“We could still pull back!” roared Antaup over the noise.
“To where?” snapped Leo. “To what?” They’d leave Orso with the field, with the initiative, with every chance of reinforcement, while their own alliance would fall apart. He’d go from liberator to laughing stock. History would record him as a treacherous loser.
“You know what?” Jin leaned in with that huge grin of his. “I reckon another tap might shatter the bastards!”
“The cavalry are fresh!” As if Jin’s smile was catching, Antaup had one, too. “One more throw of the dice?”
Now Leo was smiling. How could he help it when his friends were laughing at death? He had to stop himself turning to ask Jurand what he thought. He wished him and Glaward were there now. He looked up towards the king’s standard. The Steadfast Standard, flapping free above the smoke and ruin on the high clock tower, the golden sun glinting as the real thing slipped through the spitting clouds overhead.
There was still time. If he could shatter Orso’s centre… seize that flag… take the king himself prisoner… none of the mistakes would matter. Victory sponges all crimes away, Verturio said. Or was it Bialoveld? What did it matter? The day would be won with swords, not words. This was the moment he’d been waiting for. There wouldn’t be a better. There wouldn’t be another. It was a moment for heroes.
In battle, his father had always told him, a man finds out who he truly is. He was the Young Lion. And a lion doesn’t slink away with his tail between his legs. A lion fights to the last.
He slid his arm through the straps of his shield. “Tell the cavalry we charge!” he bellowed.
“Ha!” Antaup wrenched his borrowed horse around and thundered away to give the orders.
Leo could see exhausted men floundering from the river on the near bank. Across the water, the King’s Own cavalry surged and whirled like the starlings above the field the day before, harrying the panicked remnants of the Open Council’s forces. Corpses floated downstream, clogged into a great bobbing tangle in the boggy shallows.
But no corpses, no glory. Leo drew his sword with that faint hiss of steel that always sent a tingle across his skin, then turned his horse towards the great wedge of cavalry that was quickly forming. The men who’d ridden beside him in the North, and never let him down. The best of the best. Ordered, disciplined, fearless, their armour beaded with wet as the rain thickened.
“Men of Angland!” he roared, raising his sword high. “Are you with me?”
Few of them could’ve heard the words but they got the gist, shoving their lances at the spitting heavens, letting go a rousing cheer.
“For Leo dan Brock!” roared Antaup.
“For the Young Lion!” bellowed Jin.
Leo took his place between them at the sharp end of the wedge. Where he’d longed to be ever since Isher first mentioned rebellion. Ever since Savine made it a reality. Ever since he was last here. Where he belonged. The very point of the spear.
He lifted the rim of his shield and used it to snap down his visor.
“Forward!” he roared, though it couldn’t have been more than a metallic burble outside his helmet, and he gave his horse the spurs.
First at a walk, down the rutted road towards Stoffenbeck, surface turned to sticky glue by the drizzle, churned by the hooves of his horse as he urged it forward to battle.
He looked to his left. Jin never wore a visor. Leo could see his teeth in his red beard, eyes furiously narrowed, heavy mace raised. He looked to his right. Antaup, spear couched under his arm, a grin across his handsome face that made Leo grin, too.
Now at a trot, the buildings ahead growing clearer through the rain and the smoke, bodies scattered where they’d fallen as the fighting ground towards Stoffenbeck, the tangle of weapons and limp banners where the battle was still hot, all jolting with the movement of Leo’s horse.
Not the first charge he’d led, but the thrill was fresh every time. The dry mouth, the aching muscles, the snatched breath. The ground sped past beneath, as if he flew. The delicious vibration, from earth to hooves to saddle and up into his very guts. The fear and the excitement building to a joy that made him want to scream. He flourished his sword, raising it high.
The ranks of Angland parted before them, officers screaming as they forced the men to wheel back, lines opening so the horses could stream through.
Now at a jolting canter, hooves drumming as the Young Lion’s cavalry charged into battle once again. A battle ill-suited to horsemen, though, it had to be admitted. Leo never seemed to learn where that was concerned.
