Arcanum

by Simon Morden

  “Up, man, up.”

  The spearman got his feet under him, scooped up his weapon and ran as if trolls had smelt his blood.

  Reinhardt tracked with him all the way, urging him on, and the dwarves swarmed over the embankment.

  The air was abruptly full of rushing, and the volley of bolts burrowed home. They could hardly miss, but it took time that they didn’t have to reload.

  “Now,” said Felix, and his horse dashed forward. Hooves thundered against the turf, and, in moments, the cavalry were at full tilt, riding down the line and thrusting with their short spears.

  Felix pulled back his sword-arm, and cut forward. The Sword of Carinthia sliced a dwarf’s neck so deep that it separated head from shoulders, and it was done so quickly that he barely felt the impact in his hand. Another strike, slashing up, blade flashing between forearm and wrist. And again, overhead to slice through shoulder and chest.

  He was at the river, and he wheeled about. Here they came, his riders, and they all seemed to have made it through. Some had lost their spears and had drawn their swords, but they were ready to go again.

  It wasn’t as easy this time. The dwarves were ready for them, thicker on the ground, and rather than being on the sword side, they were on the off-hand. Felix used his shield as much as his sword, punching hard at faces twisted with effort, using his speed to carry him through. He brought his sword down point-first, thrusting through gaps in their mail, hacking at their arms and faces.

  He was back where he’d started, but not all of his riders had survived. One man was still upright on his horse, in the midst of the dwarvish host, surrounded, lost, still stabbing and hacking away at the determined hands that had hold of his legs.

  His horse whinnied and fell, and that was the last anyone saw of him.

  The Carinthian horns blew again, and another volley of bolts hammered into the enemy’s lines. Still they pressed on, trampling the bodies of man and dwarf alike.

  “Again.” Felix turned and levelled his sword at an axe-wielder who was huffing up towards them. They’d done enough damage to attract a dwarvish commander’s attention: others were following behind him.

  His axe swing was mistimed; unlike Felix’s underhand thrust, which caught the dwarf in the throat. He pulled his blade out straight as he rode by, and charged at another, swinging his sword overhand, past the held-high hammer half and against the side of its helmet, which buckled. The blow made his fingers sing, and he flexed them to adjust his grip.

  Down the line again, cutting right, right, right, as often as he could manage, and he was riding along the foot of the second embankment. That shouldn’t be happening – they needed space to ride back and retreat to the col above the valley floor. Reinhardt was already ordering his spearmen into position, and the closeness of that wall of spikes unnerved his mount.

  He wheeled away from the Carinthian line and started to carve his way to the muster-point. The second charge had been a mistake. He’d been too eager, too pleased with the first attack and wanting more. The bowmen were ready, and it was him who was delaying them.

  The other riders saw him change direction, and they pulled up and turned. They were in a better position, not so deep, not so pinned against their own defences. Most of them would make it, except the one who at that instant took an axe to the leg, and such was the force of it, it cut through the horse’s flank that they went down and died together. Or that other rider, now on foot, who was backing towards the spear wall, parrying axes, hammers, mauls and maces. Respite came from the crossbow bolts that drove through dwarvish mail and plate and leather and skin and bone, giving him the time needed for friendly hands to reach out and pull him to safety.

  Felix suddenly realised he was on his own in a sea of foes, and the tide was strong and fast.

  90

  Ullmann’s Black Company were first to the earthworks at the approaches to the bridge. They stopped and formed up along it, and wondered why the bowmen weren’t streaming back past them to the Kufstein crag, a hundred feet above them. Ullmann wanted to know why, too. He joined his men and put his hand above his eyes to shade them, trying to see what was happening.

  There were horses, some with riders, some loose, scattering in the fields behind the Carinthian line on the other side of the river. There was a thick ribbon of men on the embankment, bowmen and spearmen alike. They seethed like boiling water, and the sound was of drums and horns and the bright clash of metal.

  “Forward,” he called.

