by Kate Elliott
“That’s Liath!” Alain saw scarlet flash in her Eagle’s cloak.
Lavastine leaned down toward his captain. “Bring the Eagle to me as soon as she enters camp. Let the other captains assemble.” When he turned back to Alain, he regarded the young man with a seriousness that made Alain flush with more than wine—with a dreadful anticipation, a fluttering in his stomach. “No matter what is said, or left unsaid, you must trust me, Alain. Your part is to defend this hill.” His gaze shifted to encompass the expanse of fields stretching eastward toward the river and Gent, which lay silent and peaceful under the new sun. “How quiet it is this morning,” he added softly.
Voices swelled below, a hubbub of excited speech and shouting. The captain rode up the hill, Liath right behind him. Her horse was foundering and, as soon as she dismounted, a servant led it away.
“My lord count!”
He lifted a hand for silence and counted his captains: Lord Geoffrey, Lord Wichman, Lady Amalia, Lord Dedi of Autun. The sergeants had already assembled. “Eagle, give us your report.”
Out it spilled so quickly that Alain could scarcely make sense of it: an illusion that appeared as no illusion? the Eika attacking now? With each phrase she glanced east, her expression so transparent that Alain thought he could read each least slight grimace or widening of eyes. She was not as afraid of what she claimed to see as of how her news would be received by her listeners.
They all looked. They could not help it, her gaze drew their own so strongly toward the plain lying bright and empty between their position and the distant city of Gent.
There was nothing there, no army racing toward them, no drums beating to sound the advance.
Nothing but the quiet land under the morning sun.
“Ai, Lady,” she burst out at last, seeing their skeptical expressions.
Alain stepped forward.
Seeing him, she reached toward him like a supplicant. Sorrow and Rage, growling softly, retreated behind him, and old Terror whined and slunk back behind Lavastine. “Lord Alain! You must believe me. They’re halfway across the plains. They’ll overwhelm us if we aren’t ready for them—if they don’t overwhelm us with sheer numbers!” She grabbed Alain’s arm. Rage snapped at her just as Lavastine began to protest this liberty, but Alain called Rage down and, with a look at his father, gained silence. “Don’t you see?” she cried, gesturing toward the east.
He murmured under his breath. “I pray you, Lady of Battles, let me see with her sight. Let me see with the inner heart, not the outer seeming.”
In the late summer heat, waves of heat often rippled off the fields and rocks. It was like that now, a distortion over the fields, an image of peace blurring and changing, dust rising in a haze to cloud the sun—
There! Jogging at a ground-eating pace came the war bands of the Eika, drums pounding at their backs, their shields a blur of blue and yellow. They had already covered three quarters of the distance from city to camp; the haze of dust marked their passage. In all there were a dozen or more units, each one marked out by spears decorated with feathers, bones, and tattered strips of cloth braided into streamers. Each unit contained many more than a hundred Eika—and all had dogs loping beside them.
“Lord have mercy!” exclaimed Alain. “There are at least three times as many of them as of us!”
“There’s no one there at all!” scoffed Lady Amalia.
“And no illusion to see through,” added Lord Wichman.
“That is the illusion,” said Liath, her tone ragged as she stared at Alain with hope flaring in her eyes.
Wichman snorted. “Ai, I’ve had experience with these Eika,” he began, “and there was always some fearsome sight to be seen—” He faltered as Count Lavastine moved up beside Alain.
“What do you see, son? Like the others, I see nothing.”
Alain could only whisper. “It’s true. What she says is true.”
“This is not what I had planned for,” said the count, as if to himself. Then, with no change of expression, he turned to his captain. “To arms! Sound the horn!” The captain signaled, and at once the blare of the horn lifted, a high note caught in faint echoes off the distant bluffs. The camp came alive with movement as soldiers prepared for battle and manned both outer rampart at the base of the hill and the inner one near the top which used the slope to best effect.
