by T. O. Munro
“But are there not also orcs and humans in this division from Undersalve. Surely they will not be so slow and ill co-ordinated?”
“We should still outrun them. We are on horseback and they will want to keep their force together as they chase us.”
“The odds will be great, twelve thousand of theirs to our five.”
“Aye Prior, but remember, it is not our task to defeat them. We are to hold them. To hold them here away from Rugan’s battle. Once he has destroyed the Snake Lady’s army then he will come and take our opponents in the rear. That is when we shall both together destroy them.”
“You trust that my brother will come?” Quintala rode up beside the Queen and the Prior. “You have greater faith in him than I.”
“He would not leave us to be overrun,” Niarmit replied.
Kaylan, on the Queen’s other side raised a sceptical eyebrow and muttered something about Bledrag Field.
Niarmit rounded on him. “What other choice have I today, Kaylan. The past is done, that was then and there, this is now and here. Rugan fights for his own province today, not my father’s. I think we can trust in his self-interest to come to our aid.”
Kaylan dipped his chin in a nod of apology. “There is another puzzle though, my Lady, more immediate than any questions of the Prince of Medyrsalve’s honour.”
“Indeed, what is it?” Niarmit replied, though she guessed what he was about to say for the same thought had been in her mind these past five minutes. From Tordil’s anxious scanning of the southern horizon, the elf Captain shared the same concern.
“Well, my Lady, we have ridden almost a league due South of the Torrockburn in search of the force we know was approaching Rugan’s left flank. Yet we have found no sign. Where are they?”
“Perhaps they marched slower than we thought?” Quintala suggested hopefully. “They could be beyond the very next rise.”
Niarmit shook her head. “I like this not at all.”
***
“Hold the line!” Rugan shouted from his great black warhorse.
“Hold the line! By the Prince’s command, hold the line!” Major Darbon relayed the royal command to his left along the southern flank of Rugan’s army.
It was a disciplined advance, a thing of drill and beauty. A hundred yards ahead of them the Redfangs limped and loped, pausing occasionally to loose an arrow or receive one. In either case the missile was followed by a ribald orcish call impugning the manhood and virility of all the soldiers of Medyrsalve. But the silver line did not break. Sixteen thousand men marched as one and the time of reckoning was coming for the Redfangs.
The river was at their back, the core of Rugan’s army at their front and soon the spears of Medyrsalve would complete the task of orcish destruction that they had begun at the battle’s opening in the mouth of the Gap of Tandar.
The Prince had packed his centre with the elite spears, full half his army advancing on the doomed orcs. The right and left wings each held four thousand men, the force carefully matched to their corresponding divisions in the enemy’s force.
Against the nomads to the South, there were archers to drive off the nomad infantry and spearmen to protect the archers from the nomad cavalry. Against the Blackskulls to the North, Rugan had placed his own heavy cavalry with lances long enough to skewer two wolves and their orcish riders at one time.
Darbon smiled with grim satisfaction. The wings of the enemy’s army would be powerless to prevent the centre’s destruction. Then, when the Redfangs had been driven tumbling into the River Saeth the concentrated force of Rugan’s centre would roll up the bisected remnants of the enemy’s army in a victory of unparalleled completeness.
They did not need the hobilers of Oostsalve. They had never needed the assistance of Oostsalve. That had only ever been the Prince’s caution. Sixteen thousand silver warriors from Medyrsalve was always enough to destroy twelve thousand barbarous orcs and primitive nomads.
“Hold the line!” Darbon shouted as the Redfang orcs began to slow and turn to face their imminent destruction. The Major smiled. Everything was going as had been planned.
***
“This is not going as we planned!” Niarmit cried. The Queen and her guard were at the top of the gentle rise staring south at another empty valley and a bare ridge beyond. “Where are they?”
Tordil frowned. “Sure when we scouted their camp, they were finding their zombies hard to manage, but I would not have thought them so slow that they could not have at least reached the channel of the Forburn. Where are they indeed your Majesty?”
