Chapter 21: The Battle of Argonne
Jubilee stood stock-still and stared.
King Richard's knights had stopped at the edge of a great bowl-shaped depression in the ground, a valley tucked in the Argonne hills. On this side of the valley, King Richard ruled; on the opposite side of the valley, Gallas ruled. The small town of Argonne, just behind the knights, had been largely deserted since the beginning of spring. The town folk knew the war would touch their borders, and they also knew that, with Gallas's fortress only a few days' ride away, the war would likely end right here outside their town. Most of the unnecessary merchants and town folk moved away, leaving only essential people; baker, armorer, and tavern-keeper; and of course the Lord of Argonne. Who was only too happy to vacate his own stone-walled house to allow the King and his advisors to move in, and take the money King Richard offered him to move to his winter estates some four days' travel to the south.
Richard took over the Lord's room, and his other advisors sorted themselves out as best they could. Only the king got a room of his own; everyone else shared with another man. The inn/tavern was filled to capacity, and the houses that had been deserted were rapidly claimed by the king's guard. A few select knights claimed the few cottages left, but there was not enough for everyone, and many of them camped on the fields in their tents as they had done while on campaign. Logan, as one of the King's trusted knights, could have taken a small shepherd's cottage for himself and Lee, but chose instead to give it to the camp followers so that the women would have a roof over their heads and not have to ply their 'trade' on the muddy ground. He and Lee slept in their tent.
It was well after dark when they reached Argonne, and too dark to see across the valley to Gallas's encampment, so they had simply taken rooms and settled in for the night. After they had eaten supper, Logan went to the Lord's keep to attend a conference between the King and the other knights while Jubilee sat in their tent and unpacked Logan's armour. She spent most of the night cleaning and shining the metal, and then oiling and cleaning the leather straps that held the armour (some of the more difficult pieces of it anyway) around Logan's body. The leather was stiff with dried sweat, and the stiffness would rub against his skin and tunic and be uncomfortable. A small distraction, but a distraction he couldn't afford. Once the straps were as supple as she could make them, she wrapped the armor up in his red and gold cloak, made sure the red and gold pennant was correctly affixed to the standard pole above Logan's own yellow and blue standard, then set all of their things aside and went to Vincet's tent to do the same for his armour.
Since the night he had caught her bathing and discovered her identity Vincet had taken an interest in her. Logan hadn't been adverse to his squire spending time in the other knight's company; in fact, he seemed relieved. Jubilee wasn't exactly sure why; when she'd asked him, he'd muttered something under his breath about 'having someone to help keep you out of trouble'. He hadn't offered any other information, and she hadn't asked again. Being around Vincet was nice. She didn't have to hide who she was around him, and it was nice having someone call her by her given name again. And, when she was around him, she could take off her breast band, which was becoming increasingly tight and uncomfortable. Vincet was interested in her; she knew that; but he was never less than courteous to her. He had never kissed her again, after that night; but he also made it clear that he was still available if she changed her mind. She smiled kindly, thanked him for his kind attentions, and declined his offers to accompany her to bed.
Now, in the bright morning sunlight, she helped Logan get his armor on. Her small hands could reach under the armour plates and tighten leather straps holding the breast and backplate together; could reach in and tighten gauntlets and vambraces once they were on his hands and arms, giving him the extra advantage of having snugly-fitting armour; and the supple leather straps and buckles curved around his body with no trace of stiffness. He saw Julian jerking his shoulders to ease the itch of his leather straps, and smiled grimly to himself.
He looked beside him, at Lee, who was buckling his own armour of hard, boiled leather, and at Vincet, who was watching Julian with the same amusement. Julian happened to glance up at them both at just that moment, and saw them sitting perfectly at ease in their saddles. He shot them a sour look, wheeled his horse, and headed off toward the far end of the field overlooking the valley. Logan grinned at Vincet. "Bet he wishes he'd been nicer," he said.
Vincet watched Julian's retreating back. "His loss," he said grimly, staring at the other knight's back. "I'm not worried."
