by Tom Lloyd
‘Only on a fresco,’ Nai added, ‘seeing them before you’re dead would be … well, as portents go, it’s like pissing into the face of the Reapers.’
‘What did the fresco look like?’
Nai frowned. ‘A figure of sorts, made up of a flock of crows: it had a face, I think, but mostly it was wings and beaks.’
Very deliberately Amber angled his head up and the others followed suit. The rooks or whatever they were darted momentarily closer as a gust of wind buffeted them, then they climbed and spiralled towards the river.
What would Horsemistress Kirl think as she saw me now? What message would her raven speak for me?
‘Where’s our scryer?’ Amber asked. ‘I want an update.’
Colonel Dassai swore and wrenched back on his reins, one arm raised high to halt the unit. The captain beside him bellowed the order and they clattered to an untidy halt, the companies strung behind them following suit like surly offspring.
‘Ready bows,’ Dassai yelled, waiting a heartbeat as the captain repeated the order. ‘Bugler, order all the others except Second Company back to high ground.’ He stood up in his stirrups: the enemy camp was stirring, a sudden mass of movement that made him think of a nest of snakes, long coils unfolding and preparing to strike. Troops were running for the defensive ditches – and then Devoted cavalry burst from the left flank, driving hard to cut them off.
Dassai checked behind him. The other companies were still wheeling and preparing to withdraw. He could see their officers bellowing orders; most had followed his example and were not yet wearing their helms, displaying the sweeps of blue-stained skin on their faces left there by Litania, the Trickster Aspect.
‘First Company advance!’ he ordered, and as one they turned. Every man there knew his job; the Green Scarves had been at the forefront in the war against the Menin, raiding and punishing at every opportunity. Then, they had been the bold and the arrogant, as eager for battle as their commander, General Daken. Those who remained were disciplined veterans now, but still bold, their arrogance now earned.
The horses drove forward unchecked as their riders nocked arrows and prepared for slaughter. The Devoted cavalry had poured from their camp with little regard for order, each man intent only on getting clear of his comrades so he could manoeuvre; though two companies numbered only a hundred men, their sudden advance and the volley of arrows as soon as they were in range took the Devoted unawares.
With horsemen still pouring into the fray, those in the lead turned away from the attack, heading back to the safety of their camp.
‘Two more volleys,’ Dassai called, firing himself even as he called out the order. The wind was behind them for the moment and their arrows carried well, most striking home.
The cavalry ahead of them broke into two halves, one group wheeling aside while the other charged straight for Dassai’s archers. He looked back to ensure the rest of his men were clear; they were already at the foot of the sloping high ground where he’d left the second legion. Their passage stirred up a clamour of rooks that had been feasting on the ungrazed ground. With indignant caws and lazy strokes of their wings, the birds made for an ancient oak to the north that dominated the horizon.
‘Find yourselves a good view,’ Dassai laughed as he watched the rooks. ‘There’ll be food enough for all of you soon!’
A rogue gust of air thumped down onto his back and whipped a stalk of grass across his face. Dassai watched the grass dance away through the air, carried high by the wind.
‘Lord Ilit doesn’t approve,’ the captain commented with a smile that crinkled the long pair of blue lines running from forehead to throat.
Dassai reached over and roughly patted the man’s stained cheek. ‘Tough shit for Ilit then!’ he replied. ‘We’re Litania’s now. If Ilit don’t like it, he can argue it out with the Mad Axe.’
He looked at the Devoted camp, where more cavalry were emerging, accompanied by heavy infantry, judging by their broad oval shields.
‘Fall back,’ Dassai called, and the captain repeated with a bellow. ‘Back to the high ground so they can bravely drive us from it. Looks like General Afasin’s found his spine after all!’
The captain bared his teeth in anticipation. ‘Reckon the Mad Axe will want it as a souvenir?’
Dassai laughed as he turned with the rest of the unit and they started back to the high ground the other legion was holding. He cocked his head in thought.
‘You know, Captain? He might just.’
