Sunset Mantle

by Alter S. Reiss

  Still no cheering, but there was a hardening of faces, hands gripping tighter at their spears. “We will stand,” said Cete. “For the law, for the right, and for Reach Antach!”

  Cheers, then, and a relief in them. Perhaps this would put some iron in their spines, perhaps not. But now they knew what they needed to know. He went up and down the line, herding fifties into place, arranging his lines all along the terrace leading to the north gate. Down below, Radan made his final adjustments as well, and on the hilltops around, and down in the valley, lines of tribesmen began to draw up, each under their tribe’s banner, each wearing the colors of their tribe.

  The Antach clan army Cete arranged in a broad terrace, on his right flank. There was a steep slope down from that terrace. Poor footing, but one of the few routes where a charge could come without having to scale terraces, and down which a counterattack might be attempted, without the danger of climbing and leaping down from terrace to terrace. Kern Antach was there, at the head of his men, and wearing a high-plumed helm. He was not pleased.

  “I’ve heard you called Radan a coward in front of your men,” he said. “That was a foolish thing to do; it is an actionable thing to do, and you’ve given him yet another weapon.”

  “Mm,” said Cete. “It is actionable now. I said that he would break and run, and I do not have sufficient proof to establish that claim, if he calls up a court. On the other hand, after he breaks and runs, it will be difficult for him to find a court that will hear with favor his claims, and levy any sanction. Even a court bought by the Termith will hesitate. There is no way they could rule against me without revealing their corruption.”

  “Then he will not break!” said Kern. “You are a captain general in the direct service of the Antach of the Antach. You speak with his voice, and your words are counted as his. He will stand, and he will break us in court more surely than on the field.”

  “And what of the tribes?” asked Cete. “Will they nod their heads at this strategy, call off their attack, and wait for the spoils to come to them through the courts of the law?”

  Kern flicked his fingers. “He kills them, comes back in triumph, and your head, and my father’s head decorate his standards. You’ve—”

  “I would rather die with the Antach of the Antach than with the entire Reach Antach,” said Cete. “But damning though it might be, the odds will not be so poor in a court as they are on this field. And besides, what happens the next time the Termith want the support of a tribe? Or other city clans, who are allied with the Termith? There are fourteen tribes who have sent their men against us, and they will never forget it if the plunder they have been promised turns into blood and ruin and a starvation winter. It’s not just the tribes here that will learn of this treachery, and it is not just the tribes that are on this field who will revenge it.”

  Kern hesitated. “The Reach Antach, whole, is worth more than fidelity to sheep-thieves and rapists,” he said. “But perhaps . . . but why did you do this? It is a grave risk, and an unnecessary one. You wouldn’t have had to call him a coward if you waited for the rout; it would have been known without actionable speech.”

  “And what of my men?” asked Cete. “They are shopkeepers and miners, herdsmen and tree-pruners, women and outcasts. What would they think, when they see an army of fighting men break under the force of the tribes, when they see men with foam-flecked beards and open wounds come climbing up the terrace, pushing for the gate?”

  Kern looked at Cete hard, as though he was trying to read truth and falsehood from his face, find the real reason why he had given so great an insult in a public speech. “Is it worth it?” he said. “To take such a risk, for the slight chance it will let this last line hold a moment longer?”

  “It is my life,” said Cete. “It is your life. It is my wife’s life, it is your mother’s life.” He met Kern’s gaze, just as serious as the young captain. “I am risking everything on the line holding, and you would be wise to do the same.”

  Kern swallowed, and just for the moment, Cete could see the boy in the captain general’s clothing, see the fear and the hope and the sourness in the stomach that was a moment away from vomit. Cete clapped him on the shoulder. “I gave him an opportunity,” said Cete. “But it’s not one that he can take. The lines arranged by Radan Termith will break, and when a line of herdsmen and women holds where his army breaks, there’ll be no hole deep enough for him to crawl into to hide his shame.”

