“I’d be like a summer’s breeze against him, Captain, but I know one or two things.” We both knew that Ploster could be as elusive as a lost wedding ring if he needed to be.
From below there was another crackling burst of Gagnol’s power, as he struck at the gates. “I don’t know where those gates came from,” said our lady, “but they have wards inscribed deep within the wood. It may be that they remain intact for longer than the sorcerer hopes.”
“Do you think you can do anything to surprise the Blackhearted, my lady? I would not risk you if there is a chance it would leave an opening.” Her power was immense, but it was raw and she was inexperienced. With time and tutelage, she would be a force beyond any bar perhaps the Emperor himself. Now, I admitted to myself that I was fearful that we might lose her if she committed to action against Warmont’s Second.
“I cannot hide away forever, Captain Charing. I will see what I can do.”
I stood by as she and Ploster studied the red-armoured creature at the gates. Another hammer blow thundered against the gates and I imagined I could feel them shudder at the impact. In the courtyard below, Sinnar and Craddock had brought the First Cohort through the waiting lines of the Treads infantry and my men stood silently and impassively just where the passageway through the walls opened out onto the square, their tattooed faces visible through the openings in their helmets. We planned to funnel the attacking forces through this narrow opening, yet still be able to focus more than one of our men onto every one of theirs. If we were pushed back, I hoped that Commander Wolf would be ready to plug any holes before the First Cohort suffered attacks to our flank. I’d already practised the run from my position on the wall to where I could join my men: thirty seconds it would take. Plenty of time for me to dally, yet still make it down in time if the gates were suddenly smashed open.
I saw Ploster drop into a familiar semi-trance and felt a plucking at the air around me. I watched Gagnol expectantly for a few moments, before I saw Ploster’s eyes focus again. He’d gone red and panted heavily. “Fuck he’s a hard bastard,” he said. Ploster was did not regularly turn to earthy language, so I knew that he was impressed.
“I tried to burn him. It did nothing – as if I wasn’t even there. I’m not sure if the bastard even cares.”
As Ploster recovered himself, I felt something more powerful gather in the air about us. It was our lady, though to look at her face you would have thought that there was no effort at all. Her eyes narrowed, and without any warning, several houses to either side of the main street crumbled, their walls toppling onto the road. It was as though a giant hand had swept down and through, knocking the rubble onto the men and the sorcerer gathered below.
There was no time for Warmont’s men to escape and I heard screams as chunks of brick and stone cascaded into the street. Many raised their shields and were saved from serious harm, but the shields could not stop the larger pieces of masonry from killing those unfortunate enough to be standing where they landed. Gagnol himself was struck many times, his armour almost buried beneath dust and stone, which made dull clangs as it rained upon him. The energy he’d been focusing for another attack on the gate dissipated and he pushed himself to his feet, with his armour now a dull grey, instead of a sickly red.
Ploster dragged our lady behind the battlements and I ducked away from sight myself.
“Do not let him look at you for too long,” hissed Ploster. “If he does so, he is likely trying to set you alight, or worse.”
“Thank you, Ploster,” she said. “He has already tried that and failed when he first arrived at the gates. He has brutal power and a cunning to use it, but I will not fall to such a simple trick.”
Ploster looked agitated, which I understood to be his concern that he hadn’t seen this attack on our lady when it happened. I had not felt it either, but the Blackhearted’s reputation as a caster was earned. I did not expect to be able to second-guess all of his attacks.
I looked out again, circumspect this time. Gagnol had resumed his former position and calmly gathered his power for another punishing attack at the gates. I had to admire his strength. It takes a brave man to admit to the admirable qualities in his enemies, but it’s better to acknowledge a truth than deny it exists. Gagnol was an evil creature, but he was not afraid to stand at the front of his lines and face down the Duke’s enemies.
“If only he was on our side,” I said to Ploster.
“Aye. We’d be able to defeat the world with six like him.”
In the street behind the sorcerer, the cries of the injured continued as men dragged themselves and their injured comrades from where they’d fallen. Thus goes the life of a soldier – however well-prepared you might be, you’re always subject to the capricious whims of luck. I had seen the best of men stumble at the wrong time and been slain because of it. We had lost six of our own only two weeks gone, to an untrained caster who just happened to be born with more power than she knew how to use. Life becomes death in moments for the unlucky.
Gagnol had more tricks than just magic for us. Evidently not wanting to give our lady another chance to divert him, the sorcerer called on his Mongrels. I didn’t see how he commanded them to attack, but I heard them coming, a rapid click-click-click as their claws sped over the stone ground and the slated roofs.
“Mongrels!” I shouted along the wall. Everyone knew what that meant, and the archers pulled back their bow strings and the infantrymen drew swords and clutched at their shields. “Get our lady down below! Keep her with Commander Wolf at the back of the square,” I instructed Ploster, watching for a moment as he led her away, with Footsore behind them.
I had forgotten quite how fast the Mongrels were. Or at least, I hadn’t forgotten, but the passing of time made the memories less fresh, so that I needed my eyes to remind me anew. They ran from the side streets before the walls, rushing forward on all fours. Our lady had clustered most of the town’s archers near to the main gates and this was the area of the wall they targeted. Arrows rained down, a few finding their targets, but most of them missing the fast-moving creatures.
