Disclaimer: Star Trek (plus all its intellectual property) is owned by Paramount. No infringement intended.
Beta'd by Zero Credibility, to whom all due thanks!
8. Reed
He followed his master back to the tent in a daze.
This was NOT happening. It was NOT real. But he couldn't wake up. And he had no means of communicating with the Enterprise. If Trip were here he'd probably be able to codge up some kind of communications device from a crossbow and three hairs out of a horse's arse, but he himself wasn't that kind of a genius. Trip, presumably, was still on board ship. But where the hell WAS the ship?
What had happened to him? What should he do?
'Get out of here and run like hell,' was the first thought that came into his mind. Surely it wouldn't count as desertion if he did? He was a Starfleet officer, for God's sake, not a fifteenth-century esquire or whatever he was masquerading as right now. But where was there to run to, anyway? And desertion was desertion, he reminded himself harshly, no matter what uniform you were wearing at the time...
'Join the side that's going to win,' was the next, a suggestion that came in low and furtive and sly, underneath his guard. He thrust it away with some savagery. Reeds didn't turn their coats.
'Warn somebody,' was the next. Oh, yes. Like anybody's going to believe me on that one. 'I come from the future and by the way, you're all going to die.' And on the off chance – the incredibly unlikely off chance – that he was believed, he would change the course of history. Pity knew what the consequences of that would be. He daren't risk it.
He emerged from his mental paralysis to find that his fingers were methodically pushing the cords through the eyelets of Lord Lovell's arming doublet. The material was thick and heavy; it was meant to act as a buffer between the steel plates of the armour and the body. Its unavoidable disadvantage was that it acted like a super-efficient thermal layer, trapping heat and absorbing sweat. After a very few minutes it would be like a personal sauna bath.
He glanced up, very briefly, at his master's face. It was set in grim lines that made him look a lot older than his years. "Are you going to hear Mass, s – my lord?" he asked, for want of anything else to say.
Lovell shook his head. "Like master, like hound."
Ralf, who had just removed the pendant, stopped for an instant with an indrawn breath as though about to speak. Then he shook his head and went to replace the precious thing in one of the smaller coffers. Their master now wore no jewellery except a small boar badge of what looked like some kind of cheap alloy, pinned on to the front of his shirt.
They armed Lord Lovell in silence. Malcolm watched his fellow carefully and simply copied whatever he did with the opposite side of the body; the armour built up piece by piece, one shaped plate strapped to another so that they overlapped, fitting together with astonishing ingenuity. Francis stood without comment, watching them patiently, though at a guess without much attention.
At last he was finished, a man of metal who gleamed in the candlelight. The last thing to be placed on him was a silk tabard that slipped on over all, embroidered with a complex and extremely colourful heraldic design in four quarters. Only his head was still bare. "I'll be in the king's tent. Get them to meet me there when they bring the horses up."
"I'll bring your helm to you, my lord." Ralf seemed to be having difficulty with his speech.
Lovell's face achieved a smile that didn't get anywhere near the eyes. "I won't last long in the field if you forget it." He nodded at them both and left the tent. His tread was heavy, of course, but he moved easily enough. They heard his footsteps merge into the hubbub outside.
"If he had the sense he was born with he'd turn and run." Ralf pushed the flat of his hand across his face. "And if I had it I'd already be running."
"It's that bad?" Habits being strong, Malcolm had been picking up the discarded clothing, intending to lay it tidily on the cot since he didn't know where else to put it, but at this he paused, his stomach muscles clenching.
The other man spat, as though he had a bad taste in his mouth. "We'll be lucky to last till midday."
"And ... the king knows that?"
"'Course he knows that. Just doesn't know what else he can do, if you ask me. He won't run. He's screwed himself up to a fight now, and he'll fight anything that comes at him. He's a brave little bastard, I'll give him that."
Malcolm said nothing. He was fairly sure that this kind of talk about a reigning monarch was at least bordering on treason in this day and age, but Ralf was obviously eaten with grief and fear.
But if talk like this was rife through the army, Richard was riding out to battle on a horse that was already hamstrung.
"Well. Time we got our own stuff on. But we'd better visit the latrines first, I suppose. I know you've got a finicky gut at the best of times."
