Piotr stared at him incredulously. "Retreat from a force smaller than our own? Knights and men-at-arms of the Association retreat from half-trained peons? And retreat when better than a third of them are women? Of course not! They think they can shoot at the spearmen in safety: but I have more than enough lancers to overrun them. Sound the advance."

The knight sighed and crossed himself, and spoke to the trumpeter. Piotr grinned at the scene bisected by the nasal bar of his helmet.

The kilties got overconfident, he thought. I have them pinned here out in the open, and without protection they're easy meat for a charge. Father will be pleased – and more pleased that the credit goes to the Stavarovs of Barony Chehalis, not to my lord Renfrew, Count of Odell.

Juniper Mackenzie gripped the rope between locked boots and in her gloved hands and stepped off the branch of the tree, letting Earth pull her homeward. The downward swoop took seconds, leaving her palms tingling-warm beneath the leather when she landed. Cynthia Carson was steadying the rope and waited tensely for the word; her face was a Gorgon mask of black and gold and scarlet behind the gauze mask of the war cloak, painted with the wolf-head emblem of her totem. Most of the younger Clan warriors painted their faces before a fight these days, despite Sam's grumbles that it reminded him too much of football hooligans back home:

"They're moving," Juniper said grimly. "Pass the word to be ready." "We're ready, Lady of the Clan," Cynthia Carson. "Ready and eager." She looked it; Cynthia was a tall, fair woman of twenty-eight who'd lost father and brother to the Protector's men in skirmish and raid over the years since the Change, and her blue eyes were as cold and grim as any wolf's. She followed Juniper forward, with the signaler and banner-bearer. All around them the First Levy were rising and shedding their war cloaks, taking their bows in their hands but waiting on one knee until the signal came. Juniper pressed forward to the edge of the woods, using her own bow to press brush aside, ignoring the body of the Protectorate scout who lay with his horse, both bristling with feathered shafts. There they are:

A hundred lancers were a terrifying sight, and they looked a lot more imposing from ground level than from fifty feet up. Big men on big horses, steel and tossing plumes and blazons and the twinkling sharp-honed menace of the lanceheads above the colorful flutter of pennants. The long block of horsemen walked out from the roadway and aimed itself at the hundred bowman who'd come out of the woods to lure them. Then the curled brass trumpets screamed and a long ripple went through the men-at-arms as they lifted the butts of their lances free of the scabbards and brought them to rest on the toes of their right boots, slanting slightly forward. In the same instant the horses took their first pace, stepping high, heads tossing beneath the spiked steel chamfrons. The big kite-shaped shields came to the front as the riders pulled on the leather guige straps that hung around their necks and slid their left arms into the loops. All the shields carried the Lidless Eye; most also had their own or their liege-lords' blazons quartered with it, the heraldry of knight and baron and their vassals and paid men. There was an arrogant splendor to the sight, one that roused hate and grudging respect at the same time. There was no fear in those young men, even though they knew they might be going to the Dread Lord in the next handful of minutes. They'd been told they were the lords of human kind, and they believed it.

Well, like them I might be heading for the Summerlands today, she told herself. And I've got less to worry about when I set to discussing my deeds with the Guides. Wait. Breathe in, breathe out. Ground and center, ground and center.

Even across double bowshot the beginnings of a trot from four hundred hooves could be felt through the earth, a thuttering through the soles of her feet. The lancers would try to hit a hand gallop just at extreme bowshot, to get them through the killing ground as fast as possible. Against a hundred archers, it would work. Against eight hundred:

She filled her lungs and then shouted, her singer's voice filling the tense, waiting stillness of the woods: "At them, Mackenzies!"

With the word she dashed forward, the banner-bearer and signaler beside her. The Horns-and-Moon flag of the Clan went up, a breeze from the south streaming the green-and-silver silk out ahead of her, and the horn made its dunting huuuu-huuuu-huuuu. Seven hundred archers followed her, sprinting forward into their three-deep harrow formation, a staggered row that left each a clear shot to the front. As they halted a shaft went to the cord of every bow, and every cord was drawn to the ear. Behind them the bagpipers set up their catamount screeching, and the Lambeg drums sounded with a boom-boom-boom that rumbled like thunder through the trees.

The lancers were at full gallop now, but their line checked and wavered as they saw the trap sprung. Beside her she could hear Cynthia chanting under her breath.

"We are the point-we are the edge We are the wolves that Hecate fed!"

And the words ran up and down the line, louder and louder-.

"We are the point-we are the edge We are the wolves that Hecate fed!"

"On! On!" Piotr shouted, and thumped the trumpeter riding beside him with the flat of his shield to get the man's attention. They were at the point of a blunt wedge now, centered on the flag. "On! Charge!"

The trumpet sounded, without even a preliminary blat or squeak despite the ghastly surprise ahead. The lancers booted their horses back into a full gallop after that moment's involuntary check, realizing from years in the saddle that no matter how deadly the peril ahead was, stopping would be worse.

You couldn't stop a charging destrier quickly.

Doubly so with another man-at-arms galloping boot-to-boot on either side and another right behind you; there was just too much mass and momentum involved. Trying to do a full-stop in a tight formation of a hundred lances was asking for a disaster of collisions and fallen mounts and men crushed under ton-weights of rolling barded horse. It would take the better part of a hundred yards to halt the formation safely, and more time to turn around without blocking and fouling each other; at best they'd be stalled for a full minute under the deadly steel-and-cedarwood hail of the arrows. If they could just cover that two hundred yards ahead, the lightly armed archers would be helpless before their ironclad violence at close range. Piotr braced his feet in the stirrups and brought his shield up, covering the whole left side of his body between neck and knee; his lance jutted out over the chamfron spike that pounded up and down with the destrier's speed. Clods of earth flew head-high as the steel-shod hooves tore open the damp sod, the pennants fluttered with a snapping crackle, and a great shout went up:

"Haro!"

The air whistled "We are the point-we are the edge We are the wolves that Hecate fed!"

The foremost knight passed the split wand planted at precisely two hundred and fifty yards-planted with the inner white side towards the woods and the dark, concealing bark towards the enemy. Up and down the line the bow-captains' voices broke into the chant, and it turned into a wordless shrieking snarl of fury as they shouted: "Let the gray geese fly! Wholly together- loose!"

Juniper let the string roll off the three gloved drawing fingers of her right hand. Eight hundred bowstrings struck the smooth hard leather of the bracers in a simultaneous crackle like some monstrous whip falling on rock. Over it rose the high, keening whistle of eight hundred shafts as they rose at a forty-five degree angle into the air, paused for an instant, then turned and plunged downward nearly as fast as they'd left the bows. Her hand was by her ear as she released; it went back to the quiver and snatched out a shaft, her movements smooth and economical with long practice. Even so several of the First Levy were ahead of her; sixteen hundred more of the bodkin-pointed lengths of cedar were in the air before the first struck, and more followed at a rate of two hundred each second. It would take the Protector's men-at-arms less than a minute to cross the beaten ground between them and the Mackenzie archers, but in that time ten thousand arrows would be aimed at one hundred men and horses.