The Wolf

by Leo Carew

  The battle raged on around them, less exalted heroes clashing and dying in their thousands, but Roper was entranced by the combat before him.

  Heofonfyr surged forward once more, going for Pryce’s unarmoured knee. Pryce did not move except to lift one leg so that the spear slid harmlessly past. Garrett swept it to the side, hoping to cut Pryce’s other leg from beneath him whilst all his weight was on one limb, but somehow Pryce catapulted himself over the arc of Heofonfyr, escaping quite unharmed and bringing his own blade round in a savage overhead attack. Garrett ducked away and he and Pryce clashed four, five, six, seven times to produce a curtain of white sparks, blades moving so fast that Roper could not tell the difference between lunge and parry. Chips of Unthank-silver were flying off Pryce’s weapon where it came into contact with Heofonfyr’s diamond-dust edge. The two warriors were almost dancing with one another, feet twisting this way and that in the mud in a series of moves so skilled that they looked pre-ordained. But it was Garrett who was retreating. Pryce was too fast and Garrett had to move backwards to give himself more time to react. Pryce crowded him and launched an enormous swing at Garrett’s neck. It was easy to block but so hard that it was clearly aimed to intimidate Garrett. The Sutherner responded with all the force he had, and when the two blades met, there was a dull clunk. Pryce reeled away and half his sword-blade fell to the ground next to Garrett. Heofonfyr was too strong and had broken Pryce’s sword. In his right hand, the guardsman now clutched a shard, barely two feet in length and cut jaggedly across its width.

  Pryce barely hesitated. It was he who attacked next, slicing the remaining half of his sword at Garrett, feinting and then driving into his chest. It was a hard lunge but again, stopped at the bone-plates, the metal shard with which Pryce fought was not sharp enough to penetrate Garrett’s armour.

  The battle around them was changing; the lines were peeling apart again and the warriors around Pryce and Garrett began to disengage. Garrett’s chest was heaving with effort and he stole glances to his left and right as more and more fighters pulled away. They were left as the only two warriors still fighting in the no-man’s land opening up between the two armies. One of the Hermit Crabs appeared on each side of Garrett and threatened Pryce with their spears, lunging at him and forcing him away from their champion. “No!” shouted Garrett, smashing one of them over the head with the shaft of Heofonfyr, but another two were pulling him backwards and more were pressing forward against Pryce, trying to drive him back.

  “You’re going to allow this?” roared Pryce, contemptuously cutting down one of the spearmen with his broken sword. “Garrett Eoten-Draefend is a coward!”

  But Garrett was being dragged backwards. He raised Heofonfyr in one last salute. “I will find you again!” he called in Saxon.

  Pryce looked disgusted. Though there were spearmen within five yards of him, he showed total disdain by turning his back on the Sutherners and walking back to the Guard. Roper had been waiting, and Pryce caught sight of him. “Do not fight the Eoten-Draefend,” he said with a touch of restraint in his voice. “He would have killed you. Come, lord.”

  Roper had been prepared to be furious with Pryce for preventing him fighting Garrett, but the guardsman’s uncharacteristic patience drained his fury in an instant. The two of them began to jog back to where the Guard had retreated.

  The Skiritai were streaming forward again to an audible groan from the retreating Sutherners. The legionaries were exhausted. Most just crashed into the mud, numbed by cold hail and brutal combat. The stones of ice melted to trickle down forearms covered with dried blood, washing purified veins into the grime. They cleaned their hands numbly; took water-skins pressed forward from the rear ranks and sucked on them. The water tasted good, but swallowing it was almost too much. Some of the younger nemandi, lads of seventeen and eighteen who were not yet expected to stand in the battle line, hurried through the ranks with their medical rolls, attending to the most crippling wounds. The captains, lictors and other junior officers stayed on their feet, prowling through the warriors and telling them that they would break the enemy next time; that they must think of their brothers next to them and that if they did not fight as hard as they were physically able, it would be their peers who paid the price.

