A Time of Courage

by John Gwynne

  Jin nodded. ‘We can jump that,’ she said, ‘but we will need room to move between the ditch and the shield wall.’

  ‘There is much room,’ Morn said. ‘More than from here to the wall.’

  Good, Jin thought. That will be enough. She dipped her head to Morn. ‘My thanks,’ she said.

  Jin took her helm from a saddle hook and slipped it over her head, buckled the strap under her chin, looked at Gerel.

  ‘Begin,’ she said.

  Gerel blew out a long horn call, Jin flicking her reins and touching her heels to her mount’s ribs. She moved forwards at a fast walk, three thousand Cheren following behind her. The wall grew closer, the crackle of flame louder. A cloud of smoke billowed out of the hole in the wall, Jin sucking in a deep breath and riding into it. She came out the other side of the cloud, inside the wall, now, and saw Fritha upon her draig, standing to the right of Jin. Pits of fire burned across a wide plain, only a central channel directly in front of Jin clear of flame. A dark line shimmered, marking the water-filled ditch. A fair distance beyond the ditch Jin could see a long row of rectangular shields, white wings emblazoned upon them.

  They want us to approach down this line, think their wall of shields is strong enough to resist whatever comes at them. I shall teach them to regret such arrogance.

  She looked elsewhere, searching for a sign of Bleda, but could only see smoke and flame.

  He is here somewhere, and I shall find him, but first I will show these White-Wings what it is like to stand before the Cheren.

  She clicked her tongue, shifted her feet, her horse moving from a walk to a slow canter. Jin dipped her head at Fritha as she passed her.

  She rode on, focused now on the path before her. Jin called out to Gerel, more horn blasts, and a line of riders formed up either side of Jin, sixty wide, a ripple as lines formed behind her, the warband slipping into a huge column. Their passing rumbled like constant, distant thunder.

  The ditch was closer now, Jin saw spikes with bodies impaled upon them. Another touch of her ankles and flick of her reins and her horse was leaping into a gallop. She bent low over the arch of her horse’s neck, felt the wind snaring her warrior braid, her heart pounding in her head. The ditch rushed towards her, forty paces away, and Jin tapped her heels into her mount’s flanks, urging him on, then she was rising in her saddle, taking her weight from her horse’s back, and they were flying, weightless, leaping across the ditch, a flash at the edge of her vision of Gerel and Tark and so many others doing the same, for a long, timeless moment all of them sailing through the air. And then with a thud and drum of hooves she was landing on the other side, turf spraying, and she was galloping on.

  A wide stretch of plain opened up between Jin and the White-Wings, the warriors closer with every heartbeat. A horn blast and the White-Wings stepped together, moving from loose order to tight, another signal and their shields were coming up, interlocking with a crack. A hundred warriors wide, ten rows deep, it was the largest shield wall Jin had ever seen.

  Over ten years I have waited for this moment, planned it in my mind. How I will show the Ben-Elim and their White-Wings that a wall of shields is no match for the Cheren.

  Her mouth twisted, part snarl, part smile, and she reached for her bow, drew it from its case, then her other hand was grasping a fistful of arrows. She knew her warriors were all doing the same.

  A hundred and fifty paces at full gallop, she wrapped her reins around her pommel, guiding her mount with her knees, passed her arrows to her bow fist and nocked the first arrow, drew it and loosed, the next two arrows flying before the first one hit. She heard bowstrings thrum left and right of her, a hail of iron hurtling through the air. The rattle of stones on wood as arrows slammed into shields, screams as the missiles found gaps in the wall, a head too high, an exposed ankle.

  One hundred paces away from the wall, a new handful of arrows, nock, draw, loose, nock, draw, loose, the arrows punching deeper now that she was closer. More screams as arrowheads pierced wood and bit into the arms holding the shields. A ripple as warriors fell, others stepping forward to fill the gaps.

  Fifty paces, another trio of arrows loosed, their impacts rocking warriors not fully braced. One of Jin’s arrows took a warrior in the cheek as he risked a glance over his shield rim.

  Idiot.

  He dropped, dead before he hit the ground.

