Here, amid bare granite and a howling wind, they met. Orjin gave the Nom aristocrat a hug. ‘Well done.’
She shrugged. ‘It was your plan.’
He pulled his long wind-whipped hair from his face. ‘How many have you cobbled together?’
She gave a mischievous grin. ‘Near four thousand survivors of the battle have come to us.’ He grunted, impressed; more than he’d dared hope for. ‘Now we hit them from above, don’t we,’ she said, her eager grin widening.
He shook his head. ‘No.’
The grin faltered and she frowned, confused. ‘No? Why ever not? They’re in disorder, disheartened. They may even break.’
He continued shaking his head. ‘No. We may win that one battle. Maybe even the next. But there’re too many. We can’t beat that army.’
The frown became a scowl of disapproval. ‘I’m not scurrying back to Purage.’
It was Orjin’s turn to grin, chidingly. ‘You were planning to four days ago.’
She almost blushed, looking away. ‘That was … before.’
He raised a hand, waving aside his remark. ‘Don’t worry. We won’t be withdrawing.’
‘Then what?’
In answer, he peered down the long broad slopes of the south side of the pass to the misted green farmlands, fields, and hills below that led onward to Quon Talian lands. ‘They’ve invaded Purge territory, prevost, so I intend to return the favour. We will march south, and burn and loot and destroy until their barons and burghers howl for the return of their army to drive us out.’ He shifted his gaze to her. ‘What say you, Prevost Jeral?’
The Purge officer’s eyes had grown huge. ‘Invade Quon Talian lands with only four thousand?’
Orjin nodded. ‘We’ll keep moving, burning everything before us until they squeal for Renquill to come chase us down.’
The woman’s mischievous grin slowly climbed anew and she took hold of her thick braids, one in each hand. ‘I’m with you, Captain Samarr.’
Chapter 7
After six days of continuous marching – pursuing the shifting forces of Gris and its diminishing allies – the army of the Bloorian League reached a halt. Gregar was beyond caring by this point. He knew they’d doubled back upon themselves at least twice while the opposing knights and nobles jostled and manoeuvred for an advantageous field position. He was so foot-sore and tired all he wanted to do was sleep.
This morning he had his wish, as no order to break camp rousted them before the dawn. Later, however, a Yellows trooper stuck his head into their tent and announced, ‘This looks like it.’
‘I don’t give a shit,’ Gregar groaned from his heaped straw and ratty blankets.
‘Now you’re getting it,’ Leah called from across the tent.
The drums to muster came soon after. Before pushing aside the flap of the tent Gregar made certain of the rag wraps at his feet, legs, and hands against the cold. Haraj appeared then, dragging himself from his blanket; the skeletally lean fellow looked even worse for wear than he.
‘This ain’t the life for you,’ Gregar told him.
Haraj nodded dejectedly. ‘Maybe we’ll see them today,’ he croaked, coughing.
‘Who?’
‘What do you mean, who? The Crimson Guard, of course.’
Gregar pulled the lad outside with him. ‘Let’s try to get something to eat.’ As they walked, he whispered, fierce, ‘No more talk about the Guard, okay? Everyone would laugh.’
‘You still want to join though, right?’
Gregar winced, and peered round to make certain no one was within hearing. ‘Look – it was a dream, okay? Just a dream. Now it’s time to grow up. You should go, though. This isn’t for you.’
The skinny youth shivered and coughed anew. ‘They’ll take you, I’m sure.’
Gregar shook his head ruefully. ‘Thanks, but things like that just don’t happen.’
They joined a line, and when they reached the front a portion of hard bread was thrust at them. They returned to their squad’s tent, gnawing on the rations. Haraj had been eyeing him, and now he said, ‘I don’t think I’ll make it on my own.’
Gregar sighed. He’s right about that. ‘Fine. You got me out of Gris – I’ll get you to them.’
‘Thanks.’
Leah was waiting outside the tent, glaring. ‘Where have you two been? Get your gear. Marching orders.’
Haraj sagged. ‘Not more marching.’
Leah snapped up a spear. ‘Marching to battle this time. Let’s go.’