The prospect of being on the losing side in the upcoming battle had indeed had a rather unpleasant effect on the lieutenant's intestines, but the experience of using a fifteenth-century army latrine opened a whole new world to his incredulous and disgusted gaze. Fortunately it was a very ill-lit one, which hid most of the detail. It was probably just as well that his stomach was empty, because the stench was enough to make you heave. When he woke up – whenever that would be, because this just had to be a nightmare – he was going to demand, at gunpoint if necessary, to spend at least 24 hours in decon so that even his subconscious would be reassured that he was shot of the delusionary microbes.
As he walked back to the tent afterwards, a glum and now morose Ralf at his side, Malcolm went desperately through his options again. They were diminishing fast. The first thin fingers of light were prying at the eastern sky and the camp was now seething with activity. If he was going to run, he'd better make it quick, while the confusion would give him the best chance of escape unseen.
Reeds don't run. Hell and blast and damnation. He couldn't do it. That left the option of trying to survive.
Hell, you're supposed to be a tactical officer. Come up with some bloody tactics then! he told himself with mingled fury and despair. He thought of the broadsword with its nicks not quite smoothed out enough to be invisible. Presumably he'd be given something to fight with, but fighting with a weapon like that was an art in itself, and he'd be lucky if he could even parry the first blow aimed at him. He'd never trained with any of the other weapons he'd seen there either. And presumably, too, he'd be on horseback during the battle. He'd been taught to ride a horse, but a canter for pleasure on a well-behaved hack was one thing. Fighting for your life on a beast that was trained to be a weapon in its own right was another entirely. That's if he actually had a war-horse as such. Did esquires have war-horses? At a guess they were valuable. Perhaps he'd only have a cart-horse or something. At any rate, whatever it was, with him in the saddle its prospects were grim. If it had any sense of self-preservation at all it would ditch him at the earliest available opportunity and head for the nearest horizon.
It transpired that they had some armour, though not of anything like the quality that their master had worn. Some of it was plainly rather old, but it had been well cared for and neatly mended where necessary. Here and there one or two very minor missing pieces had been replaced with what was apparently leather, boiled to almost-solidity. A couple of anonymous boys appeared in response to Ralf's shout and began strapping them into it with nervous hands.
It didn't take as long, because there wasn't as much of it. Malcolm's arming doublet appeared to be made of straw; the coarse fibres of it scratched through his thin shirt. Nevertheless it appeared to be very effective in the sauna department. Even before the plates were being settled against his lower legs he had already started to swelter.
Both he and Ralf had blue tabards. Each bore the padlock badge embroidered on it.
They fastened a scabbard to his belt. There was a sword in it. It didn't seem even remotely real that sooner or later he was going to have to use it in anger. He wanted to draw it now and at least get a feel for the weight of it in his hand, but in this confined space he'd probably end up beheading somebody by accident.
There was a helmet too. Moving awkwardly with the weight of steel and leather on him, he picked it up and tried it on. It was like wearing a padded saucepan with a slit in it. His field of vision was hopelessly restricted. God help him, his case would have been desperate enough with perfect vision and mobility, he thought. In this lot he was a walking tin of tuna just waiting for somebody keen to make a sandwich.
"Don't put that on yet!" Ralf's voice reached him, muffled. "You'll see enough of the inside of it before we're through!"
"Right." He took it off and breathed gratefully of unrestricted air. He'd better enjoy it while he could get it.
At that moment there was yelling from outside, together with the noise of horses at close proximity.
"Time to go." His companion's face was so pale that the freckles stood out on it, disguised only by the sunburn. At a guess his own wasn't any better.
This is not happening. THIS IS NOT HAPPENING. Phlox, for God's sake wake me up NOW!
His legs took him out through the tent flap.
There were three horses outside. The biggest, a sand-coloured beast from what he could see of it, was like a four-legged tank in its steel armour. Two men were hanging on to its bridle. Beneath the steel blinkers covering its face, the nearest eye glared at him.
He gave it a very wide berth.
Ralf took the nearest of the remaining two, which was a sort of weird pink-brown colour and tried to bite a chunk out of his shoulder. Luckily the groom holding it managed to drag its head away in time.