  None of the Sacred Guard had sat down. They were fitter than any other warrior, and had their wounds staunched and their thirst quenched with an air of necessity, as though their one purpose in life was this next fight. Uvoren had gathered many of the guardsmen into a circle and was addressing them fervently. Snatches of what he was saying carried to Roper’s ears: “Leon, you’re fighting like an ancient hero. Stay at the front as long as you can; no man, no matter how well rested, will equal you when you have fallen back. Leikr, we will need your fitness now: you must fight for two men. Salbjorn, there is an aura around you this day. Use it to intimidate the bastards, and we’ll break them here.” Gray was doing the same with another group, and Pryce, furious to have missed the chance to kill Garrett, strutted in front of the rest of the Guard. He was no longer lictor; that post had been filled by a friend of Uvoren’s, but the friend now stood quiet as Pryce howled at the Guard, blood dripping from the cut in his jaw. “Their lungs are burning, their limbs are quaking and their fingers are weak about their weapons. They cannot sustain this! They live a soft, plump lifestyle in their neutered country. These bastards have invaded our home again and again and now wear our brothers’ bones as armour! Don’t just kill them: make them feel pain before they die. I want each Sutherner to know a moment of pure despair before they fall beneath your sword. Kill them! You are a tireless fist! You are a thundering heart! You are lightning! You are relentless as this bloody hail, my Sacred Guardsmen!”

  Roper returned to Zephyr to find that Tekoa was still mounted next to the destrier. “The Skiritai are commanded by their junior officers. They can handle themselves,” he said in response to Roper’s questioning glance. The Black Lord hauled himself into the saddle, utterly exhausted by the unremitting hail and chilled so that his fingers had become slow. The lightning, having paused for the last half an hour or so, had begun to flash more regularly again.

  “Bellamus has played a good hand,” said Roper thickly. His lips were going numb. “Pikemen on the fringes and knights in the centre means he can match us for quality throughout the line. That’s why he wanted to fight here; so that his pikemen would have secure flanks.”

  “This is a bloody tough nut to crack,” confirmed Tekoa. “We’re losing a lot of men and I can’t see them breaking any time soon.”

  “The knights are their weak point,” said Roper. “We won’t break apart disciplined pikemen, but we can break these knights in the centre and then it’s over.”

  “Use the Guard as a spearhead, form a wedge and push through?” suggested Tekoa.

  “They’re matching the Guard with their Hermit Crabs and they’re bloody good. And I’m sure they’ve got cavalry, Tekoa. Bellamus will be holding them as a counter-punch in case we break through. That’s why we must hold the line.”

  Tekoa raised his eyebrows and seemed about to speak again when one of the Skiritai horns sounded through the haze. “That’s the retreat,” he said. “Round three.”

  Roper took a deep breath. The lives of the men around him weighed heavily on his shoulders and he did not know what to do. Bellamus had chosen his soldiers well so that they matched the Anakim for quality and he had an ace: his cavalry, which he must use at some point. Visibility was so low, Roper could have no idea where they were stationed. He might not find out until it was too late.

  The knights were advancing rapidly through the haze towards them now. Uvoren, Pryce and Gray all still strode in front of the Sacred Guard, disdaining the proximity of the enemy and pumping their arms to raise cheers that fell in crashing waves upon the field. Both the Sutherners and the legions were dull with mud as the knights splashed towards them. The legionaries jerked into life, staggering upright and finding swords. Nobody bothered with the bows
any more; they barely had time to form ranks before the order to charge blurted through the ranks. The lines clashed once more, not aggressive but numbly inexorable. They thudded together, bounced apart, and then began their exhausting work. The Hermit Crabs were arrayed against the Guard again, and now the hail had lifted enough for Roper to be able to see, along the line, the pikemen who fought the Greyhazel. The twenty-foot ash pikes created an impenetrable thicket when approached from the front, but from the side the formation was hopelessly vulnerable. On this battlefield, however, all sides were protected and would remain so until they could dismantle the Suthern line.

