The Fate of the Fallen (The Song of the Tears Book 1)

by Ian Irvine

  THIRTY-THREE

  By the tenth day the Defiance had grown to a force of eight thousand, though Monkshart’s envoys and rumourmongers told of twice or even thrice that figure. Most were armed with bows, swords or spears hidden since the end of the war, and they appeared to be a formidable force, from a distance.

  But Nish had once commanded an army and was dismayed by what he saw. Of his eight thousand, many were beardless youths and young women who had never held a weapon before, while almost as many were middle-aged or old. They weren’t feeble but their reactions were slow, their eyes weak and their muscles wasted. Less than a quarter had any battle experience, and that dated back to the war. Monkshart had made officers and sergeants from the best of these and set them to train the remainder, though it was not going well. They simply could not impose army discipline on the unruly peasants.

  There had been no word of his father. No spies had been taken in the camp nor been seen watching it, and Monkshart’s growing network of informers had heard nothing of any army on the march. The garrison at Guffeons, a force large enough to annihilate the Defiance, remained in its barracks. No flappeter had flown over the camp in all this time. Why not? The whole world must know he was here by now, so why was Jal-Nish holding back?

  His crack troops would carve through the Defiance like a knife through cheese, and Nish pointed this out to Monkshart daily, but the zealot brushed aside his criticisms. Monkshart wasn’t concerned about casualties; indeed, he seemed to welcome them for their use in his increasingly well-oiled propaganda machine.

  Nish wanted to take charge of his forces and train them properly, but Monkshart had other work for the Deliverer and Nish couldn’t sway him. He’d lost that dominance he’d had after coming up from the Pit of Possibilities, couldn’t get it back, and felt the failure keenly. If he couldn’t even assert control over the zealot, how could he hope to succeed when the Deliverer faced a real challenge?

  The one issue on which Monkshart had given way was in the selection of the camp each evening. Nish chose each site to be as defendable as possible, though successful defence required discipline above all else, and he had an untrained rabble.

  Every morning at five, when it was still dark and pleasantly cool, Monkshart took Nish to a guarded tent pitched well apart from the others and tutored him in oratory. First off, Nish had to improvise an address on a minute’s notice. As soon as he finished, Monkshart tore it to shreds then demanded another, on a different topic, which he dealt with just as cruelly, followed by a third and a fourth. An hour of such toil left Nish wrung out, but Monkshart had barely begun.

  He handed Nish a scroll, closely written on both sides. ‘What’s this?’ Nish said sourly, ‘One of yours?’

  ‘It’s Rulke’s famous speech to the assembled Aachim after he single-handedly took their world from them. Read it once, remember it then deliver it as he would have done. It’ll be a nice contrast to the rambling orations you’ve been tormenting me with.’

  Nish did his best with Rulke’s hauntingly lyrical words, but muddled the beginning, left out the middle and trailed off at the end without ever making Rulke’s most important point. He didn’t need to see Monkshart’s barely controlled rage to know that he’d been embarrassingly bad.

  Next he was given one great speech from the Histories after another, each of which he had to remember and deliver, perfectly, after a single reading. The zealot savaged each of these performances as well, and so the morning went on until Nish was hoarse and his mind numb. Monkshart never pronounced himself satisfied; the highest praise Nish gained, and that was seldom, was that his oratory had been almost adequate … for a beginner.

  After a short break in mid-morning, Nish wrote the oration he would give to the assembled Defiance that afternoon, though it generally took a dozen drafts before Monkshart expressed a modicum of satisfaction. Nish found this labour even more trying, being unaccustomed to writing his thoughts down.

  In the early afternoon he held court in a sweltering tent, meeting delegations and pleaders for favours, sorting out disputes and, where required, dispensing justice. He hated this most of all. He felt like a pretender to his father’s throne, and nothing could have been more calculated to bring the God-Emperor’s wrath down on the Defiance. Why was he holding back?

