“All right. I won’t have you worrying about me when you should be directing the battle.” She sat proudly in the ambulance. The escorting cavalry saluted. Cornet Blair mounted with a flourish, proud to be chosen as protector of his colonel’s fiancee.
“And we’ll see the chaplain when the battle’s ended,” MacKinnie promised. “Ride out, Blair.”
“Sir.” Ambulance and escort rode away in a thin cloud of dust and MacKinnie gave his attention to the Haven forces below. In an hour their advance units appeared. They weren’t surprised to meet resistance at Lechfeld and fell back to wait for the rest of the column.
The Haven army deployed skirmishers, then formed a main battle line for attack, their artillery moving forward at the gallop. Trumpet calls rang across plowed fields as Haven’s last army prepared for a set piece battle.
It worried Nathan. Haven had better soldiers than that! They’d walked into a classic military trap, and they hadn’t even put out guards to their flanks and rear! But MacKinnie’s hard-riding scouts, their horses lathered with flecks of white foam, had circled the enemy. They had seen nothing. There was no significant reinforcements, no support at all for the forces moving so blindly into MacKinnie’s trap. Haven was doomed.
Why? MacKinnie wondered. It hardly mattered. Perhaps they had planned some clever counter-coup, but there was nothing, nothing at all that they or anyone could do now …
The Orleans Dragoons took the field within minutes of the time MacKinnie had set for them. They advanced and dug in, closing off the Haven column’s escape route, forming a solid anvil against which the charging Wolves would crush their enemy, and now, now it was time! “Mount ’em up, Hal! Move ’em out! Fox and Dragon troops will charge those batteries on the right flank. The rest dismount at five hundred meters and advance on foot. We’ve got them, Hal, we’ve beaten everything Haven can put into the field!”
The Wolves charged down the hill, whooping like South Continent barbarians, while the youthful trumpeters blew every call in the book. It was done. The Wolves were in perfect position to roll up Haven’s flank — and death fell from the skies. A sleek black shape roared overhead and, as it passed, Lechfeld was turned into a blackened cinder.
And again, again that thing passed overhead, and blinding beams of light stabbed out to burn the Dragoons! Now it hovered over the battlefield, playing its deadly beams across MacKinnie’s army.
“Dismount! All troops fire on that thing! Troop Commanders, fire troops in volley! Trumpeter, orders to artillery! Where the hell are those field pieces? Gunners, get those goddam cannon in action!”
Somehow they’d done it. The black shape fell from the skies, settling hard into the cornfields, and when the gray-coated troops in the sky machine came out, the Wolves cut them down and howled in triumph!
Too late. Haven’s army was still intact. The Dragoons were dead or running. Lechfeld was gone, and the Wolves had taken terrible casualties. The Haven force wheeled to face right, and for the first time in his life Nathan MacKinnie had known defeat. When the trumpeters sounded recall it was the end of his career, and the end of everything else. Laura had been in Lechfeld …
“Colonel.” Stark took his commander by the elbow. “Colonel, it don’t do no good to think about it.”
“Uh?” The bright fields of Prince Samual’s World faded. Awkwardly he turned away from the battlements and let his hands relax. The knuckles were white. “Your pardon, Mary. I was — somewhere else. You’re right, let’s go join the revels.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
GRACE AND ABSOLUTION
Mary Graham watched the mad light fade from Nathan MacKinnie’s eyes. I know, she thought. I know what he saw. When Hal tells that story, it’s like being there.
MacKinnie’s voice came from the bottom of a well of emotion. Mary tried to smile reassuringly, but that was impossible.
What must it be like, she wondered. To feel that much for someone? And what was she like, that girl he was thinking about? Hal wouldn’t say much about her. I don’t even know her name. What was she like, to make a man like MacKinnie feel that way? I’ll never have that kind of devotion from anyone.
Have I that much to give?
Yes. I do. I’ve always been sure of that, that somewhere, somehow—
A little girl’s dream.
No. Not that at all. When I was little I thought of a handsome, rich lord and now, well, yes, I’ve usually thought of him, whoever he’ll be, as rich and handsome, but mostly he’ll be a man who’ll let me be more to him than my father ever let Mother be.
She stared up into the star-studded darkness. That tiny dot is my sun, she thought. One dot among thousands, tiny, insignificant, and yet it was my whole world for all my life until just last year—
A world she no longer cared for. She had resented the restrictions Haven society put on her, but that had been a formless resentment, almost unconscious. Now she knew better. There were other ways to live, other cultures on other worlds, worlds without end, worlds after worlds, and what was Prince Samual’s World, or anyone on it?
We are what we make ourselves. And we can change whole worlds. We’re doing that now. Isn’t it enough?
She had felt the magic touch of command, of knowing that others depended on her judgement. MacKinnie had won the battles, but without her cooks and supply wagons he couldn’t have taken the field. He’d known that, and he’d trusted her, trusted her with the lives of all his men, and his troopers were more important to him than his own life-
“Your turn to be in a blue daze,” Nathan said. “What we need is some company.”
She nodded and let Nathan and Hal lead her down the stairs to the streets below, but still the pensive mood pursued her. Do we need company? she wondered. Maybe we have too much already. Hal would be happy enough to go join the revels without us …
She almost laughed aloud. A year ago that thought would have shocked her. Or at least she would have pretended, even to herself, that it did. Properly brought up young ladies didn’t have any doubts about what was proper.
Proper young ladies had dull lives.
The streets were alive with people. Where there had formerly been beggars and empty shops there were shouting throngs drowning the bitterness of months of defeat in wine and ale. The barbarians were driven from the gates!
Those who hadn’t pawned their finery during the siege now wore it. Several pawnshops had been looted, so that many others were gaily dressed in bright woolens, silks, even cotton prints. A riot of color wove complex patterns through the streets. It seemed the entire city had turned out. Even the saffron-robed members of the Temple minor orders, the gray deacons, and the black-robed full priests joined in the revelry. Only MacKinnie’s on-duty pikemen held aloof, and many of them quaffed hastily offered beakers of wine and beer.
“Seems different without them Temple swordsmen,” Hal said. “I see the Temple people are already recruitin’ more to replace the ones we lost out on the field—”
“Yes.” MacKinnie would rather that subject were dropped.
“It was terrible,” Mary said. “Father Sumbavu and a thousand swordsmen killed after our victory … I can’t understand how it happened.”
“It always happens,” MacKinnie said. “There’s always a price.”
But what really did happen? she wondered. Had MacKinnie understood Sumbavu so well that he could deliberately use the priest to destroy the Temple army? That was a bit frightening. If he knew Sumbavu that well, how much does he know about me?
What if he did send Sumbavu and all his men out to die? Was there any other way to get control of the Temple? Probably not. Was it worth the price? That’s the real question. What are we doing here? What am I doing? From what I’ve seen I’d rather live in Imperial society than my own—