Out of the Dark Read Free

additional reinforcements soon—indeed, the Dukes of Brebant, Anjou, and Brittany, each commanding another fifteen hundred to two thousand men, were even now marching to join him—and if the English were foolish enough to move out of their current position the overwhelming French cavalry would cut them to pieces. They knew they had him and, in the fullness of time, they intended to repay the arrogant English with interest for those earlier battles like Crécy and Poitiers. But for now the Constable, in no hurry to bring on a battle, preferred to negotiate and stall for time and the arrival of yet more troops. After all, the English position was ultimately hopeless.
    Which was why Henry had decided to attack.
    •  •  •  •  •

    “Does anyone have any idea why those humans—the ‘English’—are
doing
that?” Garsul asked almost plaintively.
    Despite the nausea roiling around inside him, he’d discovered he couldn’t look away from the outsized display. There was something so hideously . . . mesmerizing about watching thousands upon thousands of putatively intelligent beings march towards one another bent on organized murder. No Barthon could have done it, he knew that much!
    “I’m not certain,” Kurgahr said slowly.
    Of all the watching Barthoni, the historian came closest to possessing some knowledge of “military history,” although even his knowledge of the subject was slight. There wasn’t any
Barthon
“military history” to study, and while some other member species of the Hegemony were considerably more combative than the Barthoni, very, very few of them were remotely as bloodthirsty—a term no one in the Hegemony had even used until the Shongairiarrived—as humans appeared to be. None of them were represented in Garsul’s survey team, either, but Kurgahr at least had their histories available.
    “I think the ‘English’ have decided they have nothing to lose,” he went on slowly. “Surely they must realize as well as the ‘French’ that they can’t hope to
win,
yet they appear to have chosen to provoke combat, anyway.” He twitched his upper shoulders in a shrug of bafflement. “I think this race may be even crazier than we thought. It looks to me like they’d rather attack, even knowing it means they’ll all be killed, than do the sane thing and surrender!”
    “That’s a classic example of the worst sort of species chauvinism!” Joraym said testily. “You’re unfairly applying our Barthoncentric psychological standards to a juvenile, alien race, Kurgahr. As a historian, you of all people should know how inherently fallacious that kind of pseudo-logic is!”
    “Oh?” Kurgahr looked at the xenoanthropologist scornfully. “And do
you
have a better explanation for why they’re doing
that
?”
    He gestured towards the display, where the English army had slogged its way northward along the plowed, muddy strip of open ground towards its overwhelmingly powerful foe. The unarmored archers moved much more easily and nimbly than the armored men-at-arms, even with the long, sharpened stakes they carried. On the other hand, that same lack of armor meant that if the other side ever got to grips with them. . . .
    If the longbowmen were worried about that, they showed no evidence of it—which, in Garsul’s opinion, only proved Kurgahr’s point about their lack of sanity. They simply waded through the mud, marching steadily towards the French.
    The French, on the other hand, seemed taken aback by the English advance. They obviously hadn’t expected it, and it took them a while to get themselves organized. By the time they’d taken up their own battle formation, the English had halted about three hundred yards from them, and the archers were busy hammering their stakes back into the ground.
    •  •  •  •  •

    Charles d’Albret was not a happy man.
    He and his principal subordinates (inasmuch as fifteenth-century French noblemen could truly conceive of