“Shouldn’t we attack?” Oliver asked.
“Not yet,” Anatoly said. “Not until they’re packed in tight, right up against our shield wall.”
Oliver frowned.
The enemy continued to advance, slowly, cautiously, shields raised across the front line and for several ranks behind them—a crush of barbarians pressing the armored front forward.
They were only fifty feet away now.
“There!” Anatoly said, pointing. “See that man with the horn?”
In response to his question, the horn blew.
“Yes,” Oliver said.
“The man next to him … can you kill him from here?”
“Maybe,” Oliver said, frowning.
The enemy surged forward in response to the horn, shields raised against arrows and stones. It was a lumbering affair at first, large men lifting heavy shields and running forward, but as they gained momentum, their charge became more a force of nature than a coordinated attack. Most armies tried to maintain some semblance of order in the midst of battle, but these men had reached a level of bloodlust and unbridled fury that could only manifest in battle frenzy.
Through the building wave of steel and the tumult that accompanied it, Oliver stepped back from his emotions, detached from worldly concerns and cast his will into the firmament. Three wedges of blue force, each as sharp as a needle at the point and only an inch wide at the base, appeared a few feet from his outstretched hand. One after the other, each streaked to their target, the man standing next to the man with the horn. All three flew true, hitting with frightening precision a hundred feet across the battlefield, driving like three deep dagger blows into the man’s face. He went down amid the charging troops.
“Well done,” Anatoly said, then turned to Blake. “Signal hold.”
A series of notes filled the morning air. Moments later, shouts of “Hold!” rose from the sergeants commanding the line.
The barbarian surge crashed into the shield wall, a great, protracted cacophony punctuated by screaming and shouts of rage as steel met steel. Anatoly’s pikemen exacted a heavy toll on the barbarians, stabbing and killing, finding a way past the raised shields to cut into flesh, darting in and pulling back bloody.
The line held, though they were pushed back by the pressure of the barbarian ranks crushing into the assault legion, driving the whole formation farther into the gap under the sheer force of weight and inertia. The shield men gave ground grudgingly and at a price, leaving a treacherous field of carnage for the barbarians to find footing on, stabbing between their shields even as they leaned into them with their shoulders, holding the line.
The pike lines fell back as the shield wall did, stabbing overhead, using the grooves cut into the top edges of the large shields to guide their pike shafts and offer a leverage point to lend strength and sudden motion to the tips of their weapons.
The barbarians relied on other tactics, dropping their shields as they brought their weapons up and over, coming down with powerful downward strikes. Such a tactic would have driven smaller shields into the dirt and brought the enemy falling forward, but the soldiers manning Anatoly’s line were armed with large rectangular shields having two spikes at the bottom that were anchored into the ground. The barbarians’ downward strikes rarely worked and often as not wound up breaking their weapons.
Failing their favored attack, they began to use their war axes to hook the tops of the enemy shields, pulling Anatoly’s men into their back ranks where they died quickly and brutally.
The shield wall finally came to a stop, Anatoly’s men defending successfully and maintaining their line, though at the expense of dozens of lives. The barbarians had taken so many casualties that the field under their front line was littered with dead and dying.
“Now,” Anatoly said, nodding to Blake.
Another horn blew. The cliffs and the back field erupted in an explosion of arrows and stones. The air filled with shafts and bullets, arcing from three directions into the crush of barbarians filling the gap.
Sounds of pain and fear filled the air, magnified by the cliff walls, but still the enemy pushed forward, clambering over their dead to renew their assault. Arrows and stones rained steadily into their back ranks, ripping into and pummeling barbarians indiscriminately and with devastating results.
An enemy horn blew.
In five places across their advancing line, the enemy used shields to create a series of steps culminating in launch points close to Anatoly’s line. On the second sounding of the horn, five men climbed the steps, then raced along another two or three shields held overhead by their comrades and leapt over the line and into the pikemen.
