Ahead, two Banneryd riders came across from deep defence to block her way… where were the Tyree forward blockers, Damon wondered? Then he saw them, holding back and making no attempt to make a path for Sasha. One of them was Pyter Pelyn.
Sasha swung the ball across her saddle to the right, pulled hard left, swinging her horse across and exposing her right side… a Banneryd rider held back, turning in a circle in case she reversed and tried to flank him. Sasha held her line, heading for the second Banneryd rider, then tried to dive between him and his comrade. It was suicide, and they converged on her, but Sasha threw a glance over her shoulder to Damon, took both hands off the reins and threw the ball two-handed off to her left.
It hit and rolled, catching both Banneryd riders wrong-footed. Damon accelerated straight for it and leaned low from his saddle to swing. He felt the hook catch, and the weight on his arm… and nearly slipped, his heart racing as he suddenly noticed the speed at which the grass flew past.
One Banneryd rider was on him before he could properly reseat, as Sasha blocked the other with dangerous force, deflecting one blow with her armguard, and returning a hard one of her own to the cavalryman's middle. Damon swung the ball across his saddle to the left hand, fending with his right, but the Banneryd's pressure was hard, forcing him across the face of the goals. Now behind, the great mass of riders was catching him. In a moment, he knew he'd be swamped.
The weight on his left arm suddenly disappeared and he turned in astonishment to see Jaryd dropping back from his left. Where the hells had he come from? The ball neatly stolen, Jaryd reined back behind Damon and tore for the goals. Two Banneryd pursuers arrived from behind, one chasing on each side. Jaryd swung the ball to his left side and, as the rider on that side tried to snatch it, he swung it back straight into the right-side man's face.
That man flailed and nearly fell, his horse falling back. Jaryd swung into a controlled collision with the other horse, gaining space and ducking a forearm swing, and then Sasha was there to backhand the Banneryd's shoulder with the back of her hook. A last Banneryd rider came in front, looking left and then right over his shoulder to try and block… but Jaryd feinted three, four, five times until the other man went the wrong way, and with an explosive burst of speed, he shot past, reversed the ball to the protected side and galloped across the line between the talleryn posts.
"M'Lady!" he called to Sasha as they cantered three-abreast back to the centre circle. "That was a lovely steal! My compliments!"
"Says he who only beat four defenders across the line!" Sasha replied happily. She rode lighter in the saddle than most men, Damon noted, and she moved in the stirrups with almost acrobatic confidence when contesting the ball. Her eyes shone with an enthusiasm that seemed to light her up from head to toe. There were those, like Alythia, who insisted that Sasha's only motivation in being what she was, was to spite her family and peers. Damon had thought something like it himself, once… but seeing her now, he realised that Sasha could no more help being what she was than Alythia could, or Sofy, or Koenyg. This was where she belonged. To deny her that, because it offended Verenthane sensibilities, seemed suddenly ludicrous.
Damon saw Pyter Pelyn ahead and accelerated to intercept him.
"You ride for Tyree," he told Pyter harshly, coming alongside. "When your fellow rider needs a block to reach the goals, you provide it. Understand?"
"That rabid bitch is no Tyree comrade of mine," Pyter snarled.
"That rabid bitch is a hundred-fold the rider you'll ever be!" Damon snapped. "And better yet, that rabid bitch is my sister. You call her that again, I'll mistake your head for the ball."
The following round was messier, the Banneryd continuing their formation tactics to better effect. The pack rumbled forward, men wheeling, yelling and hacking, as the northerners relentlessly pushed to the goals. A Tyree rider was unhorsed, but climbed back into the saddle apparently none the worse. Another took a back-side hook to the face and bled from the nose. Jaryd blocked Captain Tyrblanc in a rearing, lashing collision, and Tyrblanc retaliated with a sharp-ended hook to Jaryd's side. Jaryd's quilted tunic seemed to take the blow well, but it was illegal all the same, and Damon spared a moment's respite to glare at the adjudicator cantering nearby on his white horse, a red flag in one hand but not raised.