There were strong barricades across the narrower alleys: tree trunks with stakes hammered through them, heaped-up doors and rubble, bristling with pikes. But across the widest street, dead ahead, the barricades were weak, no more than scattered furniture and a few spears.
Leo pointed his sword towards them, tried to roar a command which became nothing more than echoing breath behind his visor.
Everything was pounding hooves, flying mud and billowing smoke, rushing noise and rushing wind, thudding along with his own thumping heartbeat, rattling teeth, booming breath, all seen through a slot you could hardly get a letter through.
The enemy melted before them, scattering, scurrying between the buildings. Leo whooped, cut a man down as he turned to run, sword clattering from his backplate and knocking him under the milling hooves.
They were through! Through into the square at the heart of Stoffenbeck. They’d cut the king’s lines in half! A building burned on one side, smoke drawing a veil across the scattered rubbish, broken masonry, twisted corpses, a ruined fountain leaning at an angle, spilling water. He saw the town hall with its tall clock tower, one of its faces shattered, bent hands frozen at the moment its guts were torn out by a stray cannon-stone.
“Forward!” roared Leo, waving his men furiously on, but at the same time he was having to rein back. There was nothing to charge at. He caught a glimpse of the Steadfast Standard at the top of the clock tower. But no sign of the King’s Own, let alone the Knights of the Body. The whole place was oddly deserted. Riders spread out around him, all momentum lost, milling, rearing, clattering into one another like sheep in a pen.
He heard a shout from across the square. “Ready!”
A breeze whipped up, brought a sudden shower into the faces of the riders, tugging the curtain of smoke aside. Long enough for Leo to see barricades across the roads that led out. No weak ones, these. Bristling with sharpened stakes, spears firmly set in a glittering tangle. The spears of men ready and waiting.
And dull metal rings, with darkness inside. The maws of cannon, Leo realised, pointed right at them.
He tried to turn his horse, ripping up his visor so he could warn his men, but it was far too late.
“Fire!”
Broad heard the crash of the volley. So loud it made his teeth buzz.
He froze, crouching in a trampled flower bed by the wreckage of a fence. Any man with half his sense would’ve run the other way. But Broad had proved a dozen times he had no sense at all once the fighting started, and he was in the thick of the fighting now. His head throbbed with the noise of it, the smell of it. There was no resisting its pull any more than a floating cork resists a wave.
Mess came at him blurred from the murk, sharpened under his feet, drifted into the smears behind him. Broken weapons, broken armour, broken bodies. Even the earth was wounded. Muddy ground so ripped and scarred it looked fresh-ploughed. Injured men clawed through their clothes to see how bad their wounds were. Clawed at the ground. Clawed for the rear. One was so coated in filth that even close up Broad couldn’t tell which side he was on. Without his lenses there were hardly sides at all.
The cavalry had thundered through and torn the lines apart. Ripped them into shreds of bitter fighting, tattered struggles to the death, writhing in the smoke. Broad saw the blobbed shapes of three men shaken loose. King’s men, he thought. Deserters, maybe. That was his best guess. In a battle, a guess is all you can
afford. Time to let go, finally, and he felt the smile twist his face.
The first never saw him coming. Got his helmet staved in from the side with the warhammer.
The second turned to look. A flash of his scared eyes in his blurred face before Broad’s dagger thudded into the side of his neck.
The third turned to run, got one step when Broad hooked his legs out from under him with the pick-end and brought him down. He rolled over, trembling arms held up. Before he got a word out, Broad smashed him three times with the hammer, broke his arm, caved his ribs in, caught him in the side of his face and sent teeth flying, jaw half-ripped from his head.
He squirmed in the dirt, back arched, and Broad stepped over him, looking for more, snorting breath steam-hot, teeth locked vice-tight, muscles coiled-spring tense.
Shapes rushed from the gloom and he raised his hammer. Horses, clattering past. Riderless, maddened, reins flapping, eyes rolling. One with blood streaking its flanks, another with a loose boot still caught bouncing in a stirrup.
A weak barricade across the street. Left weak on purpose. An invitation. One Brock hadn’t been able to refuse. Broad was no better. He slunk through, keeping low, lips curled back, the low growl sawing at his throat.
A soldier knelt, pointing a broken spear.