They came up swinging, killing or wounding at least three men each before they were cut down. Another five barbarians rose on the backs of their companions in an attempt to repeat the attack. Oliver knocked three down, one right after the other with force-shards. Liam killed another with a crossbow bolt. The last of them leapt into a raised pike and impaled himself.
Another wing of Sky Knights floated overhead in two columns, flying in line with the gap, loosing their cargo of stones into the enemy ranks, killing a swath of barbarians with ruthless suddenness.
“That’s the last of the stones,” Anatoly said. “The Sky Knights will come en masse in about twenty minutes.”
“For what it’s worth, the enemy looks like it’s only about four legions strong,” Alexander said. “You’ve taken quite a bite out of them.”
“It’s easy to rack up a kill count when they flail away at you like these savages have.”
“More importantly, you’ve gotten the people safely to Shoalhaven.”
Anatoly nodded, looking out over the battle raging before them.
The steady hail of arrows slowed to a trickle, then stopped.
“Last of the arrows,” Blake said.
“We’re down to blade and shield,” Anatoly said.
The battle at the line stagnated, two armies pressed up against each other, taking a nick here and a scratch there, cutting when and where they could. Swords and spears bristled from the clash as every soldier vied for a shot at the nearest enemy, but most strikes fell harmlessly on an opposing shield.
On Anatoly’s line, as men fell, they were carried away, clearing the field for others to take their place. On the barbarians’ side, the bodies stacked up, forcing Anatoly’s men to retreat a few paces or let the barbarians gain the high ground by standing on the corpses of their own fallen.
“Start killing, Oliver,” Anatoly said, gesturing to the enemy spread out before them.
“What do you mean?” Oliver asked, a deep frown furrowing his brow.
Anatoly put his hand on Oliver’s shoulder and looked him in the eye.
“Start casting your spell into the enemy ranks. Kill them indiscriminately as quickly as you can.”
Oliver blinked a few times as the command sank in. His colors whirled with turmoil, but finally settled into a sense of resigned necessity. He took a moment to center himself, stepping up to the railing of the makeshift tower and muttering the words of his force-shard spell. Three deadly blades of magical force darted into the enemy ranks, just beyond those who held shields, tearing into unprotected flesh, drawing blood and screams from three enemy soldiers.
“Order the archers to retreat to Shoalhaven,” Anatoly said.
“Understood,” Blake replied.
Slingmen still hurled stones into the enemy from the cliff walls and from just behind the shield wall, but the arrows were gone. Archers were just a liability now and they would be useful if the city came under siege.
It seemed to happen in slow motion. A war axe slipped out of the cracks between the enemy shields, hooking over the top of one of Anatoly’s shields and yanking the man forward into the barbarians. As the first man fell, the men to either side suffered similar attacks, being dragged to their deaths within the enemy ranks.
Several men surged forward into the gap created in the line. Big,
powerful barbarians assaulted into the pikemen, driving through to Anatoly’s very thin back ranks. More followed into the breach, assaulting the flanks of the shield wall.
“Signal the cavalry, then call the reserves.” Anatoly snapped to Blake, turning to Oliver and pointing to the breach. “Thin them just beyond our line.”
Oliver nodded, casting three more force-shards into the soldiers surging into the breach.
Alexander vanished and poured his entire will into creating a brilliant light right above the breach point, focusing it toward the enemy only. Blinding in intensity, pure white in color, he shined his light into the face of the enemy assault … and they faltered.
The brightness of it blinded them enough to stop their charge in its tracks. Alexander released his light a few moments before the line separated to allow a cavalry charge. The heavy horse crashed into the barbarians, pouring into the back ranks, crushing them underfoot, cutting them down with relative ease as they struggled to fight while still too dazzled to see clearly.
Reserves rushed in, filling the gap in the shield line and killing the few enemy soldiers still remaining behind the line. The cavalry withdrew as Corina and Bianca floated overhead with over two hundred Sky Knights. Each of the witches cast a bubble of liquid fire, splattering orange-hot death across a swath of men. Column after column of Sky Knights followed, raining javelins into the enemy with ruinous effect, thinning their ranks as they passed overhead like the shadow of death.
