Nor was the reinforced squadron that Thoheeks Portos had brought down from the north your normal unit of lancers, either. To Pahvlos’ way of thinking, they were become true heavy horse, and he used them as such, obtaining from Thoheeks Grahvos a half-squadron of old-fashioned light-horse lancers to take over the scouting, flank-guarding and messenger functions of traditional light-horse usage.

To Thoheeks Portos’ questions regarding the reassignment of function of his squadron, the old strahteegos answered, “My lord Thoheeks, to my way of thinking, if you put a man up on a sixteen-hand courser all armored with steel and boiled leather, the man himself protected by a thigh-length hauberk and steel helm and armed with lance and saber and light axe and long shield, then that man is no longer a mere lancer, but a medium-heavy horseman at the very least. Your so-called lancers differ from Lord Pawl’s force only in that his are equipped with bows rather than lances, carry targes instead of shields.”

Although inordinately pleased with all of his cavalry, both native and alien, Komees Pahvlos was not quite certain what to make of or do with the most singular pikemen of Lord Guhsz Hehluh. Unless they chanced to be the foot-guards of a king or some other high, powerful, wealthy nobleman or of a walled city, Southern Kingdom pikemen simply were not armored—save for a light helmet of stiffened leather with strips of steel and a thick jack of leather, plus a pair of leather gauntlets which were occasionally reinforced with metal—and only the steadier, more dependable front ranks were provided with a body shield to be erected before them where they knelt or crouched to angle their pikes. Traditionally, of course, they had died in droves whenever push came to shove; such was and had always been expected.

But not so in the case of the big, mostly fair-skinned, thick-thewed barbarians commanded by Lord Guhsz. Only the cheek-guards and chin-slings of their helmets were of leather, the rest—crown-bowls, segmented nape-guards and bar-nasals—being of good-quality steel. Their burly bodies were guarded to the waists and their bulging arms to the elbow by steel scales sewn and riveted to padded canvas jacks; both their high-cuffed gauntlets and their leathern kilts were thickly sewn with steel mail, and, below a steel-plate knee-cop, their shins and calves were protected with sets of splint-arm6r riveted inside their boot linings.

Moreover, each and every one of these pikemen carried a slightly outbowed, rectangular shield a good two feet wide and near twice that in length, and on the command, each man of a formation could raise that shield a bit above his head in such a manner as to over- and underlap those of his fellows and provide a roof that could turn an arrow storm as adroitly as a roof of clay tiles turned a rainstorm.

Nor were these the only differences in the equipage of the alien foot and those of the Southern Kingdom. Aside from his fifteen-foot pike, your average pikeman bore no weapons other than a utility and eating knife, while not a one of Lord Guhsz’s men but did not also bear a heavy, double-edged sword about a foot and a half in its sharp-pointed blade, one or more shorter dirks or daggers, sometimes even a short-hafted belt-axe, one of the sort that could be either tool or missile or weapon.

Burdened as they were, the old strahteegos had doubted that these overprotected, overarmed, overequipped pikemen could maintain the needful pace on the march or in a broad-front charge. But that had been before he put them to it; after he had, he knew the—to him, near incredible—facts of the matter. It was at that point that his formerly rock-firm opinions began to undergo a change and he began to wonder just why so many generations of his forebears had callously, needlessly sacrificed so many pikemen with the excuse, now proven false, that proper armor and secondary weapons would decrease mobility. Colonel Bizahros agreed with him, but Colonel Ahzprinos did not, flatly, unequivocally and at very great length.

So, the eeahtrohsee, with their bandages and ointments, their saws and other surgical devices, arrived. The artil'iciers were assigned, the quartermasters and the cooks, the smiths, the farriers, the wagoners and the muleskinners. finally, Strahteegos Komees Pahvlos, tired of waiting and drilling, announced to the Council that he intended to start on his campaign with only the three cow elephants he already had, wanting to get the business over and done before the autumn rains arrived to complicate things for a field army.

Mainahkos Klehpteekos and Ahreekos Krehohpoleeos had risen fast and high from their origins as common troopers in the first, almost-extirpated army of Thoheeks Zastros That both men were savage and completely unprincipled had helped, that they were good warleaders and inordinately lucky had helped even more. During the years of howling chaos in the Southern Kingdom, they and the heterogeneous packs of deserters, banditti, escaped criminals, shanghaied peasants and stray psychopaths they had led had sometimes signed on as a mercenary force to first one then another army of the battling lords.

Sometimes they had given the service for which they had been paid. But more often they had either deserted in mass or turned their coats at a crucial point, especially if the ongoing battle showed signs of being a close one. At length, so odious had their reputation become that no lord or city—no matter how desperate—would even consider hiring them on; at that point, they followed their basic inclinations, becoming out-and-out warlords, they and their lawless band of ruffians at open war against the world.

When at long last Zastros had made himself High King and, after scouring the length and breadth of the land of soldiers and men of military age, had marched his halfmillion and more north, out of the kingdom, on the road to his death in Karaleenos, the two warlords had found themselves in pigs’ paradise, able now to prey not only on villages and travelers and isolated estates, but on walled towns and cities, as well.

They had behaved in their usual, bestial fashion at the intakings of the first few of these urban sites—by then, all but defenseless, despite their walls, what with their once-garrisons now marching north behind the Green Dragon banner of High King Zastros—first raping, plundering, torturing, then killing whole populations until the streets ran with gore, and finally burning everything combustible in the stinking charnel house they had made of the towns.

Then, of a day, a broken nobleman who had joined the bandit-army to avoid starving had had words with the two warlords and slowly convinced them of the sagacity of those words. For all that they and their followers were become wealthy beyond their wildest dreams of avarice, each succeeding victory had cost them men—and men of fighting age and strength were become almost as precious as rubies in this land stripped of warrior stock by Zastros’ strenuous recruitments. Moreover, scattered and fast-moving survivors of those intakings had spread the word of the atrocities far and wide, so that all walled enclosures within weeks of marching time were doing everything possible to strengthen their existing defenses and had put aside any previous thoughts of trying to deal with the marauders on a near-peaceful basis.

So, although it went hard against the grain, the warlords had begun to rein in their savages, dealing gently—by their personal lights—with the inhabitants of those places that opened the gates without a fight and showed a willingness to treat. Mainahkhos and Ahreekos even took it upon themselves to move against, either recruiting or wiping out, numerous smaller bands of their own ilk then lurking about the countryside. Then they began to recruit from the remaining garrisons of the smaller towns and cities, and slowly their howling pack of human predators metamorphosed into a real, more or less organized army.