they come out of the city and across the bridge. Hold them. Then I hit them. Then Sir Guelf hits them in the flank. Then you withdraw, we withdraw, and we spring our little surprise on them when they’re nicely stalled just where we want them. Understand, my lord?”
“Da, da. They come out and I charge them down this street here.”
The heir to Odell sighed. “Exactly. My lords, Sir Constantine and his people will hold until we get there and then take the first pedal cars off. Most of Thierry’s specialists will follow in the next two cars. They won’t need their reloading crews and the machines will be laid in advance.”
Guelf nodded, frowning as he looked for his squires. Brandon and Charlmain were… back by the rails, arguing? He strode back, a blistering rebuke behind his teeth. They were confronting a child of eleven. Odo Reddings, his wife’s youngest brother and his youngest page.
“God’s teeth, Odo! I sent you back to Hermiston with orders to accompany the wounded into Portland, hours ago! This is no place for a page!”
Odo looked up at his lord, his defiant, angry attitude towards the squires crumbling. “I missed the train, sir. Do I take the one with the Chehalis menie?”
God, of course not! One of Constantine’s knights, I know his reputation. I can’t tell them Odo hid from his brother’s dead body, but I’m sure that was it! Damn! I didn’t think of that!
“Brandon, detail someone to get this brat on the train with you-”
“And what is going on here?”
At the angry voice, Guelf turned, baring his teeth at Thierry. “A little bit of a snaggle. My page is still here!”
“Get your men into position, Mortimer. I’m going up.”
Guelf nodded, his cheeks burning with embarrassment. And Odo’s butt is going to burn!
“Brandon, Charlmain; back to your position. Sir Thierry, the padre will be at your orders. I’ll see you at the rendezvous.”
Guelf and his squires double-timed it to the formation point in the tangle of dead streets. As Guelf strode up the line, checking his men’s readiness, he saw many reach for their scapular or the saint’s medal they wore around their necks, murmur a brief prayer and tuck it back.
With a sour smile, he did the same. The plain gold disk dangling on a fine gold chain around his neck was set with a small piece of jasper. Unless somebody took it in hand and looked at it, they wouldn’t realize his old St. Valentine medal was gone, nor what the new one signified.
The Ascended masters are real. So is their power.
Then a shout of: “Here they come!”
He skipped backward a few steps to get a line of sight. The city gates were open, and at least two hundred men were quickstepping out with more behind; the assault party was Pendleton city militia from the looks, wildly mismatched armor but long pikes, coming straight down the road to the bridge and heading equally straight for Constantine’s banner. His position would be invisible to them… hopefully until too late.
“Face forward, all of you. When the signal comes we’re going to run down this street, turn right-that’s right, everyone-into the cross street and hit, in a wedge, splitting the join between the Chehalis men and the enemy. I want you all to think that you’re wild Celts! Like the McClintock woodsrunners from the far south, fangs out and hair on fire. We have to hit them like a sledgehammer; it’s our asses if we don’t. Charlmain, you’re there! Brandon, there!”
He took his place at the head of the lines, spearmen and men-at-arms with their shields forward, the lighter-armed crossbowmen on the flanks.
“Nobody look back! Everybody, eyes front! You’ll follow me!”
He turned his head over his right shoulder, waiting for the flash of red, stamping his feet rhythmically and hearing the whole menie take it up as they jogged in place. Just a few feet forward was the entrance to the north- south alley they had numbered two. He could hear the fight struggling back and forth, like the sound of sea surf in storm as a bristle of long Pendleton pikes slammed up against the County Chehalis men-at-arms and spearmen. Chenoweth was at the other end, though he couldn’t see him. Thierry’s flag signal would synchronize the attack.
