Free A Meeting at Corvallis by S. M. Stirling Page A

line of pikes stayed solid, the lancers couldn’t get anywhere near you infantry types. And when they got crowded and stalled, they got tangled up bad. A lot of them would have died before they could disengage—which, incidentally, they’ll have to practice more. Charging’s easy; retreating without getting your ass reamed is a lot more difficult. So—it’s official. The infantry wins today!”
    Everyone cheered. The younger A-listers looked a bit sullen as they did, but their fighting morale didn’t need bolstering; if anything, they tended to be a little reckless and cocky. It took serious effort and native talent to get onto the A-list, and the fact that their families were usually the ruling class of the Outfit, more or less, didn’t hurt in the self-esteem sweepstakes either. An occasional ass-whupping by the horny-handed sons and daughters of toil did them good, in his opinion; that was one reason he’d been fighting on foot in today’s match.
    â€œCertainly, Lord Bear,” Astrid said again. “But once some gaps opened up, we could get in past the pikepoints.”
    Havel nodded vigorously, then removed his helmet and handed it to a military apprentice—a teenaged aspirant to A-Lister status—and ran his hands over his bowl-cut hair. That was straight and coarse and still crow black in his late thirties, a legacy of his Anishinabe-Ojibwa grandmother. The high cheekbones and slanted set to his gray eyes might have been from her, or from the Karelian Finns who made up most of the rest of his ancestry; the sharp-cut features were startlingly handsome in a harsh, masculine way, emphasized by the long white scar that ran from the corner of his left eye and across his forehead. He stood just under six feet, and his lean frame moved with a leopard’s easy grace under fifty pounds of armor and padding.
    â€œYeah, good point,” he said to his sister-in-law.
    He gave the militia a glare, and they shuffled uneasily—which produced an alarming volume of clanks and clinks among two hundred people in metal protective gear.
    â€œThis field’s pretty level; if you can’t advance over it without breaking front, what’s going to happen on a battlefield, maybe with grapevines or fences, and people shooting at you? Or if you have to do something more complicated than pushing straight ahead? You let a pike wall get ragged, and the Protector’s knights will be all over you like flies on cowshit. One-on-one, they’ll slaughter you. Keep drilling until the formation’s always tight, and you slaughter them . It’s as simple as that. Understood?”
    â€œYes, Lord Bear!”
    â€œI can’t hear you.”
    â€œYes, Lord Bear!”
    â€œAll right, that’s enough for today. Fall in, and we’ll see if the barbeque’s ready.”
    That brought more cheers, and more cheerful ones; the padding around the blades of weapons was stripped off and tossed into a light cart, and everyone wiped their faces, scraped off the worst of the mud and straightened their gear. The apprentice brought him his horse, Gustav; he swung into the saddle easily enough, despite the weight of hauberk and weapons. The infantry company formed up on the roadway that led westward from this stretch of pasture; an officer gave a shouted pikepoints…up! and fall in! and the long shafts rose, like an ordered bare forest. The footmen went first, as the victors of the contest, swinging off with a good marching step; the A-listers followed along, looking fairly glum at first.
    Except for Astrid, and the young man riding by her side. Alleyne Loring wore different gear, a complete set of jointed steel plate topped by a visored sallet helm, what Havel had thought of as King Arthur armor when he was a kid, the type beloved of Victorian illustrators. The Pre-Raphaelite look was emphasized by the fog that clung to hollows and treetops round about, making a