Shadow of the Raven (The Reckoning Book 1)

by Ward, Matthew

  "I feel useless," Arianwyn muttered darkly. Her hands tightened on the reins. "First the bridge, now this. Is it to be my fate to stand idle while others perish?"

  "You can't help them." My horse picked up on my restlessness and skittered side-to-side. "At best you'll be in the way. More likely you'll end up on the point of a spear."

  "You think I don't know that?" she snapped. "I don't like to be helpless."

  Calda was in trouble. Her cohort had scattered, and no less than four knights bore down on her.

  "Go," said Arianwyn. "I'll be fine. Don't get yourself killed."

  Our eyes met. I drew my sword, saw Morecet's surprised eyebrow as the blade burst into flame, and rode to Calda's rescue.

  The nearest of the knights had his back to me, and I slew him before he'd even registered my arrival. The edge of my blade took him in the small of the back, slicing through his armour as if it were nothing but spider-web and false promises.

  Another turned, but his steed shied away from my sword's flames. He struggled to regain control, but pitched back off the saddle, pierced by a half-dozen arrows.

  Freed from the threat to her front, Calda decapitated a third knight. Only one remained, but three more charged out of the mist to join him. She didn't see them.

  "Calda!"

  I heard a sharp thud, and a knight toppled out of his saddle, another of Morecet's arrows buried in his breastplate. That still left three practically on top of Calda.

  I dug my heels into my horse's flank, waving madly. "Calda! Behind you!" I knew even then that I'd be too late.

  As it happened, I wasn't needed. One moment three knights bore down on Calda. In the next, there were a pair of loud metallic crashes, and the outermost knights were swept from their saddles by pouncing lions. Arianwyn had found a way to make her mark.

  Calda was out of opponents by the time I reached her side. In fact, there were only a handful of knights left on the battlefield. Sadly, there weren't even two dozen rangers still alive.

  "The gate! New foes at the gate!"

  Warned by a ranger's desperate shout, I saw our doom unfold.

  More wretches were issuing forth from the east gate. Behind them I made out the shapes of yet more knights.

  "We have to get out of here!" I shouted to Calda.

  "I know!" She wheeled her steed, taking in the sight. "Get Morecet and Arianwyn, we'll head north along the road. We can't afford to get split up in the mists."

  A doleful horn split the air and hundreds more fallen spilled from the mists. These, at least, were on foot and could therefore be outpaced. Alas, they scrambled south along the road. The refugees. They'd been pursuing the refugees to Northwatch. Whether they'd been drawn back south by the sounds of battle, or simply by dumb luck, didn't matter. I saw the giant form of Droshna looming at the head of the column, proving once again that however bad things seemed, they could always get worse.

  "South!" shouted Calda. "Follow the road south!"

  The surviving rangers looped away from their opponents and galloped away. The rest of us rode hard on their heels. I twice chanced a look over my shoulder as we fled, and each time saw fallen knights straining to reach us, Droshna's infantry hurrying hard on their heels. Even assuming there were no more dangers waiting on the road ahead, our horses couldn't keep up this pace forever. We'd have to turn and face the knights before the other fallen caught up.

  Calda had obviously seized upon the same thought, for a moment later she ordered a halt. Weary and terrified, the rangers came about and formed a double line. Calda and I pushed our way to the front rank. Arianwyn tried to join me, but I grabbed the reins of her horse and tossed them to Morecet.

  "You want to prove I've had you wrong? Keep her clear of this."

  I prayed silently that I was making the correct decision. My only consolation was that if I wasn't, Arianwyn had far more chance of dealing with Morecet than an army of fallen. As for Morecet, he regarded me with amusement for a moment, threw a jaunty salute and led Arianwyn away down the road. Or tried to.

  Arianwyn snatched the reins back, favoured me with an icy stare, and turned her horse south. "I can find my own way clear, thank you." Morecet's smirk vanished as she turned her scowl on him. With a twitch of her reins, she heaved southward, but not before a final parting shot. "Remember this: there will come a time, Edric Saran, when you'll ask me to leave your side and I won't obey."