I had no intentions of sacrificing myself on the walls, so I set off down the steps after our lady and Ploster, but not before I’d seen the first of the Mongrels bound up the vertical wall, almost as if it wasn’t there. Fifty yards away, the first of them reached the summit, seven feet of lean muscle, long limbs, sharp claws and blind, white eyes. As I descended the steps three at a time, I saw this first Mongrel cut down two archers and an infantryman, before it succumbed to a sword thrust in the neck. These creatures were despised and I watched a soldier spit on the dead body of the Mongrel as they threw it over the battlements.
More arrived, swarming over onto the top of the wall. They weren’t quite mindless, but they didn’t act in concert – that wasn’t what they were there for. I reached the bottom of the steps and ran to where my men were stationed, a dozen paces back from the passageway behind the gate. By the movement of her banner, I could see that our lady had almost reached her intended position.
“Welcome back, Captain,” said a soldier.
“Coming through soon, are they sir?” asked another.
“Wait and see, Tumbler,” I replied as I reached my position in the centre of our formation.
“I hear they’re unblooded, sir,” spoke a third soldier.
“Some of them are, Scram, but not all. And they’ve got Warmont’s Second and Fifth backing them up, so don’t go getting cocky - I don’t feel like drinking a mug of Grask in your honour tonight.”
“Scram’s a twat, though sir,” uttered a wit close by. “I’d stick I sword in his chest myself if I could drink a double measure for him.”
“Shut up Newt, you daft shit,” said Scram fondly. The other soldiers nearby laughed easily – I could tell from the sound that they were calm and I could feel from their demeanour that they were ready for a fight. This was their first real opportunity to show their loyalty to our lady.
There was another
clang against the gates. Here in the square, it sounded like someone was striking a hollow metal pot with a ladle, only much, much louder. Dust shook from the gates’ mountings and even above the sounds of combat from the walls I made out the rattling noises of small pebbles falling from the stone of the gateway.
Most of us had our eyes craned upwards, where the Mongrels still attacked the men on the walls. They were savage and fearless. I heard a shout from elsewhere in the square and saw movement as men from below broke away from their units to assist those fighting above. There had been almost six hundred men up top, clustered around the gate area. Even so, they were hard-pressed by the Mongrels.
I counted myself as an excellent captain of my troops, but I was only a good commander when it came to a wider appreciation of the ebb and flow of a battlefield. I had known men and women both who could read every tiny nuance of a battle, predicting where to move their units, seemingly knowing each and every possible outcome and able to act accordingly. I did not claim to be so well endowed, but at the small scale I would have said that I was unsurpassed, or at least I would not bow to any other. I could read how the fighting above progressed. At first, the Mongrels had instilled fear, pushing the men of Treads back. Then, it became a grim stalemate, with blood, bodies and severed limbs dropping into the square where we stood.
While the body is the tool which does the killing, it is the mind which drives the body. I have said before that a man with zeal can die as easily as a man with none, and this is true. However, when two sides are close to evenly matched, it is the side with the mental strength which will win the day – always. I heard a bestial roar, seemingly too loud to have come from human lungs. The Mongrels always fought in silence, so I knew that this primal sound had come from one of the men who faced them. Then there was another shout, and another, as the fear which had kept the soldiers in check was blown away and their determination to win – to live through the day – became a controlled anger. At that point, I knew that the Mongrels would be destroyed, even before the relief arrived from the square.
I saw half a dozen, then ten, of the Mongrels scamper jerkily along the wall, heading away from our troops. They leapt into the streets below, thirty feet as if it were nothing more than a step, and then vanished into the houses. We couldn’t concern ourselves with it now, but those ten Mongrels might kill hundreds of the town’s people before they were brought down. I hoped at least some of the town guard had been kept at their posts, rather than drafted into the fight at the gates.
The gates suffered another reverberating blow and this time there was a splintering sound, heard by everyone. Two minutes later, there was another and three great cracks appeared lengthways down one of the doors. A hush descended upon us all as we awaited the next hammering impact. It came, and this time the gates were broken – the cracked gate was smashed into pieces, sending sharp chunks of wood clattering over the paving and into the First Cohort. Wood impacted the metal of our frontline’s tall shields and we stood firm. The second gate was torn away from its top hinge and sagged to one side.
I looked through the opening and watched Gagnol turn away and make his way back through his troops. His infantry stared back at us, near a hundred yards away. They knew who we were. A few dozen ranks back, a figure loomed tall amongst them, broader and heavier by far than anyone else on the two sides: Bonecruncher. Gagnol had not been lying when he said he’d saved Bonecruncher’s arm and I saw the giant raise both limbs as he thundered out his order to advance.
“Kill them all!” he bellowed.
With only a moment’s pause, his front lines raised their shields and marched towards us.
“Move us up, lieutenants,” I said.
