by Lloyd, Tom
Beyn ran forward, beating at the disordered mob and screaming himself hoarse in an effort to get them to move. Frightened faces turned his way, uncomprehending, until those in the lead finally set off again.
‘You! Captain! Look at me, you fuck!’ Beyn yelled, lurching to the left as he spotted another regiment of pikemen appearing around the corner of a building. It was only when Beyn fought his way over and grabbed the captain by the throat that he caught his attention. ‘You, what’s your name?’
The young man looked at him in blind panic for a moment, struggling in vain to free himself. The soldiers around him started forward, then shrank back as they saw the golden bees on Beyn’s armour, the mark of the king.
Beyn shook him like a terrier, and screamed for the third time, ‘Your name, soldier!’
‘Dapplin,’ the young captain croaked shakily, ‘Captain Dapplin of the First City Legion.’
‘Congratulations, Captain,’ Beyn shouted, ‘you’ve got a mission.’ He gestured at the ground between them and the makeshift wall they’d constructed across a bottleneck of loading stations at the wharf. In the centre stood the Tollhouse, the semi-fortified building where the customs-tolls were kept before being moved to the city treasury. General Aladorn and his cohorts had been evacuated and replaced with archers. Behind the wall was a line of troops, three-deep at the moment, with officers frantically trying to drive more in behind. Thought they looked formidable, they were raw troops holding spears in trembling hands, and the Menin had more than just minotaurs to breach the line.
‘Grab another regiment from your lot and form up in squad blocks behind the main line of archers.’ He gave the captain another shake. ‘Don’t get sucked in until your job’s done, and don’t, for pity’s sake, get in the way of the reinforcement troops!’
‘You don’t want us to fight?’ Dapplin yelled back, recovering his senses. ‘The order was to send every last man on the streets to the wall.’
‘You get a shittier job,’ Beyn said. ‘They’ll use the Reavers to breach the line; your job’s to stick those bastards full of steel before they get that chance!’
‘Reavers?’ Dapplin gasped, the colour draining from his face.
‘Aye, Reavers - now you just shut that fucking mouth before I shove my fist down it! They’ll be coming a handful at a time, so each squad surrounds ’em and works together. Do it as soon as they land and you’ll have a better day than the rest of us.’ Beyn grabbed the captain by the arm and shoved him towards the mass of soldiers. ‘Move it!’
Once Dapplin had started to lead his men away, Beyn surveyed the chaotic mass of soldiers. The line was forming as well as he could hope, and tight knots of archers were grouping behind, waiting for the order to fire. What state their weapons would be in was anyone’s guess.
The ground either side of the road was sodden, so at least the Menin would have to struggle through a sucking swamp to reach them, it was a poor blessing when the storm was soaking bowstrings and blowing away range-finding arrows like dandelion seeds.
‘Cober,’ he shouted, looking around blindly until he found the white-eye most recently in the employ of Count Pellisorn. Since the count had been packed off to command the defence of the north wall, Cober had been following Beyn around like a puppy - albeit a puppy carrying a very large axe. Like Daken, King Emin’s newest pet, the white-eye was actually an inch shorter than Beyn, but he was far more powerful - and unlike Daken, Cober seemed happy enough to follow Beyn’s orders, trusting there would be a fight at the end of it.
‘Come on,’ Beyn beckoned, leading Cober towards the wall. ‘We’ve work to do.’ They gathered every man holding a weapon they could and handed them over to one of the officers commanding the wall, who squeezed them into the defensive line. It was untidy, but Beyn knew they weren’t going to win this battle on the straightness of their columns. Their only - slim - chance was to hold on weight of numbers, and that meant pressing into service every man who could hold a spear, and keeping such a press of bodies there that the Menin couldn’t break through.
Before he reached the wall warning cries began to come from the front rank. Beyn craned his head until he could just make out the line of spear-points advancing on the wall.
‘Down on one knee,’ he snapped at Cober.
The white-eye didn’t question him, but dropped immediately, as ordered, and Beyn pulled himself onto Cober’s substantial thigh, balancing himself with a hand on his shoulder, to raise himself above the defenders. The Menin were close, less than a hundred yards from the wall.
‘Archers!’ he bellowed, waving frantically, ‘Fire, as low as you dare!’
The order was relayed quickly. Half of the raised troops were farmers and citizens, conscripted into service, and useful for little more than wielding a spear and swelling the ranks, but amongst the professionals, there were hundreds of fair archers, and Beyn had seeded the units with as many experienced soldiers as he could spare.
Now they took over, screaming themselves hoarse and leading by example. Though the first volley was ragged, the second was an improvement as the bowmen started to get a feel for the cross-wind.
Beyn left them to it and went to shout with the sergeants in the line bellowing for the troops to hold their ground. More men appeared, running to join the rear ranks, waiting for their time of need.
A deep roar rang out: the sound of a thousand voices, foreign voices and more, shouting as they charged. Beyn felt the impact through his feet as much as he heard it, and he was tugging his axes from his belt as the first screams came.
