Tristan moved through the troops unchallenged, although several men offered nods of greeting and respect. He led them into the very heart of the camp, to a cluster of tents surrounded by guards, and entered one of them without pause.
The tent was cramped. Two men were consulting maps and papers that had been spread out across a camp table. Another stood apart from them, reading over a crumpled note with a sour look on his face. His expression brightened slightly as Tristan entered.
“I thought you’d still be pulling arrows out of your skin,” he said, the scars on his face twisting as he smiled.
Tristan didn’t bother to respond, although his glare spoke eloquently to the scar-faced man, managing somehow to curse, insult, and suggest an unhealthy inclination towards farm animals, all at the same time.
“I have someone you should talk to, Klöss,” Tristan said.
“You’re Klöss?” Gavin blurted out, drawing questioning looks from both of them.
“What of it?” Klöss asked.
“I came all the way from Hesk to find you. I need to talk to you in private.”
Klöss let out a sigh as he rolled his eyes. “Listen, lad, I’m a bit busy for tales at the moment. Most of the things you’ve heard are crap, anyway.”
“What?” Gavin looked confused. “No, it’s about Ylsriss.”
His despairing expression faded at that. “Ylsriss? What do you know about her?”
Gavin noted the other men's eyes were on him. This was not the way he wanted to do this. “You and I have met before. Years ago, in Hesk. You chased a cutpurse into an alley and got coshed. You woke up in a cellar filled with street children.”
Klöss's eyes widened and he nodded. “Carry on.”
“I was one of those children. Something’s happened to Ylsriss. I came all this way to explain it to you.”
“I already know she's vanished,” Klöss growled, clenching the note in his fist.
“That's probably from Rhaven, isn't it?” Gavin nodded at the note. “I tried to talk to him first, but he threw me out. I've travelled all the way from Hesk to tell you the truth about what happened.”
“Alright boy, you’ve got my attention. What is it?”
“Not like this.” Gavin motioned at the others in an exaggerated manner. “I need to tell you in private.”
Klöss sighed. “Fine. You've got two minutes.”
Chapter Nineteen
Rhenkin stood in the rain, absently patting his horse’s flank as he watched the men file in. His mind churned through the figures in his head - men, supplies, units. Were they going to have enough? The numbers would be close, but it was too good an opportunity to pass up.
“Larson!” he shouted, without turning.
The footsteps were more squelches in the wet ground than anything else. “It’s Kennick, Sir.” The man sounded apologetic.
Rhenkin swore silently to himself. Larson was a resource he was going to find hard to replace. “Sorry, Kennick,” he muttered. “Force of habit.”
Kennick nodded in silence. It was probably as hard for the new lieutenant as it was for him, Rhenkin realised. Trying to fill someone else’s shoes was never a pleasant experience.
“How well do you remember your academy strategy, Kennick?”
“Well enough, I suppose, Sir,” the man replied, scratching at his moustache as the rain ran down his face.
“Accepted ratio for victory over a force with unknown composition?” Rhenkin snapped out the question.
“Your force must outnumber theirs by a minimum of a third, Sir,” Kennick replied. “That is, unless there are significant strategic enhancers, such as true surprise, terrain or defensive structures.”
Rhenkin looked at him. “Did you do well in strategy, Kennick?”
“Top of my class, Sir,” Kennick replied.
“How much stock do you put in what you learned?” Rhenkin asked.
“Honestly, Sir? Not a great deal. Some of the tactics are useful, but I don’t really believe you can break a battle, or a war, down to numbers and ratios.”
“Is that so?” Rhenkin kept his voice level.
“There are too many factors that the books don’t take into account, Sir. You can break a battle down to numbers in terms of troop levels, training and so on, but you also need to consider things like morale shifts or necessity.”
“Necessity?”
“It’s all very well saying it’s strategically unwise to attack unless you outnumber your foe by at least a third, Sir, but you can’t give ground forever,” Kennick said, with a slight wince.
“Very good, Son.” Rhenkin favoured him with a tight smile. “Necessity drives every campaign. Necessity is why we must attack now, rather than giving those bastards any more land.” He looked at the sea of tents and men. “Are Rentrew’s men set up?”
Kennick nodded. “Some are still on their way, Sir, but most of the officers have arrived and have been brought into the command structure.”
“What have they sent us? I see mostly mounted troops.”
“It is largely mounted heavy lancers, Sir. A fair number of mounted archers as well, though the infantry is not an insignificant force.”
“And the skirmishers?”
“Still making their way back to us, Sir. They sent a man ahead to report.”
Rhenkin pulled off his helmet and scratched at his hair. How the hell did the rain work its way in underneath it? “I want you to send out some scouts. All on horseback and with orders not to get even close to being within arrow range. I want to know where the Bjornmen are going and how they’re being deployed. Get reports to me every day, without fail.”
“That will require messenger relays, Sir,” Kennick warned.
“So the men will need to sit and wait in the rain for a while,” Rhenkin sneered. “We’re doing that now!”
“I’ll see to it, Sir.”
