The Dinosaur Knights (55 page)

—A PRIMER TO PARADISE FOR THE IMPROVEMENT OF YOUNG MINDS

The deinonychus-riding children had solemn faces. Their mouths were tightly shut. Each clutched a spear or dagger in chubby hands.

Over his left shoulder, from just behind his line of sight, Duke Falk heard Count Ironstar begin a high-pitched litany of terror: “It is a judgement on our wickedness, that even children raise their hands against us! We're all going to die! All going to die! All going to—”

Falk transferred his axe to his left hand. Without looking around he swung backhand. He put broad hips and strong legs fully into it.

“All going—” The words stopped suddenly. Falk felt resistance. Then parting. Then shock.

Then nothing. Something bounced heavily on the turf behind him.

“Perhaps the rest of you gentlemen will do a better job of keeping your heads,” Felipe said dryly, as Falk heard a second, weightier thud. He brought the axe back around to ground before him. Crimson dripped from the blade into the grass by the shiny blue toes of his sabatons.

To Falk's alarm, he realized the Nodosaurs' own lethal efficiency might undo them. The Crusaders unflaggingly continued clambering up the berm of dead bodies the terciaries had built before them, even as more were added to it. Now the wall rose higher than the tallest Nodosaur. It totally masked the Twelfth's view of the abomination rushing toward them.

Until the horrors themselves, frightfully agile despite their burdens, reached the top of the grisly pile.

For a moment each froze to regard the other: the ravening pack-hunters and their stiff-faced riders; gazing back up at them, their attitudes eloquent of shock despite the brown sallets that hid their faces, the Nodosaurs.

Not even in the gruesomest bedtime stories his nannies, encouraged a moral instruction by his mutually antagonistic and lethally capricious parents, had told him had Falk ever heard of such a thing. And while those in his earshot were careful to control their reactions better than the unfortunate and now considerably shorter Estrella del Hierro, from the gasps from close at hand and the outright screams from farther, he reckoned no one else had either.

With a many-voiced screech of rage the raptors flung themselves on the pikes. Some were held in the air, impaled alongside children who still eerily made no sound as they wiggled futile arms and legs. Some ran down the inner slope of the flesh-mound to dart among the Nodosaurs' legs. Some ran up the shafts of the very pikes that transfixed them to snap at exposed chins and throats.

Not even a seasoned veteran in helmet and half-armor could stand for long against a man-sized meat-eater that hung on with fore-claws, raking for any gap in protection at body and thighs with the huge rear talons that gave them their True Name, which translated to “terrible claw.” As the Nodosaurs wrestled with squalling horrors, children ran among them slashing and stabbing until they were swatted down.

There weren't enough of them together to defeat a tercio three thousand strong. Far from it. But a pike formation lived on its solidity as much or more as a mounted charge did. The handful of dinosaurs and children spread disorder fast and wide.

Falk had just a sense of the Steel Wall beginning to waver at this attack from within. Then the horde, which had held back to allow the spectacle of the raptor-riders to take full effect, surged forward. They rolled over the wall of bodies like a flood tide to smash down on the disordered Imperials.

Falk would never get the chance to ask any man or woman of the Twelfth whether they stayed their hands for ever so-slight a fraction of a moment from unwillingness to slaughter children wholesale, or from the unexpected, mind-bending awfulness of the sight. In the proudest tradition of the Imperial heavy infantry the Tercio Duodécimo had stood and fought unyielding. Now in the proudest tradition of the Nodosaurs it stood and died in place. The lightly armored hamstringers and arbalesters, the engineers and artillerists who had retreated into the phalanx for shelter, fell alongside the browned-iron pike-wielders to the swords and spears, the axes and clubs, the bare hands and crimsoned teeth of the Grey Angel horde.

Through eyelashes laden with unabashed tears Falk watched the Companions, resplendent in their white armor, trot around Le Boule to rescue the embattled remnants of the Imperial left. Their half-thousand Ordinary cavalry thundered behind. Falk bellowed to the spear-and-shield men who waited behind the peasant center to advance; his bull nosehorn build gave him the volume to make himself heard over the racket. The Imperial Heralds, hearing his commands, relayed them with blasts on their long brass horns.

