Cora looked at Tara, pale but determined. ‘You ready to run?’
Tara sucked in air and wiped the sweat off her face. Not really, I’m fucking knackered.
‘When was this battle?’ Freya asked, pressing a hand to her heart. Tara could sense the fear she was barely keeping under control. Cora was fidgeting beside her.
‘Three days ago, a few hours after dawn. If you’re right, then it’s a pincer move, a sweep this way to catch the Rank between them and the pass.’
Freya puffed out her cheeks and then punched Tara’s shoulder. ‘You’ve come a hell of a way in three days, Captain. I’m impressed. Have you eaten?’ Tara shook her head and swallowed the surge of saliva flooding her mouth. She’d been trying not to think about it. Freya pulled a small satchel from her back. ‘Meat, cheese, some sour apples, a waterskin. Cora, you ate this morning, so the captain gets half of this tonight when you rest, then you split what’s left between you tomorrow.’
‘How much further?’ Tara asked, fidgeting almost as much as Cora now.
‘If you can keep up with my daughter, two more days. If you can’t, well, she’ll carry on ahead and take the message to our chief and your general. You just do the best you can. Getting through to my people and yours is the most important thing now. Stop for nothing.’
Cora stretched up and kissed her mother’s cheek, and Freya crushed her in a tight embrace and then shoved her roughly away. ‘Dancer’s grace upon you, my love,’ she whispered, tears glinting in her eyes. ‘Run.’
Cora grabbed Tara’s hand and started to move. Tara didn’t even have time to thank the woman or wish her luck, though what she and the rest could do against the force Tara’d seen, she had no idea. Run and hide, she hoped. She disentangled her hand from Cora’s and dropped a few paces behind, watching where the girl ran and copying her where she could. The pace wasn’t as fierce as Tara’s had been, but she knew the girl could keep it up for the rest of the day with barely a pause.
Tara fixed her eyes on the satchel on Cora’s back. Follow the food. If I drop back, I’ll be even hungrier. Tara had no intentions of dropping back.
GILDA
Third moon, eighteenth year of the reign of King Rastoth
Scout camp, Wolf Lands, Gilgoras foothills, Rilporian border
Cam would be furious when he found out Gilda had travelled with the scouts, but she’d felt the gods’ guiding hand in this and had listened, as she always did. She needed to be here. If these Watchers could leave town to lend their aid to their kin fighting in the forests and valleys, then so could she.
The scouts knew the Mireces had been spotted in the valley to the north and were debating whether they should stay in position or go to fight when Freya sprinted from the woods to the south.
‘Run,’ she screamed. ‘All of you, run!’
The scouts leapt to their feet, grabbing weapons, shouting questions drowned out by the blare of cow horns and screams of triumph. A swarm of blue-clad men and a few women zigzagged through the trees on Freya’s heels and the scouts lunged to engage. There were pockets of sporadic fighting as the Mireces surrounded and clubbed the scouts. Didn’t kill. Captured. Please, Fox God, no.
Gilda was lying beneath the low-slung branches of a fir tree and peered from her hiding place at the man and woman standing in the centre of the clearing. They were richly dressed and oozed power and arrogance. Corvus. The cast of his features matched Rillirin’s. The respect the woman was dealt marked her as special, probably the priestess. The so-called Blessed One. They shared a waterskin and laughed, triumphant as though this was the sum total of the Wolves and they’d won a famous victory.
Men and women were dragged before them singly or in pairs to be hacked down while the woman chanted an obscene prayer of supplication.
Gilda’s skin felt as though it was on fire as she crawled from beneath the fir. ‘Parlay,’ she shouted, stunning the clearing into silence. She knelt on one knee and bowed her head. ‘Great King Corvus, do not slaughter these people, in the Dancer’s name I beg you.’
Corvus looked her up and down and laughed. ‘Let them live? They are my enemies and the enemy of my gods. None who are so will live.’
‘Then take me instead,’ Gilda said and stood, shoulders back, meeting Corvus’s amused gaze with her own.
The woman drifted towards her, eyes glittering like a snake’s. ‘Do you know what we would do to you, old woman?’ she asked.
‘Your worst,’ Gilda said and shrugged. ‘What you did to Janis. What you’ve done to countless victims over the centuries. What’s your point?’
