Hartmut’s face furrowed as he frowned.
It was too late to avoid the combat.
But there was a banner behind the savages—blue and yellow check. Occitan. And another he didn’t know, and another—a line of mounted knights coming on his side of the slope, moving easily through the open woods behind the line of Outwallers, led by the Prince of Occitan.
He cursed God, and led his men into the company.
In the captain’s clever plan, the levy of the northern Brogat should have been enough, and the Royal Guard enough again, to hold the higher ridge and block the road. But the captain had never imagined the sheer horror of the dragon’s breath, nor the packed legions of boglins. When the north wall was lost, the timbers charred and the men seared to meat standing to the last, Rebecca Almspend and Desiderata stood for three long minutes in the centre of the camp, back to back, and killed anything they could see, wielding power in ways neither had ever directly attempted. Almspend’s power had been that of a scholar, and the Queen’s that of a lover. Until today.
Desiderata hurled power, praying aloud for a gleam of sunshine and watching, horrified, as the embodied Ash darkened the sky above—but he was locked in a death grip with his rival, and she threw only one lingering golden bolt to penetrate his hide before returning to the rising tide at her feet. A behemoth, tusks red, crushed men and tents, and behind it a line of hastenoch trampled those who fled and those who stood their ground with equal vigour. The barghasts swooped on any prey that pleased them.
Blanche Gold watched the ruin of all their hopes, and stood with a short sword by the little King’s bed. She had no great power with which to fight dragons, and she had no ops to loan her Queen. So she guarded the wet nurse and the babe, and when the north wall fell, and the things came, she killed them.
And again, Pavalo Payam saved her. Again, as before, he appeared before she was wholly done, when she had killed two boglins and had one fastened to her left thigh—he cut through the wall of the tent, and his sword moved with the easy, economical flow that she remembered—that it was almost worth the pain to see again—and the creatures died. He cleared the tent, ignored the shrieking wet nurse, nodded to her—and continued out the back wall.
Blanche stood and shook for a moment, and then realized she was bleeding on the Queen’s bedding, and took action.
But as she pressed a spare shift to her thigh, there was a roar—so long it seemed as if it came from ten thousand men, and not just a thousand.
Ser John Crayford watched the north wall lost, and cursed. Mostly, he was cursing a certain arrogant young man who’d had all the answers the day before. But also his own instinct. The size of the dragon trumped any kind of preparation.
Ser John had his own knights—a handful. And the Morean cavalry, which had been beaten badly a few days before. Ser Giorgos Comnenos. Ser Christos.
He shook his head, and turned to Ser Christos. “I must try to save my Queen,” he said.
Ser Christos saw the rout, the collapse, the chaos in the middle of the camp. A thousand peasants were being flayed alive in seconds. He glanced at Ser Alcaeus, who’d seen it all at Albinkirk. And Ser Giorgos, who’d seen it at the Inn.
Ser Alcaeus looked at Ser John, and the look shared their absolute knowledge.
One-way trip.
Ser John would have liked to say goodbye to his Helewise. He’d have preferred to catch more fish in a hundred brooks—to live forever, just stroking her back or hearing her say his name, to see the red-gold flash as the trout took a lure.
“Fuck it,” he said. He smiled without mirth. “Wedge. Two wedges.”
Ser Christos and the Moreans could form a wedge very fast.
The two men touched gauntlets. “Save the Queen,” Ser John said. “I will try to clear the wall.”
Ser Christos thought a moment. “Then let’s make this worth our lives,” he said. He shouted a series of orders at the Moreans—the virtually untrusted Moreans—who were standing, untested, on the southernmost walls.
The Moreans took their hodge-podge of weapons and began to form their taxeis in close order. There were Nordikaans and mountaineers and dismounted city cavalry. There were stradiotes and old, veteran infantrymen from Thrake, and young camp servants who’d scarcely ever touched a weapon.
