The Icemark Chronicles: The Cry of the Icemark

by Stuart Hill

  “Come along, my dear, react as you should, there’s a good little Queen,” muttered Bellorum as he scanned the Icemark’s defensive positions before him. “Your soldiers are in danger, they’ll need to be rescued by something fast and deadly — like mounted archers.”

  The shrill squeal of fife and the metallic rattle of drums leading both encircling arms of the pincer movement were intended to signal the position of the advancing soldiers, just in case Thirrin and her army hadn’t noticed them. Bellorum was wondering ironically if he needed to add a firework display, when a movement drew his monoculum to the earthworks of the defenses.

  “Aha! There she is, right on cue and, if I’m not mistaken, she’s with that oaf of a consort of hers,” Bellorum said happily as the Basilea led out her mounted archers and the Hypolitan infantry on their rescue mission. “Now, which wing will she take?” Suddenly the archers galloped away, and Olememnon led his infantry at a swift trot in the opposite direction. Bellorum nodded. “The right! Captain Aeneas, you will lead your teams to the right!”

  Out on the plain, Elemnestra sent a rider to warn the fyrd troops of their danger and led the rest of her archers to intercept the advancing right wing of the enemy. She would engage them before Olememnon and his infantry even reached the left arm of the pincer movement. Then if she wiped out her target quickly, she could gallop back across the plain to his aid.

  On her signal, the women of her troop fitted the first arrows to their bowstrings in one fluid movement. Ahead, Elemnestra could clearly see the enemy advancing and hear the fife and drums of their band. As the Hypolitan archers thundered down on them, the enemy soldiers leveled their muskets and waited grimly. Elemnestra swung around to sweep past, and the musketeers fired; several of the saddles were emptied, but now the enemy was vulnerable and the archers shot their arrows. Hundreds fell, and the women fitted their next arrows as they galloped by, then turned, guiding their mounts with their knees. Again they swept by before the musketeers had had time to reload, and again hundreds of the Empire’s soldiers fell, but none fled. Instead they continued to doggedly reload their weapons, following orders to the letter.

  Elemnestra suddenly became aware of six heavy covered wagons lumbering into view in the distance. They were enormously long and being pulled by huge draft horses and were obviously a massive weight, but rather than be distracted she turned her attention to the enemy pikemen, thinning their ranks with flight after flight of arrows. But still they marched on, singing the battle hymn of the Empire. The Basilea found herself admiring the bravery of these soldiers who refused to be intimidated by her archers’ arrows.

  By the time she focused on the heavy wagons again, they had rolled up the plain and turned parallel to her own sweep, but facing in the opposite direction. She was wary but couldn’t ignore the possible threat, and so attacked. As her women plunged into shooting range the covered sides of the wagons suddenly dropped, revealing cannons. Their firing teams stood at the “ready” position and as Elemnestra and her women raised their bows, an officer in the lead wagon drew his sword and shouted an order. The cannons fired simultaneously, spewing out a broadside of chain shot and broken metal, which ripped into the galloping archers. Three hundred horses fell, disintegrating in a crimson explosion of flailing limbs and riders.

  A huge cheer erupted from the Imperial troops. The devil-women were no more.

  Up on the defensive earthworks, Thirrin screamed in horror as she watched the slaughter of the archers. She turned and ran, calling for her cavalry as she went. Beside her ran Tharaman-Thar and Taradan, each roaring out a summons to their warriors. The horses of the cavalry were quickly assembled, their troopers mounted, and the leopards in position. In a blazing fury, Thirrin led the cavalry of the Icemark and the Icesheets out onto the plain. Tharaman-Thar kept perfect pace beside her stallion as his leopards let out the strange coughing bark of their war cry.

  Aware of their approach, the enemy stood quietly, their cannons reloaded with chain shot. Theirs would be the greatest prize of all; they would kill the warrior-queen of the Icemark and her tame fighting leopards. The soldiers sang as Thirrin and her cavalry thundered toward them, certain this action would signal the end of the hard-fought war.