Logan turned to Jubilee. "Squires are kept toward the back of the lines," he said. "You, I want at the very back. You're too small to be any real advantage, and you're just gonna end up gettin' hurt if you try anything stupid."
Hurt flashed in Lee's eyes, hurt and resentment. Vincet bit his lip at the look Lee was giving Logan. Logan saw it too. "Look, kid," Logan said gently. "I'm tryin' ta save yer life here. I don't want ya in harm's way. I don't want ya ta get hurt, or killed. I don't wanna haveta mourn ya. I don't wanna haveta break in a new squire. So stay outta harm's way, an' I'll see ya after the battle, okay?"
The boy still looked miffed, but he nodded and wheeled his horse, heading toward the back of the line. Logan watched him go. "Hope the kid never knows how much that hurt," Logan said grimly to Vincet as the two knights rode their horses forward to form ranks with the others. "Honestly, I'd rather keep him beside me, where I can keep an eye on him."
"He's better off in the back of the line with the others," Vincet told him. "Or better yet, back there with the camp followers. Lee doesn't belong on a battlefield. If it wasn't for that damn promise of vengeance he'd be in some peaceful village somewhere…" he bit his lip and spurred his horse forward. Logan stared at Vincet's back, wondering what the other knight knew about Lee that he didn't. He took a quick look back at the squires milling about at the rear of the field, and felt a strange prickle of misgiving stir the hairs at the back of his neck. This day was not going to go over well, he could feel it in his bones.
But he was one of the King's knights, and the King had ordered him into battle. There was no way he was going to shirk his duty. Logan rode forward to join the swelling ranks of knights.
King Richard sent his herald forward down the hill to the valley floor, with the King's standard over a white pennant. "Gallas!" the herald called, his voice carrying across the valley to Gallas's forces on the other side of the huge grassy bowl. "His Royal majesty King Richard is willing to overlook your previous aggression upon his lands if you turn and leave now, peacefully!"
There was an answering shout from the opposite lines. "King Gallas is willing to grant Richard the mercy of exile instead of death if he surrenders now and abdicates in favor of his Queen. Gallas will then marry Renee and they will unite both countries and rule."
Logan gasped. "Never!" his bellow carried across the field. "The Queen will never consent to marry Gallas!" His shout was taken up by the rest of the knights, all of whom were equally aghast at the idea of the usurper taking the throne.
An arrow shot from a longbow came arching up from the ranks of Gallas's troops, and hung suspended in the air for a moment before coming down, almost lazily. It buried itself in the chest of the King's Herald, and Richard's line watched in horror as the man crumpled in his saddle, then toppled over dead.
Logan stared too. It was a complete disregard for the rules of warfare. The herald had been under a white pennant, a sign of truce. Under the rules, a man under the white flag couldn't be killed.
A shout rose from the knights on Richard's side. "Foul!" they screamed. "Treachery! You disgrace the knighthood!"
Richard's voice boomed out across the field. Although the King wasn't trained to shout like heralds were, his voice was still clear enough to be heard by Gallas's people on the opposite rim of the valley. "He was under a flag of truce. You have shown yourself no true king, to violate rules as you have done. Attack, my knights!"
The front row of knights spurred their horses into a trot, and the next lines followed. Logan was in the third row of mounted knights; two other rows were behind him, and then came the line of squires and foot soldiers. He didn't spare a glance back; he just hoped the boy would obey him and stay back.
The front ranks sped up as their horses hit the valley floor, and almost at the same time King Gallas's forces hit the valley floor opposite them. Logan opened his mouth in a loud battle cry as he saw the other line of knights in the green and blue colors of King Gallas rushing toward them. He raised his sword, slung his shield down to his forearm, and braced for impact.
