The southern parts of the Crestel Reondir² in the Teran heartland were all amber plains of wheat and hops.
The light worked differently here. It seemed to daub everything with extra edges of lit gold.
Go Vamp—go Vamp—Eathel whispered as he stood in his saddle. Vampest, his warhorse, his massive thoroughbred destrier, flew past the shuffling men in the army.
As he rode by the men in their rows, he even swung his hip and locked it so that he leaned on one stirrup while counterbalancing with his other leg on Vampest’s starboard side.
Eathel intended the jaunty motion to take the weight off the tender leg that had just begun to itch and fill at the edges with scar.
Even now it was tightly bandaged; but no longer did it pain him. It had been a week since he had collapsed on a stretcher, and his personal surgeon had been attending his leg every day since.
But as he stood like that, he appeared to the men to saunter across the planes and address the very wind with auctorocity.
The men cheered him. He did look quite heroic if he did say so himself.
And not too bad a horseman either, especially when you
He rocked and twitched a little bit when the terrain shifted under Vampest.
He wavered in his upright stance, but still hadn't bungled his trick too horribly in front of the men.
Still keeping himself raised in the saddle, he moved his hips into a galloping stance and delicately tapped Vampest’s sides, just enough to increase the animal’s speed.
Echobella galloped as if her legs were condensed into a zephyr.
Vampest’s gallop was the instant coruscation of lightning, splayed in a heartbeat across the firmament.
Upon his warhorse, Eathel was not on a beast that heaved breath and shed heat; he was in flight upon an ominous shadow cast by a thick storm cloud.
A GOLDEN HAWK DIPPED SUDDENLY from its lofty altitude. It dove violently, falling like a stone off a cliff. Then Eathel’s own world lurched skyward as Vampest leapt off the grassy plain. Both of them rose suddenly into the air.
Eathel had wanted to see if that daring raptor would catch its prey. But his destrier Vampest spotted a furrow where Eathel wasn’t looking. The quick-thinking horse accordingly jumped, jolting his rider ever-so-slightly off balance.
Eathel recovered and Vampest snorted amid the heavy breaths that powered his gallop. Vamp was telling Eathel to take into account all his surroundings, always. After all, the horse might not see the next one.
“Sorry Vamp,” said Eathel. He patted the beautiful animal’s thick neck.
Vamp shone black. Eathel had not known darkness could be so bright until he first set eyes upon the foal who would come to be known as Vampest.
His coat was the color of the night's reflection on a still, quiet pool of water.
Vampest ran at close to 40 mph now, Eathel reckoned. He was exercising Vampest for the battle ahead. Echo, Eathel always said, was his only love; but when the swords came out, when a cavalry charge had to be mounted, then the Duchy of Tera would bring forth the key factor in their military machine. The comprehensive lethality and endless utility of their mammoth warhorses, the Teran destriers.
Another obstacle came up and Vampest leapt. A gasp of air caught and released in Eathel’s heart as he rode Vamp like a wave back down onto the other side of the jump.
Eathel was paying attention now. He rode elegantly and sat like a gentleman of the ars martia. A soldier noble from the romances.
Vampest was through and through a Teran destrier; he came from a lineage beginning with the war horse of the second Duke of Tera, Eathel’s great-grandfather.
Vampest had been trained at the Ducal stables in the sprawling, shambolic Teran capital, far north of here.
In the midst of the grime of Xiatep Tera, the city abided a silent island of sand, straw and husbandry. It was whence the best horses in the land came. And Eathel rode one now.
Eathel rode alongside his army on his way from the rear to the avant.
The host under him were mainly marching in a column a few men across on a wide road. They were heading west in pursuit of two fleeing Baronial forces.
The land around them was apportioned into thin rows of wheat fields. They were owned by small freeholders. Each hold was separated by a rough timber fence.
Eathel knew he had to take Vamp on a hurdling gallop over them. If you were going to let Vamp stretch his legs, Eathel might as well let his obsidian steed stretch his colossal legs all the way out.
Every now and then a new fence would rush up. Vampest would clear it easily. His jump so casual it was as if the horse merely strode across the chest-high pickets.
THE LARGE MAN FOR WHOM EATHEL had been squire trotted his mount up beside the young lord.