“Get back!” he shouted.
Broad took one step and smashed his head open with the hammer. He’d seen men keep fighting with wounds in the body you wouldn’t believe. Make the skull a very different shape, that’s the best way to be sure. Flatten it, shatter it, punch holes right through it.
A window cracked, flames licking up the outside of a building. Broad coughed on smoke, prickled with sweat. Eyebrows slick with it. Blurred shapes loomed up. Pillars. What had been a covered market, its roof ripped away, slates and scorched timbers and chunks of masonry scattered.
There were dead men everywhere. Broad could hardly move without stepping on ’em. Dead men and dead horses, tangled and torn apart. Even the stonework was scarred and pockmarked. Cannons’ work, he reckoned. Cannons filled with smiths’ oddments. A storm of hot metal no armour, no shield and for damn sure no courage could stop. The place stank of smoke and blood, of broken men and smashed-open horses and everything they hold.
Mad fighting here. He saw a man laying about him from horseback. Another dragged from his saddle, hacked on the ground. Two men wrestled over a knife. Black figures against the fires. Devils in hell.
Broad charged into the very midst of it, caught a man full in the side with his shoulder and dumped him sprawling, sword bouncing from his hand. He reeled into someone else, spear clattering against Broad’s back as he swung, too close for the hammer and Broad stabbed with his knife, overhand. It scraped on a breastplate, scratched down an armplate, found the joint between the two and punched deep into flesh. The man tried to twist away, fumbling at Broad’s shoulder, and Broad rammed the dagger through the slot in his helmet, left it stuck there to the hilt as he toppled back.
The first man was scrambling for his fallen sword and Broad caught his clutching hand with a swing of the hammer. Turned it to a shapeless red glove. The man took a breath to scream, bent over and Broad kicked him so hard under the jaw his helmet flew right off and went skittering across the gouged cobbles. Kicked him again, and again. Couldn’t stop kicking him.
There was a cracking sound above. A great mass of stone fell crumbling, burst apart in a gout of fire. One man was flattened, others threw themselves down, reeled burning, trying to slap the flaming embers free. Broad hit another with the hammer so hard, he turned him over in the air and sent his corpse bouncing from a wall upside down.
He caught a flicker of movement, lurched back as a blade hissed past his nose. Lurched back again as the sword came at him the other way, caught it clumsily on the steel haft of his hammer.
They blundered into each other, wrestling, hints of a bearded face, teeth locked in a snarl. He butted at Broad, made him bite his tongue and filled his mouth with blood, but Broad had the wrist of his sword arm, set his weight and drove the bearded bastard back against a wall, and again, mashed his hand against the broken stonework till his sword clattered down.
He freed his hammer, snarled as he swung it at the man’s face, but he slid free, the head catching the wall, twisting the haft from Broad’s buzzing grip. Flash of metal as the bearded man jerked out a knife and Broad caught his hand, tripped on a corpse. They crashed over, rolling through burning wreckage.
Broad came out on top, all four of their fists clamped tight around the grip of the knife, the fire-gleaming blade quivering as they strained at it. Broad twisted it, straining, straining, clenched his jaw and put all his weight on it. The man tried to knee him, snorted as he tried to roll him, but Broad was too strong. He took a hand from the knife to claw at Broad’s face, turned his head to snap desperately at Broad’s hand with his teeth but it was too late.
Broad growled as he forced the blade’s point up under the man’s ear. Forced it up, blood turning his fist sticky, and he wrenched one hand free to peel the man’s clutching fingers away from his face, then made a clumsy fist and beat at the pommel like a hammer on a nail, hammered the blade into this bastard’s head till the crosspiece met his jaw.
Broad staggered up, spitting, gasping for breath. Battle was done here for now, but it’d be back, like waves up a beach. Waves of blood that left bodies as flotsam. He could hear it coming. Screams and clashes. Mad honking, squealing, like pigs rutting.
He saw a tattered standard sticking up above a heap of dead. As he got close, he could make out the lion, the hammers of Angland. One of Brock’s men still held it, with one arm. Sitting propped against a dead horse. The handsome one. Antaup? He was breathing hard, a couple of little holes through his breastplate, blood leaking out to soak his trousers.