  She rode off without another word, Jaspyr and Fredrik at her heels, leaving me with the sense of having badly mishandled the situation. Morecet rode after Arianwyn.

  The knights were less than a hundred paces away. They'd slowed once we'd turned, wary perhaps of some trick. If only that had been true. We had less than two dozen tired men and women against twice that many knights. Nevertheless, we had to try. It was our only chance.

  "Looks like it was your turn to get me in trouble," said Calda.

  Before I could reply, she stood tall in her stirrups and brandished her sword. "By Ashana," she roared, "they'll know they've been in fight!"

  A defiant rumble echoed up and down our double line. Swords came high to join Calda's in one last salute to the hidden moon.

  Calda screamed a wordless battle cry and swept her sword down. We all did, drowning our fear in clamour as our steeds surged forward. The fallen matched our mad battle cry with one of their own, and charged. I saw levelled spears, the burning green eyes of the knights' steeds and the black banners of the infantry hanging limply in the still air. My only thought was how stupid it was to have come so far, only to die for no good reason at all.

  Then another horn sounded in the east, and everything changed.

  Eleven

  I'd heard that sound before and I'd spent many a desperate battle hoping never to hear it again. Now, however, that rising octave of three crisp notes was the sweetest music that had ever reached my ears, for it meant help was at hand.

  The fanfare sounded again, and the eastern mists parted. Blue pennants streamed from steel lances and a wolfs-head blazon snarled upon every shield. Steel plates shifted against the flanks of straining destriers, and silvered maws snarled upon every champron. These were the Sartorov Paladins, scourge of the Contested Lands and counted amongst Tressia's finest warriors.

  I'd seen the paladins before, and each time they'd hacked scores of my countrymen to ruin. It was clear a few amongst the fallen had encountered the paladins during their mortal lives. At once, their charge against Calda's shrunken band lost all momentum as they scrambled to reform against this new threat.

  They might as well have saved their efforts. With a clamour of war cries, of screaming horses and of steel upon steel, the enemy line disintegrated

  "Hold! Hold!"

  At Calda's shout, our mad advance shuddered to halt. The Tressians didn't need our aid and there was little point risking our lives out of pride.

  The fallen knights broke before the last ranger came to a stuttering halt. The paladins' pursuit caught them long before they reached the relative safety of Droshna's column.

  Another triplet of piercing notes rang out. The paladins reformed knee to knee without slowing, wheeled away from the fallen and galloped towards us.

  Beneath the thunder of hooves, I noticed another sound – the steady tramp, tramp, tramp of many thousands of marching feet.

  Black banners hung limp in the still air. The fallen made no effort to advance, to sweep away the hundred or so living warriors who'd laid their comrades low. I wondered why, and then realised the sound wasn't coming just from the north, but from the east as well. Droshna had ambushed Calda and I only to find an army on his flank.

  The paladins grew level. A single rider broke from the centre of the line and spurred towards me. As the paladin approached, he raised his visor and clasped one mailed fist to his chest in salute. "Commander Edrevor Torev. I'm glad we arrived when we did."

  "As are we," Calda replied, with unusual decorum. "You have our thanks."

  "No thanks required f
or dealing with these scum," Torev's manners were slightly stilted. Allies we might be today, tomorrow was another matter.

  "How did you arrive so soon? We didn't expect reinforcements for hours."

  "Why? We were slowed only by those wretched cannons and by the narrowness of the bridge at Ardovo..."

  "Ardovo?" I interrupted. "Didn't you receive our warning?"

  Torev gave me a strange look. "The Sartorov Paladins do not alter course to accommodate the horrors of the night. If such creatures wish to stand in our way, we ride over them!"

  "And did anything stand in your way?"

  "No," he said, with a tinge of regret. "Nothing stirred."

  Assuming we survived, Calda was never going to let me forget that particular detail, though it was one thing for an army many thousands strong to march safely through Ardovo, and another for a force as small as ours to have done so.

