“Arrows loose!” shouted General Anew Opine, pointing forward dramatically to signal the bugler. Emma inwardly rolled her eyes. If the bastard hadn’t been so capable, his storybook mannerisms would have been laughable.
Eight hundred yellow yew warbows, wielded expertly by her trained Brockmore archers, were let loose simultaneously. As the arrows filled the sky, the Rostanian cavalry spurred forward into a canter from four hundred yards off, heading directly toward Emma and her forces. The heavy arrows fell into the middle of their ranks as they moved, raining death among the tightly-packed, mounted soldiers. Emma worked to keep from flinching as men and horses began to die at her orders.
However, unlike their own, untrained cavalry, or the conscripts their army had faced near Florens, the cavalry ahead was the elite force of Rostane. They’d been drilled and trained for such an eventuality, and so the arrows did little to dissuade the charging horses, though gaps did appear in their ranks.
“Fire at will!” shouted Opine, giving the Brockmore archers free reign. The charge came frighteningly fast, and, though men and horses continued to fall, the front ranks would collide with Emma’s forces in seconds. Her soldiers, the mercenaries, and the Florensians already had their pikes dug into the ground, ready to repel the assault. But the fear was as pervasive as the stench of sweat and leather, and the soldiers were visibly jarred.
The sound of charging hooves became deafening as the Rostanians let out a powerful, incoherent war cry. Flower petals shot into the air in every direction, clouds of pink locusts amidst the rising dust. And lances were leveled, aimed for the heart of the Emma’s army.
At a hundred yards, the front rank of the Rostanian cavalry disappeared. Followed by the second rank, and part of the third rank.
Horses were howling and men were screaming, impaled upon sharpened stakes and spears which had been driven into the first row of pits concealed by the flowers. Now the ground around those traps was a swirling mass of humanity and horseflesh, bones breaking in the crush, with the few men who escaped the pit so injured that they posed no threat. Rather, they posed a warning.
The Army of Brockmore had arrived four days earlier and prepared the battlefield, traveling no more than five abreast to avoid disturbing the field of flowers in the isthmus and then setting up camp, immediately digging twelve-foot-wide and ten-foot-deep pits all across the field of battle, working in ten-hour shifts. The flowers had acted as a perfect screen to conceal these deathtraps.
A trickle of cavalry managed by happenstance to pass through several small gaps in the front line of pits, but then they fell into the second row at fifty yards out. Only a couple dozen riders reached the Brockmore battle lines, and these soldiers did very little damage, taken down as they were by the long lances of Emma’s infantry. Meanwhile, the main body of the cavalry was in chaos behind them, milling about and uncertain what to do. Though they were the elite, the Rostanian cavalry had never seen real battle; the skirmishes with the Wasmer, years before, had been in terrain unsuited to horse combat.
A Rostanian trumpet played the sound of retreat. This, the soldiers had drilled for. Horses moved in response, men maneuvering to gather injured and fallen men onto the backs of other horses.
“Not enough. They aren’t broken, not by a long shot,” murmured Captain Braston, scratching his clean-shaven face. At least his hairless face made him more recognizable, though Emma thought the beard suited the pock-marked man better.
Emma nodded in agreement. From her view, from their makeshift command tower behind their lines of defense, she could see that there was no panic. The Rostanian officers had their cavalry well-controlled and well-trained. Her nails dug into her palms. They needed to smash the cavalry, both to clear the rest of their retreat as well as send a message that the Army of Brockmore was not shattered. That they would still fight.
“They’ll just regroup and go south around the lake. Or, pursue us to less defensible terrain,” said Guy Empton from his chair, echoing Emma’s thoughts. Since his heart episode following the reversal at the Battle for Florens, Empton had begged off command and requested an advisor’s role. It had only been a couple of weeks, but he was a shadow of himself. His lanky, powerful frame—though once containing the strength to wield his great, two-handed sword—had become emaciated and gray. His face was drawn, eyes sunken into his withered face, and his thinning hair had turned gray at the temples almost overnight. And he was only thirty-eight years old, a scant ten years older than Emma.