Quintala was staring at the far ridge with narrowed eyes. Jolander followed her gaze, concentrating hard as he squinted against the still rising Sun. “Your Majesty, there,” the sergeant called. “I see something.”
“By the Goddess Sergeant, your eyes out match mine again” the half-elf chided him. “What is it you see?”
“Something moving, not naturally though. See, my Lady, a figure!”
He pointed and Quintala followed his outstretched finger to the horizon. “Aye, I see it now. Can you your Majesty?”
They were all straining to spot the sergeant’s quarry. “I see it plain,” Tordil announced. “There are four of them, staggering and stumbling, not in the manner of living soldiers.”
“The undead, Captain?” Abroath enquired with trepidation. He was trying to decipher the distant specks and see them as cleanly as the sharp eyed elf.
“No less, our quarry is in sight.”
Tordil gathered himself to spur his horse onwards, but Niarmit waved him back. “Wait.”
“Your Majesty, the force from Undersalve may be beyond that rise.”
“Another league, another league, Captain Tordil, always taking us South,” Niarmit mused aloud.
“That is where we saw the foe, that is whence they are coming,” Quintala observed reasonably.
“Tordil, look carefully at those creatures. Thom, you too, is there not some enchantment by which you can enhance your sight?”
Elf and illusionist vied with each other to descry the most detail in the distant enemy.
“They are certainly zombies, your majesty,” Tordil declared. “Four of them, by their gait and pallor they are most certainly the restless dead.”
“But they are not led,” Thom chipped in as his swift spell took hold. “See how there is no purpose to their wondering, look one spies a rabbit and lunges for it. There are at the bidding of no necromancers.”
“What of it?” Tordil snapped. “They may have wondered far from the main body. We know they struggled to shepherd their abominations. Even if these are stragglers the rest of their evil creations and their marshals cannot be far behind!”
“Behind Captain?” Niarmit interrupted. “Since when did stragglers lead an army?”
“We should ride South and West, your Majesty.” Jolander said. “The lancers can set a scouting screen to cover more ground and faster than these ponied foot soldiers.”
“No, no,” Niarmit said. “Our premise was that there was a foe close enough at hand that we needed to keep it from interfering in Rugan’s battle. If they lie further south than this, then our strategy is proven wrong. They would be too far away to offer any present threat to Rugan. Our place is at his side to add the force to make certain of his swift and overwhelming victory. We have been misled.” She wheeled her horse round.
“You fear, Majesty that we have been deceived into chasing an enemy too slow and tardy to be a threat,” Abroath pieced together his understanding.
“No, Prior, that is what I hope. What I fear is something much worse.” With that she spurred her horse North, followed in dutiful confusion by her little army.
Behind them, on the distant escarpment two zombies fought over a shredded rabbit.
***
“He is a stubborn cuss, this half-elf,” Dema growled.
The clash of battle was closer now. The Redfangs had reformed their line a mere four hundred yards from the Medusa’s c
ommand post. All semblance of rout had gone as the baying orcs presented a solid disciplined front to the advancing soldiers of Medyrsalve. But the weight of silver numbers was beginning to tell. In his centre division Rugan outnumbered the Redfangs two to one. Archers firing over the serried ranks of spearmen added to the mayhem and, for all their brute courage and prowess in arms, the Redfangs were thinning fast.
“It is time, Lady,” Willem urged. “Give the order.”
Dema reached over to seize the outlander captain by his gorget. Kimbolt saw her fingers dent the metal of his armoured throat piece. “Willem,” she spat into his face. “No one, absolutely no one, tells me what orders to give or when.”
“Pardon, Lady,” the big outlander whimpered. “But Nagbadesh will be overrun within five minutes. I did not think we could delay.”
“It is not time, not yet.” Was her only reply, her gaze scanning left and right across the battlefield.
On either flank the forces of Medyrsalve sensed their imminent victory. The sapping struggle in the centre was almost won, the next and final phase would be the rolling up of the wings of Dema’s army. To the south, the spearmen and archers who had held the nomads at bay began to surge forward, committing to an assault they were certain would be supported by a flanking manoeuvre from Rugan’s victorious centre. To the North, the heavy cavalry, tired of toying at a distance with the Blackskulls, formed up for a charge into the heart of Porgud’s tribe.
