"That's a funny thing for you to say," z'Acatto replied. "I've never heard you talk about retreating before."

"It's not just me here."

The old man nodded. "Right. That's what I hate about it. You see?"

"I'm starting to," Cazio said. "But I wish you had told me more."

"I've just been trying to forget all that," the old man said. "I never meant for you to have anything to do with this sort of business."

"It's not your fault. My own choices led me here."

"I'm not disputing that," z'Acatto replied.

"So why no retreat?"

Z'Acatto shrugged. "They have greater numbers, and we don't have enough pikes to make an effective battle square. We need our backs and flanks safe."

"The left flank looks pretty open."

"It'll slow a cavalry charge," z'Acatto said. "It's the best we can do, given the time we have. Anyway, retreat isn't an option. We have to win. If we don't, we're done."

"What if they bring more men than we think?"

"Our scouts are pretty good. They might pick up another man or two, but for some reason the bulk of Hespero's forces seem to be going east."

"East? What's east?"

"I've no idea, nor do I care. We've problems enough here."

"Can we win?"

Z'Acatto lifted his hands but didn't answer in words.

"What's my part in all of this?"

"I'm putting half the archers on the field and half strung through the forest, there. They won't send horse at the forest, but they will probably detach infantry. You'll protect the archers."

Cazio nodded, relieved. He'd imagined himself in the press, holding a pike, and didn't care for the image.

Z'Acatto's gaze shifted.

"There they are," he said.

The horsemen formed a block in the center, and the footmen were lined up behind them with archers on their wings. Cazio had seen the formation before; it was essentially a cavalry hammer, ready to smash them. When the smashing was done, the foot would come in and clean up.

What he had never seen before, however, was the formation in which z'Acatto had put his men.

They stood tightly packed in columns five deep, with the ten columns arranged in a sort of hollow wedge open to the river. Z'Acatto called it a "hedgehog," and with their pikes bristling out, it resembled one. The men had the pikes braced at their feet and set at various angles from low to high so that anyone charging in had to deal with at least five wicked levels of sharpness.

The bowmen who weren't with Cazio in the woods had formed in ranks, too, out in front of the hedgehog.

No one had come out to offer terms, and it didn't look like they would. They just kept coming closer, the horses and the metal-clad men on them looking bigger and bigger.

The archers began firing into the horsemen both from the field and from the trees. The enemy archers returned fire, targeting those visible on the field, but after a moment, as predicted, a line of about thirty spearmen with large, heavy shields broke away from the enemy foot and started plodding toward them.

Concentrating on their progress, Cazio missed the start of the charge, but he heard the shouts and turned to see it begin.

Ignoring the approaching spearmen, the archers around him concentrated their fire on the cavalry, as did those on the field, and the effect was astonishing. Five or six of the lead horses and their riders went down, followed immediately by another ten or so tripping over the fallen. The hedgehog archers poured shafts into the confusion, creating further havoc. The charge slowed to a crawl under the deadly rain, but the forty or so horsemen who remained mounted quickly re-formed and charged at the archers. They were slowed by the stakes, however, and several dismounted and began uprooting them, giving the archers plenty of time to retreat behind the battle wedge and take their places on the levee, where they could send more darts down on the enemy line.

While half the bowmen in the woods were still helping to riddle the cavalry, the other half had begun firing at the approaching infantrymen, who were now only about thirty kingsyards away, moving their shield wall along with good discipline.

There had been sporadic fire from the enemy archers, but Cazio didn't see any more of them.

"Move back," Cazio said, echoing z'Acatto's orders. "They won't be able to keep that shield wall in the woods."

As ordered, the bowmen started backing into the swamp, continuing to fire at the infantry, whose shields were now pretty well feathered. Seven of them had already dropped out of formation, either dead or too gravely wounded to keep on, but that left the numbers pretty even, and although the archers had swords with them, they didn't have shields or spears.

The cavalry was charging again, and this time there was nothing between them and the hedgehog. The massed horsemen looked unstoppable.

Mirroring the horse, the infantry advancing on Cazio's archers sent up a hoarse cry and charged.

Cazio drew Acredo.

"Run," he told the archers. "Back to the wedge."

Although, glancing that way, he wondered if there would be anything to retreat to.

CHAPTER EIGHT

THE GRASS RIPPLED, shifting to trees and hills as Anne unraveled herself and moved like a cloud. She had been afraid at first of discorporation, but in the sedos realm, the body was more illusion than anything else. Once that deception was put behind, there was much fun to be had. She could twine like grapevines through massive forests or flow like rainwater down a hillside. She could choose another illusory body. She had played at being a horse, an eagle, a porpoise, a spider, a creeping lizard. They felt more welcome in her thoughts now, too, more easy. The more she used her power, the more secure her identity seemed to become.

She had to remind herself sometimes that she wasn't there just for simple enjoyment. She never wanted to leave and returned more and more often whether or not there was anything particular she was looking for.

In fact, sometimes she forgot what she was looking for.

But not today. Today she drifted back days and toward the south.

She saw the army of the Church massed in the thousands at Teremene. That was nothing new, and already half of her army was marching to meet them. Looking at them now, she felt a coldness in her belly. Crotheny was caught in a vise; the Hansans were being held at Poelscild, but to attack with enough force to drive them back would mean letting the Church come to her gates, and the south was poorly defended. She had seen, too, a new fleet of strange copper-skinned men sailing down from the north, from Rakh Fadh, in the company of tow-headed Weihand raiders. That sailing hadn't happened yet, and the results of it seemed inaugurable.

And in the south the future was also unclear. Sometimes she saw massive carnage, sometimes an unhindered march, sometimes nothing.

None of this was new, nor did it long hold her attention. She was looking for her friends.

She already had seen Cazio, captured by the Church. She knew there was something missing, someone he had talked to that she could not focus on. But she also knew he and z'Acatto were free again.

Austra had been the hardest to find.

She imagined her friend's face, her laugh, and the chagrined pucker of her forehead when she was afraid Anne was about to get them both into trouble.

And there was something, a reflection, a flicker in the distance of leagues and also time. But as Anne moved toward it to peek up from the sedos like a groundhog from the earth, a current of sickening power caught and twisted her misty form, a massive flow against which she could not struggle. It slammed her into something, submerged her in pain and horror, and congealed her back into human form.