‘They come.’ The scryer was a hairless woman with delicate features, one of only a hundred or so women still supporting the army; most had been left behind at the camp with the supply wagons and a few hundred cavalry as escort.
‘As planned?’ Amber asked.
The scryer closed her eyes to focus her magical sight and Amber realised with a start that there were thin white scars on her eyelids. He’d heard of some who intentionally put out one eye to better channel their abilities, but he’d never seen magical runes cut into the eyelids. The symbols reminded him of when he’d been in the Library of Seasons at the Circle City, and a black pain throbbed at the front of his head as the memory blossomed in his mind: the Fearen House with its hundreds of magical books, Nai at his side and his lord at the desk. The man’s face was a blank, a featureless mask of flesh without expression or animation. Amber shuddered, involuntarily bowing his head and drawing his hands to his chest.
A cold and hollow sensation blossomed in his chest: he heard his mother’s voice in his mind, distant and garbled – an old memory, his mother calling his name from the verandah at home, but it had been a powerful one. Now it was barely within reach, eroded by the magic of the Gods as they erased his lord’s name. He had been at his training temple, still several years off his army commission, when his mother had died giving birth to a baby girl. The child had died too, but Amber had named her Marsay in private, despite Menin tradition not to name stillborns. He still thought of her in his quieter moments. The pain in his chest intensified. Marsay’s life had ended before it had even begun; now her family name had been torn from history too.
‘Amber?’
He became aware of a hand on his elbow and he looked up at Nai’s anxious face.
‘No time for memories,’ the King Man’s said. ‘You hear me, Amber?’
Hearing his name repeated dulled the chill seeping into his bones. He forced himself to take a breath, to fill his lungs with the surging energy that filled the air above them.
‘No memories,’ he said in a hoarse voice. ‘Scryer, where are their infantry?’
‘Advancing from the camp,’ the scryer replied. ‘Heavy infantry, coming to match ours.’
‘Nai, do they have mages?’
He nodded, his fingers closing around a silver charm hanging from his neck that shone brightly in the dull light. ‘Two, but neither surpass me, I’m certain. You’ve no need to worry about them.’
‘Will they discover our plan, though?’
Nai’s eyes flicked towards the Legion of the Damned, tramping in silence behind the left flank. ‘Only if they investigate closely, and there’s nothing to attract their attention. They’re not strong enough to bother wasting their energy.’
‘Good.’ The black birds swooped and danced over the ground between the armies and for a moment he imagined they were tracing letters in the sky: a distant, desperate attempt to restore the name that had been stolen from him.
‘Cavalry pushing ahead,’ the scryer reported, eyes her closed once more. ‘Four legions-worth on the slopes of the high ground, more getting into position behind.’
‘Sound the drums, close for charge,’ he ordered, and the deep, heavy boom of Menin wardrums rolled like thunder over the plain. The drums confirmed the orders every officer had been given. In normal circumstances they might be alarmed at being told to present a flank to cavalry, but they all knew the plan of attack.
Amber gestured for his guards to start towards the left, heading for the gap betw
een the undead mercenaries and the rear of his infantry lines.
‘I need to be closer,’ he said aloud, though not even Nai had questioned his movement. ‘We cannot rely on the Legion alone.’
The sound of hooves grew louder, then there were shouts of panic from the flank they were heading for. The Menin cavalry were scouts and skirmishers, not troops of the line. Amber knew he could rely on them to follow their orders: to visibly and noisily panic when the enemy closed on them.
He’d wondered if Colonel Dassai would argue, but he had accepted his orders and Amber knew he’d follow them to the letter. Not even the famous fighting spirit of the Green Scarves would stop him letting Menin and undead mercenaries take the brunt of the enemy attack.
‘Dassai’s men are running from the field,’ Nai commented, ‘and the flank’s crumbling, just as you commanded. So this is what battle looks like, eh?’
Sergeant Menax hawked and spat noisily. ‘Battle’s worse,’ he said with contempt. ‘Whole fucking lot worse. This is just folks running away.’
‘But still, for my first battle – even knowing the plan, it’s a little alarming to watch our flank crumble like that.’