  Or perhaps not. Roper squinted at where the Hermit Crabs and the pikemen joined, and saw that a gap appeared to be developing there. It was twenty yards across and growing wider as the natural rhythm of thrusting a pike right-handed shuffled the formation slowly to the left. Perhaps the casualties that the Sutherners were taking had shortened their line, thus creating the gap. Or, Roper thought, more likely this gap was of Bellamus’s creation and the cavalry was waiting to destroy any unit that went through.

  “You’ve seen the gap?” pressed Tekoa.

  “It’s bait. We hold the line,” said Roper.

  Tekoa glanced at him. “You fear the cavalry?”

  “Yes I do.”

  “Your instincts are good,” said Tekoa dubiously.

  Uvoren was running towards them. Marrow-Hunter was held low by his side and he was gesturing furiously at the developing gap, which was now forty yards across. “Send the reserves through!” he demanded. “Get Skallagrim, tell him we can break them here!”

  “It’s bait!” shouted Roper. “I’m certain they have cavalry.”

  “So? They’ll be miles away! It’s shuffling left, that’s what pikelines do!”

  “I know, Bellamus; I understand that man and this is no mistake. Return to combat, Captain.”

  Uvoren opened his mouth and screamed incoherently. His face filled with colour and he quaked as he released sheer rage in Roper’s direction. He turned away and sprinted instead for the edge of the Greyhazel.

  “He’s going to get Tore to advance his soldiers,” said Tekoa. “Tore will do whatever he says.”

  “Stop him!” commanded Roper, and Tekoa spurred after the captain. Roper turned to an aide. “Tell Skallagrim to bring his men here at once! We’re going to need them.” The aide tore away and Roper turned back to see that Uvoren had found Tore. The two were talking animatedly, Uvoren gesturing at the gap.

  As Roper watched, Tekoa cantered up to the pair of them. He was clearly shouting and pointed Uvoren back towards the Sacred Guard. Uvoren shouted back briefly and then, quite suddenly, he seized Tekoa’s leg and dragged him from the saddle. Tekoa crashed into the mud, causing Roper to utter a single swear word. He spurred Zephyr forward just as Tekoa rose to his feet, a sword flashing in his hand. Roper swore again as Tekoa raised the blade high and hacked at Uvoren. He was an exceptional legate and a brilliant soldier, but as a warrior, Tekoa Urielson was not in the same league as Uvoren. The Captain of the Guard deflected Tekoa’s blade easily and rammed a gauntleted fist into his face, stunning Tekoa enough to wrest his sword from his grip and hurl it away. Uvoren punched again, knocking Tekoa flat. Tore pulled his horse away, signalling to the trumpeter who sounded the advance.

  The Greyhazel began to move. A large section of their ranks, which had been facing the growing vacancy in the Suthern line, was unoccupied and began to advance. They evidently intended to charge through the gap and then turn on the pikemen, exposed from behind and the flank. Roper knew that right here, in this place and moment, the battle and possibly the Black Kingdom hung in the balance. Uvoren was wrong, and Roper knew that there would be horsemen waiting just out of sight. Somewhere, Bellamus’s watchful eyes would be waiting for them to take his bait. Any forces that went through that Suthern line would be obliterated and, once the Anakim line had broken, the vengeful Suthern cavalry would be free to sweep in behind the legions and rampage there. That would be the battle. It had to be the battle. Tens of thousands of legionaries would die under his command.

  It was too late to stop the Greyhazel advancing, but Roper galloped towards Uvoren, Helmec as ever by his side. He drew up beside the Captain of the Guard, who was watching the Greyhazel legionaries pour through the gap but glanced up as Roper approached. “Go to hell, you little shit,” he advised. “I’ll be damned if you’re going to cost us this battle.”

  “If it were not too late to stop your ill-advised plan, I’d kill you right here,” said Roper.

  “Ha!” Uvoren turned to face Roper fully, hefting Marrow-Hunter in his hands. He took a step towards Roper, but was given pause for thought by Helmec jumping from the saddle and pulling his sword free from its scabbard.

