Sovran at War (Kingslayer Book 2)

by Honor Raconteur

  Darius stared at him, jaw unhinged, mind blank for a moment. Then he spluttered, “I’m not that predictable, am I?”

  His bodyguard had the audacity to chuckle. “Sir. Really want me to answer that?”

  No, he’d really rather Tolk didn’t. Growling to himself, as he felt oddly out of joint at Tolk’s very precise guess, he shifted the letters aimlessly about for a moment until he felt centered. “Yes. That was the order I was about to give.”

  “You’re truly predicting loss here?”

  “I have no idea what will happen,” Darius admitted frankly. “I’m not even sure of when it will happen. This is one of the strangest situations I’ve ever had in battle.” Thinking about that, he added slowly, “Possibly because I’m not accustomed to being on the defensive side. Most of my career, I was the aggressor.”

  “That could be part of it, sir,” Tolk agreed with what sounded suspiciously like amusement. “Scouts reported nothing?”

  “No movement, at least. More people seemed to have joined the main force. I honestly expect them to attack sometime tomorrow or the day after. I just…” he trailed off, irritated and at a loss for words to describe all of the emotions boiling and roiling through him. “Nothing good has ever come out of fighting the barbarians.”

  “Win or lose here, sir, I have perfect faith you’ll stop ’em.”

  Darius stared at Tolk’s eyes, gleaming in the firelight, and swallowed hard. “I pray to Shaa that I can live up to that faith. Because if I don’t stop them, I don’t want to imagine the consequences.”

  They came with the dawn, the morning fog still lingering, not yet burned off by the sun. The alarms went up from the sentries and the scouts, all of them pulling sharply back in toward the main camp. Officers barked out orders, soldiers scrambled to pick up weapons and shields, forming their ranks like well-oiled gears meshing together, and all through this the barbarians moved quietly, not a murmur from them.

  Darius had only one arm in a sleeve as he came out of his tent to find that Roshan had saddled Sohrab, Bohme standing anxiously nearby, already on the lookout for trouble. Barbarians were famous for sneak attacks and they didn’t think twice about assassination. It was part of why they were so much fun as an enemy.

  An army runner he didn’t know, a boy barely fourteen if a day, came sprinting up, stopping two safe feet away from the warhorse and snapping out a salute before words tumbled out of his mouth, one running into another, “General, scouts report approximately sixteen thousand barbarians approaching, five clan banners, all following a tall woman riding astride a roan horse.”

  More or less what Darius expected. “How long until contact?”

  “A candle’s mark, sir, no more.”

  Close, so insanely close. How had they gotten this close without the sentries putting up the alarm? The fog, perhaps, masking their movements? Darius would never believe that many men could move silently except with this enemy. He’d seen thousands of barbarians move before, without a whisper of sound, sneaking up behind the enemy. It was why he had stationed so many sentries at every camp, paranoid about being ambushed from behind.

  Darius swung up in the saddle, ordering as he did, “Report to Behnam that I’ll be there momentarily. Roshan, stay with me during this, don’t venture from my side unless under my orders.”

  “Sir!” Both young men snapped out salutes.

  He looked for and found Tolk, already astride a horse, waiting on Roshan. Good, both bodyguards in place. Gathering up Sohrab’s reins, he nudged the horse around and guided him toward the center of the highway, standing directly in between both hills, not that he had any intention of staying there. It would be the worst possible place to stand, actually, the most direct path available for enemy contact, which Darius couldn’t afford to do. He had to stay slightly apart from the fighting to make sure he kept the overall picture clear, to give commands as the tide of battle turned.

  Behnam sat on his dark bay stallion, half-turned toward Darius, urging him silently to catch up quickly. “Bresalier,” he greeted with a quiet rumble, “we’re out of time. Still want the right?”

  “Yes,” Darius responded, gesturing toward the hill in question. “Stick with the plan but innovate if you need to.”

  “I’ll send a runner if I change anything up.”

