A cry rang out from forty throats, muffled by the visors that turned their faces into blank steel curves with only the vision slit showing dark, but still deep and hard:

“Haro! St. Joan for Tucannon! Haro!”

The lance-points of the men-at-arms came down in a long falling ripple, and their followings came up behind them, ready to run in their wake through the hole they’d punch in the enemy formation.

“Haro! Chevaliers, à l’outrance—charge!”

Nine minutes later Ingolf stopped his shete in midswing; the jarring mental effort left him weak and gasping for an instant. The Boise trooper who’d dropped his saber and cried for quarter had his hands crossed over his face and his eyes screwed shut. When he didn’t die he opened them again.

“Down!” Ingolf barked. “Down and hands on your head!”

The man scrambled out of the saddle to obey, kneeling with his palms on top of his helmet, and his horse galloped off with its stirrups flapping. The will to fight ran out of the Boisean formation with an almost audible rush that spread throughout the milling chaos of the melee battle in instants; their commander put his cross-crested helmet on the end of his sword and pushed it high.

“We surrender! Quarter, comrades, we call for quarter! Throw down, men! It’s useless! Throw down!”

They did. It didn’t always save them. Most human beings found it hard to kill; once rage and fear had pushed them into that state of un-mind, it was even harder to stop. Officers and sergeants and corporals in the Richlander force grabbed men and held them in bear grips until the killing madness ran out of them, sometimes stunning with a blow from the flat or knocking them out of the saddle with the edge of a shield. The knights dealt with their subordinates a bit more roughly, clubbing more than a few militiamen down with broken lances or skull-shaking kicks from armored feet and stirrupirons.

The Sioux weren’t even trying; he heard the savage guttural blood shout of Hoon! Hoon! as the steel drove home. More and more of them were crossing the river, too.

“Kohler!” he shouted.

“He’s dead, sir. Arrow through the throat.”

Damn, he was a good man. Just bad luck. Later!

“Then you, Captain Jaeger! Get your men behind me, now! Shields up, shetes down.”