Horn of the River God: Book I of The Song of Agmar

by Frances Mason

  “With that many archers and a castle at their back, the combined forces of Gwendur and Lurvale may even rout the king’s forces, despite their advantage of the high ground.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “If we attacked le Comte’s forces he would turn his flank, but there’s no guarantee the king would accept the invitation.”

  “At least he’s predictably stupid.”

  “And predictably arrogant. He thinks because he’s the king he should lead his forces, and he’s right that his banner should be seen, but he should at least listen to his counsellors. There are a dozen barons with him with the sense to wait when they should and act when they must.”

  From behind him came the sound of harnesses clinking and horses snorting. His men had dismounted to come through the forest east of the castle, but they could quickly enough mount and charge. Five hundred knights, every one of them a Crimson Monk, as the knightly Monks of War were known, the best mercenaries in the kingdoms. Through skill, discipline, and fearlessness they could fight against a thousand ordinary knights in unfavourable conditions and rout them, perhaps twice as many. They would hold formation when others would run off in search of booty. And a Crimson Monk would sooner disembowel himself and eat the resulting feast than run from the field. It was a fact that now entered into his calculations.

  “We can either wait till the king engages and harry the enemy’s flanks when it may be too late to do any good, or we can take a gamble.”

  “If I know you I don’t like where this is going. With Lurvale’s men so close to the river those archers won’t have to cross to pepper us with arrows.”

  Jasper rewarded his lieutenant with one of his rare smiles. It was a grim smile though, one side of his face twisting up while the other grimaced involuntarily. “We owe our god a sacrifice.”

  “I always prefer it when we sacrifice someone else.”

  “Don’t fear, Marcos, War will fight for us in the realm of Death. In that place where no sun shines, in the castle where Death himself dares not tread, War’s hall will greet us with song and sack and we’ll tilt in the glow of our lord’s eyes till eternity himself unhorses us.”

  “So we charge?”

  “We charge.”

  “So we become the idiots.”

  “Not if you follow my orders. There are only about fifteen hundred real soldiers there.”

  “Only three to one. I’m feeling better already.”

  “But look at the irregulars.”

  “What about them?”

  “They’re situated in the rear.”

  “I would have placed them in the middle so they couldn’t run.” Suddenly Marcos’s face lit up. “So they couldn’t run…”

  “Towards?”

  “Towards the ford. They’ll run straight into it and block the Gwendurians from crossing, probably disorder their ranks for a bit too.”

  “It’s worth a try, anyhow. Even if they don’t run to the ford they’ll run somewhere, maybe among the knights.”

  “That’ll make a mess of the knights’ order.”

  Half of Jasper’s face twitched while the other grinned its grim leer. “If we attack to the rear to give us a buffer, we may get both, with their rear ranks running towards the river and their forward ranks running into their own knights.”

  “And if we get neither?”

  “And if it doesn’t work we can still circle around and ride back up the slope. The knights won’t give chase. That would be too much of an invitation to even a stupid king, and they can see how massive his forces are.”

  “The king’s not a one for subtle strategy. Just line up those knights and hope to impress.”

  “Then let them sit on a hill and impress themselves instead of fighting. Don’t worry though, we’ll draw them into the fight.”

  “You hope.”

  “No honour without risk.”

  “No suicide without a grin.” Marcos offered a grimace in place of said grin.

  Jasper tilted his head and raised an eyebrow, quizzically observing his sandy haired lieutenant and friend. Marcos was no coward, but he had a cynical attitude toward war that many older monks of Urysthra would consider heretical. If he was understood by his words rather than his actions he would be thought a pacifist. His face, with its maiden-fair skin, blue eyes and straight nose, did not have a single scar, but Jasper knew this was due to a combination of incredible skill and the love of lady luck. Marcos had seen, at the age of twenty two, more combat than many knights saw in a lifetime. He was a great warrior and field sub commander. But, Jasper thought with an amusement his face did not express, it would never do to make him commander of a chapter house. The novices might take him at his word.

