That had been terrible enough, but in some ways, the open field battles had been even worse. The local crossbowmen had been both devilishly accurate and long-ranged, and only his men's superior armor and his archers' higher rate of fire had permitted the English to defeat them. Even the demon-jester had seemed dismayed, or as close to it as someone who never showed any discernible emotion could be, by the casualties his captive soldiers had sustained before they managed to break that planet to obedience. No doubt because of their implication for Sir George's ability to sustain his forces in the service of the demon-jester's guild.

It had probably been that dismay which accounted for the demon-jester's support of young Cheatham's suggestion that it ought to be possible to apply the same advantage in purchase to the English's bows. As a rule, the "Commander" seemed oddly uncomfortable whenever Sir George or one of his people suggested some small innovation in their equipment. He had no apparent problem with incremental improvements, like the substitution of new alloys in armor plate, or the better articulation of existing armor, but the introduction of new concepts clearly discomfited him. It wasn't as if the demon-jester disapproved of the suggestions. It was more as if the notion of finding newer and better ways to do things was foreign to his nature. That possibility seemed preposterous in light of the uncountable technological marvels and devices which surrounded him and were so much a part of his sense of utter superiority, yet the more Sir George had considered it, the more accurate it had seemed.

But whatever the demon-jester's attitude towards innovation might be, Sir George had been delighted by the consequences of Cheatham's inspiration. Computer had handled the actual design work, once the young archer had explained his idea to him, and despite a certain inevitable number of complaints that the old way was best, the bowmen had adopted the new weapons enthusiastically. The sheer number of new ideas and new devices to which they'd been subjected since their "rescue" undoubtedly had something to do with that, but the fact that it gave them even more range and power, and so increased their odds of survival and victory, explained even more of their enthusiasm. Each of them could still put twelve shafts in the air in a minute, but now they could hit picked, man-sized targets at very nearly three hundred paces. Their broadheaded arrows inflicted hideous wounds at any range, and their needle-pointed pile arrows could penetrate mail or even plate at pointblank ranges.

Against foes who were totally unarmored, like the natives of Shaakun or this world, that sort of fire produced a massacre, not a battle. The only true hand blows of today's entire affair had come when Sir George and his mounted men charged the broken rabble that had once been an army to complete its rout, and he grimaced at the thought of what that charge had cost.

Only two of his mounted men had been seriously wounded, and neither of them too badly for the Physician's healing arts to save them, but they'd lost five more priceless horses. All too few of their original mounts had survived. Satan was one of them, praise God, and the demon-jester had been given ample opportunity to recognize the validity of Sir George's explanation of how critical mounts were to the combat effectiveness of his troopers. If anything, the "Commander" was even more fanatical about protecting and nurturing the supply of horses than Seamus McNeely or Sir George himself. He'd even nagged the Physician to find better ways to protect them from the stresses of phase stasis and to breed and "clone" them. But unlike humans, horses took poorly to the long periods of sleep journeys between stars imposed, no matter what the Physician did. Nor did they reproduce well under such conditions, and whatever arts brought dead archers or men-at-arms back to life seemed less effective for them. The Physician was able to produce a small, steady trickle of new horses, each of which was physically mature when it was handed over to Seamus, but there was never enough time to train the replacements as they truly ought to have been before committing them to battle, and horses were bigger and more vulnerable targets than armored men. Despite occasional upswings, it seemed that there were fewer of them for every battle, and the time would come when there were none.

The thought did not please Sir George, and not simply because Satan had been with him for so long and borne him so well. Sir George was no fool. His grandfather had been the next best thing to a common man-at-arms before he won Warwick under Edward I, and neither his son nor his grandson had been allowed to forget his hard-bitten pragmatism. A professional soldier to his toenails, Sir George knew that a mounted charge against properly supported archers was madness. Well, against English archers, at any rate, he amended. True, the shock of a horsed charge remained all but irresistible if one could carry it home, but accomplishing that critical final stage was becoming more and more difficult. Or that, at least, had been the case on Earth. Although he'd never faced them, Sir George had heard of the pikemen produced in distant Switzerland, and he rather wished he had a few of them along. A pike wall, now, formed up between his archers and the enemy... that would put paid to any cavalry charge! There was no way to know what was happening back home, of course, but surely by now even the French and Italians must be discovering the cold, bitter truth that unsupported cavalry was no longer the queen of battle. He was only glad that so far he and his men had encountered no native army that could match the discipline and armament of the Swiss!

Yet for all that, he was a knight himself, and perhaps the proudest emblems of any knight were his spurs. The day when the horse finally did vanish forever from the field of battle would be a terrible one, and Sir George was thankful he would never live long enough to see it.

Or perhaps I will live long enough... now. Assuming I might ever see Earth again. Which I won't.

He snorted again and rose to his full height, stretching mightily, and then smiled at his squire. He'd had two others since Thomas Snellgrave's death, but both had since been promoted to knighthood in their own right, and neither of them had been as tall as the third. For all his own inches, Edward was bidding fair to overtop him by very nearly a full half foot once he reached his full growth. The young man stood beside him, still holding his helmet, and Sir George eyed him with unobtrusive speculation. That Edward was with him—yes, and Matilda, praise God and every saint in any calendar!—was one of the few things which made this endless purgatory endurable, yet he wondered at times how old his son truly was. He'd been almost thirteen when they sailed to join King Edward in France, but how long ago had that been?

With no way to answer that question, it was impossible to estimate his son's age. Outwardly, the young man looked to be perhaps eighteen years of age, but that was no more useful as a yardstick than his own apparent age would have been. It was simply one more mystery, yet another consequence of the extension of his troops' lifespans which had permitted the "Commander" to avoid wasting time on fresh voyages to Earth to catch still more of them. Not that voyages to Earth were the only way their masters could secure more manpower, the baron thought sourly.

He'd concluded long ago that only coincidence had caused the demon-jester to sweep up their womenfolk and children with them. Whatever else the small creature was, he had no true understanding of the humans under his command. No, perhaps that was unfair. He'd gained at least some understanding of them; it was simply that he had never and would never see them as anything more than animate property. He didn't even feel true contempt for them, for they weren't sufficiently important to waste contempt upon. They were exactly what he persisted to this day in calling them: barbarians and primitives. Valuable to his guild, but lesser life forms, to be used however their natural superiors found most advantageous.