Menax grinned. ‘They raise conscripts to fight us and you’ll see what fucking crumbling looks like! I saw the Cheme Third face down fifteen thousand savages from the waste once. All fighters, true enough, but no order: field looked like a slaughterhouse once the Third had finished chopping their way across half a mile o’ ground.’
Amber loosened the ties on his scimitars. ‘Lost both my swords that day,’ he commented. ‘The earth was stained red by the end, blood soaked everything.’ He voice hardened. ‘But the Third’s gone now. I’m the last of them, because they never learned how to retreat.’
‘Buggered if you’re learnin’ today, sir,’ Menax said with feeling.
‘No, there’s no retreat for us,’ Amber agreed, his eyes on the stirring crowd of undead right in front of them. The Legion of the Damned had seen their enemy. ‘Nai, they ready?’
‘They know.’
‘Good. This is the first step home. Every one’s going to be stained with blood.’
A torrent of cavalry swept away from in front of the Legion – his Menin cavalry, eagerly following orders. Amber would have used this same tactic against the Farlan too, so proud were they of their élite – that battle would never be fought now, but before they reached the Waste and started the long, dangerous journey home, Amber was determined Menin prowess would be remembered across the West.
He drew his scimitars as the Legion of the Damned advanced into the attack. This close he could smell them. Nothing living smelled that way, mouldering and ancient. The thunder of hooves intensified—
Then it faltered, and Amber felt his hands tighten around the grips of his swords as the scream of horses rang out and rooks cawed derisively overhead.
Dust and movement obscured his view, but Amber knew the horses had caught the scent of the Legion and started panicking. He started to run forward, suddenly desperate to be in the midst of the fighting himself, and from the maelstrom emerged a rider in the blue and red of the Knights of the Temples, at full pelt. Amber stepped away from his men to meet him before any of them could stop him, but the rider was clinging frantically to his steed and barely aware of anything else. Amber swung a scimitar as the Devoted soldier passed, cleaving up into his ribs and tipping the man from his saddle.
Before Amber could finish the man off, one of the Legion had spotted the enemy on the ground. The injured soldier shrieked in terror at the sight of the undead mercenary, but his cries were short-lived. Wielding a spiked axe with little effort, the mercenary grabbed his prey with one emaciated hand and drove the spike into his gut.
Discarding the corpse, the mercenary took a step towards Amber, a look of dark malevolence on its desiccated face. It wore a skullcap helm, one large steel pauldron on its left shoulder and a leather cuirass that sat at an uncomfortable angle on its hips. The big Menin faced it down, scimitars at the ready, but in the next moment the mercenary refocused its attention and it stalked jerkily back to the fighting.
Amber looked back at Nai. The King’s Man was far smaller than the Menin around him, but a black flame flickered lazily on the edge of his mace. For all his apprehension, Nai’s magery made him more deadly than the rest.
Amber led the way. They ploughed into the flank of the cavalry, where one regiment had broken off to protect their rear. A javelin glanced off his helm and fell between him and Nai, but the Menin didn’t even flinch as he slashed up at his attacker’s legs. The Devoted soldier caught the blow on his red-painted shield, but before the man had a chance to draw his own sword he was thrown unceremoniously to the ground. As Amber watched, a dark figure dropped down onto the soldier and pinned him down with one knee on his chest as it pounded at his head.
Amber looked around; he could sense the tide of movement falling away from the assault. At the back the Devoted were still pressing forward, unaware of what awaited them, but the Damned were surging through the kicking mess of cavalry with unnatural purpose, chopping through limbs and dragging men from their horses. Someone shrieked for the retreat, rendered incoherent by terror and drowned out by the clamour and screaming, before he too was savagely cut down.
The undead were killing whatever they could; even the horses were not immune, and Amber was powerless to stop them. He saw one axe-wielding warrior near-decapitate three in as many swift strokes. Distantly he heard more hooves, and he realised the slaughter would not end there: either Colonel Dassai was coming to cut off the Devoted’s retreat, or the Devoted reinforcements were arriving – only to find themselves collapsing into confusion when their horses shied away from the unnatural assault.
