Not that there were any men in this world. Not born of it, at any rate. Yet another army of not-men, too tall, too thin, and with too many limbs, had drawn up in a ragged line well beyond bowshot of the ship. This variety of not-man possessed three arms and three legs each, and although they clearly knew how to work iron, they were but little better armed or armored than the natives of Shaakun who had been the English's very first victims in the demon-jester's service. True, they carried large wicker shields and spears, and most wore leather helmets, but aside from that, they were unarmored, and only a very few bore any weapon other than their spears or quivers of javelins. He saw maces and a handful of swords, but no decent pikes or other true polearms, and none of them were mounted. Square placards on poles rose above them at ragged intervals—banners, he realized—and he wondered how long they'd been gathered.

He knew rather less about this world and these opponents than he had become accustomed to knowing. For some reason, the demon-jester had chosen to exercise a much more direct and total control over the planning of this conquest. Computer had briefed Sir George upon the types of weaponry he would face, discussed the basics of the local clan structures, and, as always, allowed him to actually share their crude, direct tactics through the still-daunting office of the "neural interface." But for all of that, the baron was singularly uninformed about what the demon-jester's guild wanted of this world or how the battle he was about to fight would help obtain its goal.

For that matter, the demon-jester hadn't even deigned to tell him why this particular army of aliens had gathered here. Clearly they were there to fight, but had they come for an open battle, or simply to besiege the lander? Small though the craft was compared to the mountainous ship he'd first seen hovering motionless in a storm-sick sky, it was still bigger than any mobile object these natives had ever seen before, and he barked a bitter, humorless laugh. Surely the thing was huge enough to be mistaken for a castle, albeit the most oddly formed one any man—or not-man—could ever imagine!

Whatever had brought them hither, a stir went through them as the side of the ship opened abruptly. Spears were shaken, a handful of javelins were hurled, although the range was too great for that to be anything more than a gesture, and he had no need of magically enhanced hearing to recognize the sound of defiance. It was a thready, piping sound beside the surf roar a human army might have raised, but it carried the ugly undertone of hate.

Strange, he thought. How can I be so certain it's hate I hear? These aren't men, after all. For all I know, they might be shouting cries of joyous welcome! He grimaced at his own fanciful thought. Of course it's hate. How could it be else when our masters have brought us here to break them into well-behaved cattle?

But this was no time to be thinking such thoughts. And even if it had been, his nagging inner honesty pointed out yet again, subduing these not-men wasn't so terribly different from what he'd planned to do to Frenchmen who, whatever their other faults, at least went about on a mere two legs, not three, and were fellow Christians and (provisionally) human.

He scanned them one more time, confirming Computer's briefing on their equipment and numbers, and snorted much as Satan had. As had become almost routine, especially as the demon-jester gained confidence in his men's invincibility, the English were outnumbered by at least six-to-one, and the wart-faces would do nothing to change those odds. Their job was to ensure that none of this world's not-men eluded Sir George's men and entered the ship through the open hold. Which wasn't going to happen.

Sir George drew a deep breath, feeling the not-men's hatred and sensing the confidence they felt in their superior numbers.

Pity the poor bastards, he thought, then slammed the visor of his bascinet, drew his sword, and pressed with his knees to send Satan trotting forward.

It hadn't really been a battle, Sir George reflected afterward, tossing his helmet to Edward and shoving back his chain mail coif as he dismounted beside one of the mobile fountains. The merry chuckle of the water splashing in the wide catcher basin made a grotesque background for the wailing whines and whimpers coming from the enemy's wounded, and even after all this time, the baron had never become hardened to those sounds. But at least there were few moans from his own wounded. Partly because there'd been so few of them, compared to the natives' casualties, but mostly because the hovering air cars had already picked up most of his injured. And all of the handful of dead, as well, he thought, and wondered if many of them would stay dead this time. Despite everything he and his troopers had seen and experienced, even Sir George still found it a bit... unsettling to see a man who'd taken a lance through the chest sit down to supper with him.

He put the thought aside yet again. It was far easier than it had been the first few times. The baron was still somewhat amused by his realization of just how much Computer's insistence that Physician's magic was, in fact, no more than a matter of huge advancement in matters surgical had helped him adjust to the reality. The "Commander" might have explained exactly the same thing, in his arrogant way, time and again, but somehow Sir George found it easier to believe what Computer told him. Perhaps that was because he had never yet caught Computer in an error, or perhaps it was because of his natural suspicion of anything the demon-jester chose to say. Intellectually, he felt no doubt that if the demon-jester commanded Computer to lie to him, Computer would obey, yet he remained oddly confident that Computer would not mislead him without specific orders to do so.

He was also honest enough to admit to himself that he was too grateful to have those men back to question the agency of their resurrection, or healing, or whatever it was Physician did to restore them to life. Any decent field commander did anything he could to hold down his casualties, if only to preserve the efficiency of his fighting force, but Sir George had even more reason to do so than most. Over the years of battle and bloodshed, he'd become ever more aware that his men were all he had. In a sense, they were all the men who would ever exist in the universe—or in Sir George's universe, at least—and that made every one of them even more precious than they would have been had he and they ever reached Normandy.

He snorted, shook himself, and thrust his head into the fountain. The icy water was a welcome shock, washing away the sweat, and he drank deeply before he finally raised his head at last to draw a gasping breath of relief. His right arm ached wearily, but it had been more butcher's work than sword work at the end. These natives, like so many, many others he'd faced in the demon-jester's service, had never imagined anything like an English bowman. That much had been obvious. Even the Scots at Halidon Hill—or the Thoolaas in that first dreadful slaughter on Shaakun—had shown more caution than these natives, and not even French knights would have pressed on so stubbornly and stupidly into such a blizzard of arrows.

But the natives of this nameless world had.

Sir George sighed and turned from the fountain, surrendering his place to Rolf Grayhame, as he surveyed the field.

There had been even more of the natives than he'd first thought, not that it had mattered in the end. Even his archers' bows had been subtly improved upon over the years. It had been a bright young lad by the name of William Cheatham who'd first hit upon the notion of using what amounted to block and tackle to increase the weight of the bow a man could pull. Young Cheatham had gotten the idea from watching a similar arrangement being used in action by crossbowmen on one of the many other worlds the English had conquered. That one, Sir George recalled bitterly, had been the most costly of all of their conquests. Twenty-three of his men and fifty precious horses had died and stayed that way before its natives had finally submitted to the demon-jester's demands. Even with the accustomed support of local allies with scores of their own to settle, the English had been forced to introduce the trebuchet, the balista, the mouse, Greek fire, and the siege tower, and Sir George's skin still crawled when he recalled hideous, underground hand-to-hand fights in subterranean galleries as mine and counter-mine clashed beneath the defenders' fortifications.