Shifting her head, she saw a small mass of barbarians huddled around the banner of the Snow Fox, and they had apparently regained the use of their eyes for they too stared at her. Only it wasn’t horror that filled their eyes; it was terror.
Gazing back at her men, she couldn’t stand the look in their eyes so she looked away and started toward the Raiders. The first step sent fire through leg and it cramped too painfully, causing her to whimper and almost fall.
Catching herself with her right leg, she made a half-hop, unable to suppress another whimper as her entire left leg cramped from foot to hip. Her head down, she drew in savage, trembling breaths of air and bit her tongue to keep from screaming until the muscles of her leg started to let up.
When they did, she lifted her head determinedly. Using her sword as a crutch, she started to hobble determinedly towards the cluster of barbarian warriors.
She heard the sound of her Swans as they began moving parallel to her as they made to meet the barbarians. Lifting her sword with an arm that felt dead and lifeless, she pointed at the savages, silently ordering her men to action.
Her men kept silent pace with her, not saying so much as a word. If she hadn’t seen their movement out of the corner of her eye and heard their footsteps, she wouldn’t have known they were even there.
Oddly, Falon noticed that there must have been at least fifty dead raiders fanned out in a circle around where she had come back to her senses—far more enemies, by several times over, than any one of her men could claim to have laid low.
She was still considering the strangeness of that particular scene when she came within spitting distance of the barbarians, who still stared at her with fear-filled eyes.
One of the savages, a man with a fox-headed fur helmet with the eyes of the fox still glittering, lifted up a staff with a three foot cross-section nailed to the top that dangled with all manner of bones, teeth and even skulls, all of which looked canine in origin.
Falon felt her lips peel back from her teeth and she lifted her sword in kind. Then, to her surprise, the fur-covered savage laid his staff down crosswise before her on the ground as he knelt to her, pressing his head into the ground.
Falon blinked several times and, sensing sudden movement from the men behind the barbarian leader—a shaman if she was any judge—she crouched down into a defensive stance.
But an instant later it became clear that she wasn’t being attacked; quite the opposite, she discovered, as every barbarian warrior in the group picked up his weapon and threw it to the ground in front of her. After the warriors had thrown their weapons, their shoulders slumped and they stood with heads bowed in the most hangdog posture she had ever seen in a man.
The leader with the staff—the shaman, or chief, or whatever he was—said something in their guttural speak.
“I don’t understand,” she said numbly, unable to comprehend a single thing in the stream of words that the kneeling man was spewing out of his mouth.
A young man with fur leggings and chest bare of anything except a pair of leather straps, apparently designed to carry weapons of some type, stepped through the men clustered around the Snow Fox banner and cleared his throat, and Falon turned her gaze toward him.
“You have something to say?” she asked, wondering if this one would be able to make himself understood any better than his leader or if she was just being a fool.
“He say ye new leader now,” the young Ice Raider said in halting, broken Kingdom speech.
Falon’s eyes bulged. “What?” she asked, unsure if she understood what he was saying.
“Ye medicine too powerful,” the young warrior said bowing his head, “Ice Fox no make more fight. We offer banner to new War Chief.”
After a moment of Falon just staring at him stupidly, the young man gestured with his chin toward the others and said something short in his own language. There was stir of movement in the middle of the cluster of savages, and the banner with the Ice Fox on it was brought forward. Within moments, a pair of men stepped out and the young man took it from them. With a heavy, solemn look, he presented it to her.
“I don’t understand,” Falon said, clenching her fist around her sword until her hands hurt. She didn’t want to take their stupid banner, not when all she really wanted to do was cut down each and every Ice Raider who thought it had been a fun idea to invade her kingdom.
While she stood there indecisively, still trying to wrap her mind around what the man was saying, a bloody warrior from her own side stomped up and snatched the banner from the hands of the young Ice Raider and then spat at his feet.
“You Leader?” the savage asked, looking at her questioningly and then glancing at the man who had taken the banner.
“Yes, of course,” Falon said softly. She turned to see which of her men had grabbed the banner, and to her shock the blood-covered man was Duncan. She turned back to the savage, “I’m the Lieutenant of this half of the Swan Battalion, anyway,” she said faintly, feeling dizzy and out of touch with everything around her.
“What ye want we should do with the prisoners,” Duncan asked with an angry, bloodthirsty look in his eye that Falon mistrusted greatly.
“You make prisoners of Snow Fox?” the Ice Raider man asked, and a moan went up from the barbarians behind him. Clearly they understood more of the Kingdom speech than she had given them credit for.
Muscles flexed and hands clenched into fists, but none of the Ice Raider warriors made any further shows of defiance.
“I think the Prince would kill the rest of you here, if you showed back up in camp and if he didn’t think you were prisoners,” Falon said faintly, her eyes roving over the dead and injured. Then she turned back to the young warrior, “Why are you doing this, again,” she gestured to the weapons they’d tossed at her feet, wishing this was just over and done with one way or the other.
“Ye medicine—” the young Warrior started again. but Falon raised a hand and he fell blessedly silent.