  There was a moment of clarity in Kern’s eyes. He would be the Antach after his father, if the clan still lived. “War’s a risky business,” said Kern. “We’d be better off without it.”

  Cete laughed. “Like it or not, we have it. Look to your men, and be ready for the charge.”

  “And you to yours,” said Kern. He squared his shoulders, looked down into the valley. “Seems there’ll be enough for everybody.”

  That there did. The skirmishers and slingers on either side were already circling around, trying to drive off their counterparts, find a weak place in their opponent’s formations. Cete made his way back to his standard, took up his position a few paces in front of his banner and his folded mantle. He’d rather trust to his axe and dagger than to a spear; should the line collapse, he would not be able to bring a spear to bear before being overwhelmed. He had chosen the weakest fifty to stand by his sides, to be firmed up by the general’s standard, and by the example he would set. So he set that example, holding his spear ready, facing the foe.

  The skirmishing did not take long. The first line of the tribesmen charged forward, and were repulsed by the lines of the Reach, leaving dead strewn across the field. That line had flown banners of all the tribes who had come to lay siege on Reach Antach, a tithe of slain to make it seem as though Radan Termith was a defender of the Reach, rather than a more deadly foe than any tribal chieftain.

  Then the horns blew and the drums pounded, and even up on the hill, before the gates of the Reach, the ghastly wail of the tribal battlecry caused men to flinch, step back, let the points of their spears go up. “Hold,” roared Cete, and all along the line his fifty-commanders echoed his command. “Ready!”

  There was the clash of steel on steel, of iron on brass, and Radan’s lines buckled under the press of the tribesmen. It seemed he did not intend to take the opportunity that Kern Antach had seen. The center of the line fell in, and the flanks pulled up, and then the army of the Reach broke and ran.

  For a moment, it looked as though the militia might hold. Their horns blew the charge, their commanders tried to keep their men in formation, tried to staunch the holes that had sprung up in the lines of the Reach Army. There was no way. The force of men was too great, and there were traitors in the militia’s ranks as well.

  The slaughter was well begun. The men of the Reach army had been spared the worst of the tribal assault. Men fell, here and there, to javelin and slung shot, to tribal warriors who forgot secret treaties and alliances when faced with the undefended back of a man of a reach. But the militia were not spared, and they fell as they fled, gasping, climbing up through terraces, past trees and through gardens, minds lost to fear.

  The line near the gate wavered. Cete’s men had taken up weapons because they thought they wanted to fight, but they were not so certain when faced with the real thing. “Hold!” roared out Cete, again. “Lower spears!”

  They wavered, but they held, the spearpoints coming down in their ranks. A row of points four feet from the first line, and a second one coming between their shoulders, the men in the second rank ready to strike out against any who crossed the first line of spears. “I’ve stood in the line,” said Cete, loud enough to be heard over the frightened mutters of his men. “And I’ve joined in the flight when we were routed. If you but hold, if you turn back the first wave of the rout, men will awaken from their fever and sickness. They will take up arms beside you, they will fill any gaps that others have made. Hold fast, my brothers and sisters. Hold fast, and live!”

  The men o
f the Reach army outpaced the militia. They were fleeter of foot, and they ran to a purpose, rather than in blind fear. As Cete had intended, the easiest path led up to where the Antach clan army was waiting, and men who came up that way fell back, wounded and dying. Militia men and men of the Reach army died at the hands of their lord’s clan, as the horns blew “hold fast,” and the officers barked at them to turn and fight.

  Then the trickle became a wave, and all along the line, men of the Reach fought men of the Reach, as their enemies climbed up the terraces below, making ready to kill. The line held. Shopkeepers brought down veterans, farmers killed sergeants. A spear thicket is a deadly thing, if it holds, and this one held.