“They will not run again,” Ser Giorgos said. “Neither will we. Let’s go.”
Ser John was almost happy.
“Let’s make a song,” he said, like the northerner he was.
The two wedges had little space in which to gather momentum—and the camp was an utter shambles. But there was not enough cover for the boglins to stand a charge of heavy horsemen.
The wedges cracked open the front of their wave of terror, and the close-ordered Moreans crashed into the disorder they created. The big axes began to swing. The spears licked out, and the shields remained tight, and a thousand boglins died. And still, the Morean infantry line pressed forward—step by step.
Ser Christos led his men brilliantly, and his sword was like a living rod of lightning, and a great wight died on it, head opened to its mandibles in a single mighty blow. And his wedge drove deep into the centre of the camp, where the hooves of his horses dealt more death than any weapon of man. At the edges of the squadron, men fell from horses tripped by tent stakes and died horrible deaths, consumed still living by myriad enemies, but the wedge itself trampled the enemy to a sticky ruin and cut their way to the Queen, where Ser Ranald’s dwindling Royal Guard opened ranks to let them in. Exhausted men all but fell to the ground in the respite the cavalry gave them—men who had swung an axe or halberd for ten solid minutes, and felt as if they’d aged two years.
Ser Alcaeus asked no permission, but grabbed the Queen and threw her over his saddle. Beside him, men did the same for her women—the three still alive—and the babe. Ser Giorgos pulled a tall woman with bright gold hair onto his crupper and found that she had the King of Alba in her arms.
The line of Morean infantry was inexorable and despite men lost, the phalanx appeared untouched—men fell, and were stepped on. The spears and axes rolled another pace forward.
Boglins are living creatures. They seek to live.
Many began to seek life through flight.
Ser John Crayford cut his way to the north wall. He led his men along the relatively open ground that had been the camp’s parade—he cleared the west face of the Royal Guard’s square, buying men time to drink a sip of water, or merely take a breath—and then he struck the full, packed mass of the enemy in the north-west corner.
He broke his lance, and drew his sword. The boglins were small—too small for a short weapon—and he had to reach down to kill them. His charger did it better than he.
On they plunged, and for the first time in many years, Ser John remembered the joy of combat. The pounding rhythm of the gallop, the surge of near perfect exhilaration to see the men on either side of him, the feeling of oneness with his horse.
The feeling of a living thing coming to pieces under your weapon.
He got his horse onto the ramp to the north wall. Behind him, his banner moved, and still he cut—his charger killed—and they were up on the earthen bank of the wall.
All the ground down to the burning first line seemed to be teeming with enemies. Like a termite’s nest, kicked.
He wished for a mighty adversary—a wight, or a cave troll. But instead, he simply fought well—carefully, as was his wont—and cleared the wall a few steps at a time, minding his horse’s safety, and killing.
And killing.
And killing.
In time, he could not really raise his arm. His horse was bleeding—and sluggish—and had boglins fixed to it like leeches. Ser John couldn’t smile. But he might have, given time. In the centre of the camp, the Morean phalanx had cleared the Royal Guard. One glance told him the Queen was safe. His charger—game to the end—stumbled. And there were no more miracles.
“Goodbye, Helewise,” he said out loud. Then he ro
lled off his saddle into the monsters, and killed until they finally dragged him down.
Miles to the north, Harmodius stood almost alone. The battle line had swept over the ridge in front. He had nothing to do with that, and in fact—such was his mood—would not willingly have killed any living thing except a dragon.
He watched the two vast predators duel. After an initial, vicious encounter with power and talon, they had taken to making long, bloody passes—each circling for altitude and speed, and then coming back together again. He could follow them in the aethereal as well—where the whole of the place was an increasing fog of falsehood and spent ops. Harmodius had never seen power used on such a scale, and for the first time in his long life he sensed that a locale might itself be drained of potentia. Certainly something was happening in the aethereal that was beyond his experience. He watched it.