Gregar’s regiment was formally the Second Yellows; he and Haraj were assigned to the Fourth Company, Seventh Lights. While Baron Ordren of Yellows formally commanded, the noble considered such duties to be beneath him as they would take him away from his beloved cavalry, so direct command fell to a veteran soldier, a commoner, Captain Rialla of Bloor. Sergeant Teigan ran the Fourth Company, and the colours Gregar carried were those of the Fourth.
Once column was formed, Teigan handed Gregar the tall pike with its limp yellow banner secured just behind its iron dagger-like head. Then the sergeant marched them to their field position, which proved to be a hillock in a broad meadow between two steeper forested hills. He had the company spread in lines four deep to block any path across the clearing.
Down-slope before them lay the agreed upon field of battle proper – a wide stretch of pasture and meadow with a meagre stream winding between. Only a few small copses and a couple of wretched crofters’ thatched hovels looked to impede the nobles’ charges. Early morning mist pooled in the lowlands and lay like banners across fields. Regiments raised by other Bloorian nobles, such as those of Larent and Netor, marched in column to their positions. The early slanting morning light flashed from spearheads and helmets, while the nobles trotted their mounts to marshalling grounds. Gregar had to admit they were a pretty lot in their mail coats and leggings, and long flowing tabards. Far away, close to a distant treeline, the Grisian forces arranged themselves into lines and massed cavalry as well.
On the left flank a swift column of cavalry caught his eye. Long pennants of a dark red flowed above them as they charged to a new position, and from those rippling banners flashed silver as well – the colours of the Crimson Guard.
Too far off, and moving too fast anyway.
In the Fourth’s lines, Gregar was standing front and centre with his pike and he considered their position far too exposed. When Teigan paced by, inspecting the lines, he called to the sergeant, ‘Shouldn’t we form square?’
The sergeant swung round, his thick black brows rising. ‘Oho – got us a regular military scientist amongst us.’ He halted, hands on hips, just in front of Gregar. ‘Graduated from the officer academy, did you? Years of soldiering experience, have you?’ Several in the lines sniggered at the suggestion.
Gregar just gave him a look. He motioned to the lines. ‘What are we supposed to be doing here? Watching?’
‘Our orders are to deny this particular staging area to the enemy and cover our betters should they rally here.’ He looked Gregar up and down. ‘Is that acceptable or would you like more honey on that?’
‘So what do we do if the Grisians try to take the hill?’
Teigan motioned to the pike’s top. ‘You poke them with that pointy end until they fall down.’
Several in the lines nearby laughed. Gregar gave them all a sneering smile. Very funny.
Teigan moved on, saying, ‘Just stand your ground and they’ll veer off – trust me.’
Gregar watched him go, glowering, teeth clenched against what he’d like to say.
‘Doesn’t matter anyway,’ Leah murmured from behind. ‘We’re just a sideshow. The nobles’ll decide things among themselves. They’re not gonna risk wounding their warhorses. Them beasts are worth way more than us.’
‘I thought you said the knights enjoyed riding us down.’
‘Ah. Well, only when they’ve got nothing better to do.’
Gregar turned to her; she looked too unhappy to be moc
king. Wonderful.
Though possessing something of a privileged position from which to watch the proceedings, Gregar didn’t have the training or experience to really know what he was seeing. Massed cavalry of mailed knights and petty nobles shifted about, perhaps seeking some sort of advantage. Lightly armoured skirmishers from both sides flowed about the field, harassing one another. At one point a column of archers came hurrying through the Fourth’s lines on their way to a new position. Green cloth strips tied to their arms or round their necks identified them as Bloorians. They were a poor and scruffy lot indeed, in ragged shirts and pants – some were even barefoot.
In his outfit at least everyone had some sort of footgear, be it plain sandals, like his and Haraj’s. Thinking about it though, and peering round, Gregar had to admit that few possessed even one item of armour; most wore quilted cloth jackets stuffed with straw. A few, such as Leah, wore a soft leather hauberk, plain, or sewn with bronze rings. So he supposed those poor Bloorian archers were only a touch scruffier than they.
