Chapter Fifty-three

Sunrise turned the Solfygg battlesuits blood red, whatever the underlying markings might be, when the Vandemann contingent strode out of the morning haze half a kilometer away.

The attackers were not preceded by the usual screen of freemen mounted on ponies. Baron Vandemann was an innovator, a rare thing on Northworld. It was his fatally bad luck that he had chosen to experiment against a force led by Nils Hansen.

A few of the Solfygg warriors hesitated when they saw Eagle Battalion was not only aroused but that most of Prandia's greatly superior numbers were already deployed outside the palisaded camp. Vandemann, a scarlet-suited warrior in the center of the line, turned and shouted a command. He used the battlesuit's speaker instead of its radio. The sound echoed to the camp, though distance robbed the words of meaning.

The central body resumed its advance.

"The courage of them!" Arnor said.

Because Arnor stood beside Hansen, the marshal heard his fatuous words even though the artificial intelligence cut them out of the radio net.

They're idiots!

The Solfygg flanking forces straggled into sight. Each of the smaller bodies was separated from Vandemann's force by nearly a half kilometer of flattened yellow pasture. When they saw the West Kingdom array, they stopped in their tracks and began to edge backward.

Arnor's job was to cover Hansen's back, not to deploy troops. Hansen didn't need to correct his sideman's words, and he had no time now for anything unnecessary.

"Suit," Hansen said, "display schematic. Undermarshal Tapper, advance at double-time with Sections Three, Five, and Seven toward the northernmost hostile force."

As Hansen spoke, his AI drew a pale blue arrow from Tapper's right flank units toward the clot of red beads. The Solfygg warriors were already retreating to put a rolling hill between them and the battalion they were supposed to attack.

"Undermarshal Patchett," Hansen continued, "advance at double-time—" another blue arrow "—with Sections Four, Six, and Eight toward the southernmost hostile force. Both undermarshals, screen the hostile flanking forces with one section—"

The blue arrows flattened into lines which were slightly concave in the direction of the hesitant Solfygg flanking units.

"—and hit the hostile main body in the rear as soon as it's fully engaged with our center."

The forces under Vandemann's personal control became a red arrow that flattened against the blue line of Hansen's remaining sections. Blue arrows curved back in from the flanks and squeezed the red patch into electronic limbo.

Reality wasn't going to be nearly that clean.

"Suit, send schematic," Hansen ordered. He'd learned not to trust words alone when trying to get across a complex, utterly vital concept. "Undermarshals, move out!"

Vandemann's main body was within three hundred meters. A warrior directly in front of Hansen turned. "What about us?" the man demanded in a voice that would have growled even without amplification.

The undermarshals' sections streamed forward at a jog. The lines lost cohesion almost immediately, but for the current purpose that wasn't crucial.

"Suit," Hansen said. "Straight visuals. Sections Nine and Ten, remain in reserve under King Prandia."

Because Vandemann's troops were concentrated on a narrow front, Hansen could use no more than two sections effectively in the front line himself.

"Sections One and Two, advance under my command. Peace and Prandia!"

Hansen stepped forward. He slapped the warrior who'd spoken on the shoulder to move him sideways so that his marshal could stride by. The fellow yelped, but he must have sensed that it would be a very bad time to get in Hansen's way.

Arnor and Culbreth were to either side and a pace behind. Sections One and Two were in motion. Hansen had intended to advance at a walk, but sight of the undermarshals' forces jogging drew the center into the same gait.

And hell, he was leading the line himself.

"Marshal Hansen!" yelped the king's voice over the command frequency. "You can't leave me—"

Behind with the reserves, Prandia no doubt continued, but Hansen's artificial intelligence cut him off. The AI knew the marshal didn't care squat what the king or anybody else felt about his deployments; and Prandia himself had put Hansen in command.

"Cut," Hansen ordered, forming his right gauntlet into a scissors which quivered with blue fire.