Things degenerated into a wild melee, men leaning from their saddles, jostling for position, gaining the ball briefly only to have it torn from their hook. One of the Falcon Guardsmen was jostled by Pyter Pelyn, nearly lost his seat, and then did so as a northerner hooked his stirrup. He crashed down and curled up, arms over his head as hooves stamped and thrashed all about. Again the adjudicator saw nothing. Koenyg then won free, with two Banneryd men for battering rams, and completed a weaving run toward the goals, avoiding attempted interceptions with tremendous skill until he flashed between the posts.
The next several rounds were all to the northerners' advantage as they scored four more times without reply. Many of the side's Tyree nobles engaged willingly enough on their own, but refused to lend assistance to Jaryd, Sasha or even Damon when they received the ball. Horses were changed, as the starting mounts began to gasp and froth. In the midst of one round, the ball flew to pieces as the twining leather snapped, and play paused for a new one to come from the sidelines.
When Jaryd returned to the centre circle following the next Banneryd score, he was fuming mad. "You're all honourless cowards!" he shouted at Pyter and his noble companions. "You wear the green of Tyree as if it were something to wipe your arses on! Fight for your honour, you motherless bastards, or by the gods I'll see your family banners thrown into the shit as carpets for the pigs through the rest of this Rathynal!"
The outburst, Damon observed, was not well received.
The following round was a series of slashing runs by one side and then the other, with the horses finding room to run as the play became more spread out. Damon had one good run himself past the cheering scaffold before getting cornered against the perimeter line and losing possession. Pyter Pelyn tried to hook the ball but missed, and two riders from opposing sides and directions came straight at each other, each rider leaning low on one stirrup with hooks ready. With typical Lenay stubbornness, neither gave way, and they collided above the ball with a violent tangle of limbs.
Garys hooked the ball, but was hacked on the arm by Koenyg, and lost it again. A Tyree man took a hard block from Tyrblanc, giving Koenyg time to wheel about, but then Sasha careened across his front, spinning her mount across the ball's rolling path, and somehow using her horse's momentum to lean low and wide and rip the ball away from Koenyg's reach. She continued the spin, reversed the ball, and shot off, dodging one northerner and then another, Koenyg cursing in close pursuit.
Suddenly Jaryd was there, blocking the heir to the Lenay throne with a vigour some men might not have dared. "Go Sasha!" Damon heard him yelling, as he followed in pursuit, and another rider came flying toward Jaryd from the side. It looked like an intercept, even though Jaryd did not have the ball… and Damon saw with a sudden chill through the sweaty heat that the interceptor was Pyter Pelyn.
"Jaryd, to your right!" Damon yelled. Jaryd swung about, raising an arm to block. Pyter's hook caught him about the shoulder and yanked him from the saddle. Jaryd fell with all the graceless horror of a man deliberately unhorsed, slammed hard into the turf and rolled repeatedly. Then he stopped, and did not move.
Damon swore, reined up alongside and dismounted, fearing the worstmany men had died on the lagand field, or become cripples for life. "Jaryd!" He knelt at the lordling's side and listened against his lips… Jaryd was breathing, so that was a start. Then his eyelids fluttered and his legs moved. That was even better. About them, other horses had stopped, the game apparently suspended. Except for one horse, that he could hear galloping hard… yells of warning and anticipation came from the crowd.
Damon looked up to see Sasha tearing directly toward Pyter Pelyn. She'd seen it. That wasn't good. She hit him with a back
-hook to the face, which sent him reeling from the saddle. That wasn't good either. Then Pyter's noble friends were after her, hooks raised with clear intent. Falcon Guardsmen set off in pursuit and a brawl erupted, horses jostling and men swinging. Three more nobles were quickly unhorsed-the Tyree nobility might have been a dab hand at lagand, but against Falcon Guardsmen they were little match in a fight.
Jaryd struggled to sit upright, wincing in pain. He tried to put weight upon his left arm and bit back a scream. Damon supported his weight, as Koenyg dismounted alongside. Nearby, the fight was breaking up. The adjudicator raised his red flag at Sasha. Sasha threw her hook at him, and would have dragged him physically from his horse had not a Guardsman intervened.
"I think it's broken," Damon said wearily to Koenyg, feeling gently at Jaryd's arm.
"It's not," Jaryd said fervently. "I've broken bones before, this isn't as bad." And nearly screamed again when he tried to move it.