  More banners appeared in the eastern mists. This time they belonged to friends, and if not friends then at least to allies. I saw the spread-winged badge of the Stormcrows – longbowmen from the empire's client province of Midgar. Advancing on their left came the Swiftfangs – a Hadari swordband who advanced beneath a standard of a bloody maw.

  To their right marched a regiment of Tressian halberdiers whose blazon of a sword and crossed keys I didn't recognise. Their banner bore the Tressian numeral for '12', telling me they were the twelfth company from whichever tower they hailed. Tressian regiments had ever eschewed fighting names. I'd always held it one of the reasons why they had always struggled to defeat us. Men and women would never fight so well for a number as they would for a name. Other regiments, both Tressian and Hadari, advanced elsewhere, but the skeins of mist left me guessing at their identity.

  Torev looked gloomily at the Stormcrows. "They'll be no use. With this muck in the air they'll not tell friend from foe until it's too late."

  Calda bristled, but I spoke first. "Is there a battle plan?"

  Torev didn't seem hopeful. "Plan? In this? We might as well wish for Sidara to swoop from the heavens on wings of fire and an angelic host at her back. I'm sure the generals will issue orders and talk strategy – that's what generals do – but I doubt there's any plan the mist can't thwart." He saluted us again. "Watch out for your men and women, watch out for your allies and kill any enemy you find – that's what I plan to do. Warrior's luck to you both."

  With that, Torev lowered his helm and rode off to rejoin the paladins, who had all but vanished into the southern mists.

  As Calda and I led the rangers behind the advancing battle line, the reds and greens of the royal guard emerged from the mists behind the Swiftfangs, and marched further north. Eirac rode in the first rank, his circlet exchanged for the golden helm serving as his war crown.

  Arianwyn rode at my uncle's side. With a guilty start, I realised I'd quite forgotten about her in the drama of the last few minutes. I was nonetheless pleased with the company she'd chosen. Eirac wouldn't be so foolish as to throw his life away on a mad charge, so Arianwyn was about as safe as she could rightly be. Of Morecet, I saw no sign.

  As best as I could tell, Droshna was mustering a wall of fallen to oppose us, roughly aligned on the compass line from southwest to northeast. Its right flank was protected by Tressia's looming walls, but its left was open to the Toriana Plains. Though the mists billowed and thinned through some unseen agency, they never faded entirely. At times I could see clearly for perhaps two hundred paces. At others, I barely managed a dozen.

  I couldn't tell how many fallen had gathered to oppose us. Every time I glimpsed a cluster of the enemy, the mists shifted, concealing them from sight. There could have been five hundred, fifty thousand or any number in between. My instincts told me that the truth lay somewhere in the middle of that range, but perhaps that was just wishful thinking – if there were fifty thousand fallen marching against us, the day was about to get bloody indeed. At least it would be over quickly.

  "Strange to be fighting alongside Tressians," Calda observed.

  "I'm getting used to it," I lied.

  It was stranger still to stand idly conversing with battle imminent, but it seemed neither side wanted to start things in earnest just yet.

  As I watched the combined Hadari and Tressian armies unfold, I decided Torev's cynicism was unjustified, at least in part. There was a definite plan to the deployment, with regiments and companies from both nations arranged so as to present a battle line without obvious weakness. It must have been tempting to segregate our forces, so that unpleasantness couldn't break out between neighbours. That another path had been chosen was my uncle's doing, I felt sure. Eirac had one eye to using this battle as a stepping stone to a lasting peace – in the future, a warrior would be less ready to fight an opponent who'd shed blood alongside him. Of course, whether or not that plan would work was another matter entirely.

  I only hoped that the fallen hadn't thought to man the walls. I was reasonably confident we had the numbers to win a head-to-head clash, but fighting beneath the walls of an enemy fortress? If that happened, I had no hope for us at all. Fortunately, there was no sign that any such cleverness had been attempted. Droshna had either assumed he could beat us bloody without the siege engines on the ramparts, or had no followers familiar with their art.

