by Simon Morden
It could have gone on all day until the last dwarf dropped: it might have surprised Ironmaker as much as it had Büber, but the Carinthians were simply better disciplined. And while each dwarf was likely to be more than a match against a man in single combat, when the Carinthians acted together and played to their strengths, they were the better fighters, too.
The problem was that they were running out of hill. They were halfway up now, and behind him, Büber could see the daylight over the long ridge. They’d retreated from the track and through the forest, and unless they wanted to defend the reverse slope, fighting with their backs to the river and facing uphill, they’d have to do something different when they reached the top.
It was his turn to skirmish. He twisted around, rested his back against honest pine and selected a target downhill. There was a flurry of fighting, a crowd of men stabbing down hard and fast, then scattering. The next group of dwarves half-heartedly tried to respond in kind, and Büber’s bolt looped through the tree-trunks to bury itself in the shoulder of their leader.
The dwarf gave a cry and spun away, and the others faltered, giving up almost as soon as they’d started. Büber reloaded. The lower slopes were crawling with dwarves, still too many for his comfort. Forming up and slugging it out wasn’t going to be a good choice. The enemy would push him and his men into the Enn.
He turned and used his long legs to gain height. Another scrappy fracas broke out below him, and was over just as quickly as all the others.
What was he going to do? All he had was what he knew, and he knew that in a stand-up fight they’d lose what little advantage they had.
He faced them once more, waited for his moment, put another dwarf on his back, and climbed the hill again. These men were relying on him not to throw their lives away, but he wanted more than that: he wanted a way they could win. He hadn’t thought this far ahead, though, thinking he’d force them out of their wagons and hold them up for as long as it took. When the main dwarvish force had spent itself against the Kufstein crag, then the Carinthians would simply turn around and crush the flanking group.
In the meantime, he could have everyone melt away and leave the dwarves with no one to fight. What then? Regroup, and hit them again. From where? And the answer was suddenly obvious. Behind the dwarves. While they were searching ahead, jumping at every flap of a fern or snap of a twig, his men would be at the bottom of the hill, pushing the dwarvish wagons into the Weissach.
Of course, the dwarves would come after them again. And the Carinthians would vanish back into the forests.
He’d been thinking too small; it wasn’t about this hill, this high ground. All of the valley was his. He could torment his enemies until those that were left alive broke and ran.
How stupid to rely on earth walls and open ground for their main defence, when that was exactly what the dwarves wanted: something solid to attack, with all the men conveniently all lined up behind it, so they didn’t have to go looking for them amongst the vast green silence under the trees.
He should have insisted that Felix had done it that way. He should have done it regardless, raiding behind the dwarvish wall, striking and withdrawing, then appearing somewhere else to strike again. Gods, the tactics were obvious, except they were learnt too late.
“Centurions, to me,” he called, and while he waited, he reloaded his bow. The berserker rage ebbed and flowed in him, but he thought he could control it for a little while longer.
Another fight, and more dead bodies rolling back down the steep hill, catching on tree-trunks, sliding over the rocks protruding between the roots.
Sweaty-faced centurions gathered around him, one of spear, one of bow, and Taube.
“Are we strong? The men holding up?” Büber asked them.
“Even with the double-share of quarrels, some are starting to run short.”
“Doing well enough,” said the second centurion. “No more than four, five lost.”
Taube grunted. “They come at us, we kill them. It’s what’s asked of us.”
Büber was satisfied. “Get the bows on the ridge, waste some bolts if that’s what you have to do. When the dwarves get too close, just turn and run, nothing fancy. They’re exhausted already and they won’t follow for fear of ambush. Spears over the top and head south, out of sight and as quiet as you can. I mean for us to disappear as well as any hexmaster could manage. Come back around the rear of the wagon train and kill any guards they left, and quickly before they can call out. Start turning them over, break their wheels, anything to make sure they can’t be used again. Got it? Go.”
The men went back to their centuries, moving from group to group, repeating the orders, while Büber looked down the slope at the dwarves struggling up the hill to meet them, weighed down by their armour and weapons. Every few moments, one more of their number gasped as a bolt plunged through metal and cloth into the weak flesh beneath.
Should he just charge them? Should he raise his naked blade and barrel down at them, two centuries of spear at his back, and tumble them all broken at the bottom of the hill? The roar of his kinfolk’s war-cries, the pale bleating of his foes’ fear. It would be over so quick he wouldn’t even remember it.