"It's broken, you fool," Koenyg told him, kneeling alongside. "The way you came off, you're lucky it's not your neck." Damon could understand Jaryd's reluctance to admit it. Many breaks reset cleanly, with good medicine, splints, binding and sometimes some skilled knifework. But some did not, and men would carry those deformed limbs to their grave.
"That shit pile Pyter," Jaryd muttered, his face pale with pain. "I'll duel him. Maybe he'll find some honour with a sword in his gut."
"With that arm?" Koenyg snorted. Some more horses were riding now from the perimeter, no doubt with a healer astride, someone who knew how to move a man with broken bones.
"When I've recovered then," Jaryd insisted. "I'll kill him, you watch."
"The road you're travelled," Koenyg said sharply, "you won't live that long. Take some advice from someone in a position to know, lad. You may not care for your own neck, but if you've any concern for your family, you'll apologise to Master Pyter and never talk to my wild sister again."
"She's the one coming to my defence," Jaryd retorted, breathlessly. "You're telling me these… these honourless cowards are my true friends, and those who risk their own necks to ride at my side are my enemies?"
Koenyg shook his head in disgust and rose to his feet. "If you don't know the answer to that question, Heir of Nyvar," he said sourly, "then I fear for not only your future, but your family's."
The morning was overcast, with a blustery wind that blew grey, misting swirls along the valley's upper slopes. Lord Usyn Telgar, a man of the cold northern heights, did not mind the chill. He sipped hot tea from his tin cup, wrapped in his warmest fur cloak, and observed a sight of pure wonder.
Ten catapults. Great, ungainly wooden contraptions, never before used in Lenay wars. The horses that had hauled them up the length of the valley now grazed somewhere behind the tent forest on the grassy slopes beside the Yumynis River. The catapults now sat in a line across grassy fields on this, the eastern side of the river, swarmed about with labouring men.
Facing the contraptions, a vast, dark stone wall spanned the width of the valley. It stood perhaps the height of five men-too tall for the ladders. More than half of the Hadryn army were cavalry, and not equipped for such obstacles. Thick buttresses reinforced the wall at even intervals, and two huge wooden doors with welded metal binding stood thirty strides from the river's edge on this eastern side. Beneath the wall, the river surged with a roar of foam and spray-the Udalyn had diverted the mighty Yumynis to flow through a narrow channel, above which spanned the wall's arch. It was more ingenuity than Usyn had expected of the pagans. But it would not help them.
A nearby catapult groaned and strained as men hauled the two great wheel-spokes, winding the rope tighter and tighter. Two men carried a heavy rock between them, muscles straining, and placed it into the sling. The release mechanism was checked and men moved away to a safer distance. An officer yelled the order and the firing rope was pulled-the catapult's safety catch released and the rope unwound with a squealing rush, hauling the long arm and sling skyward. Crack! The arm pulled up short, lurching the entire contraption nearly enough to topple it, and the huge rock continued onward, hurtling high and long toward the wall. A distant thud, as it shuddered the great wall doors, adding yet another white, splintered mark in its surface, before joining the growing pile on the earth before the doors.
A man arrived to stand at Usyn's side, a steaming cup in his hand. It was Yuan Heryd, similarly rugged against the cold, with the look of a man newly woken. Heryd had led much of the advance up the valley's length and was surely tired. It had taken a full day longer to sweep to the valley's end than Heryd had expected. Udalyn defences had been surprisingly sophisticated. The valley had many roads and trails that meandered along its steep sides, each successively higher than the last, as the slopes rose up from the broad valley floor. These were well forested, and dotted with cultivated fields, farmhouses, retaining walls, fences and watercourses.
The Udalyn had used all, in their defences. Major forces moving along the flat valley floor had confronted defended barricades blocking the best routes. Even when breached, a straight drive up the valley floor risked a flanking ambush from the height of a neighbouring slope. The valley slopes had had to be cleared at an equal pace, but that going proved even slower, as riders advancing along narrow, winding roads were shot with arrows, pelted with rocks from higher vantages, or unexpectedly ambushed by suicidally brave pagans leaping from cover to hack at horse and rider with indiscriminate abandon.