“In the meantime, I want your analysis of the terrain around here. We’re going to do this on our terms and I’ll be damned if I’ll let them choose the battlefield.” Rhenkin waited for the man to nod before speaking again. “For now, I’m going to get out of this pissing rain and get some sleep. Send a man in with something hot and wake me if anything happens.”
“Who shall I report to in your absence, Sir?”
Rhenkin gave the man an evil smile. “You’re my second now, Son. While I'm sleeping, they report to you.” He walked away, chuckling to himself as he headed for his tent. Kennick seemed to be a good man and he had no doubt he could do the job well. He was no Larson, though.
That attack had come from nowhere. They’d not seen or heard a thing from the fae in weeks. A man could almost have been forgiven for thinking the whole thing had been a fever dream. But then they’d come, charging down out of the moonlit sky on horses as pale as a dead man's face. Larson had been at the forefront of the battle, screaming orders for iron weapons. He’d probably never even seen the one that took him. Rhenkin shook his head as he ducked into the tent and sat on a camp chair to prise his boots off. The mud was thick and oozed between his fingers as he worked.
“Bloody waste,” he muttered to himself. Years of training and excellence had ended on the bone blade of one of those lantern-eyed monsters.
He pulled some camp shoes on and went to the table, pushing the reports aside so he could see the map properly.
“We ought to be killing these bloody hell-beasts, not fighting each other,” he muttered. “Damn it though, if you want a fight, by hell, you’ll have one.”
Location, that would be the key. His force was now split evenly between mounted troops and infantry, and there are few troops more useless than a mounted unit with no room to move.
Rhenkin traced his fingertips over the map. The local area was sketched in rough shades of charcoal. The woods, valleys and hillsides were useless for his needs. Even the plain was barely large enough for the manoeuvres they'd need to make for this to work.
“This has been a shit-storm from the start,�
� he muttered, before stomping over to the torture device known as a camp bed.
He was asleep long before the young soldier arrived with the food and didn’t wake as he set it down on the table. Sleep had been slow to find him, missing him entirely these past two nights. Now that it had him, it would not let go.
***
The Bjornman army covered the land like a dark blanket as it moved towards them, out of the trees. Keiron could just see the smaller contingent that he knew contained their supply wagons making its way around the edge of the woods to the north. They’d been moving steadily for three days now.
“Gutsy bastards,” he muttered to himself.
“What’s that?” asked the dark-haired man beside him.
“They came directly through the woods.” Keiron pointed. “I know it's a small wood, but look, their supply wagons had to go all the way around. They took a hell of a risk. What if we’d raided them?”
They’d worked together four times now, staying for a day and a night before one of them headed back to give their report to the next pair in the line. The scouts surrounded the Bjornmen and watched their every move. It was three days hard ride to their own lines, so a messenger relay line had been strung out over twenty miles, with men stationed a day apart, rotating the line and sharing the scouting duties.
Fallon had been sour with him from the outset. He spoke little, offering up nothing about his past or his experience. The only thing Keiron really knew was that he didn’t care for him or his superior attitude.
“You think too much, Keiron,” Fallon said. He hawked and spat into the grass. “You be just as keen as you like. Lick that corporal’s boots until you can see your fawning little face in them. It won’t help you. You're a messenger boy dressed up in a scout’s uniform, plain and simple.”
Keiron felt the blood rise in his face. “Screw you, Fallon. I’m as much a scout as you. Captain said so himself.”
“Well, scurry off and deliver your message then, scout,” Fallon spat, his words dripping with contempt.
Keiron glared at him and swung himself up onto his horse, only turning back as Fallon sniggered at him.
“What now?” Keiron snapped. He was done with this self-important idiot.
“You might want this.” Fallon waved his travel sack at him, with a sneer.
Keiron shook his head, despairing at himself as much as at the annoying man. He nudged his horse forward and snatched the sack out of Fallon's hand.
It was probably only because he was so sick of the man and wouldn’t meet his eyes that he was looking beyond him. He frowned as he tried to make sense of what he was seeing. Something wasn't right. Then the grassy plain simply stood up and levelled crossbows at them.
It must have taken them three full days to crawl through the long grass. The blankets they’d draped over themselves were covered in thick tufts that blended with the grass on the plain. They wore only light clothing under them, so as not to hamper their movements.
Keiron noted all of this in a second, but his attention was focused on the large crossbows the pair carried. “Fallon, move!” he finally managed to shout. It was too late. The loud twanging report of the weapons seemed quieter than the sickening crunch the bolt made as it tore into Fallon’s chest, and even quieter than the sound of the second bolt as it passed his face.
Wheeling his horse, Keiron dug his heels in and urged the beast for more speed, bending low over its back. He had no idea of the effective range of the Bjornman crossbow or how long it took to reload. The hollow sensation between his shoulder blades drove him to turn the horse wildly as he charged through the long grass.
The horse was coated in lather and blowing hard by the time Keiron reined her in. His hands had stopped shaking about five minutes before, but his legs felt like they’d barely support him. He climbed down out of the saddle, but clung onto the pommel as his knees threatened to buckle.
