The Pariah

by Anthony Ryan

  Alongside Brewer, the mottle-faced pikeman flailed away with a hatchet, displaying equal ferocity if markedly less expertise. Still apparently fuelled by Evadine’s exhortation, the company assailed their foes with frenzied aggression, some still screaming out her invocation as they fought: “For the Covenant!”

  I stumbled over flailing men to try to keep pace with Brewer, then halted at a high-pitched shout to my rear. Turning, I found Toria struggling with a man I had stepped over a second earlier. He had clearly been feigning death for a chance at easy prey. If so, he had chosen poorly. Having wrestled Toria to her knees, he tried to sink a dirk into her neck. Toria snapped her head forward, slamming her forehead into his nose. Taking advantage of his momentary confusion she drove her own dagger into his eye, sinking it in up to the hilt and holding it in place while he twitched and gibbered.

  As I hurried towards her she looked up at me, eyes blazing in accusation from a face spattered in the red-brown paste of mingled gore and mud. Her enmity was such it took her a second before she responded to my shouted warning. “Get the fuck down!”

  Luckily, she ducked just in time to avoid the slashing sword of the man who had reared up behind her. Before hacking him down, I took in the sight of his disordered face, one eye slashed to ruin and an ear hanging off, the flapping skin revealing the white bone of his skull beneath. I marvelled at the fortitude it must have taken to keep fighting. The Pretender, it seemed, could inspire just as much devotion as Evadine.

  Taking heed from Brewer’s example, I swung the billhook at the one-eyed man’s legs rather than his body. Flesh sundered and bones broke as the heavy blade smashed into his thigh, sending him to the mud where Toria scrambled to finish him off. Her quick, wiry form reminded me of a ferret twisting to deliver the killing bite to a rabbit in the way she slashed the fellow’s neck open.

  I paused to glance around, my eyes greeted by an unexpectedly encouraging sight. Not only had Covenant Company succeeded in pushing the flank of the Pretender’s line back a good forty yards but the Cordwainers to our left had also successfully beaten off their attackers. These were better armoured than the lot we faced but clearly less resolute in their cause. I assumed they must be a collection of hired swords drawn to the Pretender’s banner by promise of pay or loot. In which case he had either not spent wisely or been insufficiently generous. I counted just ten bodies littering the ground to the Cordwainers’ front and saw several of the retreating hirelings cast their weapons away in their haste to escape.

  Beyond that, I could see little of the rest of the battlefield. The sweat and breath of so many men and horses in a relatively small space formed a mist through which I made out only a confused mass of shifting, struggling forms. Horses reared here and there among a roil of rising and falling blades, but it was impossible to say which side held the advantage.

  “Come on,” I said, hauling Toria to her feet. “Won’t do to tarry.”

  I cast a meaningful glance at the Supplicants following along behind the main body of the company. Those with crossbows were either busy working the windlass or moving close to the struggle to discharge bolts directly into the faces of the enemy. I saw Swain among them but couldn’t find Ofihla and assumed she was probably somewhere in the thick of the fight doing grim work with her axe.

  Toria followed me back to the press of bodies where we closed up behind Brewer. To my relief I saw that a gap had once again opened up between the two sides, wider than before and those opposite now greatly reduced in number. Furthermore, in place of the savage determination from only moments ago, I could see fear in their faces. My relief deepened to grim delight when this decimated mob abruptly turned and fled. No order or bugle call sounded from their own leaders, but they all seemed to respond to the same unspoken command. I saw some weeping in shame or frustration as they ran, others pausing to voice curses in a dialect none of us could understand or raise their hands and form their fingers into what I assumed to be some form of insulting gesture. These lingerers, however, soon joined the runners when the Supplicants’ crossbows dropped a few to the mud.

  Another lull descended then, the wind swirling the battle haze around our disrupted ranks so that the company became like ghosts. Some, like me, leaned on their weapons, breath coming in ragged gasps. Others, like Brewer and the mottle-faced pikeman, raised their arms in triumph, their feral cries of victory mingling with the screams of the maimed not yet claimed by death. Toria sagged against my stooped-backed form, wiping the bloody dagger on my sleeve.

