By late afternoon, Shill and Maharg had gotten surprisingly adept at obeying Hansen's orders. On their own, with the pair of them engaging Hansen, things didn't work as well.
When Maharg was ad hoc leader, he tended to strike before he remembered to call the designator to his partner. Shill, on the other hand, dithered. His command to 'Strike!' was always followed by Maharg's lunge—but usually not by Shill's.
Still, this was only the first day of training. When it came to the real thing against the Thrasey forces, Hansen would be there to give the orders—unless he got his head burned off.
In which case, he couldn't pretend he much cared what happened afterward.
By the time Hansen led his tiny force back across the field, Taddeusz had been joined by Golsingh—in boots, breeches, and a fur cloak. A group of warriors were going through exercises before them.
"That's the lot what made trouble in the hall," Shill grumbled. He angled his steps to pass a little further to the side of the seven warriors.
"Hold up," said Hansen. A thought struck him.
"Group secure communications," he said, then, "Can you two hear me now?"
"Hey, that's real clear," said Maharg. His own voice was much crisper than it had been on straight audio between the suits.
"Shill?"
"Huh? Yeah, I kin hear."
"When I tell you to report," Hansen said in a controlled voice, "you report. Understood?"
"Whatever," Shill muttered.
"Right," Hansen said. "Now, are you guys up for some serious play? Trying out what we just learned on our friends there?"
"You think we can take them?" Maharg demanded.
"Designate hostile forces green," Hansen said and watched spikes of bottle green dance from the helmets of the warriors from the 'East,' wherever that was.
He was getting to like his suit. It would've been useful to have back on Annunciation, where he belonged. . . .
But that was for later. "No," he said aloud. "I think they'll kick our butts, frankly. But it'll give us some practice that we need."
Neither of the juniors spoke for a moment. Then Maharg said, "Hell, I've had my butt kicked before. Once more don' matter."
"Then stick close to me," Hansen said. "Remember your orders. And for god's sake, when it starts, don't quit till they're all down or we are!"
"Cut!"
The three warriors stepped forward in line abreast. If Hansen looked to either side he would have seen an underling with a blue spike on his helmet, but for now he was taking that on trust.
"Mark," he said with the seeming leader of the Easterners centered in his display.
The fellow was sparring with two of his own men. His suit was clearly a cut above the one Hansen wore, while two more of the Eastern warriors were almost as well equipped. The other four wore scrapings of the same general quality as Shill and Maharg—but there were four of them.
The leader paused. "You see, Lord Golsingh?" he boomed. "I claim the right of prowess to command your left wing!"
"Normal speech," Hansen ordered his AI. His face prickled with sweat, as if this were real, not a game. They were three meters from the Eastern leader.
"I'd always heard that no Easterner had any balls!" he shouted. "I don't think you seven can fight us three real men! Wanna try?"
"You—" the Eastern leader gasped in a choking voice. The arc bloomed from his hand.
"Strike!" shouted Hansen, and they struck, by god they did, all three together and the Easterner, off-balance with his pivot, toppled to the mud while Hansen cried, "Mark! Strike!"
Only Shill and Hansen that time, because Hansen had turned a hair to his right and blocked Maharg with his body, but the Easterner dropped, not one of the dangerous pair but he fell in front of one of those, tripping his fellow. Hansen struck into the tangled suits, no time to mark and command.
But his two fellows struck with him anyway, guided by the arc without a designator, as if Maharg could think and Shill could act—but they could, because he'd told them they could or because the gods were good or maybe because men like a leader to follow because it's so much simpler than thinking.
Maharg took the arc of the remaining Eastern champion squarely on the crest of his helmet and dropped. Hansen stepped close and hacked at the man, but the Easterner was both fast and experienced, catching Hansen's arc with his own.
Hansen's right arm shuddered as if he'd grabbed a live AC line. He grabbed the Easterner's wrist with his free hand. As he did so, a sickly arc snaked past his helmet—Shill striking from behind him with a skill born of practice.
The Easterner's weapon dimmed as his AI drained power from it to boost the defenses against the fresh threat.
Hansen struck home and slung his opponent to the side as dead weight.
Two of the remaining Easterners made a convulsive rush at Shill, putting the old man between them and Hansen. Shill screamed momentarily; then his microphone shut down with the rest of his suit's power.
Hansen chopped right, then left. The last Easterner stood like a statue six meters away, too surprised or frightened to take any action.
