“You heard the Lieutenant,” Darius screamed, “form up in two lines and rally forward on Lieutenant Falon!”
A strangled cry of rage sounded behind her coming from the direction of the Sergeant, but Falon didn’t have any more time for him. Reinforcements were needed and for all she knew, some of her neighbors from Two Wicks had been swept up in Captain Smythe’s advance…at least, she prayed with all her might that some of the missing men were off with him. Otherwise all those ‘missing’ were actually already dead somewhere and that was something she wasn't ready to face just yet.
Chapter 48: Battle: Pilling on
The men marched forward it was in two and a half lines which had the tendency to waver and merge together into one large line, or string out into a mess of individuals scattered over ten yards or so and looking like something that could only charitably be called a formation.
However, there were well over thirty of them to start and as the mass of men and warriors moved forward, they started picking up men like Nyia on a cold night. At first it was just one or two, but as they retraced the Captain’s progress they followed a trail of dead or wounded men. Some were wearing the green armbands of the Kingdom, some wore the black bands of their Raven enemy, and several even staggered to their feet. Some fled their scratch band of warriors, but others limped over to join the group.
Falon was more than a little surprised when she had fallen towards the back of the group to see the naysaying Sergeant and a hand full of men tagging along.
“There’s no point chasing down the enemy stragglers,” Darius’s voice in her ear caused Falon to hop on her next step and almost fall. His hand on her good shoulder steadied her and kept her from falling.
“Thanks,” Falon muttered, “but don’t startle me like that.”
“We’d waste too much time chasing them down,” Darius continued, ignoring her words.
“Right, let’s just hope we find the enemy soon,” Falon gasped trying to catch her breath, the right side of her chest had started to feel constrictive and tight, making breathing more of chore than usual.
“So eager?” Darius said questioningly.
“I fear that if it takes much longer I’ll fall too far back, and that Sergeant or Man-at-Arms or whatever he is will try to take over again,” Falon cast a dire look in the direction of the man in question.
“He seems to understand the chain of command now, and also appears to have accepted it,” Darius said in a hard voice, and he lifted his sword and made a sharp slashing gesture. “If he decides to change his mind then this group will be short one rebellious Sergeant. You offered him the chance to stay, and it’s my duty to enforce military order upon the men—your order.”
“Even higher ranking men?” Falon asked in surprise.
“Higher ranking than me, yes,” Darius said with a nod, “higher ranking than you…” his voice trailed off and he gave a wry shake of his head as he hurried forward.
Trudging up a slight roll in the meadow Falon saw her men up ahead start to slow. Hurrying up as fast as she could manage she saw almost a dozen men bent over the dead and dying. They were looting the corpses of the fallen. The poorly armed peasant farmers also wore the black band of the Ravens.
Almost as quickly as they’d slowed, the men around her, many of them wounded themselves, although to a lesser degree than the men moaning in pain in a slight depression on the other side of the hill, gave a hungry sound.
“Ch—” Falon started, intending to order an attack, but trailed off when she realized most of the men with her had already started running full tilt toward the looters. They’d started before she’d even had time to get the word out. Feeling foolish, she started after them and weakly finished her order, “—arge.”
Quick walking down the hill, Falon saw the Ravens turn at bay, squawking with fear as they tried to run away. Some of them even managed it, but the rest either attempted surrender or were overwhelmed.
“Order,” Darius shouted as soon as the Ravens had been killed or scattered, “rally to the Lieutenant. Rally-rally-rally!”
Most of the men who had run off to give chase came walking back, some reluctantly, some weary, but a few of the harder heads kept going.
“Should we go after them?” Falon asked, nervous for the men who had run off in pursuit. She spoke as soon as she reached Darius and his overly loud rally cry.
Darius spat on the ground a few feet in front of her, “Forget them, at the speed we’re going we don’t have to time to go haring after a few undisciplined hotheads,” he said shortly.
“But they might be killed if they follow those Raven militiamen all the way to the enemy lines,” Falon fretted.
Darius shrugged. “Those that live will learn better; those that don’t won’t. Smythe and the rest of the main line need us; that’s what those men should have been thinking about, and what we will be thinking about,” he said flatly and when he turned with his eyes boring into her, Falon felt as if she had just been slapped.
“Carry on then,” she said after a moment. The Imperial turned away, and Falon couldn’t help but think that he was a hard man. Perhaps unnecessarily hard, but then she in no way considered herself experienced enough to judge. All she knew was that letting those men run off to face the Lady knew what went against the grain.
“Forward march,” Darius declared, and the groups started off again. Minutes later they had reached their quarry, and the sight of their predicament almost took her breath away. “Stand and deliver you rutting cowards!” Falon could faintly hear the voice of Captain Smythe screaming.
Up ahead Falon saw what remained of the militia line, a number of men she estimated at barely a hundred and a half, being bent back into an unwieldy clump-like arrangement by a single row of Raven Armsmen. The Ravens were equipped with what identical looking armor, shields and swords, and had roughly half the number of the militia. They were the next best thing to Knights when compared to the Kingdom’s ragtag group of mostly unarmored and randomly armed men. As she watched, it looked like militia men in the back of the haphazard ‘formation’ were breaking and fleeing for the tree line behind them.