  But among the scattered and broken bodies of the fallen Hypolitan archers, Elemnestra eased her badly wounded frame to lean against the corpse of her horse. She barked orders to the thirty or so women of the three hundred who were still able to shoot, and encouraged them to hurry. She knew she must destroy the cannons before Thirrin and Tharaman-Thar were in range. Her women quickly tied rags to their arrows and set them alight, laying them carefully among the flattened mat of bloodied wildflowers at their feet. Then, as Elemnestra struggled to her knees, they raised their bows, and on her orders shot their first flight. Thirty burning arrows rained down among the gunpowder barrels of the cannons. The Polypontian officer shouted orders to his musketeers, and they raised their weapons. With Thirrin’s six-thousand-strong cavalry bearing down on them, he couldn’t waste any more cannon shot on the fallen archers; he just wouldn’t have time to reload and fire again before they were hacked to pieces by sabers and claws. But by now the second and third flight of flaming arrows had already fallen among the barrels. With desperate speed the gun teams snatched the burning rags away and stamped on them, but more fell, faster than they could move.

  At last the muskets fired, but the women had dived for cover and now stood ready again to shoot their deadly rain. With a desperate scream a young soldier tried to smother a burning barrel with his body, but then a vicious screaming crack erupted into the air and the wagon was blown apart. Almost simultaneously the remaining five wagons burst skyward on a blooming forest of flame. Broken cannon and shot burst outward in a deadly driving hail, killing and wounding hundreds of the soldiers who stood nearby. The survivors of Elemnestra’s mounted archers were also blown aside by a killing hand of fire that finally ended the elite regiment of the Hypolitan.

  Thirrin cried out in grief and rage when she realized what had happened and, rising out of her saddle, she drew her saber and shouted out the battle paean of the Icemark. The six thousand warriors of her cavalry, human and leopard, answered, their voices ferocious and deadly. They swept down on the disrupted ranks of the Empire’s soldiers, killing and killing in an attempt to avenge the loss of Elemnestra and her archers, and when at last the iron discipline of the Polypontian army was broken, they rode after them, cutting them down as they ran.

  When the few hundred who’d survived her attack scrambled to the safety of their lines, Thirrin led her cavalry in a charge across the plain to smash into the Empire’s units, who’d drawn out the fyrd with their sham retreat. By now the soldiers of the Icemark had remembered their training and had formed a shield-wall as they fought an ordered withdrawal back toward the ditches and ramparts of the defenses.

  The cavalry sliced through the Polypontian soldiers like a razor through stubble and, bursting through their ranks, they turned to slice back through them again. Soon their resistance had collapsed, too, and this time their retreat was real. After the cavalry had chased the last of the Polypontians from the field, Thirrin returned to the fyrd, now standing at a loss watching the fleeing enemy.

  “Go back to your positions and hold them!” Thirrin blazed, her eyes brilliant with fury. “If you’d followed your orders and heeded your training, none of this would have happened. You will stand to until I return! You will not stand down, no matter how long you have to wait. Anyone who disobeys this order will be hanged!”

  Turning her stallion, she led a charge across to where Olememnon and his Hypolitan infantry were fighting against the left arm of the enemy’s failed pincer movement. They’d been making good progress, first halting the advance of the Empire’s soldiers and then slowly forcing them back toward their own lines. Now Thirrin and Tharaman-Thar fell upon the flanks of the Empire’s army, driving through their lines as the coughing bark of the Snow Leopards and the paean of the human tr
oopers sounded over the field. The pike regiments tried to make a stand against the fury unleashed upon them, driving the butts of their pikes deep into the ground and holding them at graded angles that should have made them impregnable to cavalry. But Tharaman-Thar and Taradan led their leopards against the long spears, beating them down with their paws, then diving between them to savage the soldiers they were supposed to protect.

  Eventually the discipline and courage of the Polypontian soldiers was broken and they fled, many of them dying beneath the sabers and claws of the pursuing cavalry. But Thirrin’s fury was not yet spent, and she galloped to just beyond cannon range at the enemy’s lines and waited, openly challenging the rest of their army to come out and fight.