Another enemy horn blew, filling the narrow canyon with reverberating sound.
Barbarians in three spots hooked shields simultaneously and pulled, dragging nine men into the back ranks of the barbarians’ army, opening three gaps in the line at once. Three wedge formations pushed into the gaps, forcing them wider, killing the men to either side, piercing Anatoly’s line with armored formations in a matter of seconds.
“Call the cavalry back,” Anatoly said to Blake.
All three enemy wedges pushed through the line, opening up three clear passages at once, allowing the enemy soldiers to move through. They poured into Anatoly’s back field like ants marching to war.
What had been an orderly battle along a shield line abruptly transformed into a very lopsided melee. Given order, structure and formation, Anatoly’s force could hold its own against any army in the Seven Isles, but the heavy shields that made his line so effective, also made his men slow and ponderous once the line broke.
The pikemen were equally disadvantaged in that their weapons were virtually useless once the enemy got close. So much so that most of them dropped their pikes in favor of short swords.
“Sound retreat,” Anatoly said, “then make ready to ride.”
“Understood,” Blake said, a little of the color draining from his face.
“Liam, Oliver, secure the base of the tower,” Anatoly barked, scanning the battlefield. It was a lost cause. He scarcely had a thousand men left on the field. He estimated that the enemy still had well over twenty thousand, possibly quite a few more than that. The barbarians pressed forward, ruthlessly and wantonly cutting down Anatoly’s men who were now struggling to withdraw with some semblance of order, many small groups falling back under cover of interlocked shields.
The Sky Knights came back for another pass, toppling a swath of barbarians in a hail of javelins like a squall moving through a forest felling trees in its path. While devastating, their attack did nothing to change the course of the battle. Anatoly’s men fell as they fled. A javelin hit Anatoly squarely in the chest, bouncing off his dragon-steel breastplate, but still knocking him back a few feet from impact and surprise.
“Time to go,” Alexander said.
“Yeah, I think you’re right,” Anatoly said, climbing down from the makeshift tower, scanning the battlefield the moment he hit the ground. The enemy was advancing quickly.
“Go!” Anatoly said, pointing toward the back field. “Head for the picket line.”
Another javelin hit Anatoly, this time in the back. He fell sprawling into the dirt face first. Oliver killed the man who’d thrown it, while Liam helped Anatoly to his feet, quickly killing another approaching soldier with his crossbow before dropping it and drawing his sword.
“Shield your eyes,” Alexander said, waiting only a moment for his allies to comply before flooding the immediate area with light for several seconds.
“Now!” Alexander said, releasing his light, plunging the area into relative darkness and the enemy squad into temporary blindness.
Anatoly lunged forward, extending the top spike of his war axe into the heart of the nearest enemy, withdrawing it, spinning toward another man and taking his head in a stroke. It took Liam a moment to join the quick and terribly one-sided battle, but once he and Oliver did, the nearest group of soldiers died very quickly.
Killing the last of them with a hack to the side, Anatoly scanned the immediate area, seeing a group of enemy soldiers forming up not forty feet away.
“This way,” he said, moving toward the picket line at the far end of the gap. A few squads of enemy soldiers had gotten behind Anatoly, most fighting small units of his soldiers. The first he came upon were caught by surprise and died quickly.
The second barbarian squad they came upon was engaged in a pitched battle with a unit of pikemen, most of whom were fighting with swords. The barbarians were winning until Oliver killed three in the space of as many seconds, catching them by surprise with his force-shard spell. The sudden attack diverted their attention, giving the pikemen an opportunity to press their attack. Three enemy soldiers retreated, wounded, leaving just a handful of pikemen.
A horn sounded. The enemy began to charge, not the orderly movement of a formation, but an all-out rush to chase down the fleeing enemy and slaughter them. Sky Knights cast silent death down into the barbarians, but the enemy’s numbers were too great to diminish significantly with javelins.