  The Black Company obeyed as one, Ullmann leaping down into the ditch to chase after his men. The ten-mile march from Rosenheim had been demanding, recrossing the Enn and coming down the east bank. He’d hoped for a few moments’ rest before they joined the battle, and his legs ached as he ran.

  It wasn’t that far – less than a couple of stadia – but it felt much further, running towards the roar of battle while riderless horses panicked and darted in front of them. A man on a horse was galloping backwards and forwards behind the line. It had to be Reinhardt, but why wasn’t he ordering the bows back? His front was clearly engaged, and that was the signal for an orderly withdrawal to begin. Had he lost sight of the battle plan already, a plan that so clearly depended on getting as many bows behind the wooden walls of Kufstein as possible?

  “Support the centre,” shouted Ullmann, as he tried to flag Reinhardt down. “Master! Sound the retreat.”

  “Gods, Master Ullmann. It’s the prince.” The man was close to breaking.

  This wasn’t how it was supposed to be.

  “Sound the retreat, now. Or we’ve lost the bows.” He drew his sword and struggled breathlessly up the embankment.

  He understood when he reached the broad top why Reinhardt couldn’t decide. The entire ground between the first and second defences was thick with figures. Helmets and raised weapons bobbed like a mass of floating corks, those at the front separating themselves from the mass to throw themselves at the Carinthian spears.

  The crossbowmen were firing as fast as they could, a cataract of bolts pouring down over the heads of their kin into the dwarvish host. It was the only way the spears were holding the line, the ranks of enemy axes and hammers being thinned as the dwarves waded through their own dead to reach the men.

  The prince.

  Still on his horse, with three, four, five other riders around him, trying to cut and slash their way through to the tree line on the right of the field. They shouldn’t have even been there; they should have been up behind the second bank to cover the spears’ backs while they made for the bridge.

  The horses were crazed, the riders exhausted, the situation hopeless.

  “Black Company, with me. Carinthia!”

  Ullmann pushed his way through the spear wall and started towards Felix. The dwarf in front of him raised his spiked hammer, but it was almost ludicrous the amount of time Ullmann had to execute the most simple of sword-thrusts into his exposed throat. He pulled his blade back, and the dwarf crumpled forwards, blood pouring out.

  Then another: an axe, swinging sideways towards his ribs. He turned to avoid the sweep, then stepped in behind it and brought his own blade down on the dwarf’s half-turned back. And then another, except this one was cut down by someone else even before he could steady himself.

  The Black Company had taken the field, pushing the dwarves back, making a space before the spear wall as they pointed themselves like an arrowhead at the surrounded horsemen.

  It was only as he stepped on a body that grunted, on his way to engaging his next opponent, that he questioned what he was doing. He wasn’t following the plan, either. The Carinthian horns blared for the bowmen to retreat, and the steady hiss and thud of bolts tailed off to nothing. The spearmen began to turn and run for the earthworks behind the bridge.

  In moments, he and his men would be isolated and the only thing that could possibly follow was their annihilation. Even though they might hold, they’d be flanked left and right, then engulfed.

  He s
idestepped an axe swing, kicked onto his back the dwarf who’d made it, and pushed his blade between breastplate and groin: in, twist, out. They were still twenty feet away from Felix, and the five horsemen had been reduced to two while he’d been wading knee-deep in corpses.

  So it had come to this. Ullmann judged that even if he reached Felix’s side, they’d be facing the entire dwarvish host on their own. Better that one leader of the Carinthians should die than two. Better the privileged son of the idle nobility than a man like himself.

  Felix looked up from his increasingly weary swordwork. Hope flowered and died in the same breath.

  “Pull back,” shouted Ullmann. “Back to the bridge.”

  Two of his men died simply because of their incredulity. They turned their heads at his call, and let their guards down. The rest took a step back, then another. Dwarves filled the gap, looking for them to either break and run, or suddenly charge forward again.

  The Black Company moved ever backwards, chopping at any who dared come close enough, and then finally, with their feet in the ditch and heels on the bank, they turned and scrambled up and over the earthwork.