The woman licked her lips. ‘Bravado,’ she said, dismissing Gilda’s words. ‘You’d scream louder than any of the others.’
Gilda shrugged again, because it seemed to annoy the bitch. ‘No doubt I would. Again, what’s your point?’
‘Enough,’ Corvus snapped, his voice a lash that goaded the Mireces into movement. They readied the next victims and the sword and axe swung, silver on the way down, red on the upswing.
A bright, deep peace filled Gilda’s stomach and overflowed to tingle in every limb. She inhaled, raised her hands in benediction to everyone in the clearing, Mireces and Watcher alike. ‘The Dancer spreads Her peace upon us all. We who die now have nothing to fear, for She will take us into Her Light. I pity you, king, and your toy priestess. You have to live in the filth of your petty religion. We do not. We are bound for the Light. Blessed Dancer, strong and true, to Your Light we consecrate ourselves. Honoured Fox God, swift and sure, shepherd our souls into Your Grace.’ She tapped her fingertips to her heart.
One by one the Watchers relaxed, lowered weapons and fists and recited the prayer with her, fingers on chests, eyes on the sky and each other. It was all she could give them, unless she could convince Corvus to turn from the Blood into the Light.
The woman flicked back her hair and grabbed Gilda’s sleeve; she turned to Corvus. ‘Oh, Sire, let me keep this one,’ she begged. ‘She amuses me.’ She looked back at Gilda. ‘And perhaps she will take her place in sacrifice one day.’
Gilda’s eyes focused on her, as though only just noticing her presence. ‘Hmm? What did you say, dear?’ she asked. ‘I’m sorry, I wasn’t listening.’ The woman’s eyes narrowed, her lips thinned, and Gilda looked away again, back to her people, her voice joining theirs as the prayer swelled again.
‘Very well, Blessed One. I commend her into your care. As for the others, kill them. And make sure she watches. I want her to know how little her precious Dancer cares for them.’
‘Our next move, Sire?’ Valan asked. ‘They’ll know the pincer move’s coming if that Ranker we’ve been tracking reaches them ahead of us. She’s not here, that’s for sure.’ He wiped his sword clean on the coat of a dead woman.
Gilda’s heart lurched when Corvus’s gaze fixed on her. His smile was cold and cruel. ‘I think we’ve marched far enough north to convince anyone in these woods we’re heading for the valley. Time to change direction. Tell me, priestess, how far is it to Watchtown?’
MACE
Third moon, eighteenth year of the reign of King Rastoth
Blood Pass Valley, Gilgoras Mountains, Cattle Lands
Beautiful day to die.
The sun shone on the green of the valley and winked from the steel of the armies drawn up facing each other. The Rank’s brass trumpets clarioned to the sky, incessant, demanding, and the archers began to move. The rain had eased with the dawn, but the ground was claggy. The green would vanish soon enough, trodden into a quagmire. Harder to fight in; easier to die in.
‘The civilians are moving,’ Colonel Dorcas observed and indicated the stream of men and women loping through the edge of the woods in their brown and green garb, splashes of chainmail and boiled leather. When they stopped, they were almost invisible.
‘They weren’t to move yet,’ Mace said and swore. ‘What have they seen? Abbas, send a courier down there. He’s to leave his horse at the edge of the trees, though, I don’t want him
giving away their position.’
‘Yes, General,’ Abbas said and strutted off, polished stick held tight under one arm. Mace and Dorcas exchanged glances. Abbas really did need rotating to another Rank, preferably one off the edge of the known world.
‘Come on then, you bastards,’ Mace muttered. ‘Let’s see what you’ve got.’ As if in response, clouds of arrows buzzed up from both armies, hung against the pale morning sun, and then flung down into the ranks of men. There was silence, before faint screams drifted on the lazy breeze.
‘Give them ten volleys and then we’ll try the cavalry,’ Mace said. ‘See if we can’t break them early.’
The muscles in his legs twitched with the urge to run and fight, to help turn the tide, stop the war before it could really start. A flicker of white caught his eye: the enormous banner they’d made flapped and then hung still so he could read it. ‘Your allies are in prison.’ If Corvus had seen it, it hadn’t had the desired effect. His Rank loosed another volley.