  Jasper turned and addressed his men. “Ride towards the flanks of the knights and only turn to strike the irregular levies when I give the signal by lowering my lance. Scatter the irregulars and chase them towards the ford. Attack to their rear to leave a buffer of lambs between our flank and the wolves, then circle and re-form on the slope in case the knights look like giving chase. They have few archers, maybe a handful in the castle, so our rear won’t be exposed, but watch across the river. There are plenty of archers over there. We fight for Vrong Veld’s gold, but we are monks of War. Be sure to honour Urysthra with your prowess and if we don’t meet again on this earth we’ll feast together in his halls when his work is done. Honour before self.”

  Five hundred Crimson Monks replied, “Duty before honour.”

  “To the glory of War.”

  “To the glory of War.”

  Jasper placed his helmet on his head, raised the visor and mounted, and the rest climbed into their saddles. They took their helmets from their pages, and rode out of the forest. As they emerged from the line of trees they lowered their visors, shifted their lance grips to the long handles, hefted their lengths, and pointed their tips to the sky. Only about half of Jasper’s monks were out of the forest before a cry went up from the flank of le Comte’s forces. The knights turned to face the onslaught, the nearest flank unmounted, long lances at the ready in an overlapping pike formation, while the knights of the van mounted. Then Jasper lowered his lance and his monks veered away from the glittering sharp wall, smashing into the flanks of the irregulars.

  Here a man was lifted from the ground by a lance and thrown, impaled, into the men behind him. There a man’s face was crushed by the hoof of a rearing destrier. One man in cloth armour was knocked by one warhorse under the hooves of another. Another man was crushed between two warhorses as their flanks slammed together, his helmet bent flat and skull cracked open by the force. Lances shattered, sending splinters into the eyes of the poorly armoured irregulars. Bodies were thrown here and there, into others behind them, and some were lifted, as if by the hand of a contemptuous god, and thrown across the ranks. The irregulars milled about in confusion and fear, running where they could, crushing those behind them into the ranks further behind. Some ran into the knights and squires and pages in front, some at the rear ran along the river, others ran toward the castle or the ford, and some, crazed by confusion ran toward the fight they were desperate to escape. Some were spun about by collision with other men, and ran where they faced.

  After the initial assault the monks whose lances had not broken pressed together in groups, stabbing with their lances like spears, into faces, into backs, into necks, into stomachs and groins and legs, and everywhere men were falling and screaming or falling silently, dead. Some saw a broken lance in a monk’s hand and ran toward him, only to be struck down by another. Some broken lances were stabbed into faces, their many pointed, splintered ends as dangerous as their whole points had been. Other monks dropped their lances and drew their swords, swinging to left and right, spinning their warhorses to sweep men off their feet with the horses’ rumps. Here a destrier reared and thrashed its iron shod fore-hooves, shattering faces and shoulders and collarbones and ribs, and as it dropped, its rider reached forward, slicing down through cloth an
d sinew and bone. There a warhorse spun around and kicked backwards, launching one man into those that had pressed forward toward the monk.

  The knights of Lurvale, annoyed by the irregulars running into their ranks and incensed by their cowardice, drew their swords and slew them, caring little for the fate of men without title, destroying their allies in their arrogance. And then the Crimson Monks had circled away to the rear. The knights in the vanguard prepared to follow but their lord shouted and his commanders repeated the shout and the heralds passed the message with a flurry of trumpets. Some listened. Others, seeing a chance of personal glory, gave chase.

  The monks were streaming up the slope toward the forest now, their distinctive crimson armour telling all that they were the vassals of the god of war. Some of the knights who had given chase, realising who their foe was harkened to the call of the heralds, knowing that no undisciplined charge would succeed against the warrior monks. Even as they did so the monks turned, quickly ordering their ranks, far sooner than expected, and charging at the foolhardy few. Those whose lances had not been shattered were already in the van, so disciplined are the monks of war. The two fronts met with a thunderous crash.

