The Red Wyvern - Katharine Kerr [83]
Nevyn scried them out and brought the news to Prince Maryn not long after dawn. While the riders pulled on mail and helm, the baggage train prepared to defend itself. During battles Oggyn commanded the camp; he knew the job well and performed it better—not that anyone but Nevyn gave him much glory for it. In a storm of oaths and shouting, the carters drove the loaded carts into a circle. Whips cracked and more oaths flew as they tried to back their teams into a close formation. Yelling back and forth, the servants carried supplies into the middle and the ostlers brought the extra horses, dancing and snorting with excitement, inside as well. On the outside of this improvised wall, the spearmen drew up in close ranks, leaning on their spears and yawning in pretended indifference.
Off to one side the chirurgeons had commandeered a few of the wagons, then unhitched their teams and sent them back to the circle. On the relatively clean wagon gates they could lay patients. Nevyn joined them there as they readied their supplies of water and the firewood to heat it with. After so many years of watching Death feast, Nevyn could no longer bear the sight of battle. He did however keep his horse saddled and ready, in case the prince should need either his dweomer or his healing arts—the Wildfolk would come tell him if his own intuition should fail. When he tied the gelding to a wagon tree, Caudyr, the silver daggers’ chirurgeon, came limping over to meet him. He had a club foot, Caudyr, which as he aged pained him more and more.
“Are you ready?” Nevyn said.
“As ready as any one can be,” Caudyr said. “Which means not very.”
The camp fell silent to watch the riders mount up, making the meadow roil with horses and plume with dust. Horns rang out as the various lords tried to collect their men into some semblance of order. They would have to ride in a spread formation; Burcan could send his men charging into a column broadside and earn himself a cheap victory, otherwise. Up at the head of this swarm the Red Wyvern banners bobbed along, dipping now and again as their bearers settled themselves on horseback. The prince Nevyn couldn’t see at all.
Horns shrieked; the lords screamed a last few orders; men shouted in answer. The front of the army lurched forward. The men in the first ranks set off, while those in the middle began jockeying for position, and those in the rear simply waited for a chance to move. It took a long time for all of them to be gone. For a while more Nevyn could see the dust cloud that marked their going and hear the jingling tack and shouting. Slowly the dust settled and the silence with it. Oggyn, wearing a hauberk and carrying a spear in one hand, came striding over to him.
“Well, let’s pray for the best, eh?” Oggyn said.
“Just that,” Nevyn said. “Not much more we can do now.”
Oggyn nodded with a decisive wag of his beard and went back to his men. The waiting stretched on while the sun climbed with the promise of a hot day. All at once Nevyn heard birds cawing and looked up to see ravens flying overhead, heading fast toward the battlefield.
“Ah,” Nevyn said to Caudyr. “It’s begun.”
As part of the prince’s guard, Branoic and the other silver daggers rode to keep Maryn safe, not to join the general fighting. If Maryn had had his way, he would have led every charge and been long since dead, his cause failed and the Boars or their candidates invested as High Kings of all Deverry. Over the years Nevyn had persuaded him to live and conquer. Even now he grumbled, but he did stick with his guards and let Caradoc’s orders protect him. Not that they escaped the fighting—sooner or later the enemy would find the prince on the field, close in, and try to kill him.
In this flat country, and under the dust, the armies soon devolved into a blind mob, where the enemy shrank to the nearest man with a blazon you didn’t recognize. The warcries, the shouts, the screams