The noise of fighting began to die down a little, enough so that you noticed how loud they remained. Thurston's voice was meditative.

"If they weren't so stubborn, it would have been over hours ago. They've got better infantry than I expected, and horse archers are always a pain in the ass, but they don't have a hope of breaking us and they can't go around us."

"Why not?" Rudi asked. "It's a spacious landscape you have here, to be sure. I was thinking just now that it was as if you and they had agreed to fight here."

"Go around?" Thurston's grin was feral. "Yeah, with fortified villages in it like raisins in a cake, and my army across their line of communication ready to corncob them. And they must have lost two, three thousand men today-they weren't expecting our field artillery, not a bit. I've kept it out of sight the last ten years-no big pitched battles where I really needed it."

"What will you do next?"

"I can beat them, but I can't catch them if they back pedal and don't want to fight; they've got more cavalry. So I'll just march towards Twin Falls in battle order. Then they can either fight with the city as the anvil and us as the hammer-and get broken completely-or they can lift the siege and pull right out of the Snake River plain, losing everything they've fought for three years to get. After that… we'll see."

The general's head came up, looking westward towards his reserves. The dust made it difficult to see, and the huge roaring surf of combat cut hearing, but it looked as if men were moving. He waved Rudi aside and strode back to his subordinates.

To an aide, he snapped, "Get to Moore and find out what's happening there!"

A minute later the young man came galloping back. "Sir, Captain Thurston reports-"

"Captain Thurston? Where the hell is Colonel Moore, then?"

"Dead, sir. He went to contain an enemy break through-stray arrow in the eye. Captain Thurston says that he had to shift the twelfth and four batteries of the artillery reserve to contain it."

Thurston grunted. "Sergeant Anderson!"

The tall silent blond man came forward. "Captain?"

"Go see what the hell is happening with Martin and why he's senior man there-or acting like it. Get back here soonest."

The noise to the front died down then, almost to si lence. The wind rose slightly; Rudi could feel trickles of it on his neck, stealing down to leave tormenting bits of comfort in the greasy, itchy sweat that accumulated under armor. He filled his helmet before the water cart trundled off, and then dumped it over his head; it ran down into the padding beneath his brigandine and mail, a flush of delicious coolness. His friends were silent as he handed out the canteens, their eyes fixed eastward.

Dust parted before them, though everything was still blurred by a brown-gold haze. Through it the foot sol diers of the Church Universal and Triumphant could be seen, pulling sullenly back in a thick dark mass of large round shields edged with steel spear points. They parted in the center like a door opening.

Beyond that was a line of glittering metal points of light over red brown… the lance heads of the Sword of the Prophet, three thousand horsemen strong. The line of light rippled and flashed as the butts of the lances were lifted out of the scabbards; it would be cold steel now, not long-distance play with arrows.

Thurston grunted as if he'd been punched in the belly. "Christ! Well, now we know where their reserve was. Courier! Courier! Get spare pila forward-"

Rudi stepped back as Thurston's voice rapped out in a string of orders and men exploded outward like a covey of geese spooked from a pond. Off to the north the dug-in artillery batteries were in a flurry of activ ity too, crews pumping like madmen to send water through the armored hoses to the hydraulic jacks that cocked their actions. More field catapults galloped up from north and south and deployed as he watched, and their loaders dashed back and forth to the ammunition wagons, staggering under loads of four foot javelins and hundred-and-twenty-pound rope bags of round shot. Others broke out bundles of beehive-wicked-looking six-inch finned steel darts, needle-pointed and heavy.

His friends tightened girths and set their helms on their heads; you left that for the last minute if you could. Wearing a helmet for hours at a time gave you a headache, as sure as a blow from a mace.

"For what we are about to receive-" Ingolf said.

"-may the Lord make us truly thankful," Odard fin ished, then kissed his crucifix, tucked it back under his hauberk and crossed himself; Mathilda and the big easterner followed suit, and Odard's servant Alex.

"Lady of the Ravens, fold me in Your wings," Rudi murmured. "Antlered One, God of my people, You whose voice is heard on the mountainsides, lift Your hand over us. To both of You I dedicate the harvest of the unplowed field."

His skin was prickling as he stripped the cover off a shield to let the world see the antlers and moon blazon of Clan Mackenzie. Edain gave him a grim nod as he strung his longbow and then started working his right arm in circles, loosening the thick muscles; he looked very much like his father just then, which was comforting.

A silence fell along the line-silence save for the screams of those too hurt for anything but the rending of their bodies to have meaning. The dust drifted westward, and they could hear the low endless rumble of twelve thousand shod hooves striking the ground; hear it, and feel it through the soles of their feet, first as a low vibration and then a shaking like a stationary earthquake as thousands of tons pounded the flesh of the Mother in every instant.

Epona tossed her head and snorted, ears forward; the other horses shifted uneasily, and Macha Mongruad squealed in rage, the leather-backed steel plates of her barding clattering.

Odard thought having two destriers ready was being extravagant. I don't think so.

A human sound rose through the hooves. The Sword of the Prophet were chanting as the lance heads fell level: "Cut! Cut! Cut! Cut!"

The fighting men of the Republic replied, a long Ooooooo-rah that rolled up and down the ranks, a deep snarling shout full of guttural defiance and threat. A sharp bull bellow of "Come, ye Saints!" from the New Deseret troops off southward.

"CUT! CUT! CUT! CUT!"

When ten thousand men shouted in unison it was less a sound than a blow, something that thudded into your face and made your chest sound like a drum. And it struck below that too, and made Rudi's lips curl back from his teeth.

He understood what it was to look into a man's eyes over a blade and know that one of them would die; that was how the Lord and Lady had made the world, as much as the leap of a tiger on a deer, or two buck elk locking horns in the spring. That was strength and speed, skill and luck and nerve against the same. Having a small city coming towards you with nothing but murder in its heart was something else again, and as impersonal as being caught in a mudslide… or lying strapped to the latest log in a sawmill.

Thurston shouted to someone, loud enough to be heard above the stunning roar: "I don't care what they're doing; get the reserve up here now. All of them, and on the double!"

The catapults of the field batteries cut loose in unison with a multiple crashing of throwing arms against rubber shod steel. Javelins arched out, twirling as their curved fins took the air, seeming to slow as they went, and the steel balls of the round shot. Men fell, their mounts fell-sometimes an entire file of three, where a six-pound steel ball traveling at four hundred feet a second hit the ground and bounced and broke legs like brittle sticks as it spun whirling forward.