Shadow's Son by Shirley Meier, S.M. Stirling and Karen Wehrstein ...

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Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html She gazed across the fire at Chevenga. His brows rose. "You're worried I might do the same with Kurkas." She felt a strained smile form on her own lips, confirming. Peyepallo of Hyerne was there; she snorted. "Kill him and be done; that's the best way. Death ends all disputes." Chevenga signed chalk to the Hyerne, more in acknowledgement than agreement, but addressed Megan. "I can't spare my tormentor, for one reason: his position. It's political necessity." There was a round of affirmative noises. "But have you decidedhow you're going to kill him, lad?" That was his shadow-father, Esora-e, grinning cruelly; she'd heard tales of their quarrels. "No." Just that.You never answer such serious questions so shortly , Megan thought. "Then vengeance doesn't obsess you," said someone else. "No one need worry." Another Yeoli asked whether he would feel at Kurkas's mercy forever if someone else killed him, which he waved off. Then a Lakan—the general, Megan guessed by the elaborateness of his dress and the length of his hair-earrings, Arzaktaj—spoke. "We've all heard the tales, of what he did to you,Shaikakdan . It's not natural for a man, even a kind one, who is going to have in his mercy one who has done to him what Kurkas did to you, to have no thought at all of what he plans to do to him." Chevenga held up the wine-skin for quiet. "Listen," he said, in a voice that could only have oeen heard in total silence. "However it goes, I will not come away feeling the victim. Believe me." He raised his wine-skin for punctuation, and laughter rocked the fire. "Am I a barbarian?" he went on. "I look at myself in the mirror and ask, because I'd be a fool not to. War makes barbarians of all of us; the pain and fear we all suffer turns to anger and hate. I will say what my father told me: in war, barbarities are neither to do for their own sake, nor not to do because they are barbarities, only to do when necessary. At the same time, one must never forget they are barbarities, else how can one remember how to conduct oneself in peacetime?" "I picked a flower on the mountain, when I was a child. 'You killed it,' he said. 'Here, so high, where they take twenty years to grow back…' I felt awful. His point was, whatever you do, you must always know what it is you do, no matter how much pain that brings. That pain is the price of power…" He went on in that vein, while Megan waited for a straight answer.A snake in the grass, Chevenga. You usually chew things over with these people, now you're hiding behind philosophy . In truth, she'd never heard him get so preachy. It was increasingly irritating. Of course, in a day or two, when it was over, her oath would be fulfilled and he would release her; then she would do whatever she had to, to trace the fates of Shkai'ra, and Lixand.Your problem, Gold-bottom , she thought.And Kurkas's. Go with Koru . She stood on a hill overlooking Finpollendias, and scanned the ranged armies with Shkai'ra's far-lookers. The lines faced each other waiting for the order to charge, like black caterpillars with tens of
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html thousands of legs, standards poking upwards like spines, spearpoints and lanceheads winking like innumerable fireflies. As many Arkans as Alliance, but a good three-quarters were boys and old men; Megan could imagine the faces under the helmets, wrinkled or childish. Only some of them had armor. Nothing moved in the thousand meters of open space between the forces, land that had been manicured garden before war came to the inviolate heart of the Empire; it was dreamlike, seeing the armies arrayed among lawns and flowers and clipped trees. The buzzing noise of two hundred thousand voices was like distant heavy surf. The Lakans were on the left flank, with their banner of a fire-horse on black, the dark-faced knights wearing animal crests on their helmets. Backed by the Enchians with their two overlapping diamonds balanced on the one point, infantry next to them, the Schvait with their black bear on yellow and all the division standards; all the motley mercenary flags and figurines. The Yeolis with town standards— Where's the blue and green? I don't see it, that's strange. Chevenga can't be taking today off. The few Yeoli horse and the mercenary cavalry on the far right, with their lance-butts resting on the toes of their boots;Sovee . She would be carrying the Slaughterer's standard—everyone had steadfastly refused to let the unit be renamed, until Shkai'ra's corpse was brought in—and the Minztan saber. Everybody stood waiting; it seemed all the world stood waiting. She wanted to worry at the skin around her claws but kept the far-lookers steady.What are we waiting for ? Then from straight up she heard tight cloth flapping, like kites, and a distant A-niah voice. She looked, expecting to see a single-wing, and swore to herself.Koru, my Lady Goddess. Ho-o-o-o-ly shit . The sky was full of them. There had to be a thousand. Black, blue, green, in a pattern like one huge wing, or bird, with torches, each one leaving a trail of smoke. The one at the tip of the formation, the bird's head, was blue and green with the mountain and stars, the Yeoli standard in wing shape.No, Chevenga isn't taking today off . They were out of arrow-range but not out of hearing; she heard his cracking voice yell "Sing!" Then a creepy off-pitch shrilling, like nails on slate, tore out of a thousand throats and bellies. She swung the lookers back to the Arkans. Their helms were all turned to the sky, some even dropping their weapons; the neat boxes and lines of their formations rippled. When the wings were right over them, and just starting to drop for the cliff-edge behind them, the Alliance gongs crashed, "charge." Like a wave cresting, cavalry lances lowered into place, misty sun sparking off the tips, the horses starting at a walk/fast walk/trot/canter, a crescendo like thunder. Behind them the infantry started forward at a measured trot, fifty thousand strong, an earthquake sound. A howl shook the field, exultant, from the Alliance troops, despairing from the Arkan. Flights of arrows preceded the charge, thick enough to cast a moving shadow like a cloud; the crossbows replied, flatter trajectories and visible only because the sun shone on the occasional head or cock-feather. The long whistling ended in a sound like manyfold hail on a metal plate, as the heads struck steel; the duller sound of points driving home in flesh was lost in the half-kilometer of distance. The Arkan cavalry had gotten up to speed, those were the professionals; where they met the Lakan chivalry the impact threw broken lance-shafts twenty meters into the air, and horses pin-wheeled head-over-heels. Enchians and Moghiur rode around their flank, shooting point-blank with their horn-backed bows. The Arkan shieldwall stood fast for a moment, sending a ripple like a wave through the sea down the Alliance line; archers were running behind the pikes, loosing a continuous rain over the long polearms. The kilometer-long front bristled like a hedgehog with linked shafts, and swayed back and forth; the
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people around for camouflage, and t
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Und now I vind dose two—Celestial
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wounded only in the carts on march,
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