The two armies met in the middle of the valley with a thunderous crash of swords against shields and the screams of injured horses and men. Logan found himself facing a huge, burly man on a big black draft horse with heavy feathering around its hooves. The man might be big, but he was also stupid and not very fast. Logan feinted to one side, and even as the giant was turning to that side, Logan slid the point of his sword between the gap between the man's backplate and breastplate. The armour had been made for a much smaller man, and left the giant with big gaps where the armour didn't cover him. His face went blank with surprise, and he stared at the sword sprouting from his side before he fell out of his saddle. His momentum pulled the sword out of his side, and Logan wheeled his horse as he turned to face the man behind him. Out the corner of his eye he saw another man in blue and green come up behind him, but he grimly focused his attention on the man he was facing. The voice of the Weaponsmaster echoed in his head; If you worry about the man who hasn't gotten to you yet you're not going to survive the one in front of you. Good, sound advice. He watched his opponent carefully, looking for some flaw in the way the man handled his sword, and saw it. The shield was too heavy, and the shield arm was a little weak. When he raised his sword, his shield dropped a little.
Logan dropped his shield a little, leaving his throat unprotected. The man he was fighting saw the open throat, and raised his sword in what was supposed to be a killing slash that would take Logan's head off. It didn't turn out that way. Logan's sword smashed down on the rim of the other man's shield when it dropped, and a slight lean forward drove the blade into the man's throat. The man dropped both shield and sword, both hands coming up to the fountain of blood spouting from his almost completely severed neck. He dropped from his horse, dead before he hit the ground, and Logan turned to deal with another man.
At the back of the ranks, a few green- and blue-garbed men had gotten through, and were doing fierce battle with the squires. Jubilee dropped her reins, grabbed her horse with her knees, and prepared to do battle with the enemy knights who had come this far into King Richard's lines. There were four ranks of foot soldiers behind her, but the point to having mounted knights was to keep the footsoldiers from having to deal with the other enemies' mounted riders. A soldier on foot was no match for a man on horseback. A man on foot might be able to take one onrushing horse with his spear, but the horse right behind the first one would simply mow the foot soldier down before the man could pull his spear free of the dying horse.
The soldier she faced stared in surprise for a moment, then laughed and swept his shield in an arc, trying to sweep her off her horse. "Run home to your mother, little boy," the man said mockingly. "Is King Richard in such need of fighters that he must needs take children still suckling from their mother's tit?"
"I am no child!" Jubilee screamed at him, furious. She swung her sword, and felt it impact against the man's shield. The man's eyes widened, and he brought his sword up just in time to parry another blow from her sword. She traded blows for a time, doing her best to seem clumsy so he would become overconfident. And when he did, she ran him through, her sword finding the hole between his chest and his shoulder, and driving the point of her blade deep into his chest. She turned away, sickened by the sight of the blood on her blade, but had no time to brood over the man she'd just killed because here came another knight in green and blue, and she had to focus on him. This one noticed that her hands weren't gripping the reins, and smiled as he rode forward with his sword sweeping from side to side. She saw his intent clearly; he was going to sweep her from her saddle. It was something of a surprise to him, then, when her horse wheeled around at a touch from her knees, charged at the man, and her outstretched sword caught him neatly in the belly just below the bottom of his breastplate. He stared at her, looking surprised, and fell limply from his saddle with a groan. Dead? Or not? Certainly badly wounded.
She turned and saw another squire, Paul, in heated, pitched battle with another man in green. Riding over quickly, she joined the battle. The other man was good, faster than anyone Jubilee had seen, and Paul was already bleeding from a wound in his shoulder.
The other man might be fast, but he still only had the use of one arm. Jubilee nudged her horse in a circle and came up behind the man, and drove her sword into the back of the man's neck, bringing fast, instant death as she severed his spinal cord. He dropped like a lead weight from his saddle. She wheeled her horse away from the falling body, and as her horse danced aside, she saw the hilt of an ornate dagger in the man's belt. It was inscribed with the sigil of Gallas's kingdom; a great sea-serpent, worked in green enamel on a blue leather hilt with gold finials. It was too delicate, and too precious, to be on a battlefield. Jubilee dismounted, and pulled the dagger from the man's belt. It wasn't a regular dagger; it was a thin-bladed variety normally reserved for throwing. And the only reason a man would have a throwing dagger was…
Assassination.