Then, and only then, did the count’s eyes widen with astonishment as he stared eastward. His expression hardened as he examined the tide of Eika. He set a hand on Alain’s shoulder, and for the space of three breaths they stood thus, together, as the Eika flooded toward them over the fields. Finally he turned even as the captains uttered oaths or caught in gasps, at last seeing through the illusion. By now they could hear the howling of the Eika dogs and the ululations of the screaming Eika. The drums shuddered like thunder through the air.
“My captains!” Lavastine caught their attention and held it with his gaze and his posture. A servant ran up beside the platform and handed his helmet and a cup of wine up to him. This cup he passed among those assembled before him.
“There are more Eika than I hoped, but all is not lost. Our plan remains the same. Alain, stay on the hill. You, and the bulk of our army, which holds the hill, are the anvil. I, with the cavalry, will be the hammer. Had we more warning, we would have had more chance to strike them unawares from the rear—but nevertheless our only hope is to use our cavalry to destroy them on the field. Assemble your riders.” Each took a drink from the cup, pledging their courage and strength, and left. Only Lavastine’s captain and the Eagle remained, together with Lavastine’s personal servants, themselves armed and ready with shields hitched across their backs and spears in hand.
“Alain.” He touched the cup to his own lips and then handed it to Alain. “I will return to you through the Eika host and meet you here. God’s grace upon you, son. Trust our captain, who will remain beside you. Trust your own instincts. You are a born soldier.”
He leaned forward and kissed Alain on the forehead. Stunned, Alain could only drop to his knees before the count and grab his hand, to kiss it.
“Do not kneel before me,” said the count irritably, lifting him up. “You are my heir and need kneel before no one but God.”
“I will not fail you, Father,” said Alain, surprised he could speak at all.
“Of course you won’t! Eagle, attend me.”
Liath cast a glance over her shoulder, but only one, as she hurried after the count. The hounds, barking, tails whipping with excitement, clustered around Alain as he watched them go.
The cavalry assembled on the western side of the hill, hidden from the Eika assault—or so Liath prayed. She tried to estimate their numbers, perhaps three hundred in all. Behind, the infantry who had dug into the hill numbered at most twice that many. As she moved down the hill with the count, he inquired of the other business she had been about.
“The river’s mouth is chained. One Eika ship already has been destroyed. We found the tunnel.”
Lavastine watched as the units formed up under their banners: the black hounds of Lavas behind him, the red eagle of Fesse behind Lady Amalia, Lord Wichman and his men at the head of the gold lion of Saony, Lord Dedi with the raven tower of Autun and the guivre of Arconia. “How far from here to the tunnel?”
“I saw the Eika leave the gates of Gent and yet I arrived here before them.” She heard, nearing their position, the beat of drums and a low shuddering roar. “It lies just beyond that bluff,” she lifted her hand to point, “beyond the small wood.”
“You’ve done well, Eagle.”
Now he lifted a hand, seeing his cavalry in place.
Ai, Lady. If only the count had waited in Steleshame, perhaps Henry would have come. But he had had a plan, and yet, as plans often do, it had come to naught. He had planned to meet the Eika in battle in the field, forcing their hand by moving siege engines into place and then meeting their sally with his cavalry as his infantry used the tunnel to enter the city, but
now the opposite was true. His foot soldiers were pinned; to abandon his horses and lead his cavalry soldiers, on foot, through the tunnel into Gent would condemn those on the hill to annihilation. Yet surely the city had been emptied of Eika. A surprise attack from within could take the city and probably hold it against an Eika army stuck outside the gates—but by then that army would have done their gruesome work at Lavastine’s camp, a camp commanded by his only child.
His people watched, expectant, as he paused before riding forth. They waited, three hundred strong, horses shifting, spears waving against sky and the looming hill behind them.
He lowered his hand and, in silence except for the rumble of hooves, they moved out, swinging wide to give themselves as much space as possible to maneuver. Above them, from the hill, a roar of shouts followed by the clash of arms rolled across the valley like thunder.
The roar of the Eika host overwhelmed even the maddened beating of their drums as they closed the distance. Alain stood at the top of the hill so that he could see his entire force.
“What is that?” he gasped, squinting toward Gent. It seemed to him a dome of fire arched over and concealed the city, but surely no such thing could exist; it must be the sun shining in his eyes.
