The Dragon Revenant - Katharine Kerr [83]
“And he’s here now?”
“He is, and when he arrived in Aberwyn, he had an awful lot of hard coin for an exile. I’m wondering if someone gave it to him, like, to do a bit of work for them. He’s in a certain Lord Darryl’s service at the moment.”
“Not Darryl of Trenrydd?”
“The very one.”
“What does he want an exiled Bardekian general for?”
“Well, a couple of the men down at the guild seemed to think he was planning on forming an army of common-born pikemen if things came to war. It would make sense.”
“So it would, but an ugly thing it would be. I wonder if that kind of army would be more or less effective against the usual warband?”
Elaeno shrugged and turned both hands palm-upward.
“A rhetorical question only, my friend,” Nevyn said, grinning. “I don’t know much more about warfare than you do. I’ll have a word with Cullyn, I think.”
When Nevyn put the question to him, the captain had a ready answer.
“Oh, the pikemen would be effective enough if they were properly disciplined. Now I’ve never been in Bardek myself, my lord, but from what I’ve heard, their spearmen drill for months before they ever see a battlefield. They carry these big curved shields, shaped like the side of a leather bottle, you see, longer than they’re wide, and they march in tight formation, so they make a kind of wall across the battlefield. Now, as long as they hold their position, it’s going to be cursed hard for a cavalry charge to break them, and that’s where the drill comes in. Your average Deverry townsman’s going to turn and run when the horses start coming, but not your Bardek professional.”
“I see. What about when the javelins start flying?”
“I’ve heard about that, too. They don’t use the war darts in Bardek, but they do have archers and sometimes slingers. So when the missiles come raining down, the men in the second row raise and tip their shields forward to cover part of themselves and the lads in the front, and so on all the way back in the formation. That way the shield wall’s still solid, and as long as the men have the strength to hold their cover up, well, now, it’s a fair hard line to break. They call it making a turtle.”
“Ah. I suppose elven archers would stand a good chance against them, though.”
“I doubt that, my lord. I doubt that very much, even with their longbows.”
The dweomer-warning rippled down Nevyn’s back like a shower of snow. It startled him so much that he missed Cullyn’s next remark completely and had to apologize.
“What was that again?”
“I was just saying that if you want to use pikemen you’ve got to give them good equipment. Cheap shields made of raw hides won’t turn steel blades. I wonder if Darryl of Trenrydd has the coin or the craftsmen to outfit enough Bardek-style pikemen to make any kind of difference.”
“I don’t know. I have the wretched feeling, though, that he intends us to find out if Rhodry doesn’t get home soon.”
“Just so.” Cullyn’s eyes turned oddly blank, as if he were bored with the subject, but Nevyn knew him well enough to know that he was covering some deep feeling. “I don’t suppose there’s been any news from Bardek.”
“I’m afraid not. Even the dweomer has its limits, my friend, and we won’t be hearing from Bardek till the spring. I only pray that Jill and Rhodry are unharmed.”
“So do I. All the time, my lord, all the time.”
After he left the captain, Nevyn considered that odd warning that had come to him—out of nowhere, he would have said, except for one small thing: dweomer-warnings never come out of a simple nowhere. Since they’d been talking of the elves and elven warfare at that precise moment, Nevyn could be fairly certain that the warning related to the affairs of that alien race. Precisely how was beyond him, but then, the Wyrd of the Elcyion Lacar lay out of his province. That very night he contacted his old pupil, Aderyn, through the fire and handed the problem over to him.
“I’m not certain of its meaning.” Aderyn’s image was grim as it floated above the flames. “But