‘It’s down to us, then,’ Mace whispered. ‘Steel and will and discipline.’ More screams and the lines becoming ragged, the edges nibbled away, a stream of walking wounded making their way back, others carried by their mates.
Another volley. And another.
The Rank’s bowmen ran for the edges of the battle where the valley sloped and took up new positions behind wicker hides. Through the gap they’d left thundered the cavalry, five hundred huge and heavily armoured horses, a battering ram of steel and flesh.
The ground shook as the riders couched lances and bore down on the Mireces on their shaggy horses. Abbas was silent beside Mace, rapt. This was warfare for him, noble and picturesque. Well, picturesque up until impact, anyway. Then it was horses ripped open, men flung over the heads of their mounts, and the charge became a screaming, swirling mêlée that nobody could win.
To Mace’s left, Dorcas picked relentlessly at a ragged fingernail with his small front teeth. The rest of his staff crowded on the little hillock. Majors and colonels – and generals, more’s the pity – didn’t fight in the lines unless there was no other choice.
‘The cavalry is pulling back, sir,’ Dorcas murmured. Abbas tutted. Horses and men disengaged and cantered heavily back down the field. The riders turned them, rested them for a moment, and went again.
‘Horses won’t stand much more of this,’ Mace said as the impact shrieked through the valley. Mace stretched on to his toes and stared hard, trying to make sense of the chaos. Too many horses were down, but some of the Mireces’ mounts had refused the charge. ‘Go once more and then we’ll have to pull them out. When we do, send the infantry in straight away. We’ll take this hand-to-hand. They’ll break. And, Abbas, have the cavalry dismount and form up with the infantry as a second wave.’
‘They won’t like that, sir,’ Abbas said, aghast.
‘I know they won’t like it, Colonel, I also don’t give a runny shit for their damned pride. They can prance about on their ponies when the war is won. Until then, do as I say.’
Abbas flushed and ripped off a salute. The final charge drummed across the valley, armour and horseflesh crunched into each other and he focused on it, ignoring Dorcas’s smug smile around his chewing of his fingers.
‘Come on, come on, break them. Break them, damn you.’ Abbas’s stick slapped against his boot top.
But neither side gained an advantage and as the forces broke trumpets blared the cavalry retreat. As expected, the Mireces jeered the straggling line of horses, some riderless, and men, some horseless, as they began to disengage. The horses were exhausted, the mud sucking at their hooves as they straggled to the side to allow the infantry to prepare. A few dozen Mireces horses trotted into the open space and then lengthened stride. One last charge into Mace’s unready infantry.
‘Infantry to the fore and set spear, now,’ Mace roared and his herald squeaked at his trumpet, spat desperately, and sounded the order. The trumpet call dragged the Rank’s cavalry around to see the Mireces charging but they were tangled, spent, the horses blown.
Fuck it. Mace yelled for his horse and flung it into a gallop down the hillock, roaring for the cavalry to re-form. Men and horses milled and got in each other’s way. Mace saw a knot of mounted men and steered around them, yelling for them to follow. They complied and herd instinct brought two dozen more warhorses charging after, some without riders. They galloped through the ragged gaps in the infantry line towards the oncoming force. Too late.
Mireces horses bounded into the front ranks of men, impaling themselves on planted spears, charging through those which hadn’t been set and crushing the first three ranks of foot beneath their hooves and falling bodies. Riders leant from saddles to hack at arms and faces, forcing the maddened animals deeper into the First Thousand.
‘It’s a suicide charge,’ Mace screamed, but his words were lost in the wind. Whose suicide, he wondered as his horse pounded through the mud. He didn’t have a lance. He dragged his sword from its sheath and dug in his spurs. Screaming again, Mace led a score of cavalry around the mêlée and in from the flank, driving a wedge into the Mireces attack.
Break you fuckers, break. Mace gripped the pommel of his saddle as his stallion reared and kicked with lethal accuracy. A Mireces horse went to its knees, stunned, and Mace’s mount trampled it and its hapless rider into claret smears.
His gaze was snagged by a laughing face in the chaos. Captain Crys Tailorson, who he’d left at the command post, threw himself out of the saddle of – Mace squinted – Abbas’s horse and lunged into the infantry, yelling orders. The line stiffened, tightened up and surged back, closing with the exhausted Mireces cavalry.