From below came the call to shoot, but the first volley of arrows had little effect against the huge round shields or the tough hides of the Eika. Only a few dropped, among them a handful of dogs. Arrows lodged in their arms or necks or quivered in their glittering mail girdles, the metal “skirts” woven of hundreds of interlinked rings of brass or iron—but still they came on.
In answer they sent a volley of spears, axes, and stones from their back ranks even as the foremost Eika units swarmed onto the ramparts. Men braced behind earth and shield.
The lead Eika leaped over the ditch onto the earthern walls and hacked at the palisade stakes. A few of his comrades tried to slip between those stakes, turning shields sideways, but spears thrust up through their armpits or stomachs and they died straddling the earthern wall. To the left, a clot of Eika pressed hard against the wooden stakes, iron-tipped spears forcing the shieldmen back from the rampart. Men-at-arms with spears dueled back, and a small band of archers gathered behind the men-at-arms and riddled the Eika with arrows.
Other Eika bands swarmed on all sides, trying to swamp the rampart from every direction. Because the south slope of the hill was steep, the Eika had trouble maneuvering up to the wall. From his platform, out of reach of arrow and spear, Alain saw the men there tossing rocks and rolling logs into the Eika ranks. The north slope had a more gentle pitch and here the Eika pressed hard against the north “gate,” made of wagons rolled up against a gap in the rampart. An Eika armed with a stone-bladed club leaped in a great bound onto the wagon that sealed the gate and struck a man with such force the blow shattered the man’s shield and slammed him down to his knees. Already two arrows protruded from the chest of the Eika. A dozen spears and swords wounded him. The creature leaped again, arms outspread as if flying. A soldier thrust his spear upward, and the weight of the Eika’s fall drove the spear clean through its chest as the spearman collapsed underneath its dead weight. More Eika clambered after him, screaming and howling.
“There!” Alain cried as a hole opened in the eastern defense, but the captain was already in motion sending reserves in to plug the gap. Was there nothing he could do? Only watch as others fought, and bled, and died?
Along the north wall, held by what remained of Lord Wichman’s infantry, an able sergeant with a long spear stayed close to the gate. His standard bearer leaped to and fro shouting encouraging words of scripture and at one point dropped the standard over the face of an Eika to confuse it as others set upon it with axes and swords.
It seemed an eternity that Alain sat there, restraining himself. His father had told him to wait until the time was right. If he acted too soon, there would be no reserve for when it was truly needed. It was worse to stand and watch. If these men who were dying in order to protect him knew that he could not strike a blow in battle and that in war he was a coward, would they so willingly lay down their lives under his banner? Did he deserve their respect and confidence?
From the east rampart the sound of splintering wood signaled the breaking of the stockade wall. Many logs, weakened by strokes of ax and sword or pulled up by Eika, split or gave way as the weight of the Eika charge pushed into camp. On the south the line still held, but on the north slope the wagons blocking the gate had been shattered. A pack of Eika dogs bounded through the breach and over those men who now formed a shield wall as they attempted to close the gap.
Two dogs charged the gold lion banner of Saony. The standard bearer dropped the standard to make a spear of it, and with a mace in his right hand he countercharged, but one dog dodged nimbly aside and bowled the man over while the other grabbed the standard in its teeth and shook it viciously. Still the man refused to yield the standard. Splayed with his left hand gripping the banner-pole and the right arm fending off attack, he lay helpless.
“Lord Alain.” The captain jumped up to the platform. Alain’s horse—his father’s favorite gray gelding Graymane—waited patiently beside. “Take your men to the north gate. I’ll drive them off the east.”
At last a decision had been made. Alain mounted and raised a hand, the only way to communicate over the roar of battle surrounding them. He charged, two dozen men and seven hounds behind him.
At the north gate the weight of the Eika broke the line of shields. Men stumbled back to leave a wide gap thick with Eika and their dogs. There came an Eika, grinning up at Alain in a battle fury, his teeth studded with gems and his bone-white hair braided into a thick rope. Alain leveled his lance and rode in, but it was like play, like a dream with no fury, no fire; he charged for the sake of his men who died holding back the Eika, nothing more, nothing less.