Falk shouted new commands. The Scarlet Tyrants at the foot of the hill braced. Each man plucked the pair of heavy throwing-spears from the turf where it was planted before him.

The Duke ran the few steps to Snowflake. His arming-squire Albrecht waited with a stepladder to help him mount the restless Snowflake. His eyes wider and wiry hair wilder than usual, the boy handed Falk up first his helmet, which Falk placed over his head and cinched beneath his broad chin, and then his heater shield with its blue border, white field, and black two-headed falcon. Last, Falk accepted his horseman's axe, taking the lanyard loop about his right wrist.

When Falk had last glanced toward the Imperial center the peasants held their own and more, despite being shoved back step by step by the sheer weight of bodies in the scores of thousands. But their fear had grown like a tinder-pile.

The Twelfth Tercio's death gave it the spark.

The levies' morale went up in a flash. Throwing down their pikes they ran for the rear with piss and shit streaming down bare legs. Here was why Jaume had deployed the professional household troops behind them: the fleeing mass shied like warhorses from their shields and spear points, then flowed to either side of their wide wedge formation. Which channeled them around Le Boule as well—instead of them stampeding up it to trample the Emperor himself.

Snowflake rose to his feet. His heavily muscled white sides trembled with anticipation. Falk gave him a special press of armored heels. The Tyrannosaurus roared.

It was no terremoto. But then, it was the hunting cry of a monster scarcely less mythically terrifying to Nuevaropans than the Grey Angel Himself. It halted not just many fleeing peasants but a number of the Crusaders who chased them.

The house-shields yelled and charged, battering through the last of the broken commoners. The Imperial archers, who like the Nodosaur missile troops had pulled back among their better-armored comrades as the enemy closed, added a quick shower of arrows. Then the mailed foot waded into the horde, bashing with shields, jabbing with spears.

They killed their way deep into the howling mob. They were no Nodosaurs, whose skills at fighting and shoulder-to-shoulder maneuver were as matchless as their courage. The bulk of the House troops' experience no doubt came from brutalizing unarmed and unarmored serfs. Then again, that described the vast majority of Raguel's shrieking minions. The mailed soldiers fought professionally and well, and worked terrific execution.

But they had never faced an enemy like this one. No one had, for half a millennium. Their butchery, while exemplary, won no more than the pause of a few breaths.

As Falk rode past the splendid red and gold ranks of his Tyrants, he signaled with his axe for them to hold in place. They needed no orders to kill any Crusaders who got past the spearmen. Their one overriding imperative was to protect the Emperor himself.

Behind Le Boule, or so Falk both hoped and expected, the several hundred household foot who formed the final Imperial reserve would be corralling and rallying as many fleeing conscripts as they could to return to the fight.

The horde was already beginning to flow around the flanks of the house-shields' wedge to surround them. Falk knew it showed no conscious tactics. Only the brute nature of mob and flow.

He smiled. Letting his axe dangle momentarily by its lanyard, he leaned forward to pat his mount's thick neck.

“Time to show what we can do, eh, boy?”

Snowflake roared again. He, at least, was happy.

Then with a mighty thrust of his hind-limbs the tyrant was among the hordelings, his great jaws tossing men and women like screaming mice.

*   *   *

“Oh, those children! They're children!” cried Jacques, riding at Jaume's right hand.

“We have to forget them!” Jaume yelled back. “We're on the enemy!”

Whether driven by Raguel's malevolent will or their own, a dozen Crusader dinosaur knights and several dozen gendarmes had returned from their rout to the fight. They beset an Imperial left wing stalled and losing the battle against the nominally human flood of the horde. Or they were reinforcements; either way, to throw them in piecemeal was poor tactics. Jaume already knew Raguel didn't care.

He waggled his upraised lance side to side. The Companions winged out to either side into a chevron. Then he dipped the pennon-tipped lance head briefly forward.

As one the trotting duckbills stretched their gloriously crested heads out and uttered their inaudible death cry.

A few of the enemy duckbill-riders had turned to face the new threat. It didn't help. Though their armor saved the knights from most of the terremoto's effects, their mounts took it all. Some reared and plunged, trumpeted pain and fear. Two fell over kicking.