‘Aroth and the king!’ he roared, holding one axe up high, and the call was picked up by all those around him and rippled through the defenders.
From behind the archers a line of trumpeters and other musicians began to sound their instruments: they all played the same notes, a repeated refrain with no specific meaning other than to add to the noise of battle. He hoped the strange cacophony would remind the soldiers of their homes and their families, whose survival rested on their men holding the line. It wasn’t much, but Beyn knew soldiers would cling to any small hope to give themselves cheer.
‘Not today,’ the King’s Man growled. ‘I’m not fucking dying today.’
Kastan Styrax watched his troops throwing themselves with abandon at the enemy. As they slammed into the wall, some succeeded in driving the spears aside with their shields before stabbing with their own, others were impaled, and in their haste some smashed straight into the wall itself, a hastily built mishmash of rubble and sodden wood that stopped them in their tracks and left them staring at the face of some astonished Arothan barely inches away.
The Menin infantry pounded at the varied array of weapons, driven on by bloodlust and the press of ranks behind. Styrax himself couldn’t reach the defenders, such was the mass of his men attacking the wall. Another volley of arrows flew into the Menin and Chetse troops, and more came from the buildings, though most were blown about by the gale and dropped like exhausted sparrows, their energy spent.
Styrax threw a lance of flame at the nearest city building, and an orange-gold stream of fire illuminated the sodden combatants below. Before it struck, the flames were wrenched upwards and soared over the roofs of the city like a comet before dissipating into nothingness.
Styrax smiled grimly and drew on the Skulls fused to his armour. He threw a crackling burst of iron-grey energy at the building, and this too was diverted by Aroth’s mages, although its tail clipped one corner of the roof, exploding some tiles. The pieces clattered down onto those below, and told Styrax all he needed to know about the mages defending the city.
He was quite safe from attack by them; that much he was certain. The vast majority were men and women with minor skills, sitting within a network of defensive wards and channelling their power to the strongest. That one knew what he or she was doing well enough, whether or not they were a battle-mage. How long they could defend against his efforts depended on how many they numbered, but Styrax didn’t ca
re — endless power was his to command ...It would be easy, he thought, to get carried away as he punched through the mages’ defences. For the first time in years, Styrax didn’t trust himself not to get lost in the storm of magic. Even a white-eye of his skill could easily be overwhelmed by such colossal energies, and grief had made him ragged at the edges. It would be easy for him to become careless and unfocused.
Let this be a victory for the army, he thought with a quickening sense of anticipation; let it belong to the soldiers alone.
He turned and waved forward the minotaurs, who were straining to drag the battering ran along the road that was swiftly turning to mud. Behind them came the Reavers. He would commit the regiments of white-eyes soon enough - their value was in exploiting vulnerabilities once he threw them into play.
As Styrax advanced towards the wall and joined the press of soldiers, a burgeoning corona of light played around his shoulders. The troops made space for him quickly enough so he could attack the nearest Arothan troops with his spitting whipcords of bright white energy.
At such short range the coterie of defending mages could do little to defend the men and as their screams of agony rang out, so the Menin soldiers cheered and pressed harder against the line, ignoring the dead at their feet except to step over them.
On the right the minotaurs got the battering ram into position and started to drive it forward. A bronze head capped the pointed tip of the ram, inscribed by Lord Larim with runes of fire and strength. As it struck the heavy door to the Tollhouse with an almighty thump, so fire burst out from the bronze head and licked over the iron-bound wood of the door.
The fire quickly dissipated when the ram was dragged back, but the wood remained scorched, and every time the head hit it burned a little more. The minotaurs bellowed with frustration and rage as the door continued to resist, most likely blocked with rubble behind, but they kept at their task.
Above them a handful of archers braved the Menin arrows to lean out and shoot down at the minotaurs. One was successful, catching the largest of the beasts in the neck and causing it to reel away in mortal agony, then the Menin bowmen responded, peppering the upper levels of the Tollhouse.
Styrax added to their efforts as the archers reloaded, casting deep-red tendrils at the wooden upper levels. The tendrils grew rapidly, reaching out like blind snakes. When one reached the window it slid inside and Styrax heard screams a few moments later.
Shortly afterwards the city’s mages came to their rescue, deftly unravelling the skein of magic and allowing the force to dissipate on the wind. Only a black stain, darker than flame-scars, was left, but it had done its work and Styrax returned his attentions to the ranks of defenders.
He could feel the presence of the defending mages all around him, waiting to unravel his next spell, so instead he fed the inexhaustible power of the Skulls into Kobra, his unnatural black sword — and there was nothing they could do to divert that as Styrax began to barge his way towards the enemy, his weapon raised and humming with barely restrained power. The air seemed to darken around him, turning mid-morning to dusk as Kobra’s bloodthirsty magic shone out from the sword’s blade. In response, Styrax’s black whorled armour began to leak smoky trails of magic that swarmed and coiled like a mass of snakes. Before he reached the enemy he could see the fear etched clear on their faces.