The veteran soldier’s surcoat was a dark charcoal black. It had a chalky white ‘X’ on the front. The extenders of the ‘X’ went up to his shoulders and down to split across his hip. There was no ‘X’ on the back, however; this design was the accountrement of Haldric ad Seanë’s knightly order.
Eathel had slowed and was panting just as Vamp was.
Haldric’s large brown destrier, Mako, nuzzled at Vampest as the rider and horse settled in alongside him.
Of course Haldric was on the side where the last remnants of a bandage could be seen wrapped around his thigh.
“I heard you got caught up in a mild scuffle, my lord,” said Haldric.
“Nothing you didn't teach me how to handle,” said Eathel.
“I'm sure it was not,” said Haldric.
Eathel had been dreading facing this man, and glad that his former mentor had been occupied elsewhere in the army these past few days.
Eathel had learned so much from this man Haldric. Eathel now had lately made mistakes his mentor had very early taught him to avoid.
Do not lose your temper.
Do not act rashly.
Be in control of yourself.
All Eathel could hear in his head were the overlapping sounds of many Haldrics, like a stern choir in his mind, exhorting him to be temperate and wise.
Haldric looked over at Eathel, then he looked down at the stained cloth still encircling his prodigal apprentice’s limb. Though Eathel was his Lord, and was as fine an apprentice is any knight could hope for, it was still hard for Haldric to really see Eathel as a full knight. Not yet, at any rate. Too many of the young Earl’s blunders remained in Haldric’s memory.
“It got rough,” said Eathel.
“Hmm,” said Haldric.
“What do you want me to say?” asked Eathel. “Did not you yourself tell me that sometimes you fight for honor, and you die; and sometimes you fight dirty when you have to win?”
“That's right, I did, yes, lord,” said Haldric. A playful ripple curled in his lips.
The older man grabbed a bit of wet noka3 out of his pocket. He lodged a great glop of it into his lips.
Haldric offered some to Eathel, who took a small pinch. Eathel found wet noka and its attendant expectoration repugnant.
But sometimes, on campaign, one did what one had to do to feel good for a moment. His other mentor, the one who taught him all the things about war Haldric had not, Hejyman Altamani, had taught him that.
He still had Hejyman’s gaudy old dagger enscabbarded at his belt. It was but a half foot away from the gash it had lately occupied in the meat of his leg.
Eathel shoved the damp leaves up into his jaw and soon felt the pleasant hum of the noka.
“Hard to believe this precious stuff made its way from your camp, at the Barons’,” said Eathel.
Haldric leaned over on his horse and spat out a bit of noxious slime. Eathel hated wet noka. He hated spitting it, but he did what he had to do to quell the gnawing in his brain that begged him for it.
“That my noka store is complete does quite strain credulity,” said Haldric. “But this army is not come all the way from your father’s forward base. We were among the western guard.”4
Eathel looked sidelong at him. That meant they had failed to hold the flank in the first place.
“Yes,” said Haldric, “we’re here to fix the very problem we were supposed to prevent. Your father is furious.”
Haldric continued the dire report: “The baronial forces broke our line where I was in the smaller contingent meant to cut off their supply runs overland. Now you are to lead this endeavor, and I am to help you.”
There was something between him. Haldric felt it. Eathel’s shame at having almost died by his own folly. The fear that catalyzed the impulse. The embarrassment of having been so foolish to chase down a hardened mercenary, completely alone.
“My Lord, you ran off before your own men could even tell you that our orders were to move west en masse,” said Haldric with a pained look.
Eathel looked ahead. Haldric was disappointed. Eathel felt his doleful eyes on him, but Eathel was in no particular mood to return their look.
Haldric sighed and decided to change the key of this sullen melody.
“They half broke through,” Haldric continued, “for they were a larger force than your father’s commanders anticipated. This was not just a detachment moving west from the Barons; it was itself a whole army. They moved quickly out of the west through its weaker blockade. They not to the north, for that is where the main force of your father is.
“So we believe there are two forces that have become separated, both currently heading west. One of them, though farther away, is a prize indeed,” Haldric said.
“How so?” asked Eathel.