  “Likewise.” Darius didn’t know what else he could possibly say and so didn’t try. They didn’t have time for a lengthy discussion anyway. He turned Sohrab around and went to the right hill, trusting Behnam to take command of the forces on the left. With the split of the pikemen, and two generals, it was easier all around to keep the command line clear. Darius rode around toward the back of the hill, where the Night Raiders lay in wait, alert but at their ease, waiting entirely on his signal. Darius had deliberately kept the highway clear in between the hills so that if any barbarians tried to come through, the Night Raiders could slam into them. A bait and trap tactic at its most rudimentary but the barbarians weren’t known for their sophistication in war. They’d likely fall for the obvious ploy. At least some of them would.

  Darius gave them a lazy salute and nod as he rode past them, taking up position behind the pikemen, some eight rows back. He took a moment to sit there and breathe, a little more challenging this morning, as the fog invaded his lungs. It felt cool and damp, air mixed with humidity, so that he breathed more often to compensate. Or maybe his breathing had quickened as the age-old adrenaline surged in his blood, familiar and welcome, his body becoming more battle ready.

  It felt cool this morning, the dampness of the fog not helping, and Darius felt fleetingly glad for Sohrab’s warmth. The men shivered a little now, but they’d all be grateful for it later, when the fighting actually started. Darius absently wished they’d had enough time for him to make sure that every man downed a glass of water first, before battle, but no time now. When they rotated out the front ranks for the reserves, he’d enforce the command to drink then.

  Roshan pressed in closer to him, their stirrups overlapping so he could whisper loudly, “What are they waiting on?”

  “Each clan has their own superstitions, their own mantras, that they always say before battle. They won’t engage until those are done.” Darius shot him a quick, wry look. “You see now what I meant earlier, don’t you? They could be the most terrifying fighting force in the world if not for the superstitions tripping them up.”

  “Because of their rituals they gave us time to set up the ranks,” Roshan observed, mouth pulled down in a disapproving and disbelieving frown. “They should have hit us hard while we were scrambling.”

  Darius couldn’t help but agree. “Now, now, Roshan, don’t interrupt your enemy while he’s making a mistake and don’t try to correct him either.”

  Some of the foot soldiers standing in front of him obviously heard, as they gave low chuckles. Darius caught one man’s eye and winked, amused when the man grinned back before facing forward again.

  Whatever ritual completed, a sonorous cry came up from the back ranks of the barbarians, swelling and moving forward, rolling like an incoming tide. Darius couldn’t quite see details from this distance, but the woman on the roan horse jabbed her weapon into the air in a clear signal and started forward, quickly building up momentum until she sprinted the last of the distance.

  Darius’s heart double-timed in his chest, a quick tempo that drowned out some of the noise, and he called his own orders to the commanders set at even intervals. “READY ARMS!”

  The order repeated itself in different voices, at different strengths, pikes lowered until they sat on the shoulders of the front row, men bracing themselves for impact. Time, time, time. Even though they moved with brisk efficiency, the tick of time passed in Darius’s head, relentless and nerve wracking. It barely took a quarter candlemark for them all to find their places and yet it felt like a small eternity.

  Darius’s eyes took them all in, one last sweep, relieved to see that they had staggered themselves precisely as they’d been d
rilled. Of every three men, two took several steps back, creating pockets in the line so as to draw the charging horses in.

  Behnam’s side of the hill took the first wave—equine screams, war cries, and weapons clashing made a thunderous din of noise that drowned everything else out. Darius winced at the volume of it, but didn’t let it distract him. The rest of the barbarians converged on his side, racing up the slight incline, only slightly slowed down as the horses dug their hooves in, straining that little bit more to climb up the slope.

  They crashed into Darius’s side with no less force, and even twenty feet back from it, it made Darius want to flinch. He couldn’t forget how bloodthirsty and ruthless these people were but he could never become immune to it either. Their faces twisted up in gruesome rage, battle cries still rattling from their lungs like a carrion call, or guttural screams. For a moment, just a moment, Darius felt as if he stood at the jaws of the underworld, with demons calling for his soul in terrifying voices.

