by Sean Rodden
But all that was very unlikely to happen again.
Certainly not this time.
The white riders were fewer than one hundred; the Norian horsemen were more than one thousand. The desert warriors were faster, more agile, and most definitely lighter of hoof. Even now they gained upon the armoured enemy with such speed that the deed should be over and done in more than sufficient time to rejoin the main force before it struck the Fiannar again at the Three Green Humps.
Yes, even now –
Impossibly, the Ithramen came to an almost immediate stop, turned tightly upon the frost-bitten ground, shields swiftly locking, lances anchored and leveled menacingly toward the onrushing Norian horde. The white knights did not charge. They made no motion. They but waited. And their wait was not long.
As a great and accomplished horseman, Malal ach Ammut should have known that even the boldest Bhaskareesh purebreds would not charge headfirst into a wall – or into what the animals perceived to be a wall – unless specifically trained to do so. And the Norians were desert fighters, hunters, skirmishers, quick and agile; they had little cause to instill in their mounts a fearlessness for static barriers and shield walls; indeed, the small horses of the sands had ever been encouraged to obey their instincts to use speed and sprightliness in order to avoid obstacles, to circumvent and evade. No, the Bhaskareesh would not charge a wall. Only men made mad by wine or by the smoke of burning oshishish oil might attempt such a thing. Well, madmen and fools.
And in his defense, Malal was neither mad nor foolish – he had simply not been given enough time to process and respond to the unforeseen change in circumstances.
Their instincts for survival stronger than their fear of not following the frantic instructions of their masters, the Norian horses strove to come to an abrupt halt on the frost-slicked grasses, but their velocity and momentum made all efforts at control futile, and they slid gracelessly, ignobly, many going down to the sickening snaps of broken limbs and the more solid crunch of cracked necks. Others managed to skitter and stop as they shied before the wall of white steel, only to rear sideways and fall upon their flanks. Riders were tossed and crushed. So closely compacted had the Norian formation been that the rear had no time to avoid crashing into the core, nor the core into the fore. Horses and riders hurled and heaved into hapless heaps before the bright white wall, tumbling and tangling, screaming and dying.
Only then did the knights charge.
Thrown clear of his fallen stallion, Malal ach Ammut courageously rose and drew his twin scimitars from the leather harness at his back, the wickedly curved blades blushed black with a rust-resistant solution of blood and oil. All around him his tribesmen were fighting and failing, flailing bravely but fruitlessly against their armoured assailants. The white knights were utterly ruthless in their dealing of death. They entertained no appeals, listened to no implorations, however eloquent or impassioned the petitions may have been. But the knights could not have heard the pleas for mercy, even had hearing or mercy been their wont, for they cried “Arbamas! Arbamas!” as they killed, so loudly that even the calamitous clamour of arms seemed but a whisper of sand on a dying desert wind.
Malal ach Ammut wiped tears from his eyes with one silk-sleeved forearm as a great black form loomed before him.
He died with the name of his slayer ringing in his ears.
The Cauldron had wrought a wasteland of mud and blood and molten things of the Plains. A smoking sea of scorched bones and burning islands of flesh was all that remained of the ill-fated five thousand whose surrender had been refused by Lord Alvarion. The pewter air was rife with the reeks of failed magic and fired meat. Death was an adipocerous apparition in the lungs, greasy and graphitic. Flakes of brittle black ash floated on surging thermal swells, the red-edged residue of stubborn standards and banners and flags flying one last trifling time.
And through this mire of misery and fire marched the Blood King’s army.
The Fiannar and their allies waited at the edge of the field of flames. The House of Defurien and the ghostly Grey Watch held the centre under a rippling Golden Strype. To their left, the Nothirings of Invarnoth milled about restively, impatient for blood and war and slaughter of the foe. North of the Sons of Noth, the flank was secured by the Houses of Mirmaddon and Dalorion and by the icy rush of the River Ruil. South of the centre, the great Roths of the North sang their merry ballads of battle and death, and holding the wing beneath Caramel Dark was the indomitable Host of Arrenhoth.