  “You’re going nowhere near my lord,” warned Helmec. Uvoren considered him for a moment but was again distracted by a trumpet that sounded from behind Roper. Creaking round in his saddle, Roper could see Skallagrim’s legion beginning to draw near in the hail. On Roper’s other side, the Greyhazel legionaries had flooded through the gap in the Sutherners’ line and were now in the open. Many were turning on the flank of the pikemen, who could not swing their unwieldy weapons around and had to drop them and draw the short swords they carried instead. The legionaries ate away at the pikemen, pulling the gap further apart so that more and more Greyhazel poured through and began to attack the flank of the Hermit Crabs as well.

  Skallagrim rode up behind Roper. “You called for us, my lord?” he asked eagerly.

  “Hold there for the moment, Legate,” Roper said. “We will need your soldiers very soon. Prepare them to take the place of the Greyhazel Legion.” Skallagrim looked askance at Roper, who had even begun to question himself. Perhaps he was wrong. Perhaps this was a genuine mistake. There might not be any cavalry after all.

  The Greyhazel were doing sterling work. They trusted their legate implicitly and had seized on this opening, hacking into the flank of the pikeline as though it were heather. Uvoren was baying, screaming them on, and it truly looked as though here was where they would splinter the Suthern line. Even the Hermit Crabs were being forced to wheel, faced by the ferocity of the legions on two sides. Roper stood in his stirrups, surveying the brawl uncertainly. He had been so sure there would be cavalry.

  But at that moment, distant thunder began to rumble and did not stop. Roper strained his ears and looked out into the haze as the thunder rolled on, becoming louder and closer. Uvoren took a couple of paces towards the Greyhazel, hesitating. He could hear it too. From his vantage point on Zephyr’s broad back, Roper could see shapes moving through the hail.

  Cavalry.

  The thunder was the pounding of ten thousand hooves. A dense swarm of plate-armoured knights, their horses grotesquely caparisoned, came careening into view. Almost all carried shields and lances, armed for a shocking charge that would sweep away all before them. Through the haze, skirts swirling about their knees, the riders looked ghostly and formidable. The Greyhazel were not in ranks, they were disordered and most did not even face the enemy that solidified by the heartbeat. They would be obliterated and then? Then the knights would sweep through the gap and behind the legions, attacking at will.

  “Form the Greyhazel up!” shouted Roper desperately, looking to his trumpeter who dutifully sent out the notes for Dress Ranks but it was not fast enough. The Greyhazel merely looked confused at such an order, and most had not even noticed the cavalry bearing down on them. Those who had seen the cavalry were beginning to edge back, seeing their doom thundering towards them.

  Just one figure was fighting against the retreating legionaries, pushing his way into the front rank and stepping forward, in front of his peers. It was Gray.

  What he was doing there, Roper had no idea. Perhaps the tides of war had spat him out of the side of the Sacred Guard. Or maybe he had been resting at the back, had seen where the Greyhazel fought and had known that was where the battle would be won or lost and that it
was therefore where he was needed. Whatever the cause, the guardsman now stood alone before his peers as the hail thundered down, sword raised to meet the oncoming knights. Roper could hear him faintly, calling as the other legionaries backed away. “With me, my friends! With me or I die here alone! Will you help me? Will you die with me?”

  There was an immediate reaction. Half a dozen Greyhazel legionaries jumped to Gray like iron-filings to magnetised rock. First among them was Hartvig, the disgraced former guardsman who had been one of Uvoren’s war council. He was at Gray’s side in an instant, with several others joining the two famous warriors. And then, as though the retreating line had the surface-tension of a puddle of water, that half-dozen sucked a score with them. A chain-reaction spread, warriors being dragged forward on the immovable figure of Gray and inter-linking. Swords were raised and there was a sudden jolt as the line lunged forward a little, reinforced by more and more warriors that joined them, like a blood-clot forming in the face of an arterial surge. Something brushed past Roper’s thigh and, looking right, he saw Helmec sprint past him, hoping to pile in with Gray, who was still shouting, growling over the top of the clash of battle that surrounded him. “Yes, my friends, come! Let’s end this together! To serve! To serve!” He was screaming now, galvanising the line which solidified and braced itself. They began chanting with Gray.