She tried not to be vain, but she prayed to whatever gods were listening—none, in all likelihood, she knew—that she wouldn’t shrivel up like that, that she wouldn’t lose her crimson or curls. The stress of leading an army was immense. Not to mention holding control of a significant number of businesses and holdings scattered across the four duchies of Ardia and beyond.
Not a life Emma had chosen for herself, but one she found herself living nonetheless.
“Oh, worry not, Lady Breen.” Ferl leered at Emma, a smirk twisting his handsome features. As usual, it wasn’t clear if he was mocking her or just parodying the numerous others who loathed taking orders from a trumped-up handmaiden with a mangled claw of a hand. “This is exactly what we prepared for. In fact, I think it is about time to begin.” He made a spinning gesture above his head with his hapler, a long-hilted, long-bladed sword popular in Hunesa, and his mercenaries reacted in an instant.
“Rethink this, boy! You are treading on the borders of Pandemonium!” intoned Ignatius Pender, chaplain of the Army of Brockmore, his chubby face red from being ignored. His proselytizing gained him no traction with Emma, of course; she loathed the hypocritical, limping cow. Ferl and Trina Almark, for all of their conflict, also held mutual disdain for the holy man and all things Yetranian. The captains, however, were split, and most other officers and rank-and-files were becoming fanatical, particularly since the attack by those white demons. “Such power should not be used—”
“Enough, Chaplain. We are set on this course of action lest we all be slaughtered,” Emma snapped. Her patience for Ignatius was thinner than a needle point. She couldn’t help being openly dismissive, even knowing that it would enrage the holy man. Her eyes were glued to the battlefield, however.
Across the battle line, in ten yard intervals, five men and one woman separated themselves, striding forward with their personal guard flanking them. Ferl’s greenies. The five men knelt, touching their hands to the ground, while the woman, her naked feet invisible in the blowing field of flowers, simply stood there. Ashland always went barefoot; her callouses had to be as thick as leather.
Without a sound, the plant life surrounding each greenie began to turn gray, a circular pattern growing around each man like ripples in a still lake. Short grass and rough weeds, in the gaps around the flowers, began turning into charcoal. The colorless blight spread up the tall stalk of each pink flower, sucking out the green of the stalk and then the pink of the petals. Curled, colorless strings were left with pathetic, shriveled bits of confetti attached to them. Around Ashland, the flora turned completely black, ash blowing away in the breeze as she extracted every bit of power from the plants.
The Rostanian cavalry didn’t react; they were focused on organizing their retreat and helping their injured, so a few soldiers walking beyond the confines of their battle line seemed a minor thing. The six greenies moved forward slowly, continuing to draw more and more color from the landscape. It was rapidly becoming a painting of a twisted, idyllic scene, one where the stylistic artist lacked any primary colors and instead used blacks, whites, and grays for effect.
Slowly, sparks of green and brown power began to travel along the ground, raising a gentle, white smoke. The magical sparks of the six greenies converged in the middle of the isthmus fifty yards in front of the battle line, merging into a much larger, seething mass of force. Ashland rushed forward then, sapping the life around her, and the power shot across the ground toward the Rostanian cavalry.
Some of Emma�
��s own men rushed forward in their excitement, shaking weapons and cheering, while others fell back, terror as thick in the air as the rising morning dew. For most of their lives, the Yetranians had been taught of the darkness of magic, and now here it was in front of them.
The Rostanian rearguard finally noticed that something was amiss—it was hard to ignore a mass of sparkling power hurtling across a field of flowers—and raised a commotion. Chaos reigned in a matter of moments. Men directly in the path of the power spurred their horses in any direction to get away, forcing other animals aside. A number of horses, their innate, primal senses perceiving the danger, reared and ran, some even jumping into the Atwater Lakes, sending soldiers flying in all directions.
The power reached the cavalry, and both beasts and men—having seen the power of Ferl’s greenies at Florens—did everything possible to avoid it. Still, some couldn’t. But when the power contacted Rostanian flesh, it… did nothing. The blast traveled under the panic-stricken soldiers, their screams splitting the air like the calls of carrion birds, but no one was hurt.
