Dark Crusade (11 page)

Jarvo was confident.

Kane knew Jarvo well. And Kane knew that Jarvo would be overconfident.

Kane was on the move before dawn. By the time the climbing sun burned the light dew from the somnolent grassland, the two armies faced one another. The hour of the blooding was inescapably at hand.

Jarvo already had his ranks formed and on the advance. His plan had been to swoop down on Adesso Wells and encircle the Sataki army as it struggled to get under way. His strategy was sound, based on the information, as it was, that the invading army was primarily infantry with only token cavalry support. While he should have taken warning from the rapidity of Kane's advance, Jarvo felt there was little reason to suppose this army was much better trained than the last one the Prophet had sent to slaughter.

The Sandotneri general was somewhat disconcerted by the rapidly approaching dust cloud that bore down upon him from the northern horizon. His confidence still unshaken, Jarvo quickly deployed his regiments--six regiments of mounted archers along the first line, supported by his heavy cavalry as center, with six regiments of light horse on either wing, and the remaining light cavalry behind center as a reserve.

The field was a monotonous stretch of savannah, unbroken by natural barriers or fortifications. It might have been a yellow carpet spread upon the floor of some immense, blue-vaulted chamber. There was an imperceptible rise to the plain toward the northern horizon, falling away to the marshes below Meritavano a few miles to the south. Jarvo counted this of no consequence.

A thin plume of dust obscured the Sataki advance, making it impossible for Jarvo to see with accuracy much beyond the front ranks. It seemed to him that Kane had deployed his troops across too long a line, and he supposed this was because Kane's cavalry screen had not effectively fallen back upon the main body of infantry.

Not caring to give Kane time to correct this error, Jarvo ordered his front line of archers to attack.

Kane's brutal face twisted into a tigerish smile as he observed the Sandotneri line. Kane knew its strength as well as Jarvo, and he knew that his was the superior force--if his army could fight. While another man might have been unnerved at doing battle with troops he formerly had led, to Kane the situation was not a novel one.

At this point the front lines of the two armies were somewhat over a mile apart, both sides still advancing at a walk. Kane had deployed his columns into a wide crescent, positioning his archers on either flank with the remaining fourteen regiments of light horse in two lines across the front. Deployed in a third line were his eight regiments of heavy cavalry, held in reserve until Jarvo committed his own armor. Somewhat to the rear, his infantry formed up into five marching squares with pikes and pole-axes bristling about their perimeters.

As Jarvo's mounted archers swept away from the Sandotneri front, Kane signalled for his archers to attack from the flanks. It was a tentative contact on Jarvo's part, Kane decided, probably as much to feel out the Sataki force as anything. Conservative by nature, Jarvo was following the strategy that had routed the Satakis in their earlier battle.

The move reflected his contempt for the Sataki army. While archers might take heavy toll of inadequately protected foot soldiers, against other cavalry their value was more of harrassment. A direct hit of the light, iron-headed shafts might penetrate mail, but not the steel plate armor of heavy cavalry. On the other hand, the mounts of the light cavalry were without the bardings that protected the horses of the armored regiments. Sweeping archery fire could destroy a formation with crippled and unmanageable mounts, and Kane countered to guard against this.

Preceded by a black rain of death, the two forces swirled together across the yellow plain. Kane's archers were distinguishable in the distance by their black scarves and their broad armbands of red cloth, emblazoned with the black sigil of Sataki. Jarvo, Kane noted sardonically, seemed to have ordained his own blue scarves for the whole of the Sandotneri army.

The charging archers wheeled about like countless dustdevils through the high grass. It was a lightning-swift engagement--emptying saddles across both fronts, more often sending horse and rider careening to the earth. An archer typically carried twenty-four arrows in his quiver. On this terrain, any man of them could fire six arrows a minute with accuracy--more than that if circumstances required. Quivers were emptied in a matter of a few minutes; after that it was a matter of returning to the lines or scavenging on the field.

Both sides took moderate casualties, although far from crippling. Kane's was the superior force, and the Sandotneri charge failed to penetrate. The opposing horsemen exchanged fire until their quivers emptied--then withdrew to their respective, slowly advancing lines. It was a sudden, indecisive engagement--calling to mind the curtain of lightning that precedes an approaching storm across the horizon.

