Golsingh's army camped in the forest on first night of the expedition against Thrasey. Hansen saw his breath when he awakened. Snow had drifted onto the furs that covered him, and there was the threat of further snow in the sullen sky.
Slaves were building up the long fires and clattering with food preparation; ponies whickered. Hansen swore, scratched, and got up. He hadn't gotten chilled in his cocoon of heavy furs, but the irregularities of the ground left him stiff and sore.
They were camped in a valley of pine trees shattered two meters in the air. During a grim winter several years before, the trees had been buried in snow to that height. An avalanche blasting down from the crags to the right had sheared off the trunks above the level of the protective snow.
Hansen glanced up uneasily, but the high rocks were mostly bare and seemingly too distant to spawn such a catastrophe anyway.
Which was a reminder to be wary at all times, here no less than when he headed Special Units on Annunciation.
Shill sat on a log by a fire and stared into the mug he held before him. Hansen snapped his fingers at a slave, called, "Something hot to drink!" and seated himself beside the older warrior.
Shill gave him a nervous smile, as though he expected to be kicked. There was a bruise on the older man's forehead from one of the work-outs Hansen had put him through.
"I was wondering," Hansen said as he took the cup a slave brought him, "who was on guard last night?"
"Guard?" repeated Shill. "Guard against what?"
That was exactly the reply Hansen had expected, but he'd been too tired the night before to go into the matter then. When you ache all over, from training and from the unfamiliar exercise of riding a pony, it was easy to tell yourself that everything would be taken care of by the people whose business it was. And anyway, there wasn't anything he could do to change accepted practice.
The second part of the proposition still looked accurate in the grim light of day.
"What if the Lord of Thrasey attacked us at night?" Hansen asked, simply to get a reaction which would represent the attitude of everydamnbody in this sorry excuse for an army.
The older man was honestly puzzled. "Huh?" he said. "Nobody fights at night. And anyway, the battlefield's still a mile ahead. Though I guess we'll have to suit up and walk it," he added glumly, "just in case Thrasey jumps the gun."
Hansen sucked at the contents of his cup. It was fresh mead or perhaps honeyed wine, sweet enough to qualify as food and warm from being mulled in a water-jacketed boiler—which was the most sophisticated device he'd seen on Northworld, apart from the battlesuits.
"So," he said as his mind digested the information. "The time and place of the battle are arranged already? And that's always the case?"
"Sure," the older man agreed with a nod. "How else would you do it?"
He gestured. Trees of considerable size grew on the valley's distant southern slope. A mist hung among their branches, indistinguishable from the bitter smoke hovering over the pine-log fires of the encampment.
"Blazes," Shill said. "We could stumble around for weeks and never find Thrasey—nor the other way either."
A group of freemen were mounting their ponies. When the riders were safely in their saddles, slaves handed them weapons—lever-cocked crossbows or three-meter lances.
Some of the freemen had already ridden off. Scouting appeared to be as disorganized as every other aspect of battle management.
Hansen abruptly slugged back the rest of his drink. "I'm going out with them," he muttered.
"Why d'ye wanna do that?" Shill asked.
"Because I think somebody in this army ought to know what's going on," Hansen snapped.
He looked around. "I gave my pony to a couple slaves to off-saddle and feed," he said. "Where would they be now?"
"If you're really going to do that," Shill said, "take one of those." He pointed to the gaggle of freemen, mounting and equipping. "They're saddled already, after all."
"Right, thanks," said Hansen, striding toward the freemen.
The older warrior shook his head in wonderment. "Sometimes I wonder what sorta place you come from," he called.
Hansen turned his head. "That's fair," he retorted. "Because I sure-hell wonder what sort of place I've come!"
The leader of the half-dozen freemen whom Hansen accompanied was named Brian. He was about Hansen's age; a husky, steady man whom Hansen would've been glad to have as a unit leader back on Annunciation.
The remainder of the troop were fire-eaters averaging about nineteen years old, jerking their ponies with heavy hands and boasting about what they were going to do to Thrasey's scouts and warriors. Since freemen were less than cannon-fodder if matched against warriors in battlesuits, Hansen expected their enthusiasm to wane as they approached the enemy, but it made him uneasy to listen to their nonsense.
They rode through the trees, listening to the calls of scouts who'd left before them and sometimes crossing pony tracks in the snow. Half a mile from the encampment, the shallow valley Golsingh's men had followed most of the way from Peace Rock opened onto a broad plain.