‘Hold them,’ Mace screamed as he hacked into a man’s back, stabbed a horse in the neck and forced his stallion deeper into the fray.
RILLIRIN
Third moon, eighteenth year of the reign of King Rastoth
Blood Pass Valley, Gilgoras Mountains, Cattle Lands
‘All right, we’re going. Keep low, they’ve archers up on the slopes and you’re running right across their line of fire. You know what to do?’ Rillirin nodded and Dalli clapped her on the shoulder. ‘Don’t drop your spear, you’re going to need it.’
By the time Rillirin had worked up enough saliva to speak, Dalli was gone, sprinting down from the cover of the treeline into the valley. Rillirin sucked in air and followed. She ran with the others, hurdled a body, stumbled on landing and kept going, spikes of pain shooting from her ankle with each step. A hundred strides, eighty, fifty. A Wolf fell just ahead of her, blue-fletched arrow in her back. Dalli crouched lower, spear in one hand, small shield held up in the other. Rillirin copied her as best she could, the breath whistling in her throat.
Thirty strides, twenty, ten. Dalli threw her shield to one side and dragged a knife from her belt, came up behind a horse and slashed through its hamstrings. It screamed and its hindquarters collapsed; the rider rolled off and turned to engage her and Rillirin stabbed him in the belly with her spear, both hands locked around the haft, lunging with little training and an abundance of terror. His expression was one of pure astonishment as he grabbed at the spear lodged in his gut. Rillirin pulled it free and he fell.
She stared at him; then Dalli was dragging at her arm. ‘Move,’ she shouted and slithered forward towards the next horse, ripped open its belly, stabbed the rider in the side for good measure and was on to the next, bloody to the shoulders. Rillirin stumbled in her wake.
The Wolves wove among the Mireces’ horses, killing and hamstringing where they could, laming where they couldn’t. The animals panicked and pressed forward, tighter together, while the infantry stood firm on the other side, penning them in.
Don’t look them in the eye, not their fault they’re owned by Mireces. The horses were panicking, flicking out hooves, spinning on their hocks to find a way out. One stepped sideways on to Rillirin’s foot and she shouted in pain, smashing the butt of her spear into its leg. It shrilled and reared, flinging its rider back
wards on top of her. They thrashed in the mud, the man squirming until he flipped over and slammed a forearm across her throat.
Choking, hands slipping, spear gone somewhere beneath her, Rillirin flailed at him, found her knife and slid it in, scraped it off his hip and into his side. He stiffened, his eyes very wide as they stared into hers. She punched it in twice more and his mouth sagged open, revealing grey, empty gums. Too old for war.
She heaved him off her, stamped on the fingers he tried to snake around her leg, gagged on blood and dragged her spear from under his body. She could hear herself screaming, rage and triumph and fear and joy all mingling in a bright clarity, the grain of the wood, the sticky heat of the blood, the dragging of the mud each a distinct and blinding sensation.
Rillirin dodged a flying hoof and followed it back in, ramming her spear between the horse’s hind legs into the bladder. The animal shuddered and screamed, its rider turned in surprise, and she thrust the spear into his lung, practically climbing the horse’s collapsed rear legs to push him out of the saddle.
Hands grabbed him from in front and an infantryman dragged him into the mud. Sarilla’s piercing whistle soared over the shouting and Rillirin slogged for the edge of the battle with the others. As they opened an escape route for them the surviving horses, panicked beyond all control, wheeled and galloped madly up the valley, scattering men and riders, trampling any who fell before them.
Rillirin slid to a halt on her knees next to Dalli and watched them go, red from crown to heels with hot, thick, sticky blood. ‘We stopping?’ she panted and Dalli’s green eyes glittered in a red mask.
‘Stopping?’ she wheezed. ‘Girl, we’ve barely started. If we’re still alive in an hour, we can rest then. Up you get, take position between me and Tessa here. Spears work as a unit; we keep each other safe.’
The Mireces’ siege engines opened up as they got into line, raining stones and rocks down on Wolf, Rank and Mireces alike. Rillirin looked for a shield and found a Raider instead. He had a shield, a huge thing he tried to smash into her face. Rillirin stumbled left and poked at him with the spear, pulled it back as he whipped the shield sideways to protect his flank and Dalli used the opening to stab him in the neck. He fell.
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