satisfaction in seeing the difficulty.

The ranks of northerners, that had swung so wide apart at Second Squadron's charge, were now slowly swinging shut to enclose it. Remarkable, such a maneuver, and accomplished by dismounted cavalry. Fine officers….

The rally sounded again, Ticotin trying to keep his horsemen together – to drive deeper yet, break the trap's jaws… It would not work.

Rodriguez longed to charge into the fight. He felt that he could ride into the battle, gallop over the battle like an angel, and save his men. He spurred Salsa closer to the fighting, and rode against a file of men, bearded, covered with dust, clumsy in their high boots. One saw him, turned, and presented a lance- point. Rodriguez parried it aside, cut down at the man, struck something – perhaps only the lance shaft – and that man and all of them were gone, swallowed in clouds of dust, shouted commands, confusion.

Dust was in the colonel's mouth, but a breeze had come and bannered red haze aside to show clearly how Ticotin's troopers were dying, as if a great carnivorous plant – its petals treacherously open – now closed bright thorns upon them from either side.

More thunder behind him – odd sliding thunder. Gomez, that idiot, was shouting again… Ticotin was stuck in shit and would not get out, but Third Squadron was coming. Rodriguez turned in his saddle to wave them on and into a gallop. They'd be in time… but barely.

He turned to see their bannered ranks now spurring into the gallop – and saw, a moment later, the mountainsides coming down into the pass.

The steep slopes to right and left were suddenly brown and gray rivers of bounding, rolling, skidding boulders. A torrent of stone was coming down in landslides, great granite monuments tilting, toppling to swell those catastrophic currents.

Of course. The Light Cavalry archers had stopped shooting only to climb to the ridges… begin those slides of stone.

The sound was beyond sound; it buffeted Rodriguez like blows. Salsa shied and reared away.

He controlled the horse – had time to see Davila and his trumpeter, at the head of Third Squadron, both staring up like astonished children as the mountainsides fell upon them. Avalanches of rock, a flood of stone, flowed and thundered down into the narrow pass and over the horsemen. Here and there bright steel wavered for an instant, ranks of men and horses screamed – and were gone, vanished beneath tons of rumbling granite that seemed to come down forever, while dust billowed, eddied in the air.

… Perhaps forty, perhaps fifty men and horses – saved by miracles – staggered here and there as the last showers of stone, the last great boulders skipped, crashed, rolled and settled. Several of these horses had broken legs dangling. Many of the men, dust-coated, swaying in their saddles, were shouting warnings – as if what had already happened was only about to happen.

Rodriguez heard a trumpet call – a call unknown to him – back at the entrance to the pass. He turned Salsa's head and rode that way. Gomez reined up beside him. 'How?' he said. 'How?' – as if their ranks were equal.

The destroyed men were still shouting behind them. There were also screams, but not many.

Rodriguez smiled at his guidon-bearer as if they were old friends, the best of friends riding together. 'How? By my misjudgment, and the northerners' commendable initiative.'

'Ah…' Gomez nodded, apparently satisfied.

At the mouth of the pass, now only those northerners stood – though there were slight disturbances within their ranks as the last of Ticotin's men were pierced with lances or dragged from their big horses to be hacked to death.

'Yes,' Rodriguez said aloud, and meant he'd been right before, to wish to ride into the fighting. 'Go with God,' he said to his guidon-bearer – drove in his spurs, and galloped out of the pass toward the ranks of his enemies. He felt very well, really quite well… though he was saddened to hear Gomez following, riding behind him. Well, the man was a fool… always had been.

***

The fighting dust had settled, so the southern sun shone richly to warm the men and horses still alive. Now, near silence lay as if there'd been no noise in these mountains, no shouting, no trumpets, no hammering steel on steel in Boca Chica Pass.

It was a familiar quiet, the stillness after battle. Sam Monroe closed his eyes, eased his muscles to enjoy it. He was sitting on a dead horse, its skirts of chain-mail dark with blood and shit. Its rider lay with it; he'd been caught with a leg under the animal when it fell, and had been killed there.

Sam hadn't drawn his sword through most of the fighting. He might have; he'd met several of their horsemen in the battle's dust and fury. It had been odd – perfect Warm-time word. Odd.

He'd ridden here and there, watching his men maneuver – and so well, obedient to their officers and sergeants as if they'd been veteran infantry, never cavalry at all. Wonderful, really, and all the more appreciated when a man simply rode – his worried trumpeter reining behind – as if terrible noise, dust, savage struggles, and the screams of