“What does ‘medicine’ have to do with it?” Falon said gruffly. “Is it your number of wounded? Because our healers are just as powerless to help at this moment as they were before this battle started. Nothing can be done for the wounded—yours or ours—at least not until moonrise.”
“Not healing medicine; war medicine,” the Ice Raider explained. Then the shaman on the ground, or chief, or whatever, lifted his head as he sat back onto his haunches and started interrogating the young man in their language using low, even tones. After some back and forth, the young Ice Raider’s face cleared and he looked back over at her.
“Shaman says you call it ‘spells.’ Ye war medicine, ye spells,” he gave her a questioning look and, gesturing back to the huge circle of dead bodies she had left behind, he continued, “is very strong. Snow Fox is give axes ye and make War Chief ye, because medicine so strong our shaman fear it,” he explained and then added, “and so don’t kill us, ye.”
“W-w-w,” Falon stuttered a chill coursing through her. They stopped fighting because she had slaughtered so many helpless fighting men? She looked back and forth between the still-living barbarians and the pile of dead bodies behind her.
“We men of Snow Fox; if all are dead and no men of Snow Fox, then Tribe will die, our bones picked until there is no more banner, and no more Snow Fox,” the young man said miserably and then knelt on the frozen ground before of her in submission.
Falon knew she didn’t quite understand what these people were trying tell her, but she thought she understood enough. If she killed all these men then their tribe, their women and children would be left with no one to provide for them. The best and healthiest would likely be taken in by another tribe, with the rest left to die or be sold into slavery as these savages sometimes did. She also understood that by giving up their weapons, they were her prisoners. That they were trying to negotiate was something she should keep in mind, but Falon had more savages to fight this day and she had to harden her heart to the plight of the families of thes
e men who had just tried to kill her.
She schooled her face to reveal none of her thoughts and pointed her sword at the Ice Raiders.
“My men will gather up your weapons and you will help them gather up the wounded—all the wounded, from both sides,” she said harshly, speaking loudly enough that everyone, including her own men to hear so they couldn’t claim to misunderstand later. “After that you will be escorted, under guard, back to our camp. When the moon comes up, our healers will see to your wounded after ours. If your shaman can help with the healing, he is to do so,” she swept the savages in front of her with an empty heart; there was no time for compassion over these people. Maybe later there would be, and maybe there wouldn’t, but for now there definitely wasn’t. “Do you agree?” she demanded when the silence had grown longer than she would have liked.
“Snow Fox like bride on wedding night: we hear, we obey or we deserve punish,” the spokesman said, touching his head to the frozen ground and the rest of the savages mimicked this gesture before regaining their feet.
Meanwhile, Falon turned red with anger and then white with fury. For an instant she found herself with her sword pointed at these strange men, but the strain on her arm from the weight of the sword brought her back to herself and instead of chastising them for their customs, she reminded herself she had more important business at that moment. She gave a sharp nod before turning on her heel and stalking away in measured paces, to avoid cramping her leg again.
She had to leave before she killed someone, because if she had done so…then more of her people would die at the hands of these worthless Snow Fox people. Yet even as she walked away and cursed them as a worthless people, in the back of her mind Falon couldn’t help but consider the possibilities of having barbarian scouts if this war dragged on. The value they would provide if she could put them out in front of her company as guides for the scouts would likely be greater than she could comprehend at that particular moment.
As if some invisible hold on them had been broken, as soon as she turned and walked away from the surrendered savages, her men hurried toward her or spread out across the battlefield.
“I have men searching for wounded as we speak, Lieutenant,” Aonghus said, a measure of respect in his voice that she had never heard before. At least, she had never heard such respect sent her way; she had heard him speak to Darius in such a fashion before.
“Good,” she said shortly, but her mind was already churning as she tried to figure out what they should do next. Her plan to charge and just keep going until they punched a hole in the barbarian lines had failed. They had stalled out, only winning when the savages unpredictably surrendered. However, they had punched the hole, so…“Seeing to the wounded before we press on is important.”
“Ye want I should tie them up like steers destined for veal?” Uilliam jerked a thumb over his shoulder and then made a surreptitious throat-cutting gesture with a finger to his neck.
For a moment Falon was tempted, so very tempted. To slaughter the very men who had invaded the lands of her people, killed her Fighting Swans, and now threw themselves on her mercy as soon as it became obvious they were going to lose tempted something dark in the depths of her soul…something that desired vengeance above all other considerations. She had to force that desire down through sheer force of will.
“That’s not who we are,” Falon said, looking Uilliam in the eye, as if by convincing him she could convince that dark part of herself. “We’re better than that. If a man surrenders to me and I accept it, then…” she gave him a hard look that promised dire consequences if her word was contravened any anything happened to the prisoners while under her care.
“I follow ye, Squire,” Uilliam said with the same placid voice and agreeable look on his face as when he suggested slaughtering the savages like tied and hobbled steers, “me and I men live only by your grace. You say it and we do it.”
Falon was taken aback by such words and she felt strangely uneasy.
“Well, now that that’s taken care of,” Papa Aonghus paused to spit a six foot stream of brown liquid out of his mouth, “what we do after rounding up them what’s hurt and mortified?”