  When Ullmann paused to look behind him, Felix had gone. Had he fallen, or had he somehow escaped? Ullmann didn’t dare ask one way or the other, and there was no time to do so anyway. The horns were sounding, loud and long, and they were the last on the wall.

  They’d have to run as fast as they could for the bridge, with the dwarves free to chase after them: there’d be no sudden attack from mounted swords or storm of crossbow bolts.

  “Come on, come on,” he urged his company. The bridge was narrow, and there were a lot of them to get across it.

  He glanced over his shoulder, to see how close the enemy were.

  They’d stopped. They weren’t giving chase at all.

  He looked again, slowing. The dwarvish fighters had crested the bank and advanced as far as the base of the lee-side slope, but they weren’t pursuing them across the field. They seemed content with the gains they’d made, and showed no inclination to assault the bridge directly.

  Those on the crag had seen what was happening. Carinthian horns ululated across the valley, and the army’s headlong flight eased into an exhausted walk.

  Ullmann’s men collected together as they headed for the bridge: there were fewer of them than before, and there were one or two present who wouldn’t fight again that day. He didn’t have the breath for conversation, which would have been redundant anyway. His men knew they couldn’t have reached Felix, no matter what. If the prince was dead, it was because of the boy’s stupidity. Ullmann had saved them from throwing their lives away in what would have been nothing more than a futile gesture. Carinthia needed them. Carinthia needed him.

  They started to cross the bridge, but Ullmann hung back. Leaning against the parapet of the the bridge, he rested his blunted, bloody sword on its stonework.

  “Master Ullmann? What’re the dwarves doing?” One of his company, just as tired, crouched on the ground next to him, and spat phlegm.

  Ullmann coughed, and once he’d started he found it difficult to stop. It left him breathless all over again. “Don’t know,” he managed.

  “The prince?”

  “Don’t know,” he repeated.

  Straightening himself, he hooked his arm under his colleague’s and pulled him up too. In the brief moment they looked each other in the eye, shame and regret were plain in each man’s face. And fear.

  “We did what we could,” wheezed Ullmann. “I’m sure he lives.”

  The man nodded and limped away. Ullmann picked up his sword and wiped it on his breeks, though whether that made it cleaner or more filthy was questionable. Now that the stuff was drying his clothes stiff, he realised he was caked in gore.

  He raised his head quickly at the sound of hooves, but it was only Reinhardt.

  “Did you see?” Despite being on the back of a horse, and taller than the embankment, he didn’t know either. “My lord prince?”

  “He must have got away.” If he said so often enough, thought Ullmann, people would believe him. They’d seen him lead his company over the embankment to Felix’s defence. They weren’t to know what had happened after that, or suspect what thoughts he’d had.

  Reinhardt passed down his flask. Ullmann took it and swallowed some of the warm, brackish water.

  “They’re supposed to attack us,” said Reinhardt, wheeling his horse around.

  “Perhaps they expect us to attack them.” Ullmann was about to wipe his mouth with his sleeve, but decided against it. In comparison, Reinhardt was spotless. “Give me a moment and I’ll be ready.”

  “Gods, man. You look like someone bled a pig over you.”

  Ullmann drank again: the last of the water swilled into his open mouth and down his chin.

  “Killing dwarves is thirsty work. How many do you think we did for?”

  Reinhardt pulled at his moustache and stared across at the enemy line. “A good thousand or two. More, even. Each bow-century must have seen off five times their number, and they were piling up at the foot of our spears.”

  “And our casualties?”

  “More or less all our horse.” Reinhardt clenched his jaw and gritted his teeth. “Bowmen, none. Spears, two dozen or so. Those who couldn’t stay on their feet and were run down.”

  “Two thousand killed for the loss of forty men?” Ullmann sheathed his sword, uncleaned or not. “Are you sure of your sums, Master Reinhardt?”