  “Could’ve been worse,” I told her, drawing a dark-eyed stare in response. Her face appeared to have aged years in the space of minutes and her gaze held such a depth of reproach I wondered if she would ever forgive me for having compelled her to this horror.

  As I fumbled for another, assuredly resented, quip, Toria’s narrow face bunched. “What’s that?” she said, cocking an ear to the sky.

  I heard it too late to react, a faint sibilant hiss that suddenly merged with a series of thuds and the percussive ping of colliding metal. In time I would come to know this sound well; the ugly song of an arrow storm meeting flesh and armour. But then, it was only when I saw an arrow impale the shoulder of the cheering mottle-faced pikeman that I realised the danger.

  “Down!” I snapped, bearing Toria to the muddy earth. I gave a convulsive start as an arrow sank into the ground within a yard of my head, followed quickly by two more falling even closer. A short distance away a fellow billman, also having thrown himself down, took a shaft smack in the crown of his lowered head. Curiously, despite the arrowhead piercing his skull, he didn’t die right away. Instead, rising to his knees, he frowned in apparent irritation, reaching up to scratch at the arrow as if it were nothing more than an offending louse. Blood seeped from his nose as his mouth tried to form words no one would ever comprehend. He lingered for another heartbeat or two then his eyes rolled back and he settled into a slump, still kneeling and somehow upright.

  It occurred to me then, seeing three more comrades fall under the hail of arrows in as many seconds, that lying flat was not the best tactic in this circumstance.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” Toria demanded, the words emerging in a furious rush as I got to my feet.

  “We need a shield,” I replied, dragging her along. I eschewed the relatively slight form of the kneeling billman, instead making for the far more impressively built, mottle-faced pikeman. Sheer good fortune saved us from the torrent of arrows as we darted towards the corpse.

  “Get under,” I said, gripping his mail shirt to drag him upright, grunting with the effort as I went to all fours, positioning the body on my back. Toria needed no further urging and quickly scrambled into the small space beneath my straining form.

  It transpired that life had not yet fully departed the pikeman, for his body gave several violent shudders as it was repeatedly pierced. However, by the time the onslaught had abated a short while later, the corpse on my back had subsided into the slackness of death. Toria gave an irritated groan, squirming out from under me as I collapsed under the body’s weight. I took some heart from the faint glimmer of gratitude in her gaze as she helped heave the multiple feathered pikeman off me, but the reproach and accusation were only partially dimmed.

  “May the Scourge take all archers!”

  The clenched exclamation snapped our gaze to Brewer’s bulky form. He knelt a few paces away, besmirched face drawn in pain as he regarded the arrow impaling his right hand. The steel head jutted to a length several inches from the gap betwixt his thumb and forefinger, dripping blood and the scraps of his leather glove dangling from its barbs.

  “Can’t leave it in there,” Toria advised, crouching to inspect the wound.

  Swallowing, Brewer nodded and Toria drew her smaller, curve-bladed knife, placing the edge where the shaft emerged from the top of his hand. “Hold him,” she told me curtly. I duly gripped his outstretched arm with both hands, holding it straight while Toria went about her work. Brewer hissed t
hrough gritted teeth as she sawed at the shaft. She made quick work of it although the energy of her labour surely added to Brewer’s pains. With the shaft severed all the way through, she cast the fletched portion away and pulled the arrowhead free, tossing him the blood-smeared barb as she rose.

  “Token for you.” Her gaze soured as she turned to survey the surrounding carnage. “Though, I expect there’ll be plenty more to gather this day.”

  “Form hedge!”

  Ofihla’s large silhouette resolved out of the haze a dozen yards away, her Lochaber axe, blade dark and wet, resting on her shoulder as she moved with a purposeful stride. “Gather up these pikes and form hedge! Move!”

  “By the blood of all the Martyrs, isn’t it done yet?” Toria asked in a bone-weary sigh.

  The reason for the Supplicant’s urgency became dreadfully clear as the drum of hooves sounded to our front. I felt a spasm of gratitude for all those tedious hours spent under Ofihla’s harsh tutelage as the troop, reduced in number by about a third, assumed the required formation with reflexive speed. Unbroken pikes were retrieved and raised, the three ranks lined out alongside the neighbouring troops with seconds to spare before the knights came galloping from the haze to our front.