“It’s time to earn our pay, lad,” Darius roared, leveling his sword at their comrades and the enemy armsmen who had them half surrounded. His pace quickened from a steady march to a trot as he cried, “The Horns. The Horns!” It seemed like a strange battle cry for a man to make, and a part of Falon’s mind wondered if all Imperials had similarly odd battle cries.
From her place in the back of their scratch formation that she and Darius—mostly Darius, if she was being honest—had gathered together, Falon could see a number of men shift from side to side nervously instead of immediately running to the relief of their fellow militia warriors. The same men then graduated to looking over their shoulders, as what had to be the braver half of their scratch band of warriors took off after Darius. It seemed to her that these men didn’t relish the idea of taking on fully armed and armored sworn men of the Raven lords.
Too bad for them, she thought with a weary pang of anger.
“Second line, forward at the trot on my command,” Falon shouted, pretending that the men hanging back had somehow been waiting on her orders. Not waiting so much as two seconds to see if anyone was going to follow her, she lurched forward in what she was sure was the most pitiful imitation of a charge possible.
She felt eyes, which had previously been seeking the best route off the battlefield and back to camp, suddenly focus on her.
“Get’em, lads!” Falon screamed. She needed to do this for her sisters and her little brother. She needed to do it for her father’s dignity, and somewhere in the whirlwind of savage, primal emotions boiling up within her core, she had to do it for her own!
Breaking into a sort of stumbling run, she swished her sword back from side to side. Heedless of anyone who might or might not be running forward when she began to overtake the laggards, Falon put on her most determined look and pointed herself at the enemy
line. Closing her eyes briefly because she couldn’t stand the thought of letting these men do nothing when others needed them, when she opened them she was grimly determined to herd as many of them forward as possible.
“Stand and fight you weak reeds; reinforcements are almost upon us, a-Smythe, a-Smythe,” the Captain cried, and to Falon’s horror she saw the Raven armsmen surge forward.
“Westguard!” screamed the enemy, and while she was running forward Smythe’s battle flag fell, with the Captain disappearing under a surge of enemy foemen.
“Two Wicks and the Fighting Swans,” Falon yelled as her voice rose far above that of any other audible battle cry. She quickened her pace until every thud of her feet sent a hot stab of agony through her chest.
A few men tossed down their weapons and ran to the sides to get away from her, but the rest of them took heart and continued to move forward at her slow, stiff-legged pace.
There was a crash up ahead and cries of dismay. She looked up just in time to see the part of the enemy line closest to their charge had started to peel away to try and make an L-shaped formation to face Darius and his men. The armsman’s efforts had some limited success stalling out most of their charge, although a few men had spilled around the corners and were even now taking the Ravens in the back.
Then Falon and her men piled on, some stepping forward to take the place of Smythe’s militia men who were staggering backward. The rest of the men kept moving around until they came upon the enemy, doing their best to roll up their line. Swept up in the hustle, Falon was one of the last to reach the armsmen.
The man in front of her was well armed and with good armor; however, he was already facing on of Smythe’s militia to his front. When Falon and her sword came at him, he sensed the movement, turned and blocked her sword. But doing so opened himself up to the man he had just been fighting, and a well-placed pitchfork to the side of his neck sent him down like a slaughtered goat.
Shifting to the side, Falon stabbed another armsman in the back, but this time her sword skittered off the man’s armored back. Wielded one-handed, her sword simply didn’t have the power to push through the hardened leather that filled the gap in his armpit.
A shield lashed out at her sword hilt while the armsman successfully blocked his Smythe Militia foe, and Falon was sent reeling to the ground. Another militia man took her place, swinging his axe at the armsman like he was a dead tree. Beset on both sides, the armsman managed to kill his original target with a thrust to the neck, before the axeman who had taken Falon’s place split his helmet in two, his axe sinking deep into the Raven swordsman’s head.
A whistle started shrieking and Falon could sense her recently rallied warriors surge forward. Getting back to her feet proved trying, and for a long moment she was more than happy to lie where she was. Then a hand was shoved in her face and without thinking about it, she grabbed hold.
It was the Sergeant who had thought his first duty was to his Knight. Eyes widening Falon let him finish levering her back to her feet.
“No laying down on the job,” the Sergeant said in a stern voice, but there was a definite twinkle in his eye.
“Just catching my breath,” Falon wheezed, her right side feeling even more constricted as she tried to draw breath. For a moment she felt like she was drowning as a cough wracked her. The cough spasmed her body and she hunched over until the pain had passed; it was all she could do to keep her feet as her vision blacked and her hearing came in and out with each violent seizure of her torso.
Removing her hand from her mouth she saw the back with speckles of blood on it. It wasn’t a lot, and briefly she tried to convince herself that it was probably from a cut in her mouth.
“You don’t look well, Lieutenant,” the Sergeant said with an assessing look.
“What’s going on?” Falon demanded as soon as her breath was back and ignored the man’s look. He could look all he liked, just so long as he did what Darius told him and he stayed out of her way.