  Held, and bled. Here and there a group of soldiers pushed past the line of points, and slew, axes, and swords making short work of men in leather cloaks, of women in homemade armor. Each time it happened, the second rank became the first, and the third became the second, not letting them come through in sufficient numbers to break the line. Here and there, militia men caught hold of themselves, chose between the fear of death at their backs and the certainty of death if they pressed forward, and turned to face the tribesmen, who were already climbing up to meet them.

  In the center of the line, where Cete stood with his men, the push was as bloody as anywhere. Of the fifty command he had led into battle, forty-seven men had died in battle or of their wounds, or had marched out with Radan. The three who remained—Canien, Mata, and Alband—he’d kept by his side. Canien stood at his left, and was killed by a flung axe, and Mata cut down by a swordsman who came in with a spear in his side, madness in his eyes, and spittle in his beard. But Alband came up and took Mata’s place, and the line held.

  Cete’s fighters held all along the line. Shopkeepers took the places of silver merchants, fig-cutters the places of shopkeepers. After a time, even the men of the Reach army came to understand that they would not be allowed to flee into the Reach, they would not be allowed to take their traitor’s pay, and walk away with the loot of the Reach. They drew up in their ranks below the spear thicket, tried to find a path around, huddled and stopped, sheep confronted by a fence.

  A captain of the army came forward to where Cete’s standard stood. “By order of Radan Termith, Captain General of Reach Antach, let us pass; we are needed on the wall.”

  “You are needed in the field,” replied Cete. “Stand and fight, or be slain as a coward.”

  “You have no authority,” said the captain. He turned away from Cete, towards the men who stood at his left. “The walls are life, and this man is death,” he said. “Go back now, while there is time, and the walls will be manned. If you obey an outcast and scorn the words of your rightful commander, you will die and be damned for it; if you—”

  Cete leapt from the ranks. One of the captain’s men tried to intercept him, and Cete’s elbow caught him below the chin, sent him backwards off of the terrace. The captain turned as Cete came on, fumbling for his axe. Cete grabbed him, pulled him down. “You can’t,” started the captain. “My orders—”

  One stroke with the axe, and the spray of blood. Another, and the captain’s body fell to the earth. His face wore a look of astonishment; he had expected to kill that day, not to be killed.

  There was horror on the face of the men who had seen what Cete had done. His men, and the men of the Reach army. Damn them all. “Radan Termith is the captain general of the Reach Antach,” roared out Cete. “He has authority over its defense. But I will not accept disobedience from his lieutenants, from cowards who fled a fight that could be won.”

  He turned out towards the tribal army that was advancing, rising up from terrace to terrace, coming up like a swarm of ants towards a pile of fallen grain. He drew back his arm, and threw the captain’s head in a great, bloody arc, to bounce down towards the oncoming horde. “Fight or die,” he said. Again, louder. “Fight or die! You will not hide behind the backs of men and women who retain their honor!”

  The remainder of that captain’s fifty looked towards Cete, and then back down to the oncoming tribesmen. They had expected—they had been promised—treachery and plunder, the rewards of service to the Termith against the upstart Antach. Now, they knew what every soldier learns; they knew that they would die. They could fight for the Reach, if they chose. They would be in the front rank, and many had left their weapons behind as they ran.

  Others, elsewhere along the line, joined with the defenders Cete had raised. Militia men, for the most part, who took up spears, who filled holes that had been made by their rout. Men of the Reach army as well, though Cete had given orders to his fifty-commanders that they were not to be allowed into the ranks. It was to be expected; he had made officers almost randomly, and some of them were not suited for command, not willing to make sacrifices when giving way would be easier.

  Hopefully, those would not do too much damage. The majority of the Reach army was held back, forced to stand in front of the spear thicket. There were good men who Cete was dooming with those orders, men whose only fault was in officers they had not chosen, and in orders they could not disobey. But most of the good men in the Reach army were already dead, killed in Radan’s other engagements with the tribal coalition, or taken into slavery. The men who milled about beyond the spear thicket were mostly Termith aligned, and they knew how the battle was supposed to go.