The Eika stood its ground and at the last instant batted the lance aside and drove in toward the gelding’s neck with its stone-tipped spear.
Alain reined sharply aside and the spearpoint passed through Graymane’s mane, striking Alain’s mailed right shoulder. The shaft of the spear splintered. The shock sent Alain tumbling, his shield slapping into the Eika’s face as he fell. He struck earth with a slam, air driven from his lungs. A pack of dogs leaped on him, biting, ripping at his shield, clawing and jumping over him. Only his mail saved him. He tried to reach for his sword, but it lay twisted beneath him. He tried to roll, but a huge slavering dog landed on his chest, slamming him back down, and lunged for his throat.
Sorrow arrived first. His weight at full run slammed the Eika dog sideways, and Sorrow pressed on, biting and clawing, heedless of a gash opened on his great black head. Then Rage swept in, silent and deadly, and the Eika dog fell to lie twitching, hide opened in a dozen places, its life bleeding away onto the dirt.
Sorrow had already clamped down on the throat of another dog, twisting his massive neck back and forth until the Eika dog died with a spasm.
Then the other hounds charged in, a mass of black fur and fierce fighting that clouded Alain’s vision. He struggled up to his feet, drawing his sword. Tears streaked his face beneath his helmet.
“Lady of Battles, forsake me not, I beg you.”
He had never been so afraid in his life. Terror barked an alarm and Alain barely turned, rising from his knees, in time to catch a blow from an Eika ax upon his shield—but it drove him back down to his knees. A spear stabbed past him, from behind, thrusting in the Eika’s face, shattering its gem-studded teeth. They came, his guard, forming up around him, crying out to each other, calling Alain back. With an ax-blow one of the men severed an Eika’s hand at the wrist, and though the creature tried to retreat, howling in pain, the press of his shield brothers forced him forward straight into Alain.
Alain struck feebly at him, more reflex, more for his own defense. Ai, Lady, the savage was helpless, disarmed now with foul greenish blood pumping from the wound. The spearman struck again, catching the Eika at t
he throat and finishing him. As he fell, blood gushing at Alain’s feet, two more pushed forward. Alain could only fend off blows, hold hard against the rush of Eika while his men with spears and axes did damage around him.
“Back, Lord Alain!” they cried. “Back behind us!”
Weeping with shame, he stumbled backward, the hounds following in among the legs of his guard. The shield wall parted to let him into their ranks.
All along the north face the line at the rampart gave in toward the center, and throughout the camp Lavastine’s troops gave way from the wall to stand shoulder to shoulder against the Eika tide.
Alain prayed that his father would arrive soon.
2
THE heavy cavalry formed up in three open ranks, twenty paces between, with Lavastine and his banner in the center of the lead rank. A line nearly a hundred horsemen wide swung around the hill. Liath rode behind Lavastine. At first they advanced around the north side of the hill at a trot. As the enemy came into full view, the first rank broke into a charge followed by the second and third ranks.
The banner of Lavas drove all the way into the back ranks of the Eika. The lances struck high, hitting shields and heads, breaking through the Eika line in a hundred places. Lavastine himself at the front bore onward, the steel of his sword winking in the morning sun as he raised it between strokes. The second and third ranks thundered through behind him, slaying the now disorganized Eika who had received the first charge. Liath followed Lavastine and his guard and, as his charge slowed, she sheathed her sword and drew her bow. Few of the horsemen fell at first, but as their charge slowed, the Eika began to mass around any horseman who had become separated from his companions in the press, and these poor souls were dragged off their mounts to disappear into the claws of the howling Eika.
Lord Wichman forged ahead, having learned this lesson from the Eika. Small pockets of his men, under the banner of Saony, pressed on ever forward until they came around the east side of the hill. Lady Amalia and her standard bearer had also pushed on deep into the Eika forces, but as the troops from Fesse ground to a halt against stiff resistance, she and her standard pressed on until they struggled alone, an island amidst a sea of Eika.