Dema nodded slowly at the commitment of Rugan’s entire sixteen thousand to wholesale assault. “Now,” she said. “Now is the time.” She turned to Kimbolt, “ride, ride to the little wizard and tell him it is time. Ride fast.”
Kimbolt spurred his horse in a frantic ride towards the bridge.
***
Major Darbon brought his sword crushing down on another orcish skull. Black blood and brains spattered across the once silver barding of his horse, adding to the ichor of a dozen defeated Redfangs. “Glorious,” he cried as he threaded a path through the thinning ranks of the orc tribe.
Somewhere to his right the Prince was shouting, “Drive on, Medyrsalve, Drive on, force the scum into the river.”
There was a fizzing noise distant but loud, which had the Major looking round. From the bridge a smoky trail led into the sky where a small incandescent globe was rising upwards ever upwards. There was flash of brilliant light as the globe exploded and then a thunderous blast of sound, so loud that for a fraction of a second all fell silent. But nothing else happened, no harm was done, save to Darbon’s ringing eardrums. So, without a second thought, he set to laying about him slashing through the grasping hands of orcs as they sought in vain to unhorse him.
The task was harder now, a new determination had fired the aching sinews of the Redfangs. One flung itself at his horse’s neck, and clung there even after he’d cut the bastard’s head off. The animal neighed and swung round in a desperate bid to dislodge the green spurting body. Darbon struck it in the chest with the hilt of his sword and at last the corpse dropped to the ground to be trampled underfoot.
“By the Goddess,” the Prince cried out in alarm to the Major’s right. Darbon glanced across. Rugan, his sword slick with black-green blood from tip to hilt was gazing past him over to the Southern flank of the army.
Darbon swung to his left to see the source of Rugan’s discomfort. There were the nomads, locked in a tussle with the spearmen, but the archers behind them were breaking falling back. Why? Darbon looked beyond, standing up in his stirrups to see over the milling throng.
There were others, pouring up through gullies from the dry edge of the river bed. Hundreds, no thousands. Hidden beneath the parapet formed by the banks of the low running Saeth, they now flooded out onto the plain, deploying in a long line running East to West all along the Southern flank of Rugan’s hard pressed army. There were nomads in the lead, then orcs, then lumbering after them a division of something foul. The fetid stench drifted over as far as Darbon’s nostrils.
The Major gulped back nausea and fear. They were not just being outflanked, but in danger of encirclement. The fast moving fresh orcs and humans could quickly circle round to cut off their retreat to the Gap of Tandar. It was a whole new army scarcely smaller than the one they had fought so hard all morning, and this one entirely unscathed.
“Sound the retreat,” Rugan was yelling.
He urged his horse close to Darbon as the Major relayed the dread command. “Retreat.”
“The witch has betrayed us,” Rugan spat in Darbon’s ear.
“Which witch sire?”
“Both of them!”
***
“Hold a moment Captain, Captain Kimbolt isn’t it,” Odestus called back the anxious messenger.
“Aye, my Lord,” the soldier admitted looking down from the saddle at the wizard. “That is my name, but now my message is delivered and the signal given, I would be back at my Mistress’s side.”
“Your Mistress, yes,” Odestus stepped towards Kimbolt’s horse. He took hold of the cob’s bridle and patted its neck clumsily. The horse swung its head and would have taken a chunk out of the wizard’s shoulder but for the bit between its teeth. The wizard stepped back, stumbling out of the horse’s way, while Kimbolt watched in puzzlement. “Er… I wanted to speak to you about your Mistress, Captain.”
“My Lord?” Kimbolt’s confusion was complete.
“It was just,” Odestus stared over the Captain’s shoulder. “I wondered… that is to say…”
“My Lord, I really must return to her,” Kimbolt insisted with firm deference. “She will not be pleased if I delay.”