Thierry’s squire swung the red flag from his position on top of the post and Guelf lifted his sword and knocked down his visor. The world shrank to a bright slit, and he put his left fist four inches below his chin. The shield covered him from face to knee, and he tucked his shoulder into it, making his armored body into a battering ram. Then he filled his lungs and screamed the order:
“With me, forward. ”
Everyone stepped off together, synchronized by their stamping unison. He moved at a trot, building momentum and speed as his menie came behind him in a thick wedge of muscle and bone and steel and wood and leather, a harsh stink of sweat and oiled metal like a wave moving with them, a crashing rhythm of hobnailed boots and clattering steel. Voices echoed, muffled by the visors and booming from the curved inner surfaces of the big kite-shaped shields:
“Forward for Portland! Haro! Face Gervais, face Death! St. Valentine protect us! Haro! ”
Ahead the clatter and thump of close-quarter combat, the unmusical crash of steel on steel, like scrap falling on a stone floor. The grunting and panting of the heaving shoving match, shield against point or shield, men crushed forward by the weight at their backs and forced into the enemy ahead. Shocked screams of pain as steel bit home, shrieks of animal rage and fear, the patterned bellow of war shouts from the men of County Odell:
“Dismas, Dismas, Saint Dismas protect! Odell, Odell, Odell! Haro! Haro!”
They hit the enemy force locked with the Odell and Chehalis men, and the sound turned shrill as they realized they were being flanked and the crossbow volleys struck home. He rammed his shield into a pikeman’s unguarded right side with an impact that knocked into all his joints and the small of his back, smashed him off his feet and into the press of stamping boots below and thrust over and down into a man’s neck above the breastplate. The points of spears and gisarmes slammed past him from behind, thudding home in faces and guts or screeching off armor with tooth-grating tortured squeals.
Odell’s oliphants were sounding retreat. Guelf kept his head moving as he fought; you had no peripheral vision with a visor down, but he could feel the Pendleton men crumbling. He could also see Constantine Stavarov, shieldless, his visor knocked away, with blood spattered across his flushed high-cheeked, snub-nosed face and the white showing all around his eyes as he swung a two-handed war hammer with a thick spike on the other side in a blur of smashing, stabbing motion.
He was either laughing or just giving a bestial roar of joy, mouth like a red-and-white cavern. It was impossible to hear him in the tumult, but it was utterly obvious he wasn’t going to obey any trumpet-call to retreat and probably hadn’t even heard it. Two of his squires grabbed him neatly in what was obviously a rehearsed maneuver, each throwing an arm about him to pin his arms to his sides, pushing their shields forward to guard all three as they backed up with their lord’s feet almost off the ground as he screamed and struggled wildly.
Stavarov’s menie turned and ran west, to the waiting railcars and retreat. Viscount Chenoweth’s men and Guelf’s plugged the hole at the intersection, holding the enemy at bay while Thierry’s siege engineers and artillerists worked behind them in a ratcheting clack and clatter of machinery.
Smoke billowed upward as the bridge was fired, black and oily and rank with a scent of burning petroleum seldom smelled these days. The Pendleton men crumbled away, but behind them were ranks of oval hemispherical shields like sections of tower wall, each marked alike with an eagle and thunderbolts. The grim faces behind the low domed helmets and faceguards looked completely unfazed by being cut off from reinforcements by the fire. They moved in a unison like the bristle of a porcupine’s quills around an eagle standard, and the points of long javelins cocked backward with a ripple on brawny thick-muscled arms.
“Ware spears! Up shields!” Guelf shouted, and he wasn’t the only one.
The kite shields came up and the crossbowmen ducked and grabbed for their small steel bucklers. From the other side, a steady unhurried bellow of:
“Pila… ready… front rank… throw. Second rank… throw. Third rank… throw. ”
A whistle of six-foot throwing spears at fewer than ten yards distance. Guelf grunted and took a step back as two hammered into his shield, then cursed and threw it aside as the long soft-iron shanks bent, making the defense useless. He tossed his long sword up, settling it in the two-handed grip and working his fingers in the armored gauntlets. The setting sun cast long shadows, and the rusty patchwork of the sheet metal building beside him