The snow was deeper than it had been among the trees. It crushed flat the yellowed grass that would have been several meters high if erect. Sight distances were deceptively short. The open country seemed to stretch for kilometers in every direction, but swells too gentle to be noticed cut visibility to a reality of a few hundred meters.
They crossed a frozen stream. The banks were straight and little more than a meter high, but willows and coarse reeds grew so thickly along the margin that the ponies had to force their way through.
Hansen's mount didn't want to chance wetting its feet. He kicked it repeatedly in the ribs and had just regretted his lack of spurs when the pony decided to cross the narrow stream in a rush that almost unseated him.
Fur hats showed above the hillock beyond the creek. The younger freemen kicked their ponies into a wild gallop, yipping and cheering. Brian followed, calling to his men not to get carried away.
Hansen gripped his saddle with both hands to stay aboard and allowed his pony to gallop along with her fellows. It was unlikely that a rider as unskilled as he was could have controlled the animal anyway.
When the troop reached the top of the hill, they could see two Thrasey riders galloping back toward their encampment, less than a mile away on another rolling peak. One of the Thrasey freemen turned in his saddle and fired his crossbow in the direction of his pursuers. Two of Brian's men responded.
The snap of bowstrings was flat in the open air. None of the missiles came anywhere near a target.
Hansen reined up his pony to take stock. Brian shouted some warnings that showed he understood the danger of the position. Despite that, he and the remainder of the troop of freemen continued to pursue the Thrasey riders.
Other horsemen were coming from the encampment and along the plain to the right.
The Lord of Thrasey's encampment was a straggling thing with no more sign of a berm or other protection than Golsingh's own. The huge black forms of mammoths wandered in small groups, sweeping snow from the prairie with their trunks and lifting bushels of grass into their mouths.
Golsingh's force had carried fodder for their draft animals. The Thrasey army must have packed firewood over the treeless prairie, for a pall of smoke hung above their encampment.
Wan sunlight shone from battlesuits being polished by slaves. There seemed to be a surprising number of the suits.
Probably more than the hundred or so warriors in Golsingh's force this time.
Two riders from the camp joined the pair whom Brian's men were pursuing. The four turned to face their opponents.
The ground between the Thrasey encampment and the relative height from which Hansen watched was flat and almost as perfect for battle as the center of an amphitheatre. The stream closed the left margin, while the right curved out of sight within the slightly higher ground. Hansen had a box seat for the skirmish.
One of the Thrasey freemen raised his crossbow and shot. The black speck of the bolt snapped toward Brian—and on, vanishing in the snowy grass. Hansen thought it was parallax which had made him think the missile had struck, but then Brian swayed in his saddle and flung his lance aside.
The two crossbowmen accompanying Brian were desperately trying to reload their weapons. Their leader must have given an order Hansen couldn't hear for the distance, because he and his whole troop began to trot back the way they'd come.
The Thrasey freemen started to follow. One of Brian's men turned and shook his lance in threat. Another band of horsemen burst through the willows at the creekbed a kilometer away.
Hansen doubted that either side could be sure which party the newcomers supported. The Thrasey patrol began walking its mounts up the gentle slope toward their camp.
Hansen's pony had settled to crop the long grass. It looked up without particular interest as its fellows rejoined.
The younger freemen were flushed and panting. Brian looked sallow. His left sleeve had been torn off, and he clutched his biceps with his right hand.
"Let's see it," Hansen directed, clucking his pony nearer to the wounded man.
"Bastards," Brian muttered.
The clouds had thickened. It was beginning to snow sparse, tiny flakes. The temperature had dropped a degree or two since dawn.
Hansen pried the freeman's fingers from around the deep, ragged tear. The wound was bleeding badly, but the square-headed quarrel hadn't smashed bone or nicked an artery.
With only direct pressure on the arm, Brian would've bled out if an artery were severed. . . .
"Right," said Hansen, squeezing Brian's hand back over the damage. "Is there a—medic, whatever, back in camp?"
"Old Jepson, he sets bones sometimes," one of the freemen said.
"Does he stitch wounds?" Hansen demanded, and the blank expressions he received were the expected answer.
The wounds warriors took on Northworld were usually fatal and certainly self-cauterized. There was little that even the finest medical facilities of, say, Annunciation could have done for injured warriors except perform limb-grafts. And it wasn't the business of this society to worry about wounded freemen and slaves.