The invaders slogged through the diabolical bog, driven doggedly forward by hatred and rage and madness. Volley upon volley of arrows rained down on them, a storm of steel-toothed slivers, sluicing and slicing. Scores of Unmen fell, and moments later scores more. But the blood-sodden ground had prevented the preservation of tight formation, and the viscous haze thwarted precise targeting, so the deluge of missiles was not particularly effective. The army trudged, plodded, lurched like a drunken giant. Step by strenuous step, through smoke and flame and spiraling ash, as relentless as creeping death, inexorable, inevitable.
The first to emerge from the morass were phantasms ripped from the realm of nightmare: Unmen aflame, trailing wild manes of red fury, mouths stretched in screams of agony surpassing mortal pain, crude weapons awhirl as they mindlessly charged and died upon the cold sharp spears of the Fiannar. And for a time the Deathward lines held, and would have held longer had the Rothmen and the Nothirings not buckled. But the horrific spectres of howling fire were overmuch for the softer souls among the Men of the High Land and the Sons of Noth, and despite the shouted encouragement of their stalwart captains even some of the bravest wavered and faltered and broke in the end.
In battle, courage was and shall ever be a most fragile and frangible thing.
The Deathward and the caelroth fought an ordered retreat, each recessive step seamlessly synchronized, a controlled and measured withdrawal. But the Nothirings could not boast the martial discipline of their allies – indeed, the strategy of the Northmen was to overwhelm opponents with size and strength and battle-madness, but they had no effective response when such a tactic was successfully turned against them. They were saved from a disastrous rout only by a desperate and timely mounted charge by young Sennadan, new Master of the House of Shon Roidain, in whom yet burned a fury for his father’s death, and by the intervention afoot of winter-hearted Janne, Mistress of the House of Serra-Collean, whose wrath was as an arctic storm, cold and harsh and brutal. There ensued several traumatic minutes of hard fighting, frantic and furious, before the allied lines stabilized. Fiannian shields sealed holes in the line, bristling squares were anchored, formations found purchase upon good ground. One step forward, then another, then two more. However, many valiant Fiannar beneath the Silver Star and the White Swan fell in the doing. Wounded and weary warriors who had been relegated with honour to the reserve were forced into combat, to stand and fight and die in the stead of the Northmen. And this did not sit well with many a perilous Deathward soul.
An incensed young Master Sennadan sought and found the Mad Earl of Invarnoth.
“Hold, Northman! Hold and know shame! Where is the Bane of the Dragon? Where is the fabled heart of ice? Or would you add the doom of the Fiannar to your endless list of dubious boasts?”
Ingvar Dragonsbane’s gaze was level and limpid, almost preternaturally calm, in direct contrast with the wild-eyed glares of those Nothirings near enough to have overheard the Master’s virulent words.
“Your anger is justified, Master Sennadan,” conceded the gigantic Northman. “Justified, righteous, and surpassed only by that which I feel at the core of me. I will undo this ignominy, Master Thyrkin, or I will die in the trying. Be assured, your respect and my integrity will be made whole before this day is old.”
Sennadan could only stare in dark silence, nod brusquely, and turn his mirarran away.
“He insults you, my jarl,” snarled ancient Tilbeder when the Master of the House of Shon Roidain had gone. The Celebra
nt’s coriaceous visage was creased in dark antipathy. “He insults you. He insults us. He insults all the Sons of Noth. They all do. Why in Thyr’s glorious name must we fight for them?”
“You flail away foolishly and in error, Unchained. Master Sennadan does not insult us. Rather, he inspires us.” The Mad Earl of Invarnoth raised his sword, hefted his battle-axe. Pale mist streamed from his flared nostrils like the breath of an ice dragon. “Come! Brave Sons of Noth! We have a war to win, and honour to reclaim.”
And so the men of Nothira came to the succour of cold-eyed Janne even as the valiant yet enervated warriors of her House threatened to falter beneath the protracted pressure of several immense wedges of armoured Urkroks. And in a moment of sublime happenstance, the dark-tressed Mistress of the House of Serra-Collean met the Dragonsbane’s clear gaze amidst the bloodmist of battle and the slash and crash of arms, and she smiled, and her eyes and teeth glittered like shards of ice.
And from that moment forth Ingvar’s heart was no longer his own.