  Blinking, he dismissed the fancy and called out strongly, “HOLD THE LINE!”

  The pikemen in reserve shouted their own encouragements, and a few reached out, helping to brace their fellow soldiers before anyone could lose their footing. Doing so would be a death sentence and Darius didn’t reprimand anyone that helped their brothers-in-arms keep their feet. Even if it broke formation a little, which countermanded orders, he felt they were keeping the spirit of the law well enough.

  Another push from the barbarians and the line wavered, bending under the force of the attack, and Darius held his breath. Would it break? Would he be forced to do something more drastic? He didn’t want to call in the Baiji, not quite yet. He could still see some of the barbarian forces hovering in the back, not engaged, and he wanted them much closer and trapped within the space of the two hills before he called his last card into play.

  “Sir, the center!” Roshan snapped out, pointing.

  Darius snapped his head around to see that at least a hundred barbarians were trying to sneak through while the main forces were occupied. Swearing and mentally kicking himself for being distracted, he ordered Roshan, “Green flag.”

  His apprentice nimbly snatched the green flag from where it sat rolled up in his saddlebags and raised it high above his head, waving it frantically back and forth.

  The Night Raiders either anticipated that Darius would send the order for them to move, or they were watching Roshan for the first hint of movement, as the flag barely made it into the air before the mercenaries moved out double-time.

  Darius tried to angle himself so that he could watch them as well as the fighting in front of him. His attention split in three ways, toward the center, his own forces on the hill, and the barbarian forces that still hadn’t engaged, what was wrong with them?!

  He snarled out several choice curses, mostly toward Darr, as this was the sort of thing the god of chaos would do while laughing hysterically at Darius’s frustration. Sometimes Darius was convinced he was a favorite of the dark god’s, and moments like these lent credence to the theory.

  “Sir, the front lines don’t seem to be holding up that well with General Behnam,” Roshan observed, a tremor of nerves shaking his words.

  Risking a glance, Darius found he was right, as Behnam had already been forced to employ his reserve troops in three different areas. Not a good sign, they’d barely been at this battle for half a candlemark. Had he gotten a large brunt of the barbarian forces? It was a little hard to tell in this melee.

  “Should we call in the Baiji?” Roshan pressed, nearly having to yell to be heard.

  Shaking his head, Darius had to pause and shove bangs out of his eyes, the hair sticking back due of the dampness of the fog. “We can’t afford to prematurely show our hand. Calling them too soon will be just as disastrous as calling for them too late.”

  Although it might come down to that. Grimly, Darius turned his head to see how the Night Raiders fared. They were in the thick of fighting, not defeated, but barely holding their own. More and more barbarians were trying their luck by bulling through the center, which made sense, as that was the path of least resistance.

  If Darius had been able to catch any cats prior to this battle, he would have been flinging them at the barbarians’ heads right at this moment. The cat shields weren’t working at all, and either they were overcoming their own reluctance in order to do so, or they were so tied up in the battle that they weren’t paying attention to the design on the shields. Or possibly a combination of both. Either way, it wasn’t giving them the edge here that Darius had seen earlier. Pulling the same trick too many times often lost its effectiveness. Darius just wished he could have used the ploy one more time before it failed.

  Standing in his stirrups, he got enough vantage to see over everyone’s heads, toward the very back. The barbarians lingered there, not engaging, and not even shouting any war cries. “Come on,” he snarled in frustration between clenched teeth. “Come on, come on, come on!”

  “SIR!” Kaveh came up running, face flushed and beaded with sweat, although his eyes stayed clear. “I’m seeing movement toward the flanks!”

  When had Kaveh lost his horse? Shoving aside the errant thought, he rose in his stirrups again, Darius checked with his own eyes, and found his commander was right. How he’d spotted it from his position, Darius didn’t know, but some of the barbarians had reached the decisions that if they couldn’t go through here, then obviously, they should try going around. “Deploy archers. Use some of the reserves to cut them off if you have to.”

