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The true sun was half high and the Firestealer three hands above the horizon
when the scout mes-senger rode in. The legion was coming.
All of them? Rick asked. How are they formed?
They are all together, the scout reported. They come in two large groups.
The one on their left is slightly ahead of the other one.
And where is the lady Tylara?
As you commanded, she is retreating from them but keeping them in sight. She
will send messengers if they divide their force.
Excellent, Rick said. He turned to Drumold. Sound the battle horns.
The Tamaerthon hill people were obviously of Celtic origin, and Rick had
expected them to have bagpipes; but either their ancestors had been from a
group that didn t use them, or the art had been lost during the centuries on
Tran. Instead they employed a long, curled horn that looked some-thing like a
thin tuba. At
Drumold s wave, these sounded, and the camp followers began the rattle of
drums. The pikemen and archers ran to their weapons.
Rick climbed to the roof of the villa. It would be better for morale if he
were with the ranks, but he couldn t afford courageous gestures. More than one
battle had been lost because the commander didn t know what was happening to
all his forces. The staff officers he d chosen to keep with him didn t like
being up there either, but he d stressed the impor-tance of communications
until at least a few of them understood how vitally he d need messengers whose
orders would be obeyed.
His view to the east was partly obscured by low hills, but from the vantage
point
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of the roof he could just see the scarlet and yellow pennants of his light
cavalry.
They had stopped at the brow of the hill and were looking at something beyond.
He tried to pick out Tylara, but the distance was too great. He felt a
momentary panic. Suppose she d been caught by the Romans? But there was no
point in worrying about that now.
The First Pikes were moving nicely into forma-tion, a rectangle 125 men wide
by
8 deep. The Swiss had formed their pikemen into precise square blocks, but he
had too broad a front to cover for that. As he watched, they grounded arms,
acting nearly in unison. That way they wouldn t be exhausted when the combat
began.
What looked like a forest of pikes came up just in front of him as the two
thousand men of the Second presented pikes. The binoculars let him see
indi-vidual troopers. They looked nervous. Well, so was he. Here came the
archers to take their places among the checkerboard of sharpened stakes that
marked their position. Their ranks were nowhere near as geometrical as the
pikemen. They weren t supposed to be. If those heavy cavalrymen ever got among
the archers to melee in hand-to-hand fight-ing, the battle would be over.
He shifted back to the horizon. His light cavalry were facing him now, and
riding like hell. He raised the binoculars in time to see the first of the
enemy come over the low hills twelve hundred meters away.
The Romans trotted toward them like an armored flood. Tylara had no difficulty
getting the light cavalry force to simulate panic. The problem would have been
to hold them once the Roman horses broke into a trot. It looked as if nothing
could stop that steel tide.
They rode hard, past the First and Second Pikes and down the cleared lanes
leading to the villa. Their horses were lathered before they were inside their
own lines. Tylara had deliberately stayed in front, and now when she reined
in, the others halted. Some of them might not have. One cavalry group Rick
called it a
platoon, a strange word would go on south beyond the slave bar-racks to warn
of any Roman attempt to circle the woods and attack from behind, but Rick had
stressed the importance of halting first to demon-strate that they weren t
really running away.
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Once again she marveled at the details he thought of. Nothing seemed too
trivial for him to worry about. Any good chieftain inspected his clan s
weapons, but
Rick looked at their boots and sleeping cloaks as well. Who would have thought
of bring-ing spades? Or grindstones? Or of having special details to bring in
wood for cooking fires? Without him they d be lost. He was right to stay on
the roof of the villa instead of at the forefront of the clans. He wasn t
afraid of battle, no matter what some of the young warriors said.
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