“The Ravens are trying for a fighting retreat,” he explained, looking reluctantly respectful.
“Falon looked around and most of the men still standing around her were wounded. Then a group of men from the main body approached. To her amazement and relief, one of them was Captain Smythe.
His breast plate was battered to the point that he was leaking blood from a pair of rents in the sides and Falon observed the plate, along with his arm and leg guards, had been painted a dull brown to match his usual attire. His plain, metal helmet with the nose guard also had a rent running through the side. From the looks of it, the Captain was lucky to be alive.
Falon swayed on her feet as he came up to her and the Sergeant. Giving the strange Sergeant a searching look and a nod that the other returned, Falon could almost feel some kind of professional warrior to warrior, and man to man communication flowing between them in the exchange. Then the Captain clapped her on the shoulder hard enough to nearly knock Falon off her feet.
“Well done, Lieutenant,” Smythe said gruffly, reaching over to steady her, “thou managed to rally the men for a timely arrival—a very timely arrival, indeed. They nearly had us.”
At that moment, staring up at the seasoned campaigner, Falon felt as if a great burden had been lifted from her shoulders.
“Thank you, Captain,” she smiled weakly up at him, “but I’ve got one very experienced Corporal who’s been doing most of the heavy lifting. I’ve been of small help since those Knights rode through us.”
She was surprised to hear a noise of protest coming from behind her, where the Chief Man-at-Arms was standing.
Smythe just clapped her on the arm again, this time careful not to overbalance her.
“An Officer who knows how to pick out good sub-leaders is hard to come by. One who can admit when he needs to take a step back and let them do their job, even harder,” Captain Smythe gave her the same sort of nod he had just given the strange Sergeant, and something warmed inside her that made Falon almost feel her entire swell. “Good job standing tall against those Knights lad, and again with these wretched armsmen what had us boxed in.”
“It was the men Captain Smythe; I can’t take much credit,” Falon admitted with a wince. “They stood when they should have run, and rallied when…” she trailed off, realizing she was treading on dangerous ground.
“Nonsense,” Smythe said sternly, “you’ve done a Lieutenant’s work today coming to our relief, and you’ve repaid his Lordship’s trust as far as I’m concerned—something I’ll tell him myself.”
“Thank you, Captain!” Falon felt herself start to blush.
“Rallying the odds and sods is also something not very easy to do,” Smythe continued, shooting a glance at the Sergeant with the corner of his mouth quirking up.
“Says the top sodbuster, himself,” the Sergeant said with a sneer, “but maybe we should stop this mutual admiration society; those armsmen are getting away.”
“We lost too many men to their counter attack,” Smythe said dismissively, “and half of the survivors took off for the woods before your lot came along. We’ll have to keep up the pressure, but all we’re trying to do is drive them back into enemy lines and hold this part of the field. Militia aren’t meant to go toe to toe with professional soldiery.”
“As you say,” the Sergeant allowed with a blank face, and Smythe sighed.
“Rally whoever you can and launch the pursuit, if thou art so eager; I’ll be right behind thee,” grudged the Captain with a wry grin.
The Sergeant saluted and ran off bellowing at the top of his lungs.
“Uppity sod,” Smythe growled and then turned back to her.
“I’m ready for whatever you need, Captain,” Falon said, stumbling alongside the Smythe as he started following the Sergeant.
“You’re half dead on thy feet,” Captain Smythe rebuked with an assessing look and shook his head in negation, “I’ll go forward with the men and keep up the pressure on those Birdlanders. You stay here and rally
us up a reserve.”
“Are you sure?” Falon asked feeling absolutely relieved. She wasn’t sure just how much further she could have marched anyway; she was feeling weaker by the minute.
“Don’t let pride get you killed, Lieutenant,” Smythe snapped. “Stay back here and rally, thou art no good to me dead.”
“Yes, Captain,” she said faintly, realizing he had mistaken her question for some kind of foolish attempt to insert herself into the attacking force. She would have to be more careful with her wording in the future.
“Battle changes us lad, so I’m only going to say this once: the sun rose and thou wert still just a boy, but now it sets and thou art a man, with a man’s job still in front of thee. So hold fast to thy duty with both hands, and maintain here until horns again call for a general advance, or until they shove you off this position,” the Captain said seriously.
“I’m not sure what to say,” Falon said, feeling stunned. Why did he call me a man? Have I really done such a great job, she asked herself, and on the balance, Falon didn’t really think so.
“Look, thy swordsmanship still needs work, but thy stomach for battle is twice proven and that proves yer not a coward,” Smythe explained, almost as if he had been reading her mind. “So please don’t go haring off as soon as I turn by back to get thyself killed. I need you to advance past these corpses and set up a fallback position, because if we come back it’ll be with the Ravens hot on our heels.”
“I won’t let you down, Captain Smythe,” Falon promised, swept up in the seriousness of his words.
“See that you don’t. It’s far too much work to break in a new Lieutenant,” Smythe quipped, giving her another nod before rushing forward at the jog to catch up with a large body of men the Sergeant and heading towards the Raven armsmen.
The Blooding Page 37