He took a breath. He took two. He lifted his hand from his sword grip. Soon, soon, but not now.
He looked again. His own lines had withdrawn like he’d told them, and he was now between them and the dwarves. He ought to set an example and obey his own orders.
He turned back up the slope, using one hand to steady his climb, until he was at the crest of the hill. The spear centuries had all but melted away down the other side, the browns and blacks and greens of their clothing blending with the forest colours. The bows were crouched in a long line, shooting steadily, picking off their targets when they were certain of a hit, waiting if they didn’t, calling among themselves so that they didn’t all aim for the same dwarf and waste their quarrels.
He glanced to his left, and saw movement on the broad ridge. Armoured figures had reached the top, far away from any Carinthian.
Büber tapped the nearest man on the shoulder, pointed, and shouted so that others could hear. “Pull back. Now.”
The bowmen peeled away, holding their bows by the stocks, running through the forests they’d seen since they were born and had played in as children. They knew to duck under branches and dodge tree trunks. They knew how to run downhill with their feet in the soft needlefall.
Büber would have been the last the dwarves saw of them, his shoulders shifting as his arms balanced his body in a way they’d yet to learn. Whisper-quiet and wordless, they all climbed the second smaller rise and descended over it. The woods were dotted with men, crouched, catching their breath, and ahead of them was the track and the evidence of dwarvish axes: fallen trees and the scent of fresh-cut pine.
He stopped for a moment, listening for sounds of pursuit. Gods, he’d spent half his life doing that, running from one eldritch beast or another that was trying to kill him, and now it was dwarves.
He heard calls, faint and incomprehensible. They were coming from the top of the ridge, half a mile away, and beyond it, too. They didn’t know the signs to track even three hundred men through the forest, and perhaps they thought they’d gone down to the river and from there, headed towards Kufstein.
The Carinthians had pickets, but he didn’t want the dwarvish flanking move to come anywhere near the crag. He looked again at the track, and off to his left he could see the creamy pale planks of a wagon. It was the last in line.
He was just where he wanted to be, then. He crept forward through the silent Carinthians, gesturing that the spearmen should follow him. They unfolded from their rest and formed up behind him, moving towards the tree line at the edge of the track. Büber went closest of all, and saw that they’d left two guards with each wagon. If there was a century of wagons, that was … what? Fewer soldiers than he had? Probably.
Save the bowmen’s shot for later. It was time for the spears. He rais
ed his hand, hidden from the road by a tree, and pointed at the rear wagon. He dropped his hand, and the Carinthians rose with a shout and rushed the dwarves.
They were so startled they barely had time to realise they were being set upon, let alone to assume a fighting stance. Men raced down the track, either side of the wagon train. Everywhere they met the enemy, they outnumbered them enormously. They were a moving wall of spear-points bearing down on whoever got in their way, and it looked like they could go down the whole line, all the way to the front again.
“Bows, get their weapons. Every man arm himself with more than a knife.”
He left the forest and started down the track himself. What he realised was that they were winning. They could wreck the wagons at the rear with impunity, and a few more at the front to prevent the ones behind ever moving again. The dwarves had no answer against him. None of their engines would make it to Kufstein because he’d killed so many of them. Half of them at least, and the ones left he’d run ragged across hill and vale.
No point in getting over-confident, but none in timidity either. It was almost time.
He was back where he’d started, all those hours ago, at the front of the wagons. Taube was there, with his Crossed men, bloody and mean.“Break this one,” said Büber, slapping his hand on a wagon. “Leave it on the road. Spears, take the bows and hide on the east side of the track, a stadia or two deep in the forest. Wait for us there.”
The spear centurion nodded and retreated again, leaving Büber with the Crossed, who were already putting dwarvish axes through dwarvish wheel hubs.
Straining with the effort, Taube kicked one of the wheels free and sent it rolling away in the direction of the Weissach. The wagon tilted, and there was a splash from the river below.
“What are we still doing here, Master Büber?” asked Taube.
“We’re the bait in the trap, Mr Taube. As if you needed to ask.”
“If we win here, are we free?” He pulled his purloined axe free of the split green wood and hefted it.