  Almost on top of the shield wall now and Jin touched her reins, a pull to the left, pressure from her knees and ankles, and her mount slowed, turned, thirty riders doing the same, the other thirty from Jin’s front row peeling right, all of them galloping along the length of the shield wall, loosing arrows at almost point-blank range, White-Wings hurled back into the warriors behind them. At the same time the row of riders behind Jin began loosing at the shield wall.

  Jin reached the end of the shield wall and steered her mount left again, dropped to a canter and rode back along the flank of her galloping column, riding three hundred paces back down the channel before touching her mount and riding back into the centre, reforming a line again with Gerel and Tark meeting her, all of her sixty riders slipping back into a disciplined row, moving forwards at a slow canter, horses blowing and sweating. Jin saw the last few rows of her column galloping at the shield wall, peeling left and right, others cantering back down the line, reforming into rows behind her. The shield wall appeared before her, their shields studded with arrows, some cracked and splintered, dead White-Wings heaped on the ground, and then she was urging her horse into a fresh gallop, reaching for more arrows, bending low in the saddle.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-NINE

  BLEDA

  Bleda stared at the Cheren as they galloped across the plain, hurtling at the White-Wing shield wall positioned at the field’s centre. He felt his jaw clenching, muscles bunching as he watched the Cheren loose a storm of arrows at the shield wall at full gallop, the front row peeling left and right in perfect timing, galloping along the front of the shield wall, loosing more arrows as the row behind charged, then peeled away, a perfect manoeuvre repeated in constant cycle, giving the shield wall no respite, no time to clear their dead. He heard warriors scream, saw them fall. He felt a grudging respect for the Cheren, to see them galloping into battle, their courage as they charged the shield wall, the beautiful lines of their columns, their skill.

  He hated them.

  Jin is down there, leading them.

  But there was no way to get at her.

  He had repositioned his force higher on the hills, taken the barrels of fire arrows with him. His endless hail of missiles had thinned the Revenants flooding the wall, and after that flying draig had smashed a hole in the wall’s centre, he had helped to hold the Revenants back as the White-Wings had retreated.

  But his position meant that there was now a river of Revenants between him and the Cheren.

  Strangely, even though he and his Sirak had slain far more Revenants than all of the White-Wings on this eastern edge of the battle, the Revenants were completely ignoring him and his warriors, were still charging in a frenzied mass at the White-Wing shield wall on the plain behind the first ditch.

  He lifted his last fire arrow, nocked it, drew and loosed. The arrow flew through the air, trailing fire and smoke, hundreds of other arrows arcing and dropping through the air, punching into Revenants as they swarmed across the fire-dotted plain.

  The creature Bleda had aimed at stumbled, the arrow catching it in the shoulder, spinning it. For a long moment it teetered on the edge of a fire-pit, arms flailing, then it fell backwards into the flames.

  A knot of Revenants were moving across the plain, threading in between the burning pits of fire. They were moving differently from the others. A solid mass of them, slower, but with more purpose. As Bleda watched, they stopped, one of them at the centre looking up at the hill from where the flaming arrows had been coming. Straight at Bleda. It was a woman, long hair lank and stuck to her skull. She pointed at Bleda, opened her mouth and issued a ululating
cry, that felt like insects crawling inside Bleda’s skull, behind his eyes.

  Revenants stopped in their steady stream towards the White-Wings, looked up the hill, began to run at Bleda.

  ‘One of Gulla’s captains,’ Bleda hissed, fingering the twenty-four grey-tipped arrows he had.

  He turned, ran to his horse and leaped into his saddle.

  ‘Ellac, you’re in charge here. Rune archers, with me,’ he called, and then he was spurring his horse into motion, breaking into a canter. Ruga, Yul and a score of riders following him.

  They charged at the Revenants.

  Creatures were running towards them, converging on Bleda, but he ignored them, eyes fixed on the woman who had pointed at him. She was still there, standing between two pits of fire, staring at him.

  Bleda felt for his bow, his other fist reaching for arrows, a glance to make sure they were grey-fletched.

  Smoke billowed in front of him, hiding the Revenant captain.

