Warriors already on the practice ground lit the air with the blue c-c-crack! of their arcs as Maharg led his group onto it.
The field outside the old walls of Frekka was roughly square and nearly five hundred meters on a side. More than sufficient room remained for six more men to hold a mock duel.
"All right," said the marshal. "Get kitted up and we'll start."
The boundary was marked by posts—and by the stumps which remained when a warrior tested his arc against a post. Eight slaves carried each battlesuit. The coffle set down its burdens gratefully at the margin of the field.
"It'll take a moment," Hansen said. "I need to talk with my troops, here."
He gave a terse, friendly smile to Culbreth and Lee, the warriors Maharg had picked for Hansen as they strode past the levies whom the marshal had already examined. The levies glared back at Hansen with flat-eyed insolence.
Culbreth turned deliberately to Maharg. "I came here," he said, "in response to the royal levy, to serve the king. I didn't come to take orders from some underling from Peace Rock, of all places."
Hansen's face smiled. His muscles quivered, and his vision blurred in a moment of red haze while he waited for Maharg to deal with the problem.
It was Maharg's problem. Until it became Nils Hansen's.
The marshal had chosen two professionals for his own team. They got into their armor without wasting motion, then ran preliminary checks of the sensors and displays.
"Yes, indeed, champion," Maharg said in a tone that might not have been mocking at all. "You came here on your lord's oath to serve the king and the king's officers . . . and I'm sure King Prandia is as grateful as I am that your lord is no oathbreaker."
He put his hand gently on Culbreth's shoulder. The levy was no taller than Hansen and of a slimmer build, but he did not flinch at the marshal's touch. Culbreth's muscles were firm; his wrists bore the calluses of a man who had spent long hours inside a battlesuit.
" 'Serve' doesn't mean you rush off to die in single combat against Colimore," Maharg said, lowering his hand.
His voice had changed, hardened. Hansen's mind nodded approval because the other tone had been mocking. You might break a man by sarcasm, but that wouldn't make him a soldier; and Culbreth had too much potential to waste unless—
Hansen wiped his palms against his thighs.
—he had to be wasted.
"Look—" said Culbreth. The other levy, Lee, pretended to examine the exterior of his battlesuit.
The sky was gray-white. The clouds were too thin to mean rain, but they turned the sun into a milky blur which could not warm the wind gusting across the field.
"Your oath—and your lord's oath," Maharg said, his voice crackling like the arc which the professional beside him tested at that moment, "means that you obey orders. King Prandia's orders, my orders—anybody he or I put over you."
"Look—"
"Otherwise you're an oathbreaker!" the marshal said. "Otherwise you'll get better men killed. And I—"
"I—" said Culbreth, white-faced.
"—will have you executed now as an oathbreaker and leave your body for the dogs!"
"Marshal," said Nils Hansen.
Everyone stared at him. He heard his own voice from a distance.
"He's a man I want at my side," Hansen said. "We'll do fine. You don't need an army of people who don't have any balls."
Maharg stared at him. Hansen could almost hear the marshal wondering whether this was a clever variation on an interrogation technique: bonding the subject to a gentle questioner after the harsh member of the team had threatened—
Or whether Hansen really was trying to prevent Culbreth from making the wrong response and being executed as an example to the whole army.
Hansen grinned. He wasn't sure himself.
Maharg relaxed. "Yeah," he said. "Get into your armor. I've got work to do."
"Wait a sec," Hansen said, holding out his hands, palm down, to Lee and Culbreth to get their attention. "You both know the basics of team tactics? Everybody strikes at the target the leader designates. And only that target."
The levies nodded warily.
That was about as much as you could hope for. The warriors from scattered holdings might be as experienced as those of the Royal Household in individual combat, but—
There was no honor in group evolutions, and group training didn't help a man survive the lethal personal duels that occurred in the absence of war. Warriors would practice as teams only if a hard-fisted leader insisted that they do so. The few days before the army set off for Colimore weren't going to make the levies expert in the tactics that would multiply their effectiveness in war.
Though Duke Colimore's warriors weren't likely to be a damned bit better.
"Right," said Hansen. He grimaced unintentionally.
This was going to be a ratfuck, and the campaign that followed was going to be a bigger ratfuck . . . but that's what wars were, individual ratfucks multiplied by the number of combatants.
"I'm going to lead," he continued briskly. Maharg had already slammed his battlesuit closed. "They'll try to split us up, then concentrate to take us one at a time. Block cuts aimed at you, but don't strike till I mark the target."
Culbreth gave Hansen a tight grin and nodded. Lee looked blank, but he might do all right, as well as could be expected.
"If you don't get moving, Hansen," said the marshal coldly, "I'm going to see how long you last without armor."