To the south, he saw it—in the misty aethereal—as Mortirmir opened up.
That was humbling.
More potentia drained. In the centre of the hermetical combat, in the real, trees—late spring trees—began to lose their leaves. And then to die.
And above them, the rainy day began to turn to storm. Harmodius saw it happen—as if nature abhorred the fighting and strove to extinguish it. More and blacker clouds were rushing in. The rain grew stronger.
The Queen still lived, a banner of gold to the south.
The Faery Knight still lived, to the west, and Mogon, to the east.
Harmodius watched, and waited.
Morgon Mortirmir had no reason to be cautious. And a great deal of youthful arrogance that was, on this day and in this place, well-earned.
He killed.
He pounded Thorn’s horde with balls of fire and when a shaman or a fledgling hedge mage among them showed his talent, Morgon concentrated his efforts until that target was dead—and went back to flensing the unprotected.
Around him, the white banda—all but broken by the dragon and stricken by its losses—re-purposed themselves as his bodyguard. He was content with that. He moved when he had to—clearing away the last schiltron of irks covering the flank of the Galles—and then, because they were intermixed with the company, passing over them to grind cave trolls to sand.
Nothing could stand before him. He offered no mercy. He unleashed workings no practitioner had ever considered, because so few men of his power had ever been willing to walk in front of an infantry line. He broke shields and baffled visions. He mimicked darkness and light. He raised phantoms, and then, bored, dropped lines of fire that broke ranks.
Eventually—horrified—the Wild threw everything it had left at him—power and creatures alike. Instead of concentrating their efforts on flanking the company and winning the battle, the Wild responded instinctively to Power.
Ser Gavin rode easily by Prince Tancredo as they cleared the ridge, moving from west to east—crushing knots of resistance—and then Sauce came.
“We’re in it!” she roared. “Come on!” When no one moved faster, she said, “We’re dying! Get a fucking move on!”
Gavin ignored the prince’s sputtering outrage. He raised his lance. “Lead us!” he called.
Sauce turned her horse. They rode side by side for long minutes, and behind them, the Occitan knights and farther down the ridge, Lord Montjoy’s western knights formed a long, thick line.
Riding sideways on a hill always tempts a horse to descend, and over the next third of a mile they went too far down so that, when they came to the edge of the main battle, the banners of the Galles were high above them, almost due north. The company’s Saint Catherine could just be seen, and a big, black banner and, farther along, a bubble of gold that seemed to move and cast fire.
Gavin turned to the prince. “Your grace, we must charge. That is my brother’s standard.”
The prince looked up the hill—scattered with rocks, and overhung with trees of every side.
“This is not the ground,” he said slowly. And then shook his head.
“Yes,” he said suddenly. “Form! Form on me!” he roared in Occitan, and a hundred knights rode to his side—men fell in the rush to join their prince.
To the west, some of the Count of the Border’s better disciplined men were higher on the ridge side and better formed. Sauce rode at them, waving. To her shock, a crossbow bolt hit her breastplate—and whanged away into the trees. She rocked in her war saddle and turned her helmeted head to see a line of crossbowmen—she ducked, far too late.
Her horse died. She fell—one long fall and two bounces…
She rolled to her feet and drew her dagger, the only weapon to survive the fall, and turned to face the three men who came at her, all with swords.
“C’est une pucelle!” shouted one. He laughed.
They all laughed. And in that laughter, they became all the men she’d ever hated. Two moved to flank her, and her hip hurt, and the earth was rumbling and the rain suddenly felt so hard—
Sauce moved. She got her back against a downed tree and rolled over it, kicking high, and then she was between the two who’d tried to go around her. She rammed her dagger into the side of one’s head—in, and out—and her knee crushed the second man’s testicles as her gauntleted hand broke his nose and one finger penetrated his left eye. She let gravity take him, but kept his sword, and turned.