The Companions couched lances and charged home. Of all the good works they meant to do for their Lady today, mercy was not among them.

A knight in clear-enameled plate tried to wrestle his brilliant blue sackbut back under control. Its tube-crested head wagged frantically left and right; its eyes rolled as if loosened in their sockets. Jaume lifted his lance to let Camellia plow into the beast with her massive keelbone.

The Parasaurolophus had no chance. The impact rocked it back so hard Jaume heard its tailbone break in a thunderclap. The dinosaur shrieked so shrilly it broke out of Jaume's hearing-range as the beast toppled with a crash and a cloud of yellow dust.

Ribs broke loudly as Camellia ran over her fallen foe. The rider's armet-encased skull popped like an overripe berry as her right foot came down squarely on it.

Another Crusader knight managed to wheel his buff and green morion toward Jaume. Though blood ran from a ruptured right tympanum, the hadrosaur coiled back onto huge haunches to spring. It didn't get time. Jaume had time to register that the trim of his enemy's green shield and breastplate was real gold. Then his lance took him in the gorget and knocked him right over his cantle to tumble down his monster's tail.

Camellia bulled the morion aside. Its rider squealed like a scalded fatty as she trampled his armored thighs.

She bore down on a bay courser. Agile as a springer, the warhorse leapt out of her way. Jaume's lance crunched through the mail guarding the pit of its rider's upraised swordarm. He let the lance fall with its victim and drew the Lady's Mirror.

His main weapon now was still Camellia herself. Her rampaging bulk scattered coursers like straw dogs.

The Companions' rush had hammered down the Crusader dinosaur knights and blown right through the men-at-arms. But it wasn't without cost.

To his right Jaume saw Persephone, Timaeos's sackbut, hurtle to the ground. Her breastbone threw up a bow-wave of dust and well-minced vegetation. Blood pulsed dark red from the lance broken-off through segmented gorget and cream-and-rust neck.

Timaeos flew over her neck. The giant Griego had presence of mind to cast his shield, which bore his device of a red lantern, away in midair. Then he tucked his armeted head and rolled.

The helmet was ripped away. Timaeos sprang to his feet as if nothing had happened. His bronze hair and beard blazed defiantly even in the feeble sun.

Ayaks rode toward him. He held out a hand to swing Timaeos aboard his morion Bogdan. But Timaeos waved him off.

“Go!” he roared. “Ride like Hell! I follow on foot!” And turning he smashed the head of a charging courser with his maul. The rider's neck broke with an audible crack as he was thrown free.

Jaume turned his attention forward again. He and Camellia were now plunging into the horde. Men and women burst beneath her feet like blood-filled bladders. Blood spattered Jaume like unceasing rain.

Somehow Jacques had forged forty meters ahead of his Captain-General. Now the Francés knight stood at bay on his white female sackbut Puretée. Hooting plangently, she reared, pawing air. Jacques slashed longsword at Crusaders clinging to his chain-and-leather reins.

Screaming, the hordelings swarmed up the sackbut's sides, climbing each other in their eagerness to come to grips with her rider. A woman jumped up behind Jacques and wrapped her arms around his armet. He hacked up and back with his shield. Its rim caved in the woman's left cheek. She fell away—but pulled the helmet off as she did.

Jaume urged Camellia to a two-legged run through the throng. For a moment a seethe of filthy bodies hid Jacques from his view. Then he saw his friend dragged from the saddle. Puretée spun squealing. Her tail knocked Crusaders broken and kicking through the air.

But the mob closed over Jacques as seamlessly as water over a pebble tossed in a pond, and almost as quickly. Hooting in panic and despair, his sackbut fled through the horde.

Desperately Jaume steered Camellia toward his fallen friend. As he approached the place where Jacques had vanished a woman jumped up, holding a white-armor encased leg above her head and screeching triumph. She was so drenched in blood and filth that Jaume couldn't tell whether she was nude or not beneath hair that hung matted to her thighs. He split her head in passage with his sword.

Weeping, Jaume drove on past. The unceasing squelch of bones and flesh at every step was like a gauntleted fist punching his soul. But the only hope he or any of his Companions had—to say nothing of the horse-mounted Ordinaries following them—was to
keep moving
.