Jarvo, angered by the standoff and impatient to take command of the battle, ordered his heavy cavalry to charge the center of Kane's line, at the same time sending his regiments of light horse against either horn of the crescent to protect his flanks. The returning archers wheeled past his own flanks to advance with the reserve force. The reserve was to follow as a second wave, and join the attack wherever the Sandotneri line seemed to be breaking.

Jarvo's plan of action was to break through the cavalry ranks--thereby cutting Kane's line in two, and penetrating to the unsupported infantry in the rear. It was a good plan--assuming that Kane's cavalry would be hurled back against the panic-stricken masses of foot. The dust that obscured Kane's advance, however, hid the fact that the infantry was well to the rear--and that immediately behind the screen of light horse Kane waited with eight regiments of heavy cavalry.

The Sandotneri charge rumbled toward the Sword of Sataki, driving Kane's retreating archers before it like foam before a breaker.

Astride his stallion, Kane snarled commands to his trumpeters. An aide handed him a goblet of brandy. Kane tossed it off, with a wild laugh crushed it in his gauntleted fist. Locking down the vizor of his armet, he caught up his lance and urged Angel forward at a fast trot.

Trumpets blared all along the crescent, relaying Kane's commands through the thin dust that veiled battle pennants. Officers shouted orders above the deepening thunder of a hundred thousand hooves. Riding several hundred yards ahead of Kane's heavy cavalry, the first and second lines of light horse abruptly divided at the center, wheeling toward the right and left horns of the crescent. As the gap at the center broke apart, the retreating regiments of archers galloped through, passing between the open ranks of the armored third line to reform at the rear. As the archers dashed to the rear and the opening in the center expanded, Kane's third line closed ranks and surged forward. Through the yellow curtain of dust, Kane led his armored cavalry onto the open savannah.

Near 10,000 steel lance heads glinted in the sun, like the sudden smile of a hungry shark. In an instant of fear, Jarvo knew he had fallen into Kane's trap. There was no turning back.

The earth shook beneath their charge. Pounding hooves--driving the ponderous mass of armored warrior and steel bardings--tore through the dense sod, ground the dry soil into numberless explosions of flying dust and pulverized rock. Like two monstrous avalanches of scintillant steel and driving muscle and bone, the opposing armies rushed together--now at full gallop, ripping apart the earth in a frenzy to smash and to slay.

Less than half a mile separated the two lines of heavy cavalry as their charge broke into full gallop. Great chunks of shuddering distance hurtled past beneath their thundering hooves. Time hung in an eerie stillness against the onrush of space. Seconds dwindled into meaningless splinters of eternity. Time was unreal.

Encased in steel universes: sight fixed on the lance-lines ahead, sound deadened by the tearing roar of hooves, smell obliterated by dusty heat, tongue choked with tension, sensation only of headlong hurtling through space. What does a meteor know of time in the instant of its final flaming plunge?

Steel and space... and time?... is now.

Sound is sundering steel and molten screams of rage and agony. The explosive death of a volcano, vomiting its fiery blood into the icy sea. Two waves of steel smash together. Time is still; space is motionless. Steel is totality.

Steel against steel. Muscle and bone direct us, steel protect us. Steel against steel.

Lance into shield, into breastplate and pallette, into peytral and cuello. Steel lance heads bite and glance, wooden shafts shudder and splinter. They clashed together like the fanged jaws of some unthinkable leviathan, closed with a maniacal fury that ground and shattered its endless rows of bright fangs.

Edged weapons were all but useless against plate armor. Driven by the hurtling mass of steel and thew, the leaf-bladed lance heads could pierce steel armor of man or horse with deadly effect. Even if the lance head turned, or the shaft splintered, frequently the impact in itself was murderous--flinging an armored opponent from his saddle at full gallop. Should the unhorsed warrior survive the fall, the crushing weight of his armor might leave him helplessly pinned. Nor was the danger entirely at the point of the lance. An inexpert lancer, because the grapper transmitted much of the shock to the felt-lined lance arrest secured to the right side of his breastplate, might be flung from saddle by the same impact that drove into his opponent.