  Another Revenant appeared at the edge of his vision, leaping at him, arms outstretched. Two arrows punched into it, a spurt of blue flame as it was hurled to the ground. Ruga and Yul.

  ‘Cover me,’ Bleda cried, his thighs and knees tensing, putting pressure on his horse, and he was swerving between pits of fire, turf spraying, smoke rolling over them. Heat flared from one pit as his horse’s hooves skidded and they swerved too close to the flames, the stench of singed hair, then they were balanced again. Revenants leaped at him, then fell away with flashes and spurts of blue flame, his companions’ arrows keeping him safe.

  And then he saw her again, moving now in her swift, jerking fashion, away from him, through the maze of pits. More Revenants were swarming towards him, hundreds of them. Bleda loosed an arrow, then another, took a long breath, then let the third fly.

  The first arrow slammed into the Revenant captain’s side, staggering her, a ripple of blue flame shimmering up her ribs. The second sliced into the back of her leg and she stumbled, dropping to one knee, more blue flame. She looked back at him with a snarl on her face.

  Revenants leaped at him, ten, twelve, more. Too many for his guards to cull.

  His third arrow punched into the Revenant captain’s eye. Blue flame pulsed, spiralling out from her eye socket, juddering through her whole body. She collapsed on the ground, legs jerking, arms twitching, then she was still.

  The Revenants jumping at him fell like rocks, thumped still and lifeless to the ground.

  Bleda reined in his mount, Yul and Ruga catching up with him, his other warriors with them.

  All around them Revenants gave a collective sigh and dropped, collapsing to the ground. Hundreds of them, thousands. A still silence hung in the air, and then cheers rang out from the shield wall.

  Bleda twisted in his saddle, looked up at his warband on the hill, saw Ellac punching the air with his spear. Bleda grinned. A flick of his reins and his horse walked on, over to the Revenant captain. He dismounted and knelt by her corpse, pulled his three runed arrows free. They came out with a sucking, tearing sound. He wiped them clean and slipped them back into his quiver.

  One of his palms was flat on the turf, bracing him as he crouched beside the Revenant’s corpse. He felt a tremor in the ground, heard screams filtering across the field. A few strides and he was back in the saddle, looking to the west.

  Where the Cheren were still charging the centre’s shield wall in a perfect loop.

  There was no longer a river of Revenants blocking his way.

  He gave Yul and Ruga a cold smile, leaned in his saddle and spoke quickly to them.

  CHAPTER EIGHTY

  JIN

  Jin was galloping at the shield wall, arrows flying from her bow, slamming into linden and flesh. She saw a White-Wing collapse, the warrior behind too slow to fill the gap, a dozen arrows flitting into the hole. Screams, more White-Wings dropping, the gap widening.

  They are close to breaking.

  Jin glimpsed split shields, other White-Wing warriors exhausted, trying to rotate back in the wall, but her Cheren spied every movement, every chink, filling any weakness with arrows. And there was nothing the White-Wings could do to stop them – the Cheren horse were always out of reach.

  Jin was enjoying herself.

  Her war-host had made over a dozen passes and put about thirty thousand arrows into the shield wall. She had glimpsed shadows flitting across the ground as Ben-Elim gathered in the sky above her, and Jin was waiting for their inevitable diving attack. But that was what Jin wanted. Her Cheren would move their bows from the shield wall and aim them at the sky.

  Jin realized something had changed on this flank: there was an absence of sound. She glanced around, saw that the entire eastern section of the plain was still. There were no Revenants moving in their constant, animated thirst for blood.

  What has happened? Have they retreated?

  The hiss of an arrow and the Cheren rider in front of Jin swayed in his saddle, toppled slowly to the side, a white-fletched arrow protruding from his neck. His foot caught in a stirrup and he was dragged along the ground.

  The thrum of bowstrings and instinctively Jin ducked. More Cheren riders fell in front of her, four or five, screams and thuds behind her.

  She looked to the east, the direction the arrows were coming from, and frowned.

  Horses were standing in a line, maybe a score of them, and upon their backs were . . . Revenants. And they were loosing arrows at her Cheren riders. A bank of smoke swept across them, Jin squinting to see. The Revenant riders appeared again, trotting out of the smoke, sending more arrows flying. Jin swayed in her saddle, an arrow hissing past her.