Anatoly assessed the situation and nodded to himself, grim determination filling his colors. The enemy was fifty feet away and sprinting toward them—there was nowhere to run.
“Gentlemen, it has been an honor,” he said.
Javelins rained down amongst them, one hitting Anatoly on the shoulder and glancing off his armor. Another drove into Commander Blake’s neck, down through his chest and out his ribs under his opposite armpit. A look of shock and disbelief came over him as he slumped to his knees and fell over without a word. Two more javelins were deflected by Oliver’s shield.
“You have to run!” Alexander said, knowing even as he spoke that they would never make it. The enemy was closing with frightening speed, hundreds of barbarians hurtling toward them.
Liam killed the closest man with his crossbow, then dropped it in favor of his two-handed sword. Oliver wounded three more in the van of the enemy charge, causing several more men behind them to stumble over them as they fell.
“Move to the wall,” Anatoly said, running toward the cliff.
Alexander vanished, appearing on Corina’s wing as she flew, projecting himself beside her. She looked at him twice before smiling quizzically.
“I didn’t know you could do such a thing,” she said.
“Me neither,” Alexander replied. “Anatoly’s line has collapsed. Send your Sky Knights in to evacuate as many as you can and cover their retreat.”
“Understood,” she said, all business once again.
Alexander vanished, sending his point of focus back to Anatoly just as the enemy reached him. Anatoly ducked under the first man’s downward stroke, crashing into his midsection with his shoulder. The man grunted, momentarily stunned. Anatoly came up, his hands spaced wide on the haft of his war axe, driving the top spike under the man’s ribs and into his chest.
Liam waded into the carelessly charging enemy, swinging his giant sword in wide swaths, cutting deeply into men with each stroke. He bellowed in rage, driving into the advancing enemy without concern or caution, killing men with frightening violence.
“Liam!” Anatoly sh
outed.
He didn’t hear, or at least he didn’t respond.
Most of the enemy flowed past them, but many barbarians on the edge of the horde stopped to engage.
Oliver killed a man charging him but didn’t see a second man attacking from behind. The barbarian stabbed with his spear, a kill strike to be sure, but it hit Oliver’s magical shield and only served to shove him forward.
Two barbarians checked their mad charge and engaged Anatoly with more caution, one drawing his attention with a spear thrust while the other tried to flank him, attacking with a war axe. Anatoly swept the spear tip aside with the haft of his axe and kicked the man in the groin before spinning to meet the attack of the second man. Both axes struck at the same time, Anatoly’s cutting deeply into the man’s hip, the blade sticking in bone, while the barbarian’s axe hit Anatoly’s armor and knocked him off balance, sending him stumbling to the ground in front of another barbarian.
Alexander flashed into a ball of light, as bright as he could conjure, floating right above Anatoly. The barbarian standing over him with weapon raised flinched at the light, turning away to protect his eyes. Anatoly stabbed up into his belly with his short sword and rolled to his feet. Alexander released his light.
More men came. Anatoly parried the first man’s attack, stabbing him in the leg deeply enough to elicit a scream of pain and send him to the ground. The second man rushed him, stabbing him squarely in the chest with his spear so hard that the shaft shattered into splinters. Anatoly was lifted off his feet and thrown to his back, stunned by the impact.
Oliver killed the barbarian.
A battle cry filled the gap as Liam thrashed farther into the enemy ranks, killing and wounding with ferocious and wild abandon. A trail of dozens of wounded and dying men lay behind him. Then a javelin hit him in the leg, driving him to one knee. He killed several more soldiers as they swarmed him, men hacking and stabbing him to death from all directions.
Alexander started to feel a hint of panic, not for himself, but for Anatoly. Oliver was standing over him, protecting him with his shield, casting his force-shard as quickly as he could, but it wasn’t quickly enough. A javelin bounced off his shield, then another. Three men approached from different angles, all of them eyeing the young wizard like a predator eyes prey.
Sovereign of the Seven Isles 7: Reishi Adept Page 39