  All in all, things could be worse. If we were to stand any chance of thwarting Malgyne, we had to get into the city, find Constans – or more precisely the seed of Jack that he carried within him – and get to the cathedral. Better to face the fallen army on the open plain than street-to-street in the city.

  Calda shifted impatiently. "I'll leave Hydrion in command of the rangers, find a regiment of cataphracts, and ride these scum to oblivion. Are you coming?"

  I slid from my saddle. "No. I hate fighting from horseback. Take the horse and give it to someone who can use it. I'll see this one out from my own two feet."

  Calda took the proffered reins. "It's your choice, little brother." She hadn't called me that in years. "Just make sure we meet again."

  With a clamour of hooves, she vanished into the mists.

  With no better idea of what I should do, I joined the Swiftfangs. Their warchief looked at me suspiciously at first, but relaxed when it became plain that I'd no intention of taking command. A few warriors stared curiously at my sword, reminding me things I now took for granted were still remarkable to others.

  The tension was unbearable. We all knew there were enemies in the mist, but none of us knew where they were, and how many. Likewise, every man knew he had allies concealed from sight, but not where. Runners carried orders back and forth, but whatever comfort they brought vanished into the mists with them. I was grateful for the proximity of our immediate neighbours – these at least would give the Swiftfangs a measure of confidence. The longer we waited in the mists, the more the fear would grow.

  I toyed idly with my remembrance ring and, with an effort, stopped the motion. My value on the battlefield was already dubious– any act betraying my nervousness made me a liability.

  A horde of wretches appeared out of the mists. It didn't matter that they yammered and howled like wild beasts, or that they outnumbered us twice over. We had something to fight, and our imaginary perils were banished by unarguably real ones.

  Arrows whistled. The Stormcrows fired blindly, reaching for the next arrow as soon as the last had been loosed. Wretches screamed and tumbled to the ground, but the survivors slammed home against our ranks.

  Lacking a shield, I was relegated to the rear ranks, but the Swiftfangs hardly needed my help to deal with enemies like these.

  The wretches fought with no concept of comradeship. They struck our line of locked shields like the tide striking a harbour wall, and with about the same effect. The warriors to my front staggered as the first wave struck. Swords hacked down, and came away black. Wretches screamed and clawed at each other in sudden madness to escape. They found none.

  A great cheer rang out as the wretches fighting the Tressia
n halberdiers broke and ran. They left a tidemark of their own slain behind them, but few Tressian dead. Giving voice to another great cry of victory well won, the Tressians charged on after their vanquished foes, leaving us to fend for ourselves.

  The Stormcrows were suffering. Without shields or heavy armour, the longbowmen were dying in one and twos. Ever more wretches, their blades drawn to easier prey, joined that battle. The weight on our shields lessened. Cheers rang out all around me. The shield-wall dissolved as vengeful Hadari sprang forward in pursuit.

  "Hold fast!" bellowed the Swiftfangs' captain, a burly man with a broken nose and twisted lip. "There'll be more of 'em lurking nearby, and we've comrades in need."

  His level-headed shout checked the pursuit even as it began.

  "Come on, you dogs!" he shouted. "Get those shields up! Don't you know we've royalty fighting with us? You're embarrassing me!"

  As he spoke, the captain threw me a surreptitious wink. I offered a nod in return. Did I know him? He certainly knew me.

  "Right, let's see the rest of 'em off!" The captain swept his sword up, and we bore down on the embattled Stormcrows. Wretches scattered as our shields approached, but more fought on, clawing and hacking uselessly at the leather-bound willow.

  The warrior to my front went down, blood gushing from her throat. Without thinking, I stepped over her body and into the gap. Her slayer lunged at me with a notched longsword. I beat the weapon down with my own, set the wretch back in a spray of black blood. In the moment's grace that followed, I grabbed a discarded shield, and braced it to repair the wall

  I cut down another wretch, and risked a look to the north. A shieldwall of fallen legionaries emerged from the mists, roaring challenge as they came. "'Ware right! Enemies!"

  The broken-nosed captain saw the danger immediately. "Shield ring! Shield ring! Do you want to die?"