  The Revenant riders broke into a canter, and then a gallop, charging at Jin and her war-host. Another volley of arrows from them, the rumble of their hooves in gallop, more Cheren hurled from saddles.

  ‘WARE!’ Gerel was crying, Jin raising her bow, grasping for arrows, nocking and drawing. She put her first arrow into the chest of a Revenant, her second and third into its face. Three more arrows punched into it in quick succession, Gerel unloading his bow into the creature. It rocked back in the saddle, swayed and fell to the side, crunched to the ground.

  And Jin’s heart froze in her chest, ice suddenly in her veins.

  There was another rider sitting in the saddle behind the Revenant, who wore a deel of grey beneath a lamellar coat, horsehair flying from an iron-spiked helm.

  Bleda.

  He was galloping towards her, bow in his fist, loosing arrows at her Cheren riders. The sheer bold audacity of it sent a pulse of rage through her, even as she threw herself forwards, barely avoiding two arrows in the chest.

  A handful of arrows flitted from Jin’s warriors, more Revenants pierced and falling to the ground, revealing Sirak warriors in the saddle. They were close, now, thirty or forty paces away. Cheren warriors gathered about Jin, seeing this new threat, and launched volleys of missiles at the charging line. Bleda was already turning in a tight half-circle and riding away, cantering between the pits of fire, his warriors following him, back into the flames and dark vapours.

  Without thinking, Jin was guiding her mount off the wide channel and into the maze of fire-pits. Gerel saw her and followed, his horn at his lips, blowing blast after blast, and then her Cheren were following her, three thousand warriors riding into a fire- and smoke-filled wasteland.

  Jin glimpsed Sirak riders ahead of her, clicked her mount into a trot. No reckless gallop through this maze of fire, another trap of Bleda’s, no doubt. Dimly, she was aware of horns blowing, to the north. Fritha’s voice, high and shrill, calling Jin’s name. She knew this was breaking away from the plan, that she had not yet accomplished her task of cracking the White-Wings’ shield wall, but she did not care. The horn calls changed and a glimpse to the north showed ranks of acolytes massing around Fritha. They began to move forwards, down the wide channel towards the shield wall.

  I will return. Once Bleda is dead, his corpse hanging from a spike, I will lead my Cheren bac
k and finish what I’ve started. But Bleda is right there . . .

  Another glimpse of horses ahead of her, three or four hundred paces, grey deels. She loosed a trio of arrows, heard screams, both human and horse. Picked up her pace, moving into a fast canter, becoming accustomed to finding the winding path between the pits of fire.

  Corpses littered the ground, emaciated, their clothing in tatters, and Jin realized she was riding amongst a field of Revenants.

  This is where he took the Revenant corpses from. He killed their captain.

  Fritha had told Jin how the Revenants could be slain, and what had happened when their captain had fallen in the Desolation.

  Smoke cleared and Jin saw Bleda and his riders breaking into a gallop. They were free of the pits and riding up a hill.

  Jin bared her teeth in a snarl, resisted the urge to gallop after them, she was almost through the field of fire. And then the ground cleared before her, no more pits, no more fire, her view unhindered.

  Bleda had crested the rise of a hill and had stopped, was looking down at her.

  Ice slithered through her veins, a hatred of this man before her that chilled her blood. Her hand twitched but she knew he was out of bow shot. Jin reined in a moment, allowing her warriors to gather behind her as they emerged from the smoke.

  A score of Sirak surrounded Bleda, Jin recognizing Ruga, one of Bleda’s oathsworn, and also Yul, who had been Erdene’s first-sword.

  You didn’t save her, and you won’t save Bleda.

  Bleda saw her. He lowered his bow and slowly drew one finger across his throat.

  The ice in Jin’s veins erupted into a white-hot fire.

  ‘BLEDA!’ Jin screamed.

  Then she flicked her reins and touched her heels to her mount, felt the animal’s muscles bunch and she was leaping forward, breaking straight into a gallop.

  Bleda looked at her a moment longer, and then he was turning and riding down the far side of the hill, disappearing.

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-ONE