Beyn wiped a palm across his face, clearing the rain from his eyes. Voices came from all directions; there was a clatter and crash of weapons from the wall and a deep, reverberating thump from the Tollhouse. He and Cober entered the fortified treasury by a side door, to be met by anxious faces.
‘The rubble’s not going to hold!’ one young lieutenant said, terror making his voice high and strained. He pointed through an open doorway to the mound of stone and debris that occupied half of the far room.
‘Well, make sure it bloody does!’ Beyn snapped. ‘Shore the damn thing up — we’re in a city, aren’t we? How hard can it be to find rubble - or make some?’
The lieutenant blanched and gave Beyn a shaky salute before hurrying outside. Men sat or squatted in the empty interior of the Tollhouse, working the stiffness from their fingers. They were working in shifts, shooting from the slit windows, and the blood on several uniforms told Beyn it wasn’t all one-way traffic.
He went through into the front room; the makeshift barricade was indeed shuddering and shifting with every impact on the door. While the main doorway was blocked right up to the lintel, once the wooden frame gave way, the doorway was wide enough that they’d be able to haul much of the debris away.
‘Damn,’ he muttered, stalking outside again.
There were soldiers everywhere: reinforcements, running up to the wall in groups of fifty or a hundred, and auxiliaries, humping fat bundles of arrows forward for the archers. The sky had lightened a little, but that only served to make clearer the true horror of their situation.
A line of men was strung across the causeway, thousands committed to the fight in one go, and hundreds were already dead. Those at the front were barely fighting; they just stood behind shield and spear and allowed those behind them to hold spears above their heads and thrust at the enemy, who were doing likewise. It was a battle of attrition. Beyn had several thousand men in reserve - but so did the Menin.
A piercing shriek of jubilation cut through the brutal clash of steel on steel, sending a chill down Beyn’s spine. He looked up, and saw a pair of dark shapes in the sky hurtling towards him.
‘Dapplin!’ he roared at the nearest unit of pikemen, ‘get ready!’
The squad moved forward as the captain yelled orders, but still they barely had time to get into position before the first of the Reavers arrived. Squatting low over a blade-edged shield, the Menin white-eye smashed into Dapplin’s men. His long braided black hair flying, the Reaver tore a bloody path through them, the shield cutting through flesh wherever it touched, until it slowed enough for the white-eye to roll off, grab it and loop the leather hold over his shield-arm, and start towards the archers beyond.
Beyn caught sight of the weird tattoos and scars that adorned his face, which was contorted in berserk rage as the Reaver hacked at the archers with his great spiked axe. Two men fell almost at once, then another as the white-eye turned around and slashed a man’s chest with his razor-edged shield.
As Beyn raced towards the frenzied white-eye, Cober hard on his heel, the Menin abruptly changed direction and launched himself at the pair like a whirlwind of steel. His speed almost caught them out, his axe whipping around to catch them mid-step. Beyn managed to abandon his charge in time, throwing himself to the ground and skidding under the warrior’s outstretched arm, but Cober was not so lucky — Beyn heard a crunch of blade parting mail.
The King’s Man twisted as he slid on the rain-slicked cobbles and hacked at the Menin white-eye’s foot as his momentum took him through the Reaver’s legs. Before he’d come to a halt Beyn was turning, one weapon above his head, while he jabbed the other at the unprotected back of the Reaver’s knee. The Reaver arched in agony, but his howl of pain was cut short as one of the archers fired at almost point-blank range. The arrow punched a hole in the Reaver’s cuirass and threw the white-eye backwards onto Beyn, who collapsed under the enormous white-eye. He desperately tried to free his weapons before realising it was dead weight on him, not a living enemy.
‘Don’t just stand there!’ he cried, struggling to get the dead man off him, ‘bloody shoot the rest of them!’
As he got to his feet he saw the other Reaver had been surrounded and impaled, but several soldiers had been lost in the fight. The victory was short-lived as four more Reavers landed, flying directly into the defending line like an artillery strike. Those at the back turned to the nearest reserve squad, while the other two charged into the undefended rear of the battle line and began to slaughter the spearmen.
‘Get to them!’ Beyn roared, then he faltered as he looked down and saw Cober, still on the ground. The white-eye’s hands were clasped
around his neck and blood flowed freely from between his fingers. His mouth was open, as if he was trying to speak. Beyn looked into Cober’s eyes and saw the horror there: the pain, and the fear of his impending death.
A wave of anguish swept over Beyn and his knees wobbled for a moment, but there wasn’t time, not even for a man’s last moments of life. Cober’s body spasmed, and his mouth moved again, but no words came out.
His face tight with rage, Beyn turned away and headed for the fighting.
Styrax heard the door finally shatter to triumphant bellows from the minotaurs. The huge horned beasts started on the barricade filling the door, eagerly grabbing the lumps of rock and tossing them carelessly behind, drool hanging from their gaping jaws as they worked. The Menin lord fought his way clear of his soldiers and went around to the shattered remains of the Tollhouse’s main entrance. The bronze head of the ram was a mess, but it had done its job, and inside the pile of rubble had already started to slip away.