So the other one, by default, was his.
He walked around to it. It was dark brown with white markings on its legs. Its black mane and tail were knotted up tightly, and like Ralf's it had leather body-armour. He caught its eye and promised retribution if it tried anything. It stared defiantly back at him and laid its ears flat.
Luckily people around him apparently knew that he'd need some kind of a hand getting on board. Ordinarily he'd have mounted with no trouble at all, but between the weight of his armour and the shifting of his fractious horse he had no chance of that. They held the horse and the saddle steady and pushed him unceremoniously up between the high front and back. Then the reins were thrust into his hands and somehow he was riding after Ralf and Lord Lovell's war-horse towards the chaos in front of the king's tent, where other mounts were being brought up.
There was an axe strapped to the saddle, just behind his right leg. He might have a better chance with that than the sword. It probably wouldn't take quite the same amount of skill to wield. He glanced around and saw a man-at-arms hurrying out of their tent, carrying the three helmets and other assorted items of weaponry, presumably spares; he had a horse too, and would obviously follow on.
Dawn was spreading fast. Looking up, he saw that the sky was clear except for a few stripes of cirrus pink-stained across the pale apricot radiance in the east. A few of the brightest stars were still hanging on in the west; he was finding it increasingly hard to remember that he'd probably visited a fair few of them. For a hallucination, this certainly had the knife-edge of absolute reality. He was beginning to fear – however illogical it might be – that it actually was reality.
They pulled up at a respectful distance. From the right the sounds of mass movement indicated that the infantry was already on the move. Here and there the banners above them were starting to show vestiges of colour as the movement made them stir; a number of waiting horsemen on the left were carrying other banners, but there wasn't a breath of air to lift them and the heavy cloth hung in motionless folds.
After about five minutes the tent flap lifted and the king and his companions emerged. A gasp went up, quickly stifled; Richard was already wearing his helmet, and around the brow of it was a gold coronet. It would draw the fire of every archer in the enemy's ranks, and not even the costliest armour would withstand the punch of a steel-headed shaft sent from a longbow at anything like even moderate range.
The king knew that, of course. His face under the raised visor was set and pale in the thin torchlight, doggedly determined. All or nothing. He was putting himself out there in the full blaze of royalty, for the judgement of God.
He's a brave little bastard, I'll give him that. Malcolm found that he had a lump in his throat.
The small group dispersed, heading for their horses. Francis pushed through the crowd, heading for his own. Willing hands helped him to mount; he turned briefly to look at his esquires, nodded, and took up his reins.
The cavalcade formed up and left the sea of tents, heading in the same direction as what seemed like an endless column of marching men. From somewhere behind them the dawn quiet was split by the chime of a church bell.
They rode through a silent countryside. Their passage lifted a cloud of dust, and as they passed a thicket hedge the smell of wild honeysuckle briefly drifted out, sweetening the air. There was not much conversation among the infantry. Now and again a face would glance up as the horsemen passed, but for the most part the only sound was the smother of marching feet and the thudding of hooves hitting hard-packed earth.
They were obviously heading for the only piece of high ground in the area, a hillock that humped up out of the plain and lay black against the sky in front of them. Possession of it would give them an enormous tactical advantage in a pitched battle; the enemy would have to fight uphill. It obviously wasn't an inferior grasp of tactics that would lose this fight for the king.
As they reached the foot of the rising ground, the cavalry detached itself from the infantry column and rode for the crest. The riders around him and a forest of banners obscured some of the view, but the light spilling into the sky was enough now to show the landscape quite clearly.
In front of the hill, three huge blocks of armed men were assembling. Off to the right and rear, at some distance, was another very large body of men, motionless; the reserves, at a guess. Off to the right and front was a third, also motionless. Opposite this one on the left was a fourth. Away in the distance between them a haze of dust showed that the enemy was approaching.
They were walking into the perfect trap. The king had four armies under his control, placed to crush inwards like a mailed fist. How in the name of hell was he going to lose?
Once a traitor, always a traitor. The words itched and burned.
Well, he wasn't going to be one of the traitors today.
All reviews and comments received with gratitude!