“Exactly, er quite so. I mean – have you noticed any change in her manner? Any differences these last few weeks?”
Kimbolt looked at him steadily. “She has always been good to me my Lord, when I have deserved it.”
Odestus frowned. “And you my fellow, are you quite well, recovered I mean?”
“I have had no fever since you tended me my lord,” Kimbolt smiled. “Though to be sure, being cured by a wizard must have put the orcish shamans to shame.”
“And in your mind? All is well? You enjoy a restful and untroubled sleep? No uncertainties to cloud your day.”
“I am a soldier, my Lord and a survivor as my Mistress has told me. I serve the cause as best I can.”
Odestus stared into Kimbolt’s eyes, peering for a window to his soul, but the Captain’s expression was unreadable. He hauled on his horse’s reins and swung the cob away. “I must go my lord,” he said gently and spurred his steed without waiting for the wizard’s dismissal.
“The lady’s pet is of great interest to you, Governor,” the pale secretary Vesten addressed the wizard’s shoulder.
“I am interested in Dema,” Odestus replied. “And in everything about her. That man has got closer to her than anyone I’ve ever known.”
“The Lady is on the brink of a great victory. That should give her much pleasure, today. We will all rest easier with her happiness.”
Odestus pursed his lips. “I wish her well of it.”
“It will rival your own triumph at Bledrag field, Governor.”
“That was my first and last battle, Vesten. It was a far simpler and less subtle struggle than the one the lady engages in this day. I have not Dema’s thirst for warfare, nor one fraction of her talent.”
“Will you not take station with the forces of Undersalve Governor. Galen may have need of your counsel.”
Odestus shook his head. “I’m staying here Vesten. Let Galen have his glory. He’s brought them all the way from Undersalve, let him prove what he can do when the talking is done and the fighting begun. But you go, go give the blasted necromancer my best wishes for success.”
Vesten shuffled from one foot to the other and pulled at his straggly beard. “I’ll stay here, Governor, if it is all the same. The Lord Galen – he, he…..”
“He is an arse,” Odestus interjected. “While he is a skilful necromancer he is an even more co
nsummate arsehole. If he could but swop those aptitudes around he would still be a competent enough shitter, but a wizard to rival Maelgrum himself.”
“Indeed, Governor,” Vesten replied. He stepped back out of Odestus’s field of attention, but made no move to travel further and deliver the governor’s regards to the despised apprentice.
***
“My Prince,” Darbon called across to Rugan in the midst of a disciplined reforming of battle lines. “The southern division, they will be overrun.”
Rugan paused in his barked commands to look across at the hard pressed corps. Around the two commanders the silver soldiers milled in disciplined re-ordering of their formation. A fraction of the centre still kept watch against the Redfangs to the West, the orcs too exhausted to press home their advantage. The rest of the Prince’s soldiers were swiftly redistributing themselves along a West to East line, in an effort to match the unfolding deployment of the newly revealed army of Undersalve to the South. The lead humans and orcs in that fresh foe were racing East towards the Palacinta hills, trying to work around the end of Rugan’s line and encircle his force. The Prince’s men were hurrying to head off that fate.
The southern corps were out of reach of any aid. The archers overrun by the foul smelling undead that the Lady Niarmit had spoken of. Without their protection the spearmen were assailed to the front by the resurgent nomad foot soldiers and to the flank by the nomad cavalry. It would be a charnal house.
“We must strike out for their relief,” Darbon urged his Prince.
“Fool, Major, they are lost,” Rugan barked. “We can do nothing for them except hope that they buy us enough time to make good our retreat. The Goddess will bless them for it.”
The Prince wheeled his horse around, calling out for a yeoman to signal his heavy cavalry.
For a moment Darbon looked once more at the spearmen enveloped by nomads and their covering archers mauled by vile creatures unhindered, still less halted, by the arrows which had turned them into mobile pincushions. The Prince had abandoned to its fate a quarter of his already sorely outnumbered army, and the Major had to agree, he was right. They must save what they could, which might well be nothing at all.