"Right. You—" Hansen pointed to the freeman on the strongest pony "—ride back for the camp as fast as you can, and stick your shirt in boiling water. Fast!"
"Huh?"
"It'll be the bandage. Now ride, damn you!"
The freeman didn't understand the purpose of the orders, but he heard the death threat in Hansen's voice. He dug the jangling rowels of his spurs into his pony and began to canter back toward the camp.
"I'm all right," Brian said. He kneed his mount into careful motion. "Bastards."
"Sure," agreed Hansen, walking his pony alongside. "One of you," he snapped to the younger freemen, "make sure we're headed straight back."
If he could have trusted his own riding skills, he would have tried to support Brian . . . though the wounded man seemed to be doing pretty well.
Brian's waxy complexion was the main concern. The wound wouldn't be directly fatal, but shock might very well finish the job.
Brian urged his pony into a trot. His reins hung loosely in his left hand.
"Tooley's there," he said loudly, instinctively aware that if he let himself slip into shock and somnolence, he wouldn't come back. "I saw his suit, red and white."
"Naw," objected one of his fellows. Hansen, his knuckles white on the reins, marveled at the way the other men could ride and talk. "He's with Count Rolfe, ain't he?"
"Frekka," said Brian. "He quarreled with Rolfe this summer and went to Frekka. Holroyd and Finch, they hired on with Frekka too. And they're up there."
It was snowing harder, but they were back among the trees now and the needles caught some of the flakes. The trees blocked much of the wan sunlight as well. Hansen looked forward to boosting the light amplitude on his battlesuit's display.
"Finch ain't nothin'," said another man. "An' Holroyd ain't much."
"Tooley's shit hot, though," Brian rejoined. He must be in considerable pain, but he was looking better for the hard ride. "And there's a lot of the buggers. I'd figured sixty, maybe eighty tops at Thrasey if the Lord'd been hiring his ass off."
"There's more 'n that," said one of his men. Despite their youth and indiscipline, these freemen had enough experience—and intelligence, Hansen was realizing—to make them good scouts.
"There's a hundred 'n twenty easy," Brian agreed grimly.
The camp was in sight. Warriors were getting into their armor near each of the fires.
"Course," Brian added, "the King 'n Lord Taddeusz, they'll clean 'em up anyhow."
The freeman might have sounded more confident if it weren't for the wound sapping his vitality.
Hansen would have had doubts in any case.
Hansen saw Malcolm's brilliant suit on the left edge of the encampment, closely accompanied by Shill and Maharg.
Low status warriors could be identified as a class—as cannon-fodder—by the amateurish detailing of their armor. That would be easy to cure: buff all the suits down to bare metal and let the artificial intelligence separate friends from foes.
Hansen should've thought of that sooner. It was too late to change for this battle. And it was beginning to look as though that made it simply too late. . . .
He slid from his pony and left the animal to wander as it chose while he opened his armor. He tossed his fur cloak onto the bundle a slave had made of his bedding, then stripped off his fur breeches.
The wind was cold, but the interior of Hansen's battlesuit would be colder than hell until it came up to operating temperature in ten minutes or so. Delaying wasn't going to help matters. Hansen clambered inside and latched the suit over him.
The technological ambiance calmed and reassured him more than he'd expected. Hansen didn't belong in the feudal museum that was Northworld society, but he'd lived the most important parts of his adult life in a battlesuit of one sort or another.
And maybe he was kidding himself about the society as well. He belonged here a lot more clearly than he had on Diamond.
"Remote, quarter, Malcolm," he said, putting his suit through its paces before he needed to use them for real. The upper righthand quadrant of his display showed Hansen, on a reduced scale, what the veteran warrior was seeing.
Malcolm faced Lamullo, the commander of Golsingh's left wing. Lamullo's father had left him an excellent battlesuit, painted in candystripes of bronze and black; but the son had inherited little of his father's aggressive drive. Hansen suspected that Lamullo's lack of ambition was as much the reason Taddeusz supported him as the suit itself was.
It was snowing harder. Hansen pursed his lips and glanced around him—then said, "Mark Golsingh," and let his AI do the work.
A carat pulsing on Hansen's display indicated where the king was hidden at the center of a group of twenty-odd warriors, most of them well equipped.