His hand tingled pleasurably. All along the lines, Hansen's and that of the Solfygg force, arc weapons sawed through dawn's slow brightening. The opposing numbers were roughly equal, but the quality of the armor was—

The lines crashed together. Vandemann's ten champions strode onward with none of the hesitation which warriors normally showed just before the moment of impact.

Hansen parried Baron Vandemann's high cut. The blaze of light paralyzed both men in their overloaded battlesuits. Culbreth thrust at Vandemann's left shoulder. Arnor stepped close and hacked at his right ankle.

Vandemann's suit failed with a loud bang. Arnor's arc blackened all the paint from toes to knee. The baron's right foot flew away from a ball of plasma.

The baron toppled. "I got him!" shouted Arnor.

The Solfygg champion beside Vandemann cut Arnor's head off.

Hansen's battlesuit was hot and reeked of ozone. He switched his arc to his left gauntlet and stabbed at the killer's helmet. He had to pull the blow when a second champion pressed from his right. He didn't know where Culbreth was.

Hansen backpedaled, waggling a three-meter arc in the face of each opponent. Several of the Solfygg champions had fallen. The survivors of Hansen's front line stumbled in retreat.

One of Hansen's immediate opponents slashed through his arc. Hansen relighted his weapon and tried to step backward. It was like trying to push a dreadnought.

Hansen's suit was using all its power to defend against the hostile arcs. The joints of his armor were stiff, and if he stumbled—

His heel clanged against a battlesuit. He guessed he'd found Culbreth.

—Hansen was dead.

King Prandia's battlesuit was bright gold. He and his sideman Wood struck together, chopping the opponent on Hansen's right into three pieces.

Hansen transferred full power to the arc from his left gauntlet. When he tried to lunge into the blow, his legs trembled instead of obeying smoothly. The king and another warrior, the left-side member of his team, stepped around the marshal and finished that Solfygg champion also.

The battle area shrank into a dazzle like that of a megawatt transformer shorting out. It was over almost immediately. The undermarshals' forces had swept in behind Vandemann's troops and hammered them to scrap metal.

Just like it was supposed to happen. . . .

Hansen unlatched his battlesuit and opened it wide to the morning breeze. The wind was already dispersing ionization products in the air, but the smell of charred flesh would remain for months.

Hansen tried to get out of his armor. His muscles wouldn't obey. He wasn't sure he could have stood upright had not the legs of his battlesuit been firmly planted on the soil. He began to sob.

Two of Hansen's freemen ran over to lift the marshal out of his suit. On their second attempt, they succeeded.

King Prandia had stripped off his battlesuit. He walked toward Hansen, taking short, precise steps.

There was a windrow of armored bodies where the lines met. The remainder of the dead all lay in the direction of the West Kingdom encampment.

Even as they died, Baron Vandemann's warriors continued driving their opponents back.

"How . . . ?" the king mumbled. "Marshal Hansen, how many men did we lose?"

"We won the battle, Your Majesty," Hansen said. His eyes were closed. "That's all history's going to care."

He opened his eyes again. The smell and the memories behind his closed lids were worse than viewing the carnage.

Prandia put his arm around Hansen's shoulders, "I don't mean to seem ungrateful for your—your wisdom and your courage, Lord Hansen," he said. "But their battlesuits were, were . . ."

The king swallowed. "Were what you warned me they would be. What if the rest of the troops had supported Vandemann the way they were supposed to?"

"They didn't," Hansen said harshly. "They won't. You have a kingdom, Your Majesty. Solfygg has only a conglomeration of barons. They mostly hate each other worse than they hate you."

"Yes, but—" Prandia said.

A man stumbled toward them, through the wandering freemen and blank-eyed warriors who muttered about what had just happened.

Culbreth! Hansen's sideman wore a numb expression and his forelock was shriveled by the arc that slashed into his helmet, but he was still alive.

"What could've happened doesn't matter, Your Majesty!" Hansen said. "All that matters is that we've won!"

The ranks of silent dead threw the lie back in his face.