  Groups of them threw down their weapons, and advanced down the slope with open hands. Cete smiled grimly at that. The Termith were afraid that if the Reaches were to find an accommodation with the tribes, it would weaken the hold of the city clans. They still might extinguish that danger in the ashes of Reach Antach. But if anyone survived who had seen this battle, tribesman or reachman, the Termith might find themselves wishing they could brag of their treachery, to drown out the reputation for cowardice their treachery had earned. If people discounted the strength of the Termith, if they refused to take contracts from Termith-aligned fighting men, their clan was in a position little better than the Antach.

  It was a victory, but a costly one, and not one that gave much aid against the oncoming tribesmen, who climbed up through the terraces like coils of snakes, like smoke rising through a pile of wood. Here and there, they met with patches of surrendering soldiers from the Reach army, with men of the militia who were too injured to climb up the whole way to the walls. Some of them lived to be taken captive, but most were cut down where they stood. There was blood in the air, and the plunder of a wealthy reach. The killing fever had come, and no secret alliance would be strong enough to hold it back.

  There were too many tribesmen. If all his troops were fighting men, and if the walls were defended with bow and javelin, they could have been driven off. But they were not, and they were not, and the Termith and their allies had spent a fortune raising up their tribal army. The enemy would be tired from the climb, they would be coming up on a readied defense where they expected helpless meat, but there were too many. Cete’s lines could not save the Reach Antach.

  He knew it, but his men did not. They had fought their first battle, and they had won. And they knew that tribesmen were worse fighters than civilized men, they knew that they had the law on their side, and the walls of their homes to protect. They steeled themselves, moved their spears into position.

  The line of men was drawn up near the base of a terrace wall, and the line of women and children and others who had come to fight without being mustered waited at the base of the next terrace up. Marelle stood among the women, a smudge of dirt on her cheek, her spear unbloodied, her neighbors by her sides. If the wall fifty tried to break Cete’s line with missiles, the terraces would shield them. But that wasn’t the limit of the mischief that they could cause, and as the tribes came forward, he sent a runner to the Antach clan army—hold back as well you can, and look to the rear.

  It was time. Cete gave the order, and the slingers and men with javelins came through the ranks, and began their work. There were only fifty of them, and the terraces and trees provi
ded good cover. One tribesman fell, another, a grain of dirt in the avalanche that was coming up the hill. Still, one less enemy left alive to enjoy the plunder, one less tribesman who would count himself lucky to have come to the walls of the Reach Antach.

  Then the slingers retreated back through the ranks, and the men who had flung their javelins took up spears, for the enemy was upon them. The previous attack had come in dribs and drabs; a squad here, a fifty-command there, all disordered, some too maddened with fear to see the spears that killed them. The tribesmen came in good order, their wails rising up to the heavens, and they hit all along the line at once.

  It buckled. They were forced back a foot, then another. All along the line, his men killed, but the tribesmen came up over the bodies of their slain, more, always more. Another foot, and Cete could see gaps starting to show in the ranks to his left, between his position and where he had stationed his fifties of sword and axe.

  Buckled, but held. Women came down to fill the gaps where men had fallen. Men from the Reach army held out in their hopeless clusters, men who had forgotten everything of plot and plan and knew only that their enemies were upon them with sword and axe and tribal chant.

  For a long time they sweated there in the noonday sun, exhausted and terrified men against exhausted and terrified men. If they could not take the Reach, half the tribes that had mustered up against it would not survive the winter. Too few hands to do the work, too few young men to protect their sheep and grain from those who had not marched in the summer. It was fight or die, fight and die, on both sides.

  It was a glorious defense, but it could not last. There were too few defenders, too untrained, and while the women fought with valor, they tired quickly, unaccustomed to the weight of weapons. Another step back, and Cete’s foot touched the mantle he had left folded on the ground. He would not go farther back; if the men at his sides retreated, he would die where he stood. Marelle was behind him, between two of her friends. She would fall soon after him, as she had wished.