by Whyte, Jack
The arrows I was using were the very ones that had killed Ban of Benwick, the arrows given to me by King Ban himself, upon his deathbed. These large, heavy war arrows, with their flared and wickedly barbed heads, could pierce armour from a distance as short as the one from which I was shooting, and the enemy below me were all too close for me to miss. My assault broke the fury of their attack within moments, for it was sustained and deadly, with never a missed target on my part. I drew and aimed and fired as quickly as my hands could move, and I had been well trained in making those movements. I dropped live men with my first five arrows, and by that time even those who had not noticed me before were aware of my presence above them.
The first move by an enemy rider to disengage and ride away caught my eye, and I drove him out of the saddle with a hard shot that skewered his cuirass between his shoulder blades. I heard the noise as he crashed to the ground. Then it became difficult to select a target, because so many men were suddenly in retreat, and naturally, our men were thundering after them, intent now on revenge. As it was impossible to tell friend from foe when they were galloping away from me, I slid quickly back down the hill and salvaged as many of my spent arrows as I could before I remounted my horse and spurred after my companions.
I was feasted that night, the tale of my "counterattack" being the talk around our campfires. We had lost seven men in the encounter, but it might have been far worse and it certainly would have been far more disastrous had I not had my bow and arrows with me. Of all the sixty men riding in Samson's two squadrons, I was the only bowman.
I had good fortune in the next raid, too, managing to quickly spot a weakness in the force that was facing us. It was the kind of occurrence that takes place in the blinking of an eye, when you identify an opportunity, and the decision to exploit it or to let it pass by is instantaneous. In this instance, leading a diversionary thrust across the enemy's front to distract them from advancing directly against our main position, I saw an opening between two sections of the enemy where no space should have been, and I swung aside and charged straight into it. Fortunately, the men directly behind me followed without thought and we were able to act as a wedge, splitting the enemy into two groups that were more easily surrounded and dealt with.
From being the greenest tyro in the group, I had progressed to being known by everyone and acquiring a growing reputation as a man of luck and good judgment, which was extremely flattering but precisely the kind of conceit that Germanus and Tiberias Cato had warned me against more times than I could remember. A short time after that, however, Sigobert, the veteran cavalry commander who had been Samson's second in command for years, was killed in a skirmish with some displaced Burgundian bowmen. His command was taken over by another veteran, Rigunth, but then Rigunth rode into an ambush at the head of a small group three days later and was killed with all his men.
When the word of Rigunth's death arrived, Samson came looking for me and appointed me, temporarily, to the position of squadron commander. I accepted without a blink, having heard only the word temporary and fully anticipating that someone would quickly be promoted from the cadre of junior officers to fill the spot. By the time two weeks had passed, however, I was sufficiently perturbed to seek out Samson. I found him sitting at a makeshift table by one of the fires, studying a map that had been drawn by one of our clerks who had a talent for such things, and cleared my throat to announce myself and let him know I wished to speak with him.
He put down the map and the pen he had been holding and looked at me strangely, his mouth twisted sideways in a half smile. I told him briefly what was bothering me and asked him when I could expect to be relieved of my temporary duties, and he leaned backwards, clutching the edge of the table and wiggling his shoulders to loosen them from the strain of having sat still for so long.
"Why are you asking me that?" he responded. "We're in the middle of a war, Cousin. Are you telling me you are not enjoying your command?"
"No, that's not what I'm saying at all, Samson. I'm enjoying it thoroughly, but it has been more than two weeks now and for the past few days I've been worrying that I might be enjoying it too much."
"How so?"
I stared at him, surprised that he could not see my meaning, for to me it was as obvious as the nose on my face. "Because I'm beginning to be afraid that when someone is appointed to fill the post, I'll resent him for taking over."
His expression did not change by as much as a twitch. "Why would you resent someone for obeying instructions and accepting a promotion? That's what soldiers do, is it not?"
"Aye, but—"
"But what? Are you afraid he might do the job better than you?"
"No, how could I be? I don't even know who we are talking about."
"But whoever he may be, he might still do the job better than you can?"
"I doubt it."
Samson raised an eyebrow, perhaps aware that he had dealt a blow to my vanity.
There was a long pause after that, and then my cousin looked down at the map he had discarded to listen to me. When he spoke his voice sounded distant, and carried a distinct chill. "Think about this, Cousin Clothar, and consider your answer well. You are what—sixteen? Sixteen, aye. Now, are you asking me to believe that you can handle this post—the leadership of an entire squadron—better than anyone else I might appoint?"
That put a curb on my tongue. I hesitated, then decided to be truthful, no matter the cost. I ought to be able to speak the truth to my cousin with impunity, and I could see no acceptable reason for pretending that I did not believe in myself.
"Yes, Cousin," I said. "That's what I'm telling you."
He looked up at me, and his face crinkled in a wide grin. "Excellent," he said. "I think so, too. Get on with it, then."
I felt myself gaping at him.
"I said get on with it, Clothar. You are now officially in full command of Beta squadron, so may I return to my map? It really is quite important."
I walked away in a daze, attempting to come to terms with the realization that I was now Commander Clothar in fact as well as in name.