  Once the day began to cool, Nish addressed the multitudes after Monkshart had whipped them into a fervour with his brilliant oratory. Nish didn’t try to compete – if he’d practised every day for a decade he would not have had half of Monkshart’s skill. He kept his words simple and his message direct – he’d given his promise and he was here to deliver it. Together they would cast down the God-Emperor and create a better world.

  It seemed enough, and afterwards he walked among the Defiance, despite Monkshart’s objections that it was now better to remain aloof. Monkshart wanted to control him, but equally wanted to control who met him. As Nish moved through the camp he could see Phrune and his marshals forming barriers between him and those undesirables Monkshart didn’t want him to meet, and Nish didn’t have the strength to fight that battle as well.

  Afterwards he returned to the tent with Monkshart and Phrune to continue work on their strategies and tactics for the campaign.

  Finally, generally after midnight, Nish went gratefully to his guarded tent, where every night he had to eject a comely young woman from his bed, and once a brace of them. He sent them away as politely as he could, though they, or others, often reappeared in the night. He ordered the guards to keep them out; they nodded, winked, slyly tapped the sides of their noses and did nothing. Apparently Monkshart personally interviewed and selected each young woman according to what he knew of Nish’s tastes.

  Each time it was harder to send them away; he could feel his resolve weakening daily, and damned Monkshart for manipulating him in yet another way. Nish took a surly pride in not having succumbed. Yet.

  Nish shot upright in his bed, heart pounding. The ululating shrieks seemed to be plunging right at him, rising in pitch as they came.

  He had taken to sleeping in his clothes as an extra barrier against the night intruders. He thrust his feet into his boots, laced them up and ran outside. The camp was dimly lit by the night’s dying fires, which gave enough light to show a flappeter hurtling down towards his tent. How had it known where to find him? There must be a spy in the camp.

  It rocked in the air, levelled out and raced towards him, its pairs of legs extending like a black spider’s. Nish, slow to realise its intentions, threw himself to the ground as the flappeter shot overhead. A foot hook snagged in the back of his shirt, jerking him into the air and carrying him along, swinging wildly.

  Its rider was leaning over the side, grinning in triumph. Taking Nish had been easier than he could have dreamed. The other pairs of legs were reaching towards Nish and he had to get free now, before they took an unbreakable grip. He thrashed his arms, kicked his legs, and felt the thin fabric of his shirt tear.

  It slipped along the hook but unfortunately snagged on a seam, which held. Nish threw his arms up, wriggled violently, and the shirt, which was large and loose, began to slip free. Another foot hook caught it. Nish punched it out of the way. A third came at his face; he wove to one side, gave a mighty thrash like a fish trying to escape from a hook, tore free and fell onto a nearby tent, collapsing it onto the people inside. A woman’s voice cried out in terror; another joined it, and another.

  Rolling off the heaving canvas, Nish came to his feet. He couldn’t see the flappeter that had attacked him but another was sweeping down on the row of tents. Catching a set of tent ropes in its hooks, it tore the pegs out of the ground, dropped the tent on the one next door and continued down the line, ripping up more tents and dropping them on others, on the panicked people milling in the dim light, and onto the camp fires. Nish saw people carried high into the air and flung away like missiles before the flappeter, its momentum spent, feather-rotored away.

  The other beasts had done much the same. Fir
es sprang up all over the camp. People, many naked from their bedrolls, were screaming and running in all directions. Now arrows and crossbow bolts began to fall out of the sky as the unseen riders fired down at them. In the densely packed throngs, many missiles struck.

  ‘Spread out!’ Nish shouted. ‘Take what cover you can,’ but in the din no one heard him.

  Was the attack just meant to unsettle them, or was it cover for something larger? There had been no news of an army on the march, though even as far back as the war some battle mancers had been able to cloak a large force of soldiers. He wove his way to the edge of the camp and looked over the steep side of the hill. He couldn’t see anything, not even with the clearsight which was still holding back on him since leaving the maze.