  Kaveh snapped out a salute then broke into a run, bellowing orders for archers to form ranks and fire at will. Darius had a bad feeling Kaveh’s horse might have caught one of the arrows flying about. Hopefully it wasn’t critical.

  Turning back to the other side, Darius checked Behnam’s situation to find that the barbarians there had apparently reached the same thought. If they couldn’t go through, they’d go around. Only Behnam didn’t have enough reserves to stop them, and the archers struggled to keep the enemy from advancing.

  In just under a candlemark, they were losing ground.

  Darius felt another urge to swear. Did he not do enough sacrifices to Shaa lately? Was that the problem? Because of his negligence, was She unable to keep Darr at bay? That was the only possible explanation for why so many things were going wrong at once.

  From Behnam’s side, a red flag shot into the air, waving, quickly followed by a black one. Behnam was calling for the Baiji, demanding that Darius order them out now.

  Did he dare?

  Did he dare not to?

  Behnam would lose that hill soon, no doubt of that, but the back lines of the Roran barbarians still weren’t moving, and if they didn’t get into proper position, Darius couldn’t use the Baiji in the hammer and anvil tactics he’d planned. They’d lose the proper force to crush the enemy on all sides.

  Then again, if Behnam fell, they wouldn’t have the necessary force there either.

  “Sir?” Roshan pressed. “Should I raise the red flag and call the Baiji too?”

  It would take both generals raising the red flag for Tunheim to lead the Baiji cavalry out of the gates. Darius eyed the handle of the flag protruding from Roshan’s saddlebags, thinking harder and faster than he had in a long time.

  “No.” A sick feeling in his gut, Darius forced himself to meet Roshan’s eyes. “No, we need to change tactics.”

  Panic and unease threatened to claw its way up his throat, and Darius could feel his stomach churning in acid, but he forced himself to meet Roshan’s eyes. “I need you to go directly to Tunheim and give him new orders.”

  Roshan blinked, startled, then his dark eyes darted around them, taking in the situation, and coming to the obvious conclusion. Darius didn’t have anyone else he could afford to send. Every single hand they had was needed here. Roshan was the only one that could go, the only one that Tunheim would recognize as having the authority to speak with Darius’s voice. Turning back to Dari
us, he gave a nod, drawing himself up as if to reassure his mentor that he could do this. He put on a somber expression, likely meant to make himself look older. The effort utterly failed and instead emphasized his youth. “Yes, sir. What orders?”

  Was he ever that young? Darius had been the same age as Roshan, almost, when he joined the army. He had to remind himself of that, firmly, bringing his voice under control before it betrayed his nervousness. “Tell Tunheim to not aim for the back. He’s to split his force evenly and come in from both sides. Come now.”

  Proving that he had learned military protocol, Roshan repeated faithfully, “Do not aim for the back. Split your force evenly and come in from both sides. Come now.”

  “Good,” Darius acknowledged, still even and calm, as if his heart didn’t want to beat out of his chest. “After you deliver the message come back to me. Go.”

  Roshan passed over the flags, put heels to flanks while turning his horse’s head, immediately heading for Ruralcalba’s front gates. Tolk spared Darius a reassuring nod before following at the boy’s heels. He watched them go for a moment that he probably couldn’t spare and whispered a prayer to Shaa that Roshan stayed safe while running that message. If anything happened to the boy, Darius wouldn’t be able to forgive himself.

  Another army runner came sprinting up to him, panting harshly, dark curls plastered with sweat to his forehead. “Sir! Commander Ramin says the barbarians are close to breaking through the ranks. Orders?”

  Ramin had the section closest to the highway, on the downward slope of the hill. Darius anticipated the worst trouble there from day one, but there was little that could be done about it. He’d given the man the most reserves out of the entire line and it still hadn’t been enough. Grimacing, he told the runner, “Tell him to hold his ground no matter what. The Baiji are coming.”