  “That’s what my centurions tell me. There was a whole century on the right that went into the woods. Assuming they can swim the river, or join up with whoever’s up on the col, I’ll still count them able to fight.” He reached up and unbuckled his helmet, working it loose and dragging it off his dark, damp hair. “Victories are carved out of numbers like this.”

  “Then why aren’t we singing, and blowing our horns? Freyja’s tits, we’ve got something to cheer about.”

  “It feels like a defeat,” said Reinhardt. “We were pushed back too easily. There are too many of them. It doesn’t matter if we kill two or ten thousand of them, they still outnumber us.”

  Ullmann kicked at the ground. “If every Carinthian life is worth a hundred dwarvish ones, most of us will get to go home. That’s news worth spreading, so let’s not keep it to ourselves.”

  Reinhardt declined the return of the water flask. “If that’s the end of fighting for the day, I’ll spread it far and wide. I’ll set a watch, the centuries can rest at their posts, and we’ll wait for Felix’s return. There’s no word yet from Master Büber, though.”

  Ullmann pushed an unruly thought away. “I’m sure he’s doing his duty.”

  “I’ve sent some reinforcements to the Weissach bridge. If he needs them, they’ll be there.” Reinhardt turned towards the bridge. “Clean yourself up, get something to eat, and we’ll sort out with my lady exactly where we stand.”

  “Lady Sophia’s here?” There was no reason for her not to be, but he’d assumed Felix would have sent her back to Rosenberg via the west side’s horse track.

  “Standing on the walls of the crag.” Reinhardt pointed out the Carinthian banner draped over the wooden palisade, and the dark figure resting her elbows on the top, distance-pipe in hand.

  Ullmann looked and looked again, judging angles and distances. “She couldn’t have seen what happened to Felix from there, could she?”

  “The shoulder of the hill opposite gets in the way,” said Reinhardt. “From the crag, it’s only the far end of that second wall that’s visible.”

  So she hadn’t seen his abortive attempt to rescue her consort, nor his subsequent retreat. That was something, at least.

  “That’s …” – and he tried to find the right word – “unfortunate for my lady.”

  “I’d rather her not be here at all,” said Reinhardt; “it’s too dangerous. But she is who she is and, what some people think she is too, a seer of her god. Strange days we’re in, Master Ullmann.”
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  He rode off, back through the lines, and Ullmann followed wearily. On the other side of the bridge, every spare blade of grass, every turned sod, had someone lying on it. Half of them looked stunned by what had happened to them, and the other half looked dead, eyes closed and still.

  Further back, though, were the volunteers he’d brought. They were fresher but more anxious. Their only experience of battle so far had been watching the Carinthian line run from its defences as fast as possible. It hadn’t been like that at all: those who’d fought had acquitted themselves magnificently and when the dwarves approached them again across the open ground and funnelled themselves across the bridge, they would do so again. Dwarves would die in their thousands, except this time, the spears would hold the earthworks while the bowmen above shot at them until every quarrel had flown and even the bows were thrown down on their treacherous dwarvish heads.

  Suddenly, he was staring at Aelinn, and she at him.

  She blinked roundly at him, and rather than taking a step towards him, took a step back.

  He pressed his lips thin, and gave a short, stiff bow.

  “I have a …” – he took a breath – “an appointment I have to keep.”

  She nodded, mutely, and he turned aside to avoid walking any closer to her.

  91

  It had degenerated into a series of skirmishes, but each one followed the same pattern. The dwarvish line would advance cautiously uphill, clearly hating the terrain, and slowly collect in knots rather than form a continuous chain. The shadows under the trees would shift subtly, and a sudden harvest of half a dozen bolts would sprout from mail-clad chests and bellies. The dwarves would fall, and their brothers would race to where they thought the shooters were.

  And when they arrived, out of breath and aching from the run, spearmen would pounce and momentarily outnumbering them, overwhelm them, leaving them dying on the prickly, thirsty ground.

  Then the spears would be gone, further upslope, and any pursuit would be met with more crossbows from a completely different angle.