The Black Prince of Ithramis smiled solemnly as the party of riders drew up before the mounted knights of the Own. He raised a gauntleted fist in salutation and sincere respect.
“Hail, Commander Teagh. Welcome and well met.”
“Congratulations on your glorious victory, Prince Arbamas!” grinned Axennus. “Glorious and fitting. What better way to blood the Prince’s Own than on an entire Vein of Blood Mages?”
“Apt indeed. But the strategy was your own, Southman. The success therefore also belongs to you.”
The Commander waved the words aside. “There is no ‘me’, Prince Arbamas. There is no ‘you’. There is only ‘us’.”
“As you say, Southman. Our victory it is. Nevertheless, even now your military acumen demonstrates its genius. As you predicted, the Leech sends a part of the Blood King’s army against my Ithramen.” He raised one arm and pointed westward through the dreariness of the morning. “Twelve thousands, or my eyes lie to me. A larger contingent than I expected, I must admit. It stands to follow that the enemy flanking party will also be larger. I fear your one hundred and the four score and nine left to me may not suffice.”
The March Fox glanced to the taut-jawed Iron Captain at his right, then upon the small, elaborately helmed man to his left.
“Oh, I believe we are enough, Prince Arbamas.” Impossibly, his grin grew wider, white and waggish. “Nevertheless, we cannot have you worrying unnecessarily. So I have brought along some friends.”
Following one of the Commander’s signature flamboyant gesticulations, the Black Prince directed his argent gaze to the murk beneath distant Caramel Dark. And there he saw an anomalous mass rushing toward them, like a swell of dark waters over a grassy strand, wave upon wave of grey wrath, ruthless, relentless. And above that furious flood flew a banner red of field and emblazoned with the image of a charging bull.
“The House of Cilcannan,” observed the Black Prince. His voice, like his eyes, shone. “And Harlastian’s Eye of the Grey Watch.” The shine in his eyes darkened. “Will Tulnarron not need Master Collinan’s sword? And has Caramel Dark been utterly abandoned?”
“The Master of the House of Eccuron has established that he is more than capable of standing alone. And after the horrors of last night, no minion of the Blood King will attempt Caramel Dark in the foreseeable future – indeed, Prince Arbamas, those heights are likely the most secure place in all of Eryn Ruil this day.”
A risen eastwind bore the clamour of combat westward over the Northern Plains as the warriors of the House of Cilcannan and the warders of the Grey Watch were greeted by the Ghost Brigade and the Prince’s Own. The din on the wind was answered with a raucous rumble of fisted breastplates, the rhythmic clatter of spears striking shields, and the strident song of nine hundred voices soaring to a single resounding deafening roar. And like the tidal fury stirred by a perfect storm, the Erelians and the Ithramen and the Fiannar thundered away.
To battle and war.
They should not have been as good as they were.
They had never fought a real battle. They had never engaged an actual enemy. They had never experienced the whelming horror of war: The sounds, the sights, the very taste in the air; the pain and the stink; the ripping of the soul. The ear-shattering symphony of metal screeching against metal, the boom-boom-booming of war drums, the forlorn wail of horns, the thwack and twang of strings and the shrill shriek of arrows, all accompanied by a maniacal chorus of grunts, shouts, screams, weeping, prayer. The air painted pink with a fog of blood, the frantic panic in the eyes of a friend, the irrational hatred contorting the face of a foe, the fatal blade coming down, down, down, death in slowed motion. The foul flavour of copper on the tongue, the astringent sapour of bile rising from knotted guts, the eating of air spiced with dust and dirt and flecks of flesh. The sharp sting of arrows piercing past mail into muscle, the thin agony of blades scoring skin and sinew, the scabrous scrape of throats roared raw, the pang of fatigue rising in the legs, the fatal ache in arms too exhausted to lift either sword or shield. The hundredfold stench of sweat and blood and piss and shit and pure unadulterated fear.
No, they should not have been that good.
But they were.