  He moved down the slope, torn shirt flapping, until the racket from the camp faded. The wet ground squelched beneath his feet. Nish scanned the darkness. What was that? It sounded like a faint, rhythmic murmur. He turned his head this way and that, trying to make it out above the distant clam-our from the camp. He continued down; the murmur was fractionally clearer here, and suddenly he knew what it was.

  It was the massed tread of a marching army and they couldn’t be far away. He scrambled up the slope to find the chaos unabated. Monkshart was bellowing orders but for the first time in his life no one was taking any notice. If someone didn’t take command the Defiance would die here today, and he, Nish, was the only one who could do it. But first he had to have a battle plan.

  He ran down the long ramp of the hill. They had one single advantage – he had chosen the camp site carefully, overriding Monkshart who had wanted to stop by a stream in a location that was almost undefendable.

  The camp lay at the top of a flat hill with a curve of steep, rocky country at its back, and no army would choose to attack up those difficult slopes, though a squad of climbers might. Forwards, the hill ramped towards the plain in a narrow neck on either side of which were sharp slopes with marshland at their bases.

  The army would have to attack up the neck. He was a third of the way along it now, crossing into a shallow dip. His boots sank to the ankles in sodden earth and his plan crystallised. The army would be attacking uphill on wet soil which would become muddy as they tramped through it, then through this boggy dip. Above here the neck narrowed before flaring out at the top of the hill.

  He pulled his boots out of the sticky mud with an effort, and backed up onto solid ground. The enemy’s formation, compressed at the narrows, would not be able to attack en masse, so if he could get his ragtag forces into position in time they would have another small advantage.

  The flappeters had only made one pass and Nish didn’t think they would be risked in the coming battle. They were too scarce and valuable, while men’s lives meant nothing to Jal-Nish. Nish judged that the army was close to the bottom of the hill and could be here in ten minutes.

  He wasn’t sure he could even restore order in that time; the Defiance sounded close to panic and if he couldn’t gain control right away it would be too late. Once they got wind of the army they would abandon their weapons and flee. Could he do it? He had to try; and after all, he’d led his men in equally hopeless battles during the war.

  Nish ran back to the camp and snatched sword and shield from a guard who lay groaning on the grass with an arrow in his belly.

  ‘To me!’ he roared, leaping onto one of the dinner trestles and banging his sword against his shield. ‘Now is the hour of our greatest need. Your Deliverer needs you. To me!’

  Their sweating faces reflected the firelight as they turned his way, just a few at first, then more and more as he continued to bang sword on shield. It wasn’t light enough to read their faces, though he sensed that he hadn’t got through to them. Another aerial attack could see them panic and bolt; news of the enemy certainly would. They were at the point where the actions of a few hotheads or cowards would decide the fate of all. He had to get to them first.

  ‘Quiet!’ he roared, and this time they stopped talking. They were used to listening to him in silence, thankfully. ‘Any man or woman who speaks while I’m addressing you will be banished from the Defiance.’ He eyed them, his glance sweeping over the crowd. ‘Are you with me?’

  ‘Yes,’ they said unconvincingly.

  ‘I said, are you with me?’

  ‘Yes, Deliverer!’ the crowd roared.

  He took a deep breath. ‘The enemy army is at the foot of the hill.’ He pointed with his sword. ‘They think we’ll run like dogs, but they don’t realise we’ve lured them into a trap!’

  A shiver passed across the face of the crowd. He’d hit on the right approach by accident, but he still had to convince them.

  ‘That’s right, a trap! I chose this battlefield carefully. To beat us here, the enemy would need three soldiers to our one and they don’t have the numbers. I, your Deliverer, will captain you against them. Follow my lead and we’ll drive the God-Emperor’s army into the swamps to drown. Once people hear of the Defiance’s great victory, the whole world will rise up against the tyrant.

  ‘Follow your Deliverer! Defiance, this way!’

  Nish leapt off the trestle and ran towards the neck, not looking to see if they were following. He couldn’t afford to show any uncertainty. After an agonising silence he heard the first feet behind him, and then the rest of them. But five minutes had passed, and they had to reach the narrow part of the neck well in advance of the enemy. It would take time to order his raw troops into defensive formation. More time than he had.