A distant rumbling of hooves announced two larger masses of mounted knights and nobles closing upon each other. These two misshapen groups milled about one another in a moving savage scrum. This free-for-all scrimmage then overran a nearby regiment of infantry and the poor sods who failed to scatter like geese went down beneath the horses’ hooves. Gregar was beginning to comprehend Leah’s dire warnings.
This mounted boiling melee roiled on randomly across the field, leaving behind in the churned mud fallen and trampled bodies. Infantry from both sides harried its edges, and each other.
Watching the maces and axes rising and falling freely, the mounts crashing into one another, Gregar allowed that at least these nobles knew their one and only trade – fighting.
Hooves crashing the ground behind their position brought Gregar and everyone round. A small group of knights was bearing down upon them from the rear. The Fourth scrambled to reverse, spears and pikes clattered into one another, a few panicked soldiers even tripped and fell. Teigan was bellowing non-stop, taking troopers by their shoulders and yanking them into position.
As the cavalry closed, the sergeant threw up his hands and ordered, ‘Make way! Make way for our lords!’ The Yellows troopers hesitantly parted and the ten knights reined in. ‘Guard the perimeter!’ Teigan then bellowed, and he took hold of the jesses of one mount, soothing the horse. ‘How goes the day, Lord Gareth?’ he asked.
This knight had seen fighting. His mount was steaming with sweat and was dappled in blood. His jupon was torn to rags about his mail coat; it might have once been a bright festive orange. The flanged mace hanging at his side was wet with blood and gore, even what looked like a tuft of human hair. He drew off his helmet and set it on the saddle’s pommel. He was an older fellow, his long sweat-matted hair shot with grey, his beard tied off in two long braided rat-tails. ‘The day goes well – so far. Damned thirsty work, sergeant. Have you any drink among you?’
‘Drink!’ Teigan barked. ‘Drink for Lord Gareth!’ A water skin was handed up to the fellow, who took a long pull then tossed it back to Teigan.
All this time the other knights constantly eyed the surroundings, their war-axes, picks and maces readied in their mailed hands. Gregar realized that these knights were a bodyguard, or the personal household troop of this Lord Gareth.
‘May Togg and Fanderay watch over you today, m’lord,’ Teigan said, releasing the mount.
Gareth put his open-faced helmet back on, chuckling. ‘And Fener too, hey?’ He heeled his mount and took off down the hillside, his troop chasing behind.
Leaning on his pike, Gregar turned to Leah. ‘Who in Burn’s name was that?’
The woman was staring after the lord, a strange expression on her face. ‘That? That was King Gareth of Vor. One of the three kings of the Bloorian League.’
‘Didn’t see any fancy bird plumes on his helmet.’
The young corporal almost blushed. ‘No. Not him. He’s one of the real warhorses. Him’n’the king of Rath, they go way back. Hret of Bloor is young, but he’s the third. Some say there’s a fourth as well – of the Crimson Guard.’
‘The Guard?’ Haraj asked, from Gregar’s side. ‘Really?’
Leah looked surprised. ‘Of course. Duke Courian of the Avorean line. They were kings of the north of these lands, long ago.’
‘Quiet in the ranks!’ Teigan bellowed. ‘Form line, dammit!’
Gregar returned his attention to the field; he alternately blew on his hands to warm them and stamped his feet. Far across the churned field the scrum of mounted combatants still surged about, parting sometimes as one portion pursued the other. Wounded knights wandered out, or sagged on aimless mounts, while fresh ones charged in from far quarters. To Gregar it looked like little more than a glorified bar-brawl of chaos and blind flailing about.
Eventually, numbers told as the far smaller contingent of the Grisians and their allied city states gave ground, then broke off entirely, separating into individual groups and withdrawing. Gregar’s Fourth sent up a great cheer at that but quickly choked it off as one of the troops, some twenty knights, came storming up the gentle slope directly for them.
‘Contain them!’ Teigan yelled. ‘Don’t let them through!’
Gregar didn’t know how a thin line of Lights could possibly throw back a determined charge, but levelled his pike in any case.