  From behind the lines, Scipio Bellorum had viewed it all, and his original elation at the destruction of Elemnestra and her mounted archers gave way to frustration as he watched Thirrin and her “trained leopards” destroying his Yellow and Orange armies. Only his elite Black Army was totally intact, and with the support of the remnants of the Reds, he hurriedly sent them to hold the front line, come what may, against the barbarian Queen.

  He scanned Thirrin and her cavalry, as close to panic as he’d ever come in his long military career, but then breathed a sigh of relief. The young Queen seemed to have slumped in her saddle, and one of the leopards had his face close to hers, for all the world as though he were talking to her — an illusion made all the more believable since she seemed to be holding a conversation with it, listening, then apparently replying as it looked at her.

  Bellorum squinted through his monoculum, watching her mouth moving silently, and wishing desperately that there was some way of hearing what was being said. Then she hugged the huge beast and, slipping across from her saddle, she climbed onto its back and they trotted back to Frostmarris. The rest of the cavalry followed, and Bellorum sat back in relief.

  The crisis was over, and luckily two of the four reinforcing armies were less than half a day’s march away. Turning to his staff officers, who sat on their horses with carefully expressionless faces, he beckoned to the youngest. “How long do you estimate it would take you to ride back to the pass through the Dancing Maidens?”

  “Two days, sir!” the young officer answered stoutly.

  “Which means three, at least. I want you to take orders to the reserve armies you’ll find camped just inside the border, and tell them to come here at all speed. The time has come to crush this queenling and her little country. Their arrogance is beginning to annoy me.”

  28

  One hundred soldiers stood tied to stakes in the courtyard of the citadel. One in every hundred from the ten thousand members of the fyrd regiments who’d broken ranks and left their positions. They’d been chosen by drawing lots, and now were to be flogged.

  One hundred housecarls had also been chosen to carry out the sentences of twenty lashes for each soldier, and stood waiting for Thirrin to give the order to begin. It was the first really warm day of the spring, and the sound of birdsong tumbled into the otherwise silent courtyard where almost two thousand of the fyrd regiment had been crammed to witness the punishment.

  Thirrin was mounted on her warhorse and, urging him forward, she pitched her voice at a level everyone could hear. “Soldiers of the fyrd, you are here to witness the punishment of your comrades for disobeying orders.” She glared at the ranks before her, the rage she had felt during the battle rekindling as he spoke. “The guilt belongs to all of you! By breaking ranks, you not only endangered your comrades but also put in jeopardy the entire defense of Frostmarris and therefore the country and people of the Icemark!”

  Her stallion began to sidestep and snort, ready for battle as he heard the anger in Thirrin’s voice. “But above even this, you are all guilty of bringing about the death of Basilea Elemnestra of the Hypolitan and her mounted archers! It was their brave sacrifice that saved you from certain destruction. A sacrifice that wouldn’t have been necessary if you had obeyed orders and the most basic rules of engagement! You do not break ranks! You do not pursue the enemy unless ordered to do so! Anyone, of whatever rank, who commits such crimes again will be hanged, and his body left to the crows.” She turned to nod at a lone drummer, who began to beat out a slow rhythm that would set the pace of the strokes. “May you all feel the pain of your comrades. May you all feel the disgrace of your crime.” She nodded again, and the housecarls drew back their whips and began the punishment.

  The crack of the lashes cutting into flesh echoed across the courtyard, mingling with the screams of the soldiers. But the watching regiments remained deathly quiet. After less than two minutes the punishment was complete, and the soldiers were cut down and carried to the hospital block where the healers were ready to receive them. Then, with a silent nod from Thirrin, the fyrd was dismissed and they were marched back down to the defenses to resume their duties.

  When the last rank had filed through the gates, Thirrin dismounted and, giving her horse to a waiting groom, she walked through the huge doors that led into the Great Hall. The cavernous space was empty, and for a moment she leaned against the cool stone of the walls and closed her eyes. But then a soft step approaching across the flagstones made her open them again and straighten up. Somehow she wasn’t surprised to see Oskan walking slowly toward her.