So ferocious had been their defences that, at times, Usyn had wondered if the Udalyn had made the worst miscalculation of all, and had tried to win the battle outright. The combined Hadryn companies and militia were not the untested rabble of a century ago-trade and exchanges with their lowlands Verenthane brothers had improved the quality of Hadryn horses, weapons, armour, tactics and fighting skills considerably. The Udalyn had discovered this to their loss, with barely a mailshirt or a crossbow between them. Hundreds had fallen, their bodies strewn across the roads and barricades of their precious valley.
But their sacrifice had served its purpose, as the valley cottages and farms had been emptied of both people and livestock by the time the Hadryn army had arrived. All now sheltered behind this, the great Udalyn wall, at the far northern end of the valley. Great walls of sheer rock loomed at the valley's end beyond the wall, broken only by the plummeting roar of the Yumynis Falls. The Udalyn were trapped in there. Getting them out was just a matter of time.
There was a squeal and crack as another catapult fired. "A glorious sight, is it not?" Usyn said to Heryd, his eyes tracking the rock's flight through the air. Thud.
Heryd nodded. "Aye, my Lord. Do you know your father's price for them?"
"Fifteen pieces each," Usyn said smugly. "Made and transported from Larosa itself. The Bacosh are truly masters of war. It would be a grand thing to campaign there."
"Aye, it would, for such a holy cause." Heryd's lips pursed, considering the great doors. "The pagans build well. Doubtless those doors have been reinforced behind. We may splinter the timbers, yet not break through. Worse, we litter our approach with rocks. Men may trample each other in a crush, assaulting such a space under archer fire."
Usyn stared at the doors, now clearly weakening beneath the catapults' combined assault. He had not considered Heryd's concerns. It angered him. "Why did you not say so earlier?" he said harshly.
"My apologies, my Lord," said Heryd. "I was sleeping. The terrain was difficult, I lost a hundred plus men."
"We are thousands!" Usyn said angrily. "Our friends from Banneryd are riding to assist us in Taneryn, once here they can relieve our forces from Ymoth instead, and then we shall be more. This battle must be won before the southern pagans realise what is happening! I cannot tolerate further delays!"
"Aye, M'Lord," Heryd agreed. He pointed to a spot further along the wall. °I suggest we divert half the catapults and begin a new point of entry. The stone wall shall take longer, but to guarantee a successful assault, I would like another entry point
at least, perhaps two."
Usyn considered, broodingly. Udys Varan continued to speak ill words of him with the captains and nobles, he was certain of it. The Hadryn Shields were sworn by oath to family Telgar, but their captain was a cousin to the Varans. The bulk of the army were militia, and no less capable for that, as in most of Lenayin… but their allegiances were divided amongst the noble families and their respective towns and regions. He had cousins and uncles amongst those serving, yet they afforded him little comfort. Some spoke angry words of Udys Varan and implied the new Lord of Hadryn weak in not dealing with him more sternly. But the soldiers respected the seasoned Udys, clearly more than the untested heir of Telgar. Usyn felt trapped, and increasingly resentful.
"Deploy the catapults as you see fit," he said finally. "Should we not also breach the wall on the west of the river?"
"No, M'Lord," said Heryd. "That would force us to divide our forces to either bank, and the pagans have destroyed the last bridge. The Udalyn have no point of exit on that side, let's keep them bottled up and not expose ourselves to a flanking assault."
"As you will," said Usyn, shortly. Heryd sipped at his tea, unruffled by his lord's tempers. Usyn regarded him for a moment. Yuan Heryd Ansyn. Family Ansyn had long been allies of the Telgars. Usyn's mother had been an Ansyn, the sister of Heryd's father. Some suggested Heryd's daughter for a match with Usyn. Usyn disliked the notion-the girl was pallid and spotty. But he wondered what her father thought. "Some of the men say that I am too young to command this effort," he said now.
Heryd swallowed his tea and shrugged. "None can choose the time of their father's passing," he said. "Family Telgar have ruled Hadryn since the Liberation. The turn was always yours, my Lord."
"Our ascension was challenged by some," Usyn said darkly. "Many Varans feel the great lordship was rightfully theirs and that King Soros made a mistake to grant it to us."
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