5
Nine days after my assumption of command over my thirty-man squadron, Gunthar launched an all-out campaign to obliterate us, and I began to regret the hubris that had driven me to assume such an enormous responsibility. I lost three men in one afternoon, right at the outset of that campaign, all of them shot out of the saddle by bowmen who had managed to infiltrate our defenses and set themselves up in a blind where there was only one trail that passed by. They knew we would have to use it sooner or later. Their chance came sooner than they had expected, judging from the lack of debris we found afterwards around their hiding place and from the fact that they took their first three targets efficiently. But they died themselves very quickly thereafter, because they had neglected to provide themselves with an escape route.
Three men lost might not seem like many to some observers, but that was one full tenth of my force, and the old Roman word for killing one in ten of one's troops was decimation. We had been decimated by a trio of nameless bowmen. We would replace our men when we returned to our base in the castle, but our pool of available replacements was growing no larger and every diminution of that resource was a permanent one.
Gunthar, on the other hand, seemed to suffer from no such constraints. In any encounter between our forces and his, we were more than likely to emerge victorious. No one knew the reasons for that, but there could be no doubt that it was true, because the casualty count at the end of each fight and skirmish was unequivocal. Face to face, hand to hand and nose to nose, the number of casualties demonstrated that we outfought them regularly by a count of at least three casualties for them against every two for us. But there was no parity in the situation. If Gunthar lost a hundred men, he would field two hundred fresh ones in the coming days. Every single man we lost, on the contrary, increased our cumulative weakness, and as each day passed we grew more and more aware of just how weak we were becoming.
We had one turn of good fortune that came when our fortunes seemed at their lowest and we most needed something in the way of a ray of light in the darkness that was hemming us in. Ingomer, lord of the neighbouring property of Vervenna, returned from the eastern patrol as soon as he received the word we sent him of Theuderic's death at Gunthar's hands.
Understandably enough, he rode directly to his home at the head of six hundred men to rescue his wife before doing anything else or reporting his presence to anyone, but he found its buildings burned and walls toppled. Distraught, and believing his wife and newborn child dead, he immediately went looking for Gunthar, bent on vengeance. Fortunately, before he could encounter any of Gunthar's mercenaries, he met Samson, who told him his wife and child were safe in Genava. Enormously relieved, Ingomer returned directly to Castle Genava to greet his beautiful young wife and to meet his newborn son, and he and his six hundred men had remained in the castle after that.
Most beneficially for our beleaguered garrison, however, Ingomer rode right up to the drawbridge with his six hundred horsemen, defying Gunthar's watchdogs to challenge them. At the last moment, just as the drawbridge was descending, Ingomer rapped out an order, and two full wings of his riders, a hundred horsemen to a wing, turned their horses smartly and split apart into two groups, then swung into a pincer formation and swept into the woodlands beyond the lea from left and right, routing the hidden enemy there, who, being mainly bowmen, were unable to use their weapons defensively to any great extent among the trees. While the first two wings of cavalry scoured through the woods in opposing arcs and finally spilled back out into the open, Ingomer turned the remainder of his force about and led all four hundred of them slowly and inexorably into the trees, mopping up the last remaining vestiges of resistance among Gunthar's occupying force.
Inside the castle we had never known exactly how many enemy warriors were ranged against us out there, and the wide-ranging estimates that were bandied about were based mainly upon random observations when there was little to observe. Ingomer and his men, however, had left upwards of a hundred of the enemy dead among the trees. Those who remained alive were stripped of their armour, clothing and weapons and set free to make their own way through the surrounding forest to wherever they might wish to go. We had no interest in taking prisoners, and we knew that once disarmed and naked, Gunthar's mercenaries would not find it easy to rearm themselves quickly. Stripped bare, they would be fortunate to make it back through the bogs and forest that lay between them and their nearest support bases, and doubly fortunate to do so without stumbling across any of the local people who lived out there among the trees and had no reason to be hospitable towards any of Gunthar's mercenaries.
That was one of the brighter moments in the campaign, but over and above everything else I can recall about that time is the feeling of hopelessness that grew upon us daily as we suffered continual and irreplaceable losses of men and horses while simultaneously watching Gunthar's numbers swell.
Brach and Chulderic held joint command of the castle and its garrison, although Chulderic was nominally commander in chief of all the forces of Benwick and Brach merely commanded the infantry, a position more or less forced upon him by his immense size. He simply could not find a horse large enough to bear him when he was armed and armoured, so any yearnings that he might ever have had to be a cavalryman had long since been abandoned as unrealistic. After Ingomer's rout of the watchdog guards beyond the bridge, we fully expected Gunthar to mount an expedition to replace them, and we quickly brought out our foot soldiers to prepare defensive positions in the woods before new enemy forces could be moved in. The expected attack never occurred, however, and we were left to wonder why Gunthar would simply allow such a strategic position to be abandoned.
We wasted no time while we were wondering such things, however, and we quickly put our newly freed infantry to use against the Burgundian mercenaries, enjoying the fact that, for a brief time, the difference they made was wonderful. At every clash of arms, Gunthar's creatures were sent scampering for their lives and the morale of our troopers swelled for several weeks. But then the same reality that governed our cavalry asserted itself over the infantry, too. Their losses were simply too consistent to be sustainable.