The knights charged straight for the Fourth. Gregar firmed up his grip on the pike and sent a prayer to Fener. But at the last instant the cavalry veered aside, knocking spearheads aslant as they passed along the line. Then, near the centre – and Gregar – they yanked their mounts inward, stamping and kicking into the ranks to break the line and flailing to either side with their axes and war-picks. The Yellows infantry, completely unarmoured, flinched like an animal from these assailants.
Gregar, however, charged in. He took a horse in the neck with his pike. It threw its head in agony, ripping the weapon from his grip. Its rider kicked free of the falling animal, rolling, then drawing a longsword. Gregar met the knight with drawn twinned fighting sticks.
He parried a flurry of blows, giving ground, then struck, numbing an arm and backhanding the man across his neck, bringing him down. A mounted knight attempted to trample him but he shifted aside, giving the woman a solid blow to her kidney and unhorsing her in passing.
The Yellows infantry surged in around him then and he saw Haraj in the middle of the churning chaos, dodging and weaving, as yet unarmed. He wanted to take the fellow by the neck and shake some sense into him, but even as he watched the lad flicked out a hand and did something to a passing knight and the man flew off his mount, his saddle having somehow become completely uncinched.
Another knight attempted to push past Gregar but he took hold of the man’s arm as he threw an awkward mace swing and yanked him from his horse. As he fell, however, the knight returned the favour and gripped Gregar’s arm to drag him in a tumbling roll. The knight rose first and drew a killing dagger, a misericord, which he raised over Gregar’s chest.
Something impacted the man’s head with a meaty crack and he slumped. Gregar pushed the heavy dead-weight aside to see Sergeant Teigan standing over him, a war-hammer in each hand.
‘Raise the company colours, soldier,’ Teigan told him.
Lying flat, almost in a daze, Gregar saluted. ‘Aye, aye, sergeant.’
He found the pike and raised the bloodied colours to wave it back and forth. The surviving Fourth, having pushed back the charge, set up a great cheer, shaking their spears and taunting the remaining Grisians, who were quitting the field.
Teigan moved from trooper to trooper, alternately cuffing and squeezing shoulders, congratulating every single man and woman.
Leah came limping up to Gregar – she’d taken a blow to her left arm and cradled it as she offered him a rueful grin. ‘Well done. Our best showing yet. I think you took down three all by yourself.’
He just shrugged. ‘Bastards got my blood up.’<
br />
Haraj appeared then, nodding to Gregar, who looked the lad up and down – he hadn’t been touched in all that chaotic confusion of kicking warhorses and swinging weapons. ‘There’s not a mark on you, man,’ he observed, almost resentfully.
‘No one can hit me,’ the lad answered, and he offered a weak smile as if in apology.
Gregar gaped at him. ‘Did you say no one can hit you?’
The skinny youth nodded. ‘That’s right.’
‘Ever?’
‘Not if I don’t want them to.’
Gregar took a fist-hold of the lad’s shirt. ‘Do you mean that all this time I was worried sick that you were gonna be—’ Cutting himself off, he pushed the youth away. ‘I don’t fucking believe it. Burn take it, you’re safer out here than me!’
Leah looked between them both. ‘I don’t understand. What does he mean, Gregar?’
He waved a hand at Haraj. ‘He means he’s a mage.’
The woman’s eyes grew huge. ‘A mage?’ She studied Haraj. ‘In truth?’
The lad shrugged, embarrassed. ‘In a very narrow sort of way … yes.’
‘Baron Ordren will have to be told,’ she said. ‘He may want to hire you into his household.’
Gregar raised a hand for silence. ‘Please, this is just between us. Haraj here, well, he – he wants to …’ He looked to the bright noon sky. ‘Gods, how do I say this?’
‘I want to join the Crimson Guard,’ Haraj said, rescuing Gregar from his dilemma.
Leah’s mouth opened in stunned amazement and she blew out a long breath. ‘Hunh. Just what I used to imagine doing – long ago. But if you are a mage, then they should take you. They take all mages. At least, that’s what I’ve heard.’
Haraj nodded eagerly. ‘Exactly.’
Gregar looked to the sky again, then squinted across the field. ‘We’re too far away.’
Kellanved's Reach Page 13
