power nor the right to dismiss me from the alliance. In the law of the Snow Leopards, agreements are binding for life. Call your warriors, friend and ally, we go to war!”
Thirrin stepped forward and hugged the huge leopard, burying her face in the deep fur of his chest, and for a moment let his purring rumble through her. “Thank you, Tharaman,” she said simply. Then, turning to the Thar’s second in command, she said, “Taradan, call the cavalry.”
The leopard bowed his head, then stood to bark the call to arms. Behind the defenses, the human troopers and the leopards prepared for action.
Scipio Bellorum watched the defenses before him with confidence. The queenling would come out to do battle. She really had no choice. And he would annihilate her and her circus of a cavalry. He was certain the abominations of nature that took the form of talking leopards could never withstand a full volley from two hundred thousand cavalry pistols and carbines. Each of his troopers carried two long-barreled guns, and at his orders they would fire them into the enemy ranks. That alone should be enough to wipe out her combined force of six thousand, and any leopards that did survive would probably turn their spotted tails and flee.
No action that Scipio Bellorum had personally led had ever been lost, and he was fully confident that the coming battle would last only a matter of a few minutes. Back behind their lines, the Polypontian army watched as their general prepared to destroy the enemy cavalry. Many of them had fought through this long campaign with a growing sense of admiration for the soldiers of the Icemark and their young Queen. Some of the officers had privately started to say that the Icemark should be embraced as an ally rather than fought against, and that it should be granted the status of a Client Kingdom under the protection of the Emperor and Senate. But their general was determined to defeat them in the field.
He could be clearly seen watching the defenses of Frostmarris through his monoculum, waiting for the enemy cavalry to emerge. Suddenly he pointed, and all eyes turned to the gate in the system of ditches and ramparts. Queen Thirrin and her combined cavalry of humans and leopards were walking slowly out onto the plain.
They came on in twin columns, and as the Imperial soldiers watched they fanned out to form a fighting front that alternated between horse and leopard. At their head rode the girl Queen and the largest of the leopards. A murmur rose up from the Polypontian soldiers, and Bellorum gave orders for his cavalry to advance. As the two sides trotted toward each other, a trooper in the Icemark cavalry unfurled a banner. The device on it showed a galloping horse and a running leopard, and over both rose the fighting white bear of the House of Lindenshield.
Scipio Bellorum rode hand on hip, a smile on his lips. Soon, the queenling would be dead and the war all but over. He raised his hand, and his troopers drew their long-barreled pistols from the holsters on their saddles. They rode on, guiding their mounts with their knees.
Thirrin stood up in her stirrups, drew her sword, and circled it over her head. Immediately the cavalry of the Icemark broke into a controlled gallop, the human troopers singing their fierce battle paean and the leopards letting out the coughing bark of their challenge. Bellorum maintained his trot and leveled his pistols. One hundred thousand troopers followed suit and awaited his order to fire.
Again Thirrin’s voice rose into the air, high and fierce, and the leopards lowered the thick domes of their skulls as the human troopers hunched down behind their shields. Bellorum stood his ground calmly as the smashing force of Thirrin’s cavalry bore down on him, then as the thunder of their hooves filled the air he fired his pistols. There was a crack of two hundred thousand other pieces, and their solid shot hit the charging cavalry. It hardly faltered as Thirrin screamed out the war cry of the Icemark: “Blood! Blast! And Fire! Blood! Blast! And Fire!”
The leopards threw up their heads, and the Queen’s human troopers took up the war cry. The pistol shot had been turned by the thick fur and skulls of the leopards, and by the shields and surcoats of the troopers. They smashed as a solid wedge into the Polypontian cavalry and drove through them, slashing and hacking