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

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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