Kane tore through at the head of his charge--an awesome figure in black plate armor, forged to fit his massive frame. His black stallion, gigantic in matching steel bardings, loomed like a frothing, iron-hooved demon. His men knew he led them, and they followed into hell without further thought. The dull thunder roll of drumming hooves--then the instant of collision. A lance pointed toward Kane across the closing gap of timeless space. Kane shifted his own lance suddenly, struck the other lance, felt it glance harmlessly across his vamplate--then his lance head angled upward to slide past his assailant's shield, strike the angle of armet and gorget. The lance head caught for an instant, the shaft bent under their combined momentum--then sprang free, and the Sandotneri rider tumbled backward from his saddle, neck already snapped.

The clangour of his fall suddenly echoed across the entire front--a strident protest of steel drowning out the bass nimble of hooves, as the two lines collided.

Kane, his lance only momentarily engaged, galloped past the unstrung puppet of steel. Already a second lance was thrusting for him. Kane swung his lance to guard; the other lance head instantly lowered, struck Kane's stallion. The hemispherical boss of the peytral deflected the point. Kane's lance, glancing from the other's shield, struck the Sandotneri cavalryman in the center of his breastplate. The steel lance head drove through breastplate, chest, and backplate. Kane's lance lifted the impaled warrior from the saddle, held him for an instant in midair--before the wooden shaft snapped.

Kane cursed and hurled the broken half into the path of a third oncoming lancer. Lunging aside, Kane deflected the enemy lance with his shield, as his own broken lance entangled the charger's driving legs. The Sandotneri mount stumbled--at full gallop with a double burden of heavy armor and rider, it could not recover. Horse and trooper crashed head over heels as Kane drove past, unslinging the massive battle-ax from his saddle.

Another lancer thundered toward him, as Kane flung up the heavy ax. Kane twisted, caught the lance head on his shield. The shaft splintered at the impact, jarring Kane against his high cantle. His assailant held his saddle with no less difficulty. Kane swung the ax in a murderous arc as they came together. The heavy spike pean gouged through the barred vizor of the other's armet. Kane hauled on the haft, almost losing grip, as their horses pounded past each other. The spike tore free in a splatter of brain.

By now Kane's charge had carried him through the Sandotneri line. A scatter of light horse followed as a second line, but Kane ignored them for the moment. Hauling on the curb bit, he managed to wheel Angel to the right, checking his headlong charge. He had an instant's respite to draw breath and to survey the dust-veiled field. The Sandotneri charge had shattered against Kane's armored regiments. Already most of the struggling warriors had lost their lances, were smashing at one another with ax, mace and flail. Here and there Kane saw great two-handed broadswords in use--heavy blades whose crushing power served even when edge failed against steel plate.

The melee resounded like the forges of hell--a deafening cacophony of smashing steel, pounding hooves, crashing bodies, war cries and howls of death-agony. Dust and torn sod swirled like a yellow blizzard.

Beyond the struggling mass of armor, the regiments of light cavalry engaged in a lightning storm of sabres and plunging hooves. They rode clear of the armored meleetheir sabres were toys against armored horse and rider, and mail hauberks were no defense against the crushing weapons of the heavy cavalry.

The dust obscured details of the battle, but Kane could see that the horns of his crescent, reinforced as his front lines of light horse swung to either flank, had engulfed the entire Sandotneri charge. Jarvo's force was encircled. The battle was now one vast melee, and Kane had the advantage of numbers. Jarvo's only hope to escape annihilation was to break through the Sataki trap, reform his men for a fighting retreat.

And now Kane saw that the infantry squares were cautiously advancing to join the fray. The Sataki charge had overrun the Sandotneri charge, carrying the battle past the initial line of contact. The torn earth was littered with bodies in armor and mail, many still alive but crippled within the weight of their armor, pinned beneath fallen mounts. Remorseless as jackals, the foot soldiers swarmed over them--driving poniards and misericordes through mail and joints between plates, smashing in armets and breastplates with hammers and axes.

Kane hoped in their frenzy the louts could tell comrade from foe.