"Remote quarter Golsingh," Hansen said as he started in that direction. Golsingh and his warchief were listening to Brian say, ". . . and a lot of 'em been at Frekka, Thrasey must've hired 'em away in the last week or two."
The freeman's left arm was in a sling. One of his fellows was standing nearby, ready to support him if needed. Hansen hoped they'd used the—hopefully—sterilized cloth for a bandage, but there was only so much you could do. . . .
The error in the scout's report had no tactical significance, but it made all the strategic difference in this world. The Lord of Thrasey hadn't hired mercenaries from Frekka; they'd been sent as a gift. Hansen was willing to bet his life on that.
Of course, he wouldn't have a life to gamble with further unless things worked out better today than they were likely to.
"That doesn't matter," said Taddeusz contemptuously. "Nobody who'd take service with merchants is of any concern."
Hansen reached the back of the circle of high-ranking warriors. He put a gauntlet on the shoulder of a man, hoping the fellow would make room. The man turned slightly and shoved Hansen away.
"I remember Tooley," Golsingh replied, sounding thoughtful. "He was here a few years ago. Terrible temper, but . . . Not a warrior I would dismiss lightly."
"Command channel," Hansen directed his artificial intelligence.
He shouldn't have access to a commo frequency intended for top-ranking personnel, but there was nobody except Hansen in the whole army who knew how to activate the push, much less lock out middle-rankers like himself.
"Don't worry about—" Taddeusz was saying when Hansen's voice broke in on his earphones with: "Lord Golsingh, I'm sorry to interrupt—"
"Who!" Taddeusz shouted. They all used amplified voice communications instead of the excellent radios built into their suits. "Hansen? Is that—"
"—but I've viewed the battlefield and there's a way we can win this, I think pretty easily, especially with the low light conditions."
An arc blazed up from the center of the group of warriors.
"Taddeusz?" the king said doubtfully.
The circle broke outward like a ripple spreading.
Hansen also began backing away. "Lord Taddeusz, please," he said. "The terrain—"
The warchief's weapon slashed down.
Hansen jumped back. The arc, though attenuated by three meters' distance when it struck him, screeched in Hansen's ears and blurred his display into hash. He fell over.
Taddeusz shut his arc down instead of stepping closer. "If I hear your voice again this day," he said in a distinct tone more threatening than a bellow, "I will kill you. Begone!"
The circle of warriors closed about the leaders again.
Hansen got to his feet. His suit wasn't functionally damaged, but the paint had blistered off most of his breastplate.
He'd been this angry before.
He began walking toward Malcolm and the left wing.
He'd been this angry before. He always felt better when he'd killed something. As he would very soon.
Trumpets across the camp blew. A freeman near Lamullo took his own horn out from under his cloak and responded with a two-note call.
Cold and distant as the wind, other trumpets answered from the Thrasey encampment.
The sky was sullen. The upper left arm of Hansen's suit had been repaired, but he hadn't thought to replace the suede liner. Each time his skin touched the casing, the steel felt like a burn.
Warriors were moving out in clumps, forming a line of sorts.
"Maharg," Hansen said. "Shill. Come with me. We've got a battle to win."
Sometimes when Hansen felt the way he did now he slammed the heel of his hand into a wall. His battlesuit would knock over the stump of any of the nearby trees.
He clashed his palms together. The shock of power-driven steel against steel rang through the nearest warriors, turning a dozen faceless helmets toward him.
"For people who don't deserve it any damn way," Hansen added bitterly; though the good lord knew he should've been used to it by now.
Shill and Maharg swayed in their tracks. Hansen looked at Malcolm and said, "Malcolm. Come with us. You go out there like the rest—"
He nodded, uncertain whether the gesture was distinguishable while he wore armor. "—and you'll just get yourself chopped up. There's too many of them."
"Come along, you lot," Lamullo called over his shoulder. The gaggle of armored men was drifting into the woods. Freemen on ponies were intermixed with the warriors for the moment.
"No," said Malcolm. Then, sharply, "No!"
But instead of moving immediately to join the rest of the left wing, he pointed to Shill and Maharg and said, "You two. You can go with him if you want to. You—do what he says, all right? Do what the laddie says. But I can't."
Malcolm turned and followed Lamullo with long, clashing strides.
"Remote, quarter, Malcolm," Hansen ordered his AI. "Local unit, secure communications."
He grinned invisibly at Shill and Maharg who quivered between frightening alternatives. "Come on then, guys," Hansen said. "We've got a battle to win."