The army of Ithramis fought as a single cohesive unit, connected and congruent, seamlessly efficient, thousands of disparate souls unified and dedicated to one specific goal: Absolute victory. Five lines deep, six hundred warriors wide, the Ithramian formation was a virtually impervious construct of spears and sarissas and locked long shields. The foremost line brandished lethal lances almost twice as long as a man was tall, with each successive rank wielding weapons at least four feet longer than the line before it, the shafts of the longest spears balanced in specialized smooth-edged notches of the forefighters’ shields. Thus the face of the formation bristled with nearly five spears for each frontline warrior – five cold steel points, conical in shape for strength and ease of thrust and withdrawal, five fangs of fell and fatal iron for foes to die upon.
And die they did.
Unmen charged mindlessly into the viciously spiked structure of Ithramen, only to be skewered yards from the shield wall. They fell in masses, and mounds of flesh and iron formed within minutes of the onset of battle. Hammer-hefting Urkroks fared no better, entire contingents of the enormous ogres impaled and run through by the lunge and plunge of a thousand spears. A company of heavily armoured half-Urks sought to outflank the Ithramen to the south, but they were slowed by the spongy nature of the turf there, hampered by cavorting cohorts of light cavalry, muddled in melee with spry swordsmen, then obliterated by a charge of chamfroned heavy horse. And all the while a rearguard of Ithramian bowmen sent a shower of arrows down upon the enemy, here, there, everywhere, a lethal rain that neither slowed nor stalled.
The Black Prince had selected the ground well. The place was called Lindanshield, a broad rocky rise backed by the River Ruil to the North and stooping to the Soft Road to the south, its slope most gradual upon the western side and steepest to the east. The limestone plateau was large and flat enough to permit easy movement and adjustment of the lines, allowing the Ithramian formation to swell and swivel, to curl effortlessly, to flawlessly follow the flow of battle, all the while firmly anchored to the sheer shore of the Ruil and leaving but one flank to defend.
The front and rear lines of Ithramen were each composed of five hundred heavy foot and supported on the Soft Road side by more agile light infantry; the second through fourth ranks were constituted entirely of light foot. The longest spears sported points at each end, enabling the entire formation to turn upon a coin should necessity demand it. Half of the heavy horse that had come to Eryn Ruil had shed their armour and unwieldy lances in favour of mobility and small bows double-curved after the Rhelnian fashion; both light and heavy cavalry patrolled the flank and the rear, running down stragglers, cutting small companies away from the main mass of the enemy and ruthlessly destroying them.
And long before the
battle for the rock of Lindanshield was half a knell old, it was clear that the Ithramian phalanx was not only effective, but utterly devastating.
Mak Lorro, Ogre-Queen of the Blackbones, lapped lime green snot from her nostrils and brutally beat at her cowering entourage with massive blockish fists. Her tiny pink eyes were like nasty little needle wounds in her fat face as she bleated a litany of commands, order after shouted order, each incensed instruction sending a member of her cringing court scurrying away. The Ogre-Queen watched as hundreds of half-Urks engaged the mounted defenders on the foe’s flank, pinning them down, at least momentarily, while several thousand of her most ferocious Urkroks rumbled southward, awkward and lumbering yet devouring ground more swiftly than a man could cover at a run. Her intention was to circle wide, avoiding the fight on the flank, and come up behind the Ithramian lines, essentially encircling the enemy. The Queen snuffled elatedly at her own genius, her bulbous tongue licking bugs and grit from each of her three teeth. And indeed, the plan was sound one. Sound, logical, and potentially lethal.
But flawed.
For Mak Lorro did not know that she had sent her best fighters directly across the path of the Prince’s Own, one hundred riders of the Ghost Brigade, the whole of the House of Cilcannan, and a cold vengeful Eye of the Grey Watch.
She grinned as her finest four thousand disappeared in the distance.
And never saw them again.
Somewhere far beyond the dense grey sludge of the sky, the sun soared unhindered to its zenith, white and blind, uncaring, unblinking, the solitary eye of a great cavefish insensibly swimming about the world in slow and unceasing circles. Beneath that callous light, below the close canopy of clustered cloud, the war for the north raged on and on, neither abating nor easing, a long sordid song of horror and pain, of fury and terror and suffering. Death was not particular, death did not discriminate – the sickle in those cold bony hands favoured none and all. So many lives to reap, so much misery to seed. So sundry the hundreds of sundered souls singing under an unsunned sky, answering that ultimate summons, never questioning why.