Hansen made a chopping gesture with both hands. "Remember," he said to his men, "it's practice. And don't lose your cool, because that's the main thing these bastards want."
An arc snapped high from Maharg's right palm.
Hansen slid quickly into his battlesuit. It was quite possible the marshal would prod one of the levies if they delayed further. Even at practice power, the arc weapon would sear through flesh as easily as its blue lambency danced in the air.
When Hansen closed the frontal plate over him, his battlesuit switched on. The screens gave him a visual display both brighter and more clear than that of his unaided eyes.
The practice battle had attracted spectators besides the band of slaves who carried the battlesuits. Most of the warriors on the field interrupted their training sessions to watch. A surprising number of others—civilians and off-duty warriors alike—had come out of the city as well.
All right, they'd get something to look at.
"Suit, secure commo for Team White," Hansen ordered. His suit's artificial intelligence set up a lock-out channel for Hansen, Culbreth, and Lee—perhaps the first time the other levies had even heard of such a thing, though the capacity was built into every battlesuit. The AI also tagged the three of them with a white carat on the team's vision screens so that the friendly elements could identify one another instantly.
"Ready?" demanded Maharg. He used his external speaker rather than spread-frequency radio to communicate. Arcs quivered from both his gauntlets, crossing, without quite intersecting in front of his thorax.
Hansen stood in the center of his team with Culbreth to his right. No time now to talk.
"Practice," Hansen ordered his AI. "Cut." A low-power arc spluttered from Hansen's right gauntlet, extending and then condensing to a higher flux density as he scissored his thumb and forefinger.
Maharg and his two professionals stepped forward in unison.
The teams were well matched in terms of equipment. The marshal himself wore a suit of royal quality, the creation of a master smith on a long series of good days. Its overall finish was flawless, though Hansen was confident that the armor he'd taken from the Solfygg rover could equal it in terms of offense and protection.
The other four battlesuits were clustered on the boundary between third class and fourth—better than 90% of the suits in the royal army, and inferior only by contrast to the nearly unique armor worn by the team leaders. Hansen doubted that there would be any advantage to his team if Culbreth and Lee swapped equipment with Maharg's two subordinates.
But equipment doesn't fight wars: men do. And these professionals were very fucking good.
"Mark!" Hansen shouted to his AI with his command field centered on the professional fronting Culbreth.
The warrior's image pulsed red in Hansen's display and those of the other levies, but Maharg wasn't waiting for Hansen to drill his subordinates in the fine points of teamwork. Each of the professionals moved against his opposite number.
Maharg slashed at Hansen with his arc extended two meters from his glove. The weapon was too attenuated at that distance to endanger a royal suit even if Hansen hadn't parried the stroke with his own dense flux.
The arcs crossed with a dazzle. Sparks flew and the air itself fluoresced for the instant before Maharg's overloaded weapon died with a sputter. The marshal stepped backward to relight it with a command.
Hansen's screen was set to a 120° wedge to his front. At the left margin of his vision, he saw Lee parry a stroke skillfully and step forward to chop at his opponent in turn. The professional locked arcs with him.
Maharg cut sideways. His weapon took Lee waist high while all the power of the levy's battlesuit was concentrated on beating down the arc of the warrior in front of him.
Circuit breakers tripped. Lee toppled, his battlesuit as cold and dead as a steel coffin. Had the combat been real instead of an exercise, the marshal's arc would lave cut Lee and his armor into a pair of smoldering pieces.
"Strike, Culbreth!" Hansen shouted as he cut at the warrior he'd marked on the displays.
There wasn't any good thinking about the ones who didn't make it through, not while the fighting was going on. Not afterward either, but Hansen did, he always did.
The professional backpedaled and parried, but Hansen's arc licked out three meters to soak up the power available to the lesser suit in a blaze of protective sparks. The man started to fall because his servo motors couldn't react at the expected speed, and Culbreth slashed across his ankles to trip the suit off-line.
One down from either side, but there wasn't any time to think about it because Maharg, an instant too late to save his subordinate, cut at the peak of Hansen's helmet. Hansen barely blocked the stroke with an arc from his left gauntlet.
The roaring thrum of the hostile weapon vibrated through Hansen's battlesuit. His displays broke into snow. He kicked, overcoming the inertia of drained servo motors with the strength of his thigh muscles.
Hansen felt but could not hear the clang of his boot striking something; Maharg's suit had been as near overload as his opponent's. The marshal staggered backward and broke the contact.
Hansen's vision display cleared in time to show Culbreth stepping in to stab Maharg—
Not now! Maharg was free!