  They numbered about fifty in all, a small contingent compared to the rest of the Pretender’s host, one he had presumably held in reserve until now. These, I knew, were the so-called turncoat knights, those who had turned their backs on prior allegiance to the Algathinet line to throw their lot in with the Pretender. I had heard they were mostly the second or third sons of minor nobles, disappointed or overlooked youths willing to risk rebellion to win the acclaim and wealth they felt to be their due. Many had been disowned by enraged fathers as a consequence and the king had issued edicts stripping away lands and titles from those now condemned as traitorous wretches. However wretched their official status, to my eyes they still presented an impressive, bowel-loosening sight.

  They galloped towards us at full pelt, lances levelled, breath steaming from their chargers’ nostrils. The knights themselves were all clad in quality armour, no mismatched scavengings here. Their helms were crested with various motifs, their plate enamelled in blue or red, engraved with gold in places. The great wake of churned mud raised by their charge and the continuing fog of battle prevented the sun from catching on their armour as they drew ever closer. To me this made them appear more menacing, an unstoppable wall of noble steel and horseflesh sure to smash through this cluster of villainous churls.

  If there was ever a time to run, this was it. And yet I didn’t. I would tell myself later that it was Ofihla’s presence and the sight of her gore-covered axe that kept me in place. This, and Sergeant Swain prowling behind the line with primed crossbow in hand, was reason enough for any coward to conquer their terror. However, I have since come to accept that it was not fear of the Supplicants that made me stand the appointed distance behind Brewer, billhook gripped and ready, staring into the eyes of the warhorse speeding towards me. I stayed because they, their captain and the friends I stood alongside had contrived to turn me into a soldier. In that moment, I could no more run than a mother could run from an imperilled child.

  The apex of the knights’ charge impacted on the section of our troop closest to the river, aimed with deliberate care to sunder our line and turn the whole army’s flank. Although I had expected the line to dissolve under the blow, true to Ofihla’s promise, the leading warhorses shied from the thicket of pikes at the last instant.

  Screams and panicked whinnies sounded as spearpoints pierced necks and shoulders. One charger spilled its rider to the earth as it reared then fell, legs thrashing. I saw the knight abandon his lance and get to his feet, moving with surprising speed given the amount of plate he wore. He half-drew his sword and took one step towards our line then abruptly stiffened as a crossbow bolt punched through the mail covering the gap between helm and gorget. If that hadn’t sealed his fate, the trampling hooves of the horse that came barrelling through next certainly did.

  Unfortunately, this charger had its shoulders and neck covered by a thick quilted canvas. Its instinctive fear of the pikes caused it to slow as it neared the line, but it quickly rallied at the urgings of its rider, a large knight clad in red enamelled armour and a griffin-headed helm. Remarkably, the line held as the charger ploughed into it, although three pikemen were trampled before a frenzy of hacking, stabbing billhooks and a volley of crossbow bolts brought the warhorse down.

  Once again, the knight tried to fight on, stumbling to his feet and laying about with a mace until Ofihla charged into the gap he had created in the first rank. She moved with bull-like speed and ferocity, keeping low and slamming her shoulder into the mace wielder’s breastplate. The force of the blow was enough to send him sprawling, his attempted parry with the haft of the mace too feeble to deflect the overhead swing of her axe. The huge cleaver blade sundered the visor covering his face, birthing a brief but spectacular geyser of blood.

  “Close up, you laggards!” she snarled at us, putting a foot on the knight’s head to work the axe loose.

  Another knight came at us as we hurried to comply, a tall black charger bearing a knight with armour coloured to match his mount. He resembled an obsidian statue brought to life as he loomed above us, his lance descending to spear an unlucky billman through the chest a few feet to my right. The weapon’s point stuck in the billman’s ribs, Ofihla cleaving the shaft in half with her axe before the knight could drag it clear. Brewer shifted to the Supplicant’s side to jab his pike at the charger’s mouth, another valuable trick she had drilled into us since few horses can abide damage to their maw. Blood joined the spittle flying from the animal’s bared teeth and it turned, lashing out with its rear hooves. I saw another pikeman fall dead as an iron-shod hoof cracked his head open, but the warhorse’s panic prevented his rider, or any of the other knights now crowding the ground to our front, from exploiting the gap.