Chulderic had sent out messengers to neighbouring kings and governors, requesting assistance, but little was forthcoming. The news of Ban's death was out now and it was believed that the fighting going on in Benwick was among his sons, squabbling for the wealth of the kingdom. Although that was untrue, kings and rulers who had been friends and allies to Ban were reluctant to commit their own resources to what they saw as a family squabble blown out of all proportion. There were too many other real enemies and invading Outlanders abroad in the land to permit anyone who was not directly involved in the Benwick wars to dilute his own forces.
One afternoon in the second month of the struggle, when things were at their bleakest, we had been pursuing a band of Gunthar's horsemen—Germanic mercenaries who had been celebrated as Roman auxiliary cavalry and magnificent horsemen for hundreds of years—and we had finally brought them to battle. It was an even match, too, all things considered. The Germans were mounted on their heavy, forest-bred horses, and there appeared to be two thirty- man squadrons in their party, which matched our own size. They had been riding far abroad on this occasion, raiding deep inside our holdings and penetrating right to the lakeside about ten miles north of the castle, where they had burned at least one village and hanged large numbers of helpless farmers, simply to encourage their neighbours to offer no help to us. We had received word of their presence two days earlier and had ridden to intercept them and put an end to their depredations, and it had taken us an entire day to find them and cut them off so that they had no choice but to fight us.
We came together head on, in a wild, charging melee that seemed to have developed of its own accord. I had had some thought of splitting my squadron into two groups and spearing into the middle of the enemy formation, but before I could even begin to issue orders I saw them charging right towards us at the full gallop. We had no option other than to fight or run, and so we fought. I led my men directly towards the oncoming enemy, and by the time the two lines met, both sides were advancing at the full gallop.
I was unhorsed on the first pass because my mount went down, smitten in the neck by a hand axe, and I flew right over its head. I should have been killed then and there, for I was winded for a long time, but in the heat of the fighting no one paid me any attention and I was able to collect myself and find a riderless horse. It was a stallion, and it had no wish to be ridden any further that day. Unfortunately, in a battle of wills between him and me, he was destined to lose. As I was trying to catch hold of his bridle, a rider came galloping by on his other side. He knew I was not one of his, but he was galloping hard and could not reach me from where he was, so he slashed at the horse, trying to disable it. His slash was ill timed, however, and poorly aimed because of his speed, so that instead of wounding or crippling the horse, the flat of his blade smacked against the beast's rump, and the animal, already terrified out of its wits, erupted into a run. I went with it, for there was nothing else I could think to do. I twisted my fingers into its mane and ran alongside it in great, bounding strides until I grew confident enough to take my weight on my arms and raise both feet, then drop them back to earth and thrust myself up and back into a vaulting swing that landed me astride the horse's back. Once there, and free of the press for a moment, since we had run far beyond the fighting, I brought him to a stop and gathered up the reins, and as I turned to ride back towards my command, I saw my cousin Samson.
He, too, had evidently managed to swing out of the scrabble of the fight, flanked as always by his two most faithful followers, Jan and Gurrit, a pair of loyal stalwarts who might have been twins, so similar did they appear to be at a casual glance, and who had appointed themselves as Samson's personal bodyguards. I first saw him because his trio of riders were the on
ly people moving in that area and my eye went to them automatically, assessing the potential danger there and recognizing Samson and his escorts immediately.
They were angling back towards the crush of the main fight, riding close together in a tight arrowhead with Samson in the lead and Jan and Gurrit pressing hard on his flanks. It was clear to me in my first, sweeping glance along the line of their attack to their intended target that they were aiming to use the concerted weight of their horses to drive a wedge into the exposed right flank of the enemy formation, but it was equally clear that someone in the enemy ranks had already anticipated what they would do and was moving quickly to counter them, dispatching a group of five riders to interpose themselves between Samson and their own force and give their comrades time to close the weakness in their formation.
I was more than a hundred paces from where the two small groups would meet, but I put my spurs to my new horse and drove him hard towards the convergence point, knowing that I would be too late to take part in the clash of the meeting and feeling the dread of foreknowledge swelling in my chest and threatening to choke me. Three against five was not particularly great odds, but my store of optimism had been sadly depleted during the previous few weeks and I no longer held high expectations of anything other than defeat and disappointment.
Sure enough, while the two groups were yet separated by a gap of twenty paces or more, I saw one of the enemy swinging what appeared to be a slingshot of some kind over his head, and moments later one of Samson's companions, I could not tell which, threw up his arms violently and toppled backwards, the helmet sent flying from his head by the force of the enemy projectile. He had barely hit the ground when the two groups closed with a meaty collision of horseflesh and the clang of hard-swung weapons. Samson's other man, the one on my side of the action, went down, hard, his arms outflung as he fell or was knocked sprawling from his mount. I was fifty paces distant now, galloping flat out, and I saw the blood spraying from the open slash in the falling man's neck, spreading like a red fog as he went down.