  In the distance another thunder sounded. The sound of thousands of the king’s knights descending from the distant hill. The knights who had faced the monks did not hear. Neither did the monks who faced the knights. But they because of the angle of their attack could see. Jasper, riding about the flank of his men, swinging his sword above his head to urge his men on as the front ranks clashed swords with their foes, saw them first. The tactic had worked, not only in sowing havoc, but in drawing the dithering king into the fight before the Gwendurian forces could augment those of le Comte. He reared his great destrier, pointing his sword to the heavens, and rode forward, circling around the flank of his monks to pierce the flank of the foremost Lurvalese knights. Soon the Lurvalese were routed, returning to their lord, and Jasper ordered his monks and drew them back up the slope, to await the arrival of the king. He would strike the flanks again then.

  But the Comte was no fool, and the lances fell back in an orderly retreat to the ford, slaughtering any of the irregulars who blocked their path. He drew them up in an arc of steel at the ford, thinning his lines, but exposing no flank. They would cover the crossing if their line was not broken. Jasper knew that line must be broken, and soon, and the king in his tardiness might have left it too late. Jasper and his monks were the only hope, if the longbowmen of Gwendur were not to destroy the flower of Vrongwenese chivalry. Their baggage train waited at the trees, and even now their pages were running down the slope, bringing fresh lances for those who had broken them. They were soon rearmed, and then they marched, and met the arc of steel.

  Now the battle was truly joined.

  Chapter 14: Augustyn: Thedra

  The greatest kings of men have built The Temple, where all gods do obeisance to the king and father of gods. There, beneath the soaring columns, arches and vaults, Thulathra sits His throne and surveys His court. Beside Him sits his Sister Queen, Dalthi, Great Mother, whose body is Earth, womb of all life. Beneath His heel, the neck of The Primal Dragon is eternally crushed. Born from the void between Sun and Earth at the beginning of things, it contended with The Great Father in the heavens, and the fire of their struggle scattered across the emptiness of space, where still it burns as the River of Fire, that great stream of stars which shows the way to men when all about is darkness. As above, so below, for here ever burning candles flow in a stream from the dragon’s maw down to The Great Altar, serving Him it could not rule. The other gods have their shrines along the aisles, their statues turned to hear His Laws, and heroes act out their ancient adventures across the grand mosaics, beneath the feet of gods. Along the walls the images in stained glass of Ropeua’s apotheosised kings take their place. In their hubris the kings, whose bequests paid for their own images, thought to set themselves higher than The Sun, but though the delicate glass stands higher than His statue, it is His rays that daily show them to the faithful, and they are thereby cast down to walk along the floor with the passing of the hours, so obeying the will of him who brings Light to the Darkness. Thus is the presumption of men defeated in the very hour of their supposed triumph. The Temple is a place of order, where all are ruled as they should be, and all, both men and gods, have their place.

  Augustyn now walked down the nave. He genuflected toward the throned statue of Thulathra, exchanging a gold coin for a cheap candle that an oblate of the Order of the Sun offered him from a basket, and passing the candle to the priest who stood by the altar. The priest went to the stream of candles, lit the new one from another that was mostly completely melted away, and replaced it. The duke passed behind the statue, and came to the small door behind it.

  The two towering Crown’s Yeomen stepped aside to allow him to pass. Historically, besides the king and his Yeomen, only the arkon of Thulathra was permitted to enter the palace this way, and he still went no further than the King’s Chapel. But Augustyn had been the king’s favourite for forty years, and old traditions had almost been forgotten.