Emma bit her lip despite her efforts to conceal her emotions. However, with everyone’s eyes affixed to the field, not a soul noticed. Was this not going to work? If not, her men would be doomed. Not today, but certainly when they reached the open plains south of Draston.
Just as she despaired, though, the gates of Pandemonium were torn open in the middle of the retreating forces.
Cutting off the escape of the cavalry at the head of the isthmus, a thick line of green flame burst forth, sending earth, soldiers, and horses flying into the air. Or, rather, chunks of charred flesh into the air. Even several hundred yards away from the blast, Emma could smell the burning flesh as if it were pork on a nearby cookfire. Men around her averted their faces, Captain Ezram vomiting while Ignatius held aloft his Yetranian medallion in righteous fury. Pompous bastard. If Yetra could have helped them, then she would have already. No, instead, they had to rely on this magic.
And it was oh so effective.
The flame didn’t follow the path of the magical sparks sent forth by the greenies. Rather, it cut horizontally across the land bridge, waterline to waterline, effectively walling off the retreat. After the green barrier burned for about ten seconds, the flames disappeared. No smoke, no final flare… they were just gone. In their place was a fifteen-foot-wide ditch, already filling with the waters of the Atwater Lakes. At least a thousand panicked cavalry were left on the land bridge, firmly wedged between the spiked pits—which still writhed with injured and dying men and horses—and a new, deep fissure created by magic.
“By Yetra’s milky teets,” coughed the former General Empton, rising weakly from his wheeled chair to get a better view.
“Hideous,” murmured Captain Ezram, with one other captain—Quentin, predictably—nodding his assent, disgust twisting his heavily bearded features. Ezram was a quiet one, but a fervent Yetranian. He had previously been a captain of the guard in one of Escamilla’s fisheries near Hunesa. Thousands of men and women worked at that location, capturing fish and lobster, preparing them for travel and shipping them inland. Emma recalled that Ezram had obtained funding to have a Yetranian chapel built on site, and altered work shifts to ensure that every single worker would be able to attend a Yetranian ceremony each week. In fact, it wasn’t optional for any under his command.
Emma would have to keep an eye on him.
General Opine—seemingly exalting in his victory—said something to his aide, who rushed to the bugler and signaled a sounding for the general advance. The ranks moved forward in a ragged line, some rushing forward and turning the sapped flora to ash while others held back in fear, reluctant to touch any ground where the greenies had stepped. Officers shouted orders in response, and not a few lashed out with spear butts to get the men moving more quickly.
As the army approached, the Rostanians began their surrender with barely a whimper. Men dismounted, throwing aside their weapons before Emma’s forces even reached the pits. Her men knew how to circumvent the pits, of course; others had brought planks, but the pits were so full of the dead and dying that there was no place to cross them via the slats of wood. Instead, men moved between them and then began collecting weapons, herding both prisoners and horses toward the former battle line.
“A great victory for our noble forces! There must be over a thousand dead and wounded, even more captured,” said Opine, adopting the pose of a heroic knight. One leg up on Empton’s chair, his hand flat on his brow as if to obscure the sun (which was behind them). Again, however, he was too annoyingly competent to mock.
“Indeed, thanks to my greenies!” said Ferl without modesty.
“I’d like to see your men fight without this magic. The fucking cutthroats would be slaughtered, to a sobbing man,” said the Silver Lady, spitting on the ground. Ferl raised his eyebrows.
“My lady. My silver-tongued, silver-haired, silver-hearted lady… without our magic, all of us would have been pierced like a Sestrian kabob. Your big-breasted warriors could not have saved us,” he said with a lighthearted sneer.
“Both of you, stop,” Emma ordered them, breaking into their eye contact. “This was, indeed, a great victory. Thank you, Ferl, again, for the use of your greenies. You will receive your bonus when we reach our destination.”
“And where, exactly, is our destination?” asked Ferl, sticking his hands in his pockets. “Do we not just flee our enemies, tails between our legs?”