Fourteen
I was taller than most men, which was useful when positioned in the midst of the First Cohort, for it allowed me to see much of what happened around us. Other commanders perched themselves atop fine horses, which was a practical solution to allow greater visibility when you were three hundred yards away from the front line. For an infantry commander, it was an excellent way to ensure you became the focus of every man with a bow.
As Warmont’s men marched double-time across the fifty yards between where they had sheltered and the shattered gates, I saw the dark blurs of arrows raining down into them as the archers above regrouped after the Mongrel attack. The infantry raised their shields, but I was sure that a number of them would succumb to the bowmen.
One of the gates still hung from its hinges and this worked to our advantage, disrupting our enemy as they had to adjust their formation to march around it. Gagnol would have been better off waiting until he’d knocked this one as flat as the other. When they came within twenty feet, they lowered their spears and roared, an aimless battle cry, which they taught you on the first day of basic training.
There was a crunching sound as they contacted our front line. We carried solid, square metal shields, four feet tall and two wide, which we could interlock when we needed to. A normal man could not have wielded such a shield effectively in battle – not while he tried to use another weapon as well. There was clanging and the sound of metal on metal, along with a duller sound – unmistakeable once you’ve heard it once – of metal cutting through flesh. Screams reached me as we hewed through their first ranks and I saw and heard my lieutenants and corporals, close to our front line as they shouted their orders, maintaining our formation.
We were unmoved for a time, as a constant stream of Warmont’s heavy infantry pushed themselves through the gates, only to die to our swords as we stood firm with our shields, cutting at their armour and bodies with our etched blades. I knew from experience that their shields would not deflect our attacks for long. Our blades are too heavy and sharp, the arms wielding them too strong and tireless. Nevertheless, their numbers were great and even as their bodies piled up, fouling the feet of those behind them, I could feel the weight of the enemy pushing us back, inch by reluctant inch. Through the gateway, I saw Bonecruncher as he surged onwards his men, trampling those too slow to get out of his way. Warmont’s Fifth had arrows sticking from his back and shoulders, their black-feathered shafts visible in numerous places. I watched as he snapped away three of the arrows, snarling in anger at the temerity of the archers who had tried to kill him. He was as tough as they come.
I had often wondered if my skill in commanding my men came from an unknown power I possessed. I had never spoken of it, even to Jon Ploster, but I was able to sense the tides of a fight when I was close by, even when I might not see them directly with my eyes. In my mind, I had a strange mental image of roots coming from my feet, descending not into the earth, but into the warp and weft which underpins everything. Through these roots, I could feel the vibrations of life and death and read from them how my men fared, or indeed how the men of my enemy fared.
As we inched back, I could sense that Bonecruncher’s exhortations to his troops were driving them forward, almost in a panic at what he might do to them. Their fear of him had become greater than their fear of us and this was what made Bonecruncher such an effective shock commander. As they pressed in through the gate, the men at the back pushed their fellows more tightly up against our front lines, and though we slew them in great numbers, the weight was too much and the inching steps back became bigger as we were pushed unwillingly away from the passage through the wall. The town square was wide and deep – it wouldn’t be long until Warmont’s men spilled around us, allowing them to attack our flanks.
I ordered the men in the back lines to break away from our square and to reinforce each of our flanks, effectively turning our square into a wide column. They complied flawlessly, three hundred men splitting to the left and right, extending our line to block the advance of the enemy. I cursed as I realised I was fractionally too late – the soldiers heading right were able to assume their positions, using their shields and brute force to push the enemy infantry away. Unfortunately, this gave only one outlet for Warmont’s men and with the pressure of their numb
ers, they were successful in breaking out into the town square to the left of the gate, knocking aside the men of the First Cohort I had directed to block their paths.
“Line! Four deep!” bellowed Sinnar off to the right.
“Dabs! Hold fast!” That was Corporal Gloom. “Woods, kill that little shit! Knacker, stop fucking about!”
Our line formed, four men deep, as we were jostled back into a diagonal across the town square. Warmont’s men swarmed through the gap in their hundreds, with more coming through. Men in battle are like the waters of a fast river, taking the path of least resistance as they charge headlong forwards. They flowed past us, gathering in the square to the left of where we fought.
From my periphery, I watched as Commander Wolf’s infantry marched to meet the threat, their first taste of battle looming unavoidably before them. The two sides clashed, equal in numbers for now, but with Warmont’s men flooding through the gates in support. I saw that Bonecruncher had been carried along by this human deluge of his own making and he chortled with glee as his infantry battered at our shield wall.
The volume of the battle increased, washing over me, and I felt myself dropping into that space where I drifted languidly through the currents of the battle. Everything slowed down, though the world remained in such beautiful, sharp focus that I often wished I could call this my reality, rather than it just being a temporary state.
“Trank, Herder, stand firm!” I heard myself shout, the voice distant and not quite my own. We were pushed back further, our line bowing in defiance of our will and strength.
“Planky, Brunt, lock shields! Sods, Lurch, stab that bastard! Do it now!”
I raised my voice to join those of Sinnar and Craddock, Langs and Gloom. This was the test, where the men needed our guidance, our threats and our encouragement.
Soldiers' Redemption (First Cohort Book 1) Page 14