  The fires cast a faint illumination down the slope; enough, as Nish reached the narrows, to show the dark mass of the army moving up the base of the neck. He continued to the centre of the dip, feeling the saturated ground sinking under his boots, then went backwards onto the slope above it, which had shed the rain and remained solid underfoot. It was the best defensive position he could hope to find.

  ‘Spearmen,’ he called, ‘come forwards; form a triple line here.’ He swept his sword back and forth across the neck. ‘Swordsmen, form ranks behind the spears. Whatever happens, don’t move until I give the order.’

  The spearmen began to straggle into position, but they were so damned slow! Nish’s throat had gone dry; he could hardly speak. ‘Hurry, the enemy is on the march.’

  He jogged back through the lines to the rear, showing himself to as many of his troops as he could and trying to look the part of the Deliverer. He didn’t feel it. He felt sure they were all going to die.

  ‘Archers!’ Nish indicated the slightly higher ground to left and right, further up the hill. ‘Take position there and there; be ready to fire over the heads of our troops. Don’t shoot until I give the order.’

  He sent scouts to keep watch from the rocky heights behind the camp, in case a detachment circled around and attacked from the rear.

  Monkshart came running down the slope, dark robes flapping about his long shanks. ‘What on earth are you doing, Deliverer? You can’t risk yourself in battle.’

  Nish brandished his sword and Monkshart stepped aside smartly. ‘I lead the Defiance,’ Nish shouted, raising his weapon high so the firelight blazed off it. ‘To victory or to death!’

  ‘Victory or death!’ roared the Defiance, putting themselves between him and the zealot.

  Nish headed back towards the front line. Monkshart drew his own weapon, though he didn’t follow. Nish recruited a dozen boys and girls to act as runners, for his orders would not be heard over the din of battle, and crouched behind a spindly bush. The enemy were halfway up the neck now, advancing more rapidly than he’d expected.

  He wouldn’t have driven troops that hard, since the slippery climb would soon exhaust them in their heavy gear. And since there had been no sign of an army from the lookout last night, they must have made a forced march to get here. They would have been weary before they began the climb – another small advantage to the Defiance.

  The leaders were so close now that he could make out individual soldiers. Nish sent
runners back, ordering his archers to fire at once, and again as the enemy reached the top of the slope below the dip, then to be ready for hand-to-hand fighting.

  He signalled his front-line troops to crouch down. They did so, clutching their weapons. Dawn was breaking and he could just make out their faces – fearful but, he hoped, resolute. The archers fired over their heads and the ragged volley opened up a few gaps in the enemy’s front line, though not enough to make a difference to either side. He prayed they’d do better with their second volley, though massed archery fire required careful training and they hadn’t had it.

  An enemy officer ran out ahead of his fellows, waving his sword and urging them on. If Nish had brought a crossbow he could have picked him off. The army broke into a plodding run. Good! They’d be exhausted by the time they got to the dip.

  The enemy archers fired from the flanks and a dozen of Nish’s spearmen fell. A fresh-faced youth, the camp joker, began to scream in agony and jerk at the arrow in his belly. Other soldiers were moaning, wailing, begging for help. It could be enough to demoralise his green troops.

  ‘Stand firm,’ he cried. ‘Fire!’ he roared, running out into the open and brandishing his sword above his head. His archers fired again, though with no more impact than the first time. Return arrows whizzed by. He hastily dropped flat.

  The advancing army reached the dip and began to labour, but the troops pressed on, their boots churning the wet earth to sticky clay. It would make the dip harder for those behind to cross, but Nish’s previous optimism was fading rapidly. The enemy was a strong, disciplined force and, despite the advantages of position, he didn’t think his troops were going to survive the initial onslaught. Once the enemy broke through their lines, the Defiance would be finished and so would he.

  The light was growing rapidly now. Nish could see the insignias on the soldiers’ shields, and the look in their eyes, for many of them had their helms up, the better to see.