Emma ignored him. “Opine, have your most worthy men take the mounts.” Most of the remaining horses of their own cavalry had been slaughtered on the night of the attack by the pale creatures they’d faced not so long ago. That strange, confident traveler they’d encountered—Cryden Renshaw, he’d been named—had called them Feral. An apt label. “Braston, Quintin, Ezram. Bind the prisoners as best you can, and ensure no over-zealous—” Emma glared at Ignatius, “—soldiers harm them.”
“With respect, Lady Emma, why do we not just sentence these men to death? An enemy left behind is still an enemy,” Captain Quentin noted, pursing his lips as he watched the relatively orderly disarmament.
“Would you wield the blade? Would you cut the arteries of defenseless men in front of you?” Emma asked, hands on her hips. Her mutilated hand was habitually angled so only the thumb was visible; she was always conscious of it, especially when challenging these men of war.
“Well, I—”
“Have you ever even killed before? No? It is not something to easily shrug off. It stays with a person.” Emma was, unusually enough, thinking of that Merigold girl, and the haunted look in her eyes after she’d learned that she’d bloodily slaughtered three mercenaries. That poor girl was likely dead now, killed by the Feral who’d raided their supply wagons.
“And these Rostanians. They may be our enemies this day, but they are still our countrymen. Should we kill them for following the orders of their superiors? Besides, if we did murder our prisoners, the rest of the cavalry would pursue us to the ends of the earth, and there would be no hope to mend our country. Vengeance is the strongest of motivators.”
Quentin lowered his eyes, revealing a balding head that she’d never noticed. “Apologies, my lady. I bow to your wisdom.”
“She knows a lot for a serving woman,” murmured one of Ezram’s aides. Emma couldn’t tell which one, but she couldn’t react anyway. Not the first comment she’d had to ignore, even if this one had elicited a smile on Ignatius’ fat, ruddy face.
Her gaze solid on the men around her, she continued without acknowledging either the remark or the smile. “And, anyhow, leaving these men behind will force the Rostanians to choose to abandon them and continue pursuit—albeit with half as many horses—or rejoin the army in Florens. After seeing the greenies in action, I would not expect to see dust rising behind us any time soon.”
“But, for the hundredth time, where are we going?” Ferl asked. “Frankly, I need to ensure that my men are getting paid, lest they begin to�
� misbehave. And, I’d say, after today, they deserve every yet they’re given.”
Emma gazed east, a considering look on her face. As if she were making the decision right then and there. They would pass within miles of Draston in a few days. Would the Drastoners provide succor to the Army of Brockmore? Could they combine their forces with the Drastoners, and would they be a match for the Rostanians? Almost certainly not. All messengers had been rejected. Not surprising, as Rostane still had possession of Michel Fraunt, the flippant son and heir of Duchess Emily Fraunt, the ruler of Draston. Likely, they had already struck a deal. Emma would be lucky if that deal didn’t include military interference from Draston as her forces traveled through the duchy.
No, there was only one place to go—one place where Escamilla had cultivated relationships for years, where someone might take them in. The place where she had managed to get those invaluable yellow yew bows from, and the place where she kept a great deal of money deposited that could keep the soldiers paid, fed, and happy. For the first time in Emma’s life, and likely for the first time in the lives of nearly every soldier there, they would leave their home. They would leave Ardia.
Emma pointed east, toward the border.
“We go to Jecusta. We go to Farrow’s Hold.”
Chapter 3
In the days following the victory over the Rostanian cavalry, Emma felt only fierce anxiety; it was a great pressure crushing her like the dark hand of Ultner. Certainly, her army had won a major victory, and word of that would spread throughout Ardia. Her men celebrated, somehow procuring barrels of whiskey despite being miles from the nearest town of any consequence. They sang and danced and bragged of their military prowess, never mind that few had bloodied their spears.
However, there was little to truly celebrate. Florens had fallen days ago, and the Rostanian forces continued to swell as minor nobles and landowners met their quotas, and as conscripts from across Florens were integrated into the infantry. Danby, Escamilla’s master of information—who now served in the same capacity for Emma—had discerned that only the duchy of Hunesa still truly fought Rostane and retained their independence.
Wisdom Lost Page 3