However, the Damned were not immune from harm. Amber watched one Devoted soldier stab his spear into the face of a mercenary, the weight of the blow snapping its withered neck. The mercenary dropped like a stone – but the victory was short-lived as another came from behind a horse to open the soldier’s ribs and behead him in the blink of an eye.
Amber let his scimitars sink to the ground. The cavalry were in total disarray. Some would probably escape, but the Damned were swarming through them so quickly that many could not even see the danger as they died.
‘Sound the drums,’ he croaked, ‘ready the charge.’
Somewhere nearby the alarm was being sounded. General Afasin wanted to turn and curse at whoever it was – their efforts were only increasing panic in the camp – but he found himself transfixed by the sight before him. The bulk of his army, more than twenty thousand men, were spread out across the floodplain – and they were crumbling. The battle had been raging for an hour, and the infantry were now heavily engaged, but barely any of his cavalry were still fighting – somehow their first assault had been routed entirely, even the reserve driven back.
‘Captain Kosotern,’ he said quietly, ‘where is that mage?’
The captain appeared, dragging a bearded figure after him.
‘Mage Bissen, sir.’
Afasin stepped forward and though Bissen stopped struggling, Kosotern had to hold the man up as he sagged under the white-eye general’s gaze.
‘I made no—’ Bissen started, breaking off as Afasin raised a hand.
The general bent down and with his face inches from Bissen’s, he said softly, ‘Light cavalry, horse-archers, and scouts protecting the flanks. That was your report.’
‘Your scouts confirmed it,’ the mage protested. ‘You saw them raiding our lines yourself!’
‘I saw some of them,’ Afasin agreed. He straightened and rearranged the red sash of his order, which had snagged on a link of armour. ‘And yet somehow two legions of heavy cavalry have been routed and slaughtered.’
Bissen opened his mouth to reply, but Afasin never gave him the chance. In one swift movement he drew his sword and ran the mage through.
Mage Bissen staggered back and crumpled to his knees, reaching one hand out to the captain
in a desperate, dying plea for help. Misinterpreting the action, Kosotern snarled, drew his own weapon and stabbed Bissen in the chest to finish him off.
Afasin watched the blood drip from his sword a moment then raised his eyes to watch the battle. Even at this distance he could see the line buckling, the right-hand legions disintegrating as they were outflanked.
‘The day is lost,’ he commented, quelling the roiling anger in his belly. ‘Send out the remaining cavalry to cover our retreat.’
‘General!’ came a shout from further down the line, and he and Kosotern turned, swords still drawn, to see a man on horseback racing towards them. ‘A message from Colonel Gittin!’
Without waiting for a response the rider reached them, dropped from his saddle and lurched the remaining steps to fall at Afasin’s feet. The horse was lathered and caked in dust, the soldier himself filthy and exhausted. ‘General, it’s all true!’ he wailed, drawing himself up to his knees.
‘What is?’ Afasin snapped, reaching out and dragging the man upright.
‘What the preachers said – the warnings!’
Afasin glanced back at the knot of white-cloaked followers of Ruhen who stood at the head of a rabble of civilians. He’d barely been able to prevent them from marching out with his troops; the zealots had been quite certain Ruhen’s divine presence would protect them from any harm.
‘Warnings?’
‘The army of daemons,’ the soldier gasped, ‘they march with daemons! Our cavalry are slaughtered, broken entirely.’
‘By daemons? The bloody sun’s shining!’
‘The colonel’s words, I swear it!’ he pleaded. ‘I saw the cavalry charge. They never reached the enemy flank – and in the next moment they were overrun. No humans could move or kill so quickly.’
Afasin threw the man down. ‘Kosotern, sound Full Retreat – we go as we are. Belay my last; they’re on their own. No idea what that fool Gitten’s talking about, but we’re too few to protect the camp once they’ve cover of night on their side.’
‘Full Retreat? What of Ruhen’s Children?’ the captain asked in dismay, glancing back at the preachers. ‘They’ll fall behind, and we’re not positioned to escort them. They’re barely armed, sir!’