“Put them on the wagon and make stretchers for those that won’t fit; the savages can carry them,” Falon said then added darkly, “they can be good for something at least.”
“And after that?” Aonghus asked, with Uilliam looking on expectantly from behind him.
Falon wrinkled her brow. “We punched the hole,” she pointed, “we’ll continue through as soon as we separate out the walking wounded to watch over the disarmed barbarians. They can sift through the wounded and get them back to camp. The charge may have stalled, but it hasn’t stopped—not yet.”
“Ye sure that’s safe?” Aonghus asked a little too mildly.
“You don’t trust them?” Falon asked with a blank expression.
“Ye do?” he countered.
“Not for an instant,” she agreed. She paused and narrowed her eyes, “Send a runner to the Captain; maybe he can send some men to help watch them,” as she said this she turned to look in the direction of the Captain and his men. She could see his banner still planted in the same spot it had been.
“The Captain’s men might not be all gentle like,” Aonghus pointed out.
Falon turned back to him her eyes flinty, “I don’t care about ‘gentle.’ All I care about is ‘alive and un-maimed;’ anything else, they’ve earned, if not here then at some point in their Ice Raiding lives. My men won’t do it, but I’m not in charge of the Captain’s men, now am I?”
“As you say, Lieutenant,” Aonghus said softly, “as you say…”
Chapter 42: Through the Hole
“Maybe we should have waited for the Captain to shift some of his men?” Aonghus said uneasily.
“We just wiped out the extreme right of their army, either dead, surrendered or run off,” Falon said flatly. “We can do more good coming around from behind and stabbing them in the back while they’re tied down with the rest of our units. But if we wait too long, they’re going to shift another tribe over here to cover the gap. The flank attack is going through; first we’ll help the Captain’s men and then we’ll fade back and see what other trouble we can get into.”
“Yer the Lieutenant,” Aonghus said, fading back into the ranks.
“The wounded can be seen to by the guards and the prisoners,” Falon said, but she was speaking to open air as Aonghus had faded back into the ranks and the men had opened up a circle around her. Her fist tightened; she wanted someone to fight with, and far from fighting with her, Papa Aonghus was doing something far much worse: he was giving her the respect due a battle-tested Lieutenant. A real Lieutenant, in other words, not the pale womanish imitation she was sure she really presented to the world. After all, how could she be anything other than womanish? It was, when all was said and done, her very nature…how does one fight that effectively?
Still, with no one to argue against and protest her orders, or tell her she was doing something stupid or idiotic, she had no choice but to woman onward.
That, and pray she wasn’t leading a bunch of good men to their deaths.
They spent several minutes pushing their way through the thick underbrush that infested the trees a ways back from the edge of the clearing. If they wanted to sneak up and take the savages by surprise, they needed to do more than just show up on their flank and give them time to redeploy. With only a score and a half of remaining effectives at her back, she needed to fight smart and that meant coming at them from behind. If pressed on both sides, these Ice Raiders would break, she just knew it.
Hopefully, any lookouts they had been monitoring the far end of the battlefield would mistake the joint Ice Raider prisoners and Swan Warrior battlefield scouring for a temporary respite, as ‘both sides’ moved to rescue their wounded.
That was why Falon had marched her men wide, well beyond the original far extreme left battle lines which her unit had anchored.
Finally turning right, they ran parallel the tree line—or rather, what she hoped was parallel. She was neither a great hunter nor possessing of an instinctive direction sense, so she had to rely on men who knew what they were doing. More minutes passed as they pressed forward.
“Shouldn’t we be there yet?” Falon hissed at Uilliam as his overly tall form was easier to spot amongst all the trees.
The large man looked over at her and splayed his hands, “I’ll check,” he said and turned to the man next to him.
After a brief consultation up and down the line—one that took far too many candle slivers, slivers they didn’t have—he turned back to her.
“They think we may have overshot the position,” he finally confided.
Falon stared at him flabbergasted. “Well why didn’t we stop earlier?” she whispered furiously.
“Ye didn’t give the order,” he shrugged helplessly.
Falon closed her eyes and counted to a slow twenty before opening them again. “I didn’t give the order,” she repeated, “of course, why wouldn’t I have to give the order? It’s not like we’re trying to rescue our outnumbered comrades by sneaking up on an enemy war band! So of course we should wait until we overshoot the mark, because I didn’t magically know when to stop.” As soon as the words left her mouth, Falon felt embarrassed and ashamed. Not only had she shown her lack of woodcraft but in the process, by accusing men who’d fought with her in battle, she showed her unworthiness for command. Are these those ‘womanish tendencies’ I need to be careful of, she wondered. Well, that, or she needed to squash them like a bug.
“I apologize, Uilliam. That was unworthy of me,” she said, placing a hand on his arm when his head turned away, “but more importantly, it was unworthy of you and the men. I am ashamed.”
“Any man might be upset that we need to turn around,” Uilliam said, looking worried, like he might be caught in the wrong somehow and with his words Falon felt relieved. If anyone might make the mistake then it wasn’t just her, but even still, there was no cause to repeat it.
The Painting (Rise of the Witch Guard Book 2) Page 36