A kid who froze, or a man as old as Shill who's forgotten this is only play. . . .
Hansen's arc lengthened and took the warrior in the chest. The Easterner turned sluggishly to run. Hansen stepped forward until his weapon was close enough to overwhelm his opponent's armor and drop him.
He stopped, panting heavily.
"You treacherous slimy bastard," rasped the amplified voice of the Eastern leader, rising to his feet.
Now that his suit was reset, mud was coursing off the painted metal with almost the enthusiasm that it had from Krita's armor under similar circumstances. "Now I'm going to kill you."
The dense flux that shot from the leader's right gauntlet wasn't a practice weapon.
"Battle status," Hansen ordered his AI, raising his arc in guard. He'd thought Krita might kill him, but it hadn't crossed his mind that this fellow would take a defeat personally enough to commit murder in front of Golsingh himself.
Because it surely was murder, Hansen going one-on-one with a suit as good as this fellow's. Maybe somebody would—
"Hey!" shouted the king. "Stop that! We need—"
The Easterner cut at Hansen's head. Hansen blocked the blow. His display flickered with the strain, even though the arcs crossed two meters from the attacker's gauntlet.
"Taddeusz! Stop them!" Golsingh ordered.
Hansen backpedaled, praying that he wouldn't trip over a warrior sprawled on the ground behind him. His display would give him a 360° view if he wanted it, but he was afraid the distortion would be more dangerous than the chance of an obstacle.
"Let them play, milord," the warchief replied with the casual certainty of a man who knows that he's wearing a battlesuit and his king is not. "I have doubts about both of them. More than doubts about the—"
"Hey!" boomed an amplified voice.
A warrior strode onto the field behind the Easterner. Red-blue-silver battlesuit—
"Watch him, Malcolm!" Hansen shouted. "He's nut—"
The Easterner spun like a dancer, slashing at Malcolm's head. Malcolm got his arc up in time, but the shock of meeting knocked him to his knees.
Hansen stepped forward and cut at the Easterner's live gauntlet. All three armored warriors froze like a group of statuary as sparks roared and dazzled in all directions.
The Eastern leader's suit was of very high quality. The artificial intelligences controlling the other two suits had to drain all power from their servos to prevent the Easterner's arc from finishing Malcolm. A patch of mud beneath the trio began to harden as full-power discharges lashed across it.
Hansen leaned forward and reached out with his left hand, moving against the dead weight and stiffness of his suit.
The Easterner's weapon was slowly driving down Malcolm's guard. Hansen's right gauntlet had grown hot, and his air system reeked with the odor of suede as the lining charred.
Hansen unlatched the Easterner's suit, shutting off the arc and the defensive charges instantly. Malcolm's straining arm slashed upward when the resistance was released, plowing across the Easterner's plastron in a glare of burning metal.
The Easterner fell face-down. Steam gouted as mud cooled the glowing mass where his chest had been. Malcolm tried to rise—and failed; then tried to open his own battlesuit. His gauntlet pawed in the general direction of the latch without quite touching it.
Hansen found the latch of his own suit by closing his eyes and letting instinct guide his desperate hand. He swung open the front of his clamshell and paused, too exhausted to go further until the pain of his burning right hand goaded him to drag his arms out of their casings.
He stared, dull-eyed, at the steaming ruin of the Eastern leader.
The ruin also of Hansen's hopes for a first-class battlesuit. The steel which sheathed the electronics had a good deal of mechanical strength, but against the full wrath of an arc weapon it might as well have been so much tissue paper. Malcolm had burned the Easterner out of his suit's chest cavity, and in so doing had irreparably ruined the plastron itself.
Oh, the piece could be repaired in time—though certainly not in time for battle against the Lord of Thrasey. But the battlesuit would never be as good as it had been before the damage, not even in the unlikely event that the repairs were done by a smith as skillful as the original builder.
"Well, I said I had my doubts, milord," Taddeusz said. "Lamullo will command the left wing as usual."
Golsingh nodded. "Shall we go back to the hall now?" he said. "I hope there's been a message from Frekka about the suits we ordered."
The king and warchief turned their backs. Hansen swore quietly, trying to gather up enough strength to get out of his armor. Maharg and Shill had stripped and were aiding Malcolm.
Golsingh's blond wife had accompanied her husband to the practice field. Hansen blinked to see her staring at him. Her face didn't change as he met her eyes, then turned and walked on with the other nobles.