There were no signs of the Bjornman scouts, although their army still loomed in the distance. Of course, there’d been no sign of them right up until the second they'd attacked either. Fear forced him to move, whispering into his ear, and he led the horse through the grasses. After an hour of walking, he stopped and allowed her to drink from a small, stream-fed pond before mounting her again.
He rode steadily, careful not to strain the horse too much, running her hard for only short periods before permitting her to drop down to a canter and then to a walk.
By evening, he was exhausted. The riding was taxing enough, but the fear was visceral and it ate away at him. He hadn’t really stopped for any rests, other than to walk the horse. He'd tried to, on several occasions, but soon found he was glancing back or staring nervously at the grasses as they blew in the wind, so he'd pushed on.
Navigating by the stars was simple enough when all he had to do was to go in a straight line, but the darkness was total. Keiron wasn’t a city boy, by any means, but there is a huge difference between the darkness inside a town or village and the darkness found in the middle of nowhere.
The stars seemed very bright and the moon, although not yet quite full, hung fat and heavy in the sky, lighting his path. When the wind blew the clouds across the sky, however, they cloaked the glowing orb and the night enveloped him. The darkness swallowed him, taking him down to that place every child has visited and which every man carries with him in a small, secret part of his soul; the place where the night holds a touch of terror.
He slept twice, waking with a lurch each time and nearly falling from the saddle. On both occasions, he also discovered that the horse had strayed off course and he had to search frantically to find the constellation he should have been heading towards. He felt a sense of true relief when the darkness finally began to lift, revealing the grey light of dawn.
The hill was miles to the south. He must have drifted off track during the night and never really corrected course. It was visible, however, and that was enough. He let the horse graze while he ate a handful of something dried and tasteless from the sack, then set off again. The warning couldn’t wait. The Bjornmen were coming.
***
Klöss moved forward towards the front lines, muttering an almost rhythmic stream of curses. It was a low song of frustration, one that he sang to himself as he watched the hated horsemen peel off and retreat again. Their riders were lightly armoured and were, as far as he could see, wielding only bows. They would be easy prey if his men could ever get close enough. Every attempt they had made, however, had been met with a hail of arrows and the riders had eventually simply broken off without truly engaging.
His army was spread out behind him, company after company of men awaiting his orders. He ignored them, however, focusing on the horses and the endless sounds of arrows striking shields as his men crouched against the onslaught again.
The bows of the riders were small and didn’t really have the power to penetrate the thick leather armour of his men, even if they did make it past the broad shields. Despite that, there was a scream of pain with every hail of arrows, as either an archer was lucky or a Bjornman wasn’t.
“These horses, they are effective.” Tristan spoke conversationally, as if they were just taking a stroll.
“They’re a pain in the arse, is what they are.” Klöss looked at the low-lying hills and the army in the valley between them. The horse archers had been harrying them for days as they'd advanced, riding in and raking them with their bows, only to peel off and retreat as soon as an advance was ordered. The one time he had allowed a force to truly pursue them, riders in heavy steel armour had come thundering into position and charged into his troops, their lances devastating the exposed Bjornmen, while the fallen were churned under the steel-shod hooves of their mounts.
“I’ll be damned if I’m going to play his game,” he muttered.
Tristan gave Klöss a wry smile. “His game?”
Klöss waved at the view before them. “Look at the hills there. He’s basically set himself up with a fortress. He expects us to
come plodding along and walk right between them as his archers slam arrows down onto us and the rest of his troops charge.”
“A good plan, as far as plans go,” Tristan acknowledged, with a grunt.
“And one I don’t plan on following,” Klöss muttered, waving an arm to catch the attention of the man following him. “Gerrig, find out if they have assembled the catapults yet. Oh, and pass the order to bring the arbalests to the front line.”
The young man nodded and left at a run.
“A good lad, you have there,” Tristan noted, watching him vanish through the lines. “Needs a sense of humour, though.”
Klöss gave him a long look. “A sense of humour? Tristan, you do understand we’re about to have a battle here?”
“Then it is required even more.” He laughed as Klöss treated to him to an icy stare.
The army undulated as the men shifted and those carrying the heavy arbalests moved towards the front.
Klöss gave the order and waited. The army had halted now, a high wall of shields protecting those in range of the arrows that flew towards them. The horse archers continued to worry at the army like flies at a horse’s eyes.
The weaponsmaster stood beside the long rows of catapults that were situated in an otherwise clear space in the middle of the army. The weapons were too valuable to risk by leaving them exposed to an enemy attack, but nobody wanted to be that close to them. They threatened a violent death, involving flying shards of jagged wood and ropes lashing fast enough to cut through flesh, to anyone within reach, if anything should go wrong.
The older man scowled down at his crews as they made adjustments, then finally raised the white baton.
“Let’s go and spring their trap, shall we?” Klöss said to himself.
The order was given and the men moved forward, organising themselves into three companies as they trotted towards the enemy lines. After only a few minutes, volleys of arrows began to fly towards them, but it was nothing close to the storm that they had been expecting. Very few of the arrows managed to cover the full distance, and the Bjornmen simply closed ranks and raised their shields as they drew closer.
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