“The Barons knew they needed their supply lines open, and they couldn't be short of funds when they made it to Kerrand and thence the Sea Tyrennian. They needed to either buy their way into existing supply lines or prepay and engage merchants on the terms of the market. They were not going to be in a position to negotiate a any favorable agreements with the traders. The Barons are in a panic to buy food now, and especially merchants.”
“They’re desperate,” said Eathel. “And they had to put together a lot of money very quickly.”
“Precisely, lord. The leaders among the Barons banked their specie in a common fund administered by committee vote,” said Haldric. “They were acting more in unison this time than in the previous baronial war.”
“But that also means their funds are accumulated, centralized, and concentrated, said Eathel. “Think—we cut off the river works that are their main link to their food.”
“That is, only if we could reach them in time,” Haldric said. “Their lead on us now is too wide.”
Both were quiet for a moment. But Eathel could feel Serixiphina get to work on it.
He wasn't sure what she'd come up with. Sera might not have a plan. Any force they could ride that far that fast would be too lean to take on a force of even a few hundred.
She hadn’t bothered even to tease him much since the dream—a dream that, the further away he got from it, seemed less and less real.
Because the attack wasn’t viable, Haldric, as he so often did, took advantage of an opening for levity.
“What’s at stake is no less than their steak,” Haldric winked at Eathel.
The older man was given completely over to the kind of laughs that devolved into groans.
“So this caravan would be a tough nut to crack,” offered Eathel.
Haldric had to laugh at that.
Eathel could feel Serixiphina rolling her eyes.
Haldric, the old war dog, still could not abandon the prospect of gaining so much in their enemies resources. Perhaps the largest plunder even he had seen in his long career.
“It’s a shipment of a lot of treasure in a small space. I alert you, lord, to this only, not as a recommendation—there are perils,” said Haldric.
“I’m not sure anything is possible, my lord,” said Haldric, “but you should know the lay of the land. The cavalry that could get there would be tired from the ride over,”
“with the guards of the target fit from regular strong marches,” finished Eathel.
Haldric nodded. His former squire may be capricious, but shrewd.
“We saw how many those guards are,” said Haldric. “They were a surprisingly fast coach for their bulk, and their rearguard were numerous.
“The coach itself is well armored,” Haldric continued. “I would say it takes rather after a heavier carobalista. But I haven’t seen one quite its like. It withstood a shot by trebuchet, at least of a kind.
“The men and horses around it burned,” said Haldric in a casual way, “but the vehicle itself—the Baronials hitched a train of draft horses back up to the carobalista’s evener before we could intercept,”
“You managed to hit it with an artillery piece?” interrupted Eathel. He had never heard of such a thing. Even if it was as slow a trundling wagon as Haldric said, being able to hit a moving target—he’d never heard of anything like that.
“Not exactly, lord. We hit near it,” said Haldric. “But your man Ballant is quite an enginer.”
Eathel remembered he had poached the talented Ballant, a master artillery enginer from a battalion specializing in bringing down castle walls.
“Ballant built you such a war engine?” asked Eathel. “I myself sent him back to the capital.”
“No, lord, he was not there; but it was his design,” said Haldric. “He made it and submitted it to the war group at the Tandrat, and it recently has been approved by your father. This was its first test.”
“And this engine is capable of hitting a target—not standing still? One in motion?" asked Eathel.
“Within reason, lord,” said Haldric. “The battery is quite ingenious. Your Ballant has put a shot mechanism as strong as any ballista on a wheel that can be turned by three men—or two strong ones—by way of handles standing on either side, attached to the wheel.
“The wheel lies flat upon the ground,” Haldric went on. “It can turn in this way in a complete circuit and continuously. Though it's smaller, it can be relatively quickly moved if the edges of the circle are coated with the right oil.”
The right kind of oil. Eathel shook his head and smiled to himself.
Haldric as Seanë, gentleman knight, was infamous for delighting in every tiny detail of anything that came into his experience. Haldric had to know and understand how everything worked, and what made it work well.
“What do they call it?” asked Eathel.
“It was originally called ‘Ballant’s Turner,’” said Haldric, “but the men shortened it to ‘Ballancer,’ and it stuck. Few know of it outside of a small crew of artillery. It was used for the first time there at the western blockade of the Barons.”
“There’s an argument about the plan, and there’s an argument against it, my lord,” said Haldric.
He would need to think quickly.
But he knew Sera was already working out the details.