  Muffled curses emerged from the black-armoured knight’s visor as he attempted to control his horse in between lashing at our line with a longsword. To his left and right, his comrades sought to guide their stalled mounts past, suffering a volley of crossbow bolts and viciously jabbing pikes all the while. Spotting a tear in the wayward horse’s quilt covering, Brewer seized on the chance to sink his pike deep into the animal’s flank. The beast screamed and reared, Brewer’s pike snapping as the horse collapsed, spilling its rider into our first rank.

  “Pull him in!” Ofihla shouted as I and another billman reached down to grab the knight by the rim of his helm. As soon as his greaves cleared the second rank, the dagger line descended on him like wolves swarming a lamed deer. Screams erupted from his visor as narrow blades stabbed into every gap in his plate. Having lost his sword, the knight flailed and punched at his tormentors, but to no avail. His struggles ended when Toria jammed her longest dagger into the slit in his visor, holding it in place while a wiry comrade pounded the pommel with a mallet until the hilt met steel.

  Shifting my gaze from the ugly spectacle, I saw the knights had lost all momentum and were strung out along our line. As far as I could tell their aggressive efforts had been reduced to hacking at the hedge of pikes with their maces and swords. The Supplicants continued to methodically assail the knights with their crossbows, aiming for the horses rather than the riders. A half-dozen more fell while others reared and whinnied in protest at the torment and I saw that a gap had started to grow between these nobles and our unbroken company.

  They’re afraid, I realised, a surprised laugh escaping my lips. A half-trained mob of the worst miscreants in all Albermaine had taught fear to these noble turncoats. It was an unexpectedly sweet moment, but one that would be proven short-lived.

  The trumpet sounded faint at first, a plaintive, almost comical wail rising above the tumult of combat. However, the message it conveyed was clearly understood by the Pretender’s knights. Those who could easily disentangle themselves from the fray, about twenty in a
ll, turned their mounts and rode towards the right of our line. A dozen or so were too lost in the frenzy of the fight or too fearful of turning their backs to heed the summoning trumpet. They lingered and fought on only to be brought down by the Supplicants’ crossbows or the unrelenting pikes.

  Once the last of them fell, both horse and rider feathered by several bolts and pierced by many spearpoints, I gained an unimpeded view of the reason for their comrades’ sudden departure: a great mob of people advancing at a run close to the riverbank. There was little order to their ranks and scant sign of armour. As they ran, they shouted discordant exhortations and waved weapons above their heads, mainly scythes, pitchforks and axes. These were not soldiers, but churls, and at their head rode a man of impressive stature but unadorned armour. His visor was raised to reveal a long face of high cheekbones and a curved nose. Instead of a weapon he carried a banner, the great silken square flaring out behind his horse to reveal the winged, golden serpent of one Magnis Lochlain, self-proclaimed rightful king of Albermaine.

  “Fuck me!” Toria breathed, gazing in unabashed wonder at the fast-approaching mob and their usurping leader. “Is that truly him?”

  “I’d wager it is,” I said, reaching up to touch gloved fingers to the wet trickle on my forehead. They came away bloody and I felt the sting of an open wound, one I had no memory of suffering. “Thought he’d be taller,” I added, flicking the blood away.

  “Dress those ranks!” came Ofihla’s strident order. “Prepare to receive infantry!”

  She and the other Supplicants dragged the dead and wounded behind the line while the company tidied itself. The pikemen raised then lowered their weapons to a lesser height, myself and the others in the second rank wiping the grime from our billhook hafts for a more secure grip. The sight of the oncoming mob, a true horde rather than the clan folk and knights we had already faced, it became increasingly plain that they outnumbered Crown Company by a considerable margin. Also, they advanced with a distinct and unnerving lack of hesitancy. If anything, the closer they came, the faster they ran, responding to the increased pace of their leader.