The crossbowmen were winding. The third man was two paces away—at a dead run, buckler raised.
Sauce rolled her right wrist and her borrowed sword’s point came on line. It went between the man’s buckler and his sword—he’d had poor teachers—and went into his neck almost to the hilt. Sauce used the dagger as a crowbar to scrape him off her blade, dumped his screaming near-corpse to the ground, and ducked behind the log as the crossbows came up.
She had the satisfaction of seeing Ser Gavin’s knights sweep across the back of the line of crossbowmen, uncontested. The ambush had caught only her.
She heard Gareth Montjoy’s war cry, and saw the border knights charge.
The crossbowmen were steady. They loosed, and immediately spanned, and a dozen knights’ saddles were empty.
Sauce crawled under the log as the crossbowmen began to span again, and ran, bent double, in plate armour—no mean feat.
There were thirty—no, more than fifty of them.
Sauce ran, light-footed, through the hobblebush and gorse, and they finally noticed her.
Ten paces out, and one had his weapon reloaded.
He aimed it. It was enormous, and she had no tree to save her, so she rolled forward like the acrobat she had once been. The ground was soft—too soft—and she scissored her armoured legs to get over the roll—she was not dead, but up again.
She got in among them as they began to draw their swords. The more experienced of them simply ran—they could not face Sauce and a charge from a line of knights. But the sword killed one, and the dagger another, and then the ground rumbled, the earth shook, and suddenly, Sauce thought to fall flat.
A horse kicked her in the back plate.
And then the charge was past her.
She got up.
She looked slowly around, and then popped her visor.
And stood, and shook.
“That was stupid,” she said to no one.
Then she started walking to where she could see Saint Catherine gleaming red in the rain. To her left, a beautiful horn played three ringing notes. Almost in front of her, a company of Gallish knights met the Occitans head-on.
A beautiful horn sounded three long, clear notes.
The brigans—big, well-drilled men in heavy armour—were giving ground one grudging step at a time. The company now had the hill behind them, and they scented victory. Neither force wanted to lose any more men. There was an endless, nightmare intensity—a spurt of violence, a single killing like a murder, and then sullen heavy breathing. Perhaps they all feared the dragons had taken the issue out of their hands. Perhaps they merely wished to live. But they—the island of professional soldiers of both sid
es in a vast battle of beasts and amateurs—had slowed to a desultory slaughter.
Toby became aware, at some point in the fighting, that his knight had just one hand, and was fighting with, of all things, a curved falchion. He had a moment to breathe—one of the captain’s little workings had just killed a dozen men, and Toby—like every man-at-arms around him—chose to grab two breaths instead of pushing forward into the gap.
He burrowed to the left, to get back into the spot behind the captain. His spot had been taken by—of all people—Diccon, a virtually unarmoured boy who now wielded the captain’s heavy spear.
“I’ll kill ’em all,” Diccon gasped.
He had two wounds, both bad, both showing white bone.
The brigans gave a few more steps.
Off to the right, there were war cries, and shouts—even through the rain. A red banner showed for a moment.
The captain turned back and flipped his visor open. “Ser Bescanon, bless his black heart,” he said. He stared into the rain as if by will alone he could see through it.
“You should step out of the line,” Toby heard himself say.
The captain smiled. “I should,” he agreed. “But I won’t.” He flipped his visor down and crouched slightly, as he always did when he fought. “Come on, you bastards,” he shouted through his visor.
Twenty lances heard him, and moved forward.
The Fairy Knight ordered Bescanon’s charge, and it had the smallest effect. At first.
Bescanon trotted his thirty lances over the crest and looked down on the maelstrom. He looked left, where the Faery Knight, outlined in lurid green sorcery, sat a rearing stag like a horned centaur. His knights—the survivors of the dragon’s breath—and all his people were locked in death grips with the very centre of the enemy line—a huge behemoth, tentacled hastenoch, too many imps and wolves and a wing storm of barghasts.
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