Last stand wasn’t a phrase you ever wanted to use about your own side, but that was the look of it. Wounded men. Twisted faces. Desperate shouting. Someone coughed, leaning on a broken spear, coughing blood, and drooling blood, coughing again. The Northman, Jin, had a flatbow bolt in his thigh. He had Brock under the armpits even so, swearing in Northern as he struggled to drag him out from under his dead mount.
“Here,” slobbered Broad. His mouth wouldn’t fit round the human word. All it wanted to do was snarl and bite like an animal. He hooked his arms under the horse’s side and with a growl managed to heave its dead weight up enough for Jin to haul the Young Lion free and sag back, spent.
“Master Broad,” croaked Brock. He looked baffled. Like all this had come as quite the shock.
“Your wife sent me.” Broad frowned into the murk. Everything beyond arm’s reach was blurred. Everything more than a few paces off was just wriggling smears. Crackle of flames to one side. Air full of smoke and settling dust and dying men’s groans. Brock’s leg was a mangled mess, armour crushed and slathered with his blood, his horse’s blood, the knee-plate twisted almost flat.
“Good of you… to come.” Brock lifted his left arm, baring pink teeth as he dragged the battered remnant of his shield from it. “But you can see…” A great nail had punched right through the vambrace, near the elbow, blood dripping from the end. “There’s nothing… to be done here.”
Broad could see that. He could see that very clearly. He looked up at Jin, and the Northman looked back, and no words were any use.
“Go back… to Savine.” Brock was panting between each phrase. “Make sure she gets away.” Like every word was a hero’s effort. “Make sure my child… gets away.”
Broad stood. There were shapes in the smoke. The king’s men, he guessed, moving in to finish it.
He took a fallen sword and pressed the hilt into Leo dan Brock’s hand. The Young Lion nodded to him, and Broad nodded back.
He could do no good here. But then he hadn’t come to do good. He turned away from the killing. Slipped down a ruined side street, and away.
“Shit,” growled Clover, lowering his eyeglass and frowning down towards t
he smouldering wreck that used to be a town.
“What is it?” asked Flick, over the endless racket of the fighting.
“Best I can tell, the Young Lion’s glorious charge came to grief. Let that be a lesson for you in the value of glorious charges.”
“What does that mean?”
“That there’s naught left to fight for. We need to save what we can while there’s still something to save. Stay close and stay low.” And Clover tucked the eyeglass away and drew his sword. Not so much from any desire to swing it, but because having it drawn was the done thing in a battle. Then he clenched his jaw, squared his shoulders and headed exactly the wrong way. Which was to say towards the fighting.
It was bad now. It was always bad, but it was real bad now. Everyone on the arrow-prickled, blood-smeared, mud-churned way was hurt. A Carl spluttered blood and bits of teeth into his hands. Another stared stupidly, hair clotted with blood. A Thrall clutched at the leaking stumps of two fingers, snarling curses. A Named Man sat, pale as milk, staring down at his hands as he tried to poke his guts back in through a great slit in his side. Clover caught his eye and gave him a nod. He was back to the mud, and they both knew it. A nod was all Clover could do for him.
“By the dead,” croaked Flick, wincing as if he was walking into a wind, the terrible, mindless din of it getting louder and louder.
Clover shook his head. Gripped tight to his sword. Could there have been a time he enjoyed this? Looked forward to it? Strained every muscle to get back to it as soon as he could?
“Must’ve been mad,” he whispered.
Some arrows fell fluttering and Clover dropped down, hunching his shoulders. Like hunching your shoulders would do any good. Who was shooting anyway? In all this, there was just as much chance of killing your side as theirs. Maybe it got so you didn’t care any more. So any killing seemed a sensible notion. Everyone else was at it, why be the one fool left out?
Been a long time since Clover felt that way. The mud’s cold embrace waits for everyone. Getting some poor bastard there faster just ’cause he was facing the other way hardly struck him as a thing worth risking your own life for. When there’s a flood, do you waste time raging at the water? By the dead, no, you just try not to drown. Battle’s no different. A natural disaster.
The Trouble with Peace Page 55