—with a straight thrust to the belly which Maharg parried. The other professional cut Culbreth down while the levy focused, mind and battlesuit, like a gadfly eager to die so long as it can drink blood first.
Culbreth didn't get his drink of blood this time, but his depowered suit was still falling toward bruising contact with the ground when Hansen dropped the professional who had gotten between Hansen and the marshal.
Hansen stepped onto rather than over the professional and cut at his remaining opponent. This time it was Hansen's arc within a hundred millimeters before the marshal was able to block it.
Their suits crashed together. The physical shock was lost in the electrical roar that bathed both men. All the power the battlesuits sucked from the Matrix snarled out again through the locked right gauntlets as arc cut arc.
"Poplin and Branch!" the marshal shouted through the deafening static. "Reset and join me! You others, you stay where you are."
"Bastard!" Hansen wheezed and lurched sideways to break the contact.
One of Maharg's subordinates was already on his feet with his weapon lighted. The other warrior was getting up also.
Hansen's right arm was in an oven. As good as his battlesuit was, the amount of power being channeled through the gauntlet heated the current pathways and soaked into the flesh of the man inside.
The bastard Maharg was determined to win. He was going to shut down Hansen's suit even if that meant changing the rules mid-way.
It wasn't dangerous to lose a practice round. You bounced around like the pea in a whistle when your suit hit the ground—bruises, pressure cuts; maybe a bloody nose.
Not really dangerous.
Hansen flashed the arc from his left gauntlet in a long stroke toward the marshal's face, then waved the other arc toward the subordinate on his right as if ready to parry an attack from that side.
Maharg laughed. The sound from his external speaker had a metallic cruelty. He strode in. His two fellows were a step behind to either side.
Hansen flicked the left-hand arc high, clamped it off, and lunged with all his suit's power toward the marshal's left knee.
Three arcs hit him simultaneously, overloading even Hansen's armor in a fingersnap.
And it didn't matter a damn, because of what Hansen's display showed him in the last instant before it went black: his thrust had gotten home. Maharg was dropping also, as sure as a barrel-rider in a waterfall.
Hansen hit face-down. His nose and forehead rapped the vision display. His eyes watered, but he didn't think he was bleeding anywhere from the impact.
He would have liked to rest where he lay, dragging air into his blazing lungs, but the heat cooking his arm was too much to bear.
"Reset," Hansen said to switch the battlesuit live.
The display flooded Hansen's world with light. He wasn't interested in that or even in getting to his feet. He used the suit's servos to roll him over on his back; then he unlatched the frontal plate and shut the power off again.
The outside air was cold and comforting, though it made him shiver uncontrollably. Hansen dragged both his arms from the battlesuit. He tried to lever his body clear and felt his muscles quiver uselessly under the strain.
"You there!" he shouted toward the slaves goggling at the edge of the field.
Hell, his voice was cracking also. He felt like death, like meat through a grinder.
"Come fucking help me out of this coffin!"
Lee and Culbreth had already taken off their battlesuits. They reached Hansen's side before the slaves did and supported him while he pulled his legs from the armor.
Maharg lay on his side. He opened his suit without having to power it up again. His subordinates stepped close, then backed away from the marshal when they saw his face.
"Smart guy," Maharg muttered. He'd cut his lip on a tooth when his suit hit the ground.
Hansen offered him a hand, though god only knew whether Hansen wouldn't just fall back down if the marshal put any weight on him. He hadn't hurt like this since . . .
Since the last time he'd been in action, and nothing had mattered except whether he nailed the ones he was after.
"Naw, that's all right," Maharg rasped. He set his palms on the ground to support his upper body. His biceps were trembling.
"Are you okay, sir?" asked one of his subordinates. Both of them were still suited up.
"Oh, I'm bloody wonderful," the marshal grunted. "Will you get out of that damned armor before you step on somebody?"
He looked at Hansen. "That's a pretty good battlesuit, buddy," he said; paused; and added, "And you're not so bad yourself."
Hansen managed to smile. "When I don't hurt all over," he said, "I'll thank you for the compliment."
Maharg swore and got to his feet in a series of determined movements that didn't quite overbalance and make him fall again.
"Think you can lead the left wing with all the levies when we meet Colimore, Hansen?" he asked.
Hansen nodded. "Yeah," he said. "I think so."
"Then I guess you got the job," the marshal said, as nonchalantly as if they had discussed the time till sunset. His eyes swept the crowd, then focused on Hansen again. "Where did you say you served before you came to Peace Rock, buddy?" he asked.
"I didn't say," said Hansen.
Maharg nodded. "Yeah," he agreed. "That's what I remembered too."
He laughed. "Come on," he said. "We've got three days to train these levies well enough to keep them alive."