  He hurried along the Bridge of Kings, which sloped down from the Outer Ring, high on its tall pylons, to the lower Inner Ring, close to the water. At the end he passed through another door, also flanked by Yeomen of the Crown, then the King’s Chapel. In his haste he was oblivious to its magnificent multi-domed mosaic ceilings, their thousands of tiny, geometrically arranged tiles of gold or precious gems glittering in the flickering light of row upon row of candles, and throwing a gilded, tessellated rainbow across its plastered, whitewashed walls. He emerged behind the throne in the Great Hall where several more Yeomen stood guard. He stepped around the throne and and strode purposefully down the centre of the hall.

  Along the walls of the great hall yet more Yeomen of the Crown were arrayed. To a man over six feet tall and broad of shoulder, each held a crossbow diagonally across his front. A sheathed long sword hung from one side of his broad leather weapon belt, a great war-hammer from the other. Over their plate cuirasses their tabards displayed the royal arms quartered with the war-hammer that was both their symbol and their preferred weapon when on foot in a melee. They were the king’s bodyguard and the elite troops of the realm. Every one of them had proven himself in battle before becoming a king’s man, usually in the most treacherous regions, in the marches or in colonies across the seas. Born free but not of noble birth, their loyalty was to the king alone, and they were utterly incorruptible. Only the Monks of Urysthra could claim to be as formidable. But unlike those monks the Yeomen of the Crown were not mercenaries, and they did not worship the god of war. Their god was the king, and no battle was worthy of their devotion if it did not ensure his safety or answer his command. Only a hundred were stationed here, but there were a thousand throughout the palace.

  At the far end of the hall the duke turned, following one passage then another, turning and turning again.

  Eventually he reached the Privy Chamber, which looked out across the gondoliers and pleasure barges of the circular central lake. Here the Privy Council, a select group of the Lords Temporal and Lords Sacred, conducted the most important business of the realm with the king, beyond the press of the fractious Assembly of Lords. The king, tall but withered by age, his shoulders still broad with the young warrior’s bones but the muscle now wasted away, sat at the head of the long oak table, its surface gilt with the repeating pattern of the royal arms, three crowned mountain lions rampant astride a river. Arthur, Prince Norwalds, Crown Prince, tall and huge muscled, the image of his father’s youth, was at his side; Lord High Constable and, in the absence of his father’s strength and wits, War Leader. Arthur’s cousin Amery was there, duke Vrong Veld, Lord High Admiral – a title more nominal than real in a kingdom of many great ports and their proud, self-serving dukes. His dark angry eyes flitted with a perpetual challenge from face to face, but always rested with greatest contempt on Augustyn. Humphrey, count Jermon, Elder Lord, the
king’s foreign secretary, as ancient as the king but not crippled by the same senility, his long hair falling like fine silver threads to his shoulders, arthritically knobbly fingers pressed together under his long nose, eyes still sharp behind wrinkled flesh. Godfrey, duke Sol, Lord Chancellor, myopic eyes looking but never quite meeting yours, and a subtle political mind despite being only twenty four years of age. Louis, viscount Belin, King’s Marshal, middle aged, with grey streaks at his temples, otherwise dark hair and a swarthy complexion. Ramon, arkon of Thulathra, Lord of the Exchequer, attired in a stainless white habit, on which was emblazoned a golden sun with golden rays. His thin lips pressed tightly together. A man capable of theological hair-splitting and tediously convoluted eloquence when delay served his ambitions best, but pragmatically quick in calculating the monetary advantage of his cult. Melkor, count Sevnign, Keeper of the King’s Wardrobe, manager of the King’s Household, elegantly attired in flowing silk robes of the king’s heraldic colours, gold, white and purple. And now Augustyn, duke Relyan, Ear of the King, chief adviser and master of spies, went to his place by the king’s ear, opposite Arthur.

  Amery’s small dark eyes glared beneath his beetling mono-brow as Augustyn crossed the room. “Does at the king’s pleasure now mean at the duke’s pleasure?” he growled. Augustyn pointedly ignored him, removing his cap to reveal his balding crown, showing liver spots and grey hair around it almost like a monkish tonsure, running his other hand over his forked white beard as he sat.