She grabbed the dagger. "Assassins!" she shouted, pitching her voice high to carry over the sound of battle. "An assassin, trying to reach the king!" Up and down the line, the squires looked up at her, where she held the tiny throwing dagger up. "Hold the line! They must not get past us!" She vaulted back onto her horse, and kicked it into gear, racing halfway up the hill and partway around the side of the valley. On the far side of the valley, she had seen Gallas standing next to his standard-bearer. Drawing her bow from her back and quickly lashing the shining throwing dagger to it, she nocked the arrow to the bow, adjusted her draw to compensate for the weight of the dagger, and released.
The arrow shot straight and true, missing most of the fighting. She had been running at breakneck speed over the sloping ground, and was only a thousand paces away from Gallas when she loosed the arrow. Two of Gallas's bodyguards, seeing the lone rider coming at them with drawn bow, aimed their bows at her, but she ducked, wheeled her horse, and ran, leaving her arrow with the dagger strapped to it quivering in the ground inches from Gallas's knot of advisors. She watched a man pick it up, saw them pull the dagger free, and realized they knew what it meant; the assassin had failed. Gallas turned to his herald, and said something; a second later, the trumpet pealed the retreat for Gallas's forces. A cheer rang out from Richard's forces, and Jubilee let her sword and shield arms drop wearily. In the heat of battle, the weight hadn't seemed like much, but now that her adrenaline level was dropping off, she was exhausted. She turned and rode down to the valley floor, suddenly overwhelmed with concern for Logan. She had lost sight of him; where was he? Had he made it? There were a lot of bodies on the ground, more in green and blue than there were in red and gold…but she rode among the bodies anyway, looking into the faces of those on the ground.
A weak moan from somewhere off by her horse's front foot caught her attention, and she dropped her sword and shield, falling to her knees. "Sir Vincet!"
The knight lay on the ground, groaning. "Lee?" he said weakly, opening one eye. Jubilee reached for the fastenings of his helmet, releasing the straps and pulling it off. Underneath, he looked relatively unharmed, though his face was tight with pain. "Where are you hurt?"
"My…leg…" She reached down and unbuckled the metal shin plates, one of which had a hole through it. "What happened?"
She answered his question as she pulled the cloth of his red and gold uniform away from the wound and made a makeshift field dressing with strips torn from his cloak. "Gallas sent an assassin in the middle of the battle. Paul and I stopped him, and as he went down I saw the throwing dagger with Gallas's sigil on it in his belt. I took it, strapped it to an arrow, and rode a quarter of the way around the valley until I got close enough to shoot the arrow at his feet."
Vincet dropped back with a groan as she finished. "He figured his assassin didn't make it, and he decided he was going to call of the battle until he could regroup. Clever. Leave me, Lee; you've done enough for me. Go find Logan. The last time I saw him he was being beset by three of Gallas's knights, and was already wounded. Find him."
Jubilee leaned in. "Are you sure you're going to be all right?" she asked anxiously.
"Yeah. Go." Jubilee got up, and then on an impulse dropped back down to her knees and pressed her lips against his. "I'll see you later," she whispered, then vaulted onto her horse and rode off to find Logan. Vincet grinned and allowed his head to loll back on her shield, which she had propped under his head, and reached for her sword. He'd give it back to her later. A short sword was hard to replace on a battlefield of mostly full-sized swords.
Jubilee rode on, pausing only long enough to look into the faces of the men on the ground, growing increasingly worried when she didn't find Logan. Behind her, other knights began to gather up their wounded, but when she glanced back, Logan wasn't among them. He would have come to find her as soon as the battle was over, of that much she was certain.
It was only as she got to the end of the red and gold bodies that she happened to look up. Crossing the opposite side of the valley and making its way up the hill was a bay gelding ridden by a figure in red and gold; and behind that figure was another horse, a heavy-bodied black with a limp figure slung over its saddle. Only one knight had a black like that; Logan. And the bay…could be anyone, but from this distance looked like…Julian? She looked behind her, intending to call for another knight to help her, but stopped as she realized they were too far behind her to hear her. Jubilee paused for a moment, undecided, then ran after Logan without a second thought.