Chapter Twenty-six

The only thing that kept Hansen from open despair was his knowledge that the Colimore army a kilometer away was no better prepared for battle than were the levies Hansen led.

Intellectual awareness wasn't the same as emotional belief. Hansen believed, whatever his mind told him, that warriors on royal left wing—his wing—were going to charge without any discipline at all and be sliced six ways from Sunday by a Colimore phalanx.

Freemen mounted on ponies galloped back from a sortie toward the Colimore lines. It had been more bravado than reconnaissance. One of the riders lifted his curved bronze horn from its neck sling and blew a trill of meaningless excitement.

"God help us all," Hansen muttered as he stood in his battlesuit with the frontal plate still open.

Culbreth was at Hansen's side, already suited up. "Sir?" he boomed. "The marshal says, ah, would you get into your armor so he could talk to you."

Maharg had said to tell his left wing commander to get his thumb out of his ass, there was a job to do—if the marshal had been so polite.

Maharg was right. Hansen swung his battlesuit closed.

"Suit," he ordered to switch on his artificial intelligence. "Schematic overlay, opposing forces." He paused, then added, "Thirty percent mask."

"Hansen," snapped the command frequency in Maharg's voice, "what do you make their numbers as being?"

The same thing your suit's AI does, Marshal.

"A hundred and forty-six, Maharg," Hansen said, keeping his voice cool. "We've got a clear margin of forty warriors. That's not the problem."

The normally diamond-sharp visual display of Hansen's battlesuit was now covered by a thin overlay which showed the two armies disposed across the terrain. At the edge of the screen, the artificial intelligence tabulated the relative strength of the forces, both total and by class of battlesuit.

"There's no possible way Colimore could hire more than fifty warriors!" Maharg said sharply. "Not if he sold the whole bloody duchy."

Maharg had chosen to let off steam with Hansen, a levy from nobody-knew-where, on a closed push where no one else could hear them. It was one of the greatest compliments anyone had ever paid Hansen.

It also spoke pretty well for the marshal's ability to judge men.

"We knew Solfygg was behind all this, Maharg," Hansen said. "We've still got them by numbers, and I think we're generally better man-for-man, even my crew."

Hansen kept his tone that of the calm advisor; a man whose guts weren't a gray turmoil at the thought of leading warriors whose idea of group action was persuading a scullery wench to pull a train before everybody was too drunk to stand up.

"Generally better, I'll grant," the marshal said. "But my read-out says there's twelve Class I suits on their left flank. Twelve royal suits."

"Yeah," said Hansen. "That's the thing that bothers me, too."

It was going to rain before the day was out. Earlier storms had beaten down the prairie's autumnal grasses, though tussocks of brown and gray and remembered green still remained. The field, a traditional battle area for the generations before the Peace of Golsingh, was nearly flat, but visibility would still be tricky.

The Solfygg armor was one of the things that bothered Hansen.

"It had better bother you," Maharg grumbled. His voice had lost the particular harshness of concern Hansen had noticed at the beginning of the discussion. "I was expecting to be able to give your wing some support. I don't know how quick I'll be able to take care of those royal suits."

"Look, my boys'll hold up their end, never fear," Hansen said, his voice sharp with pride despite himself. "You can call us levies if you want to, but if we weren't the damned-best warriors in our households, our lords would've sent somebody else!"

And that was flat truth.

Hansen suddenly realized how much he cared about the men he led . . . and how much he hoped they wouldn't let him down.

Horns and bugles blew across the field. Thirty or forty mounted freemen armed with lances and crossbows advanced through the Colimore line. The warriors in battlesuits remained motionless for the moment.

Hansen's overlay showed that the Colimore warriors were spaced irregularly, like beads strung by an infant. Duke Ontell was using his freemen to entice the royal forces to advance first.

The royal army wasn't in parade-ground order either, but its four-to-three advantage in numbers gave Hansen a feeling of comfort as he glanced through the overlay—

So long as he ignored the twelve Solfygg warriors who stood out from the Colimore left wing like the teeth of a saw. Those champions wore suits as good as Hansen's own . . . or just about anybody else's.

A hundred or more royal freemen charged to meet the Colimore riders. The latter immediately turned tail and galloped back toward their own lines.

"All right," said Maharg in a tone of calm determination. "This is as good a time as any, I suppose."

Hansen visualized the marshal as he stood in his armor at the center of the right wing. Maharg's face would be set, his eyes knowing. The marshal was betting numbers against quality, and he was perfectly aware of the casualties that always resulted from that trade-off.

"Hey, buddy," Hansen said softly.

"What, then?"

"That's a lot of royal suits," Hansen said. "More than you've seen in one place before, probably more than anybody has. Don't push. If they come to us, they'll get separated and you can handle them just like you did me on the practice ground."

Maharg snorted. "Who's the marshal?" he demanded. "You or me?"

And then he said, "Thanks. We're going to take care of these bastards."

Or die trying—

But that thought was lost in Maharg's command over the general frequency, "Warriors, remember to keep your line and hold your intervals. All forces, advance!"

Bellowing with amplified enthusiasm, the royal army strode forward. The warriors' battlesuits sizzled blue halos in the humid air as they went forth to kill and die.