  “And what do you imagine was achieved by that horrendous display of cruelty?” he asked quietly.

  “Discipline and a good lesson learned!” she snapped in reply.

  “Don’t you think these soldiers are carrying enough of a burden without the added threat of a flogging if they make mistakes?” His tone remained even and level, but Thirrin could see him shaking with a suppressed rage that seemed to shimmer in the very air around him.

  “Oskan, do you really believe that I don’t understand exactly what my soldiers are going through? Do you really think I’m a stranger to burdens?” She almost laughed at the bitter absurdity of it all, but she controlled herself, knowing that if she started, she wouldn’t be able to stop.

  “They’re lucky, they only have to worry about a flogging if they break ranks and endanger their own lives again. But if I make a mistake, thousands could die, a country could be lost, and who knows what else could be inflicted on those unlucky enough to survive!” Her voice had slowly risen in strength as she spoke, and suddenly she let everything go in a glorious outpouring of emotion.

  “Don’t talk to me about burdens, I drew up the plans for them! How many fourteen-year-olds do you know who rule a kingdom at war, who command an army, who keep together an alliance of more species than she can remember, who’s killed more people than she can count, who waits desperately day in, day out, every living blessed second, for the arrival of allies she’s terrified are going to let her down? Please tell me, Oskan, tell me her name. I’d like to have a cozy chat with her and compare notes! I’d like that, it might make me feel just a little less isolated, and just a little less afraid that at any minute the whole sorry, ludicrous, deadly, hellish mess is going to collapse around me, and everyone will finally find out that I don’t know what I’m doing and that I’m making it up as I go along!”

  She drew a deep, shuddering breath and fell silent, but her voice reverberated in the vast empty space of the Great Hall as though they were standing inside a huge bell that had just finished ringing.

  Oskan blinked in amazement at the passionate outburst, almost smiled, thought better of it, and then finally gave her a hug that made her gasp. After a moment’s hesitation she returned his embrace, gently at first, then more and more fiercely as she reached out for his help and comfort. They stood there rocking from side to side while the war raged on and the world and all its woes continued without them. But after a while she disentangled herself. Oskan grinned when he saw her red cheeks, then he said, “I’m sorry, but I must go. I’ve got some soldiers to patch up.”

  She nodded. “And I have to find a lost commander of infantry.” He frowned in puzzlement, but she shook her head. �
�I’ll explain later.”

  They stood in silence for a few uncertain seconds, then finally walked away in opposite directions.

  Her boots echoed in the silence as she strode across the flagstone floor and into the tangle of corridors that wound and writhed around the interior of the royal palace like veins and arteries. She took a few steadying breaths as she walked along and slowly regained her composure. By the time she reached the first junction of corridor and walkway, she’d become Queen Thirrin once again, and she concentrated her mind on the task at hand.

  She knew exactly where she was going and who she’d find there. Earlier that morning she’d sent some of the quieter chamberlains to discreetly find out where he’d gone, and after they’d reported back she’d made up her mind to talk to him.

  She came to a small, low door, and when she opened it, sunlight and the scent of flowers flowed around her in a warm rising wave. Before her lay the citadel garden. She walked out into the small space that was enclosed by the battlemented walls, and closed her eyes. The short Icemark spring was already evolving into summer, and the hum of bees filled the air as they shuttled like living sparks between the blooms that blazed their confusion of color into the air.

  Thirrin breathed the heady mix of perfumes deep into her tired frame, and for the briefest of moments was almost able to forget the war. But then a warm gust of wind brought with it the sound of shouted orders and the tramp of marching feet, and she opened her eyes to reality and her task.

  In the center of the garden tall rosebushes were already coming into flower, their deep reds, icy whites, and delicate pinks making a tangled tapestry of pigments and velvety textures on the warm air. Instinctively she walked toward them, and found Olememnon sitting on a bench surrounded by blooms and bees. He hadn’t heard her arrive and he sat, eyes closed, with petals in his hair and a butterfly sitting on his shoulder. He looked like one of the many minor Gods of Nature, tired out by the effort of spring and resting in his own creation before the tasks of summer began.