Kingdom River

that kind?'

'Very kind.' Sam took the bowl from her. 'Please… sit.' Standing to one side of the hanging lamp, he dipped a horn spoon into the steaming Brunswick, took a sip.

Patience settled onto the cot, her scimitar across her lap, and smiled up at him. She seemed as she always seemed, rested, lively, interested. 'You don't think I might have poisoned it?'

'I don't care,' Sam said, and took another spoonful.

'Poor old Louis, in Map-McAllen, would have wanted me to poison it. Boston would have said, 'Well done.' '

'If the Khan wins, you won't need the poison.' The stew was very hot. Some solder must have run from back of the hill, run through the dark with the yoked buckets slopping.

'If the Khan wins,' Patience thoughtful, 'I do think he will fall in love with me. He can't be used to someone as pretty and clever.'

'Probably not.' Sam blew on his spoonful. 'You said, 'stew – and news.' '

'Yes, and you're the first to hear it. I came to you first of all. A Mailman flew here just a little while ago; he must have hunted the camp like a night-jar to find me – I heard him calling. A really nasty thing; I asked his name, and he said, 'Fuck you.' Webster hates him and tried to bite, but still, he's the first to ever bring me news '

The Brunswick had cooled enough to eat. 'And that is?'

'The battle north – on the river ice?'

'Yes. Won, thank Lady Weather.'

'And will you thank her that there the Queen was killed? The nasty Mailman brought the note – news down from Baton Rouge by pigeon, then up from Map-McAllen to here.'

'… Killed?'

'Yes, killed. Her ship broke, and the Kipchaks swarmed over.'

… Then, sitting puzzled on the cot, Patience reached up to take the stew bowl from him, and said, 'Weeping… How does that feel to do?'

CHAPTER 26

As clouds sailed over a setting semi-moon, the regiment called Dear-to-the-Wind filtered through trees and frozen underbrush. Stocky men in fur cloaks, felt trousers, and felt boots, they managed fairly quietly through deep snow, carrying strung bows. The bow-staves were short and curved as yataghan blades were curved, both, some said, to honor that same crescent moon that rode through Great Sky above them.

… Lieutenant Francisco Doyle, always insubordinate, didn't hesitate to lean close to his colonel and whisper in her ear. 'Get back out of here, ma'am. Get up the hill.'

It was not a suggestion most would have cared to make to Colonel Loomis. Charmian shrugged him away and ignored it. One of the Kipchaks, scouting, stepping shuffling through a drift, was coming close to the evergreen overhang where she and Doyle stood in darkness.

Doyle, really a brave young man, was considering another whisper when his colonel strode suddenly out into the snow, her moon-shadow stretching lean and swift beside her. She flicked her rapier's bright blade to set the startled tribesman's half-drawn bow aside, then thrust him through the throat.

The man convulsed, dropped his bow, and clawed at the blade's razor edges, arching back and back to get a breath for screaming. But the blade point stayed in him. The colonel, as if dancing, accompanied him as he lurched away, still slicing frantic fingers along the steel.

Their shadows pranced over the snow while the bowman managed a sound at last, a soft squealing that ended as he fell, in liquid fart and stink.

Arrows – one, then another, whistled past into the woods, and Doyle saw hundreds of Kipchaks now coming on foot through the trees downslope, kicking through the snow in ragged ranks. Some shooting as they came, but most with yataghans out, steel flashing in moonlight. There were no war cries, yet, or shouted orders.

A second rank of many more hundreds was emerging from the trees behind them.

Colonel Loomis, wiping her blade, paced across the hillside a little higher, with Doyle hurrying behind, arrows flirting past them through moonlight and shadow. As they went, a thousand of her men and women – waiting buried or half-buried in fallen-branch rambles, in clearing drifts, on snowy slopes – stirred slightly, so she could mark their places as she passed.

At the line's west, anchor end, more than half around the hill, Colonel Loomis stopped and looked back across the moonlit breast of the slope. To Doyle, she seemed – in a shifting wind that blew snow-powder swirling – a copybook witch, so tall, angle-faced, and fierce, her long black hair sailing free… her sword's sharp, slender yard the brightest part of her.

She stood waiting and watching, until soon the first screams were heard with the snap of light crossbows, the harder twang of the tribesmen's weapons. Then, like anticipated music, the clash of steel rang through the night, and Kipchak war horns sounded their deep, bellowing notes.

… Sam spurred Difficult up the main-ridge rise, through wet snowflakes barely visible in the dimness before dawn. His trumpeter, Kenneth, followed, and six horse archers, at Howell's insistence, paced along. Arrows nocked to the strings of their odd longbows, they trotted guard in shifting order beside, before, and behind him. To the west, the uneven voices of battle sounded, softened by falling snow.

Both regiments of heavy cavalry were standing dismounted, each trooper by his horse, in long ghost rows along the ridges, their armor dimly lit to gleaming here and there by wind-blown torches. Two thousand big men – with a number of big women – waited in silence, but for the stamping of impatient chargers.

Sam found Howell, torch-lit, beneath the scorpion banner – and stayed mounted so the people near enough could see him.

'It's slippery, Sam.' Howell looked up at him, squinting snowflakes away from his good eye. 'Falling footing.'

Sam leaned from the saddle to answer. 'Footing enough for down-slope charges. If men and horses fall then, they fall into the enemy.'

'True.'

'Where's Carlo?'

'Down the line.'

'He knows to move without your order?'

A nod. 'If the Kipchaks get through.'

'Right. If the Light Infantry breaks on our left flank, Howell, they'll fall back up these slopes. If that happens, if you see it's happening – '

'Charge as they clear.'

'No. If Charmian's people start breaking, start backing up the ridges, you and Carlo are to take both regiments – at the charge – down those slopes and into the Kipchaks. That's my order, and that's what you will do.'

'We'd be riding our own people down!'

'Yes, Howell, you would. You'd have to go over them to strike the Kipchaks as soon as possible, as hard as possible, to give Phil time to pull out of the center and march his people west.'

'Dear Jesus…'

'Howell, am I right in this – or wrong?'

'… You're right.'

'Then be sure Carlo also understands that order.'

Howell nodded, and they both listened to the battle sounds, west. No cheering, of course, from their people, only shouted commands, shouts of warning. The Kipchaks were noisier fighters, calling battle cries, war horns sounding their mournful notes… Still, there was in that dull, shifting roar, a sort of music to commanders, and they heard in it no advantage yet, either way.