“You won’t be under any sentence, that’s for sure. You may still want to fight for your homes and your families.”
Taube walked to the next wagon and started chopping. Between axe-blows, he grunted. “Our homes and our families. Of course.”
Older, more capricious princes would have seized these men’s property and shown their household the road, but Büber knew that Felix had made certain that whatever the men had done, their wives and children hadn’t suffered for it.
“If you don’t know shame, how about duty?” Bait or not, he was offering himself in the same way.
“And you suppose my precious wife has the same notions of duty?” He’d all but reduced the axle to kindling, and the wagon sagged to the ground. The scars on his face twisted. “Take me back, will she?”
Büber shrugged. He knew all about scars, and lost fingers and toes. If Taube had been this much of a bitter little shit in his previous life, perhaps sending him down the mines had given his family a freedom they hadn’t looked for or expected.
“You could always beg,” he said, and turned his attention to the dwarves up the hill.
They were massing near the crest, above the slopes that were strewn with dwarvish dead: everywhere he looked there were bodies, in ones and twos and mores, face up, face down, wrapped around tree trunks and in the hollows of roots, at the end of long scrapes where they’d slid and at the bottom of rocky outcrops.
Led by an idiot king to their deaths. Gods, that made him angry – that none of this was even necessary. Was Ironmaker even here to see what he’d done?
There was more movement as the dwarves started to descend. It was time they ran again.
“Taube, with me.”
Büber took the river-side of the track and ran down the long line of wagons. The Crossed followed, some having permanently exchanged their spears for axes and hammers. That they’d made a stupid decision to fight with a weapon they hadn’t trained with was up to them. But they had a history of ill-discipline and making bad choices, and it was too late to change them back or castigate them. The dwarves were slithering and sliding down the hill towards them.
Büber reached the end of the wagons, and started to shove men towards the Weissach, through the trees. “That way. Keep going.” He stayed long enough to make certain that he’d been spotted, and that when he plunged through the green ferns by the side of the track, he was being followed.
Of course the dwarves wanted to keep sight of him, in case he disappeared again into the green mist, only to come at them from a different direction. They struggled after him, exhausted, savaged, scared of the bright sky and the tall trees.
He ran on, through the hidden spearmen, the crouching bows. As he passed the bowmen, they rose up and fired, and still the dwarves came at them. Then the wood erupted with men, charging forward, spears thrusting, twisting, charging again.
Now.
Büber stopped, turned and drew his sword.
92
When she asked them straight, no one would tell her.
She was given hints, and veiled elisions, but when her patience for such verbal circumlocutions had worn thin and she’d finally demanded, “Is Felix alive or dead?”, she couldn’t find anyone who would admit to having seen him being either dragged off his horse, or ride away free.
“But he was right in front of you. Master Ullmann, you were there, on the earthwork. How could you not have seen what happened to him?”
She looked at Ullmann carefully, watched him glance sideways at Reinhardt. Was he worried that Reinhardt would deny his story, she wondered, or were they both hiding the same thing?
Ullmann was wet, not from sweat, but from river water. She could smell its weedy taint on him. “My lady, I didn’t see. I was fighting for my life and the life of the men around me.” He ran his fingers through his damp hair. “There were loose horses, I know that. None of them were Felix’s.”
“Master Reinhardt? If I go down and speak to the centurions, what will they tell me?” She put her hands on her hips and speared him with her gimlet eye. She’d have liked to have speared him with something more substantial.
“They’ll tell you what we’ve told you, my lady. That he was on his horse, and then he’d gone, and no one can say where.”
She howled with frustration.
Ullmann pulled out his sword, and it was filthy. She knew what a sword looked like when it had gone through a man, and it didn’t look that much different when it had gone through a dwarf. He set about cleaning the blade.
“You’ve lost your prince,” she accused them, stamping her feet.
“He’s not lost—” started Reinhardt, but she cut him off.
“Then where is he? Is he hiding? Has he run away?”
“He is not dead,” said Reinhardt. He stood up to face her. “He is not dead, because no one saw him die.”
“People die all the time without being watched.”
Reinhardt took another step closer, and lowered his voice so that only she could hear. “When a prince of Carinthia leads his army into battle, his troops will win the battle, not least because they know the prince still lives. If he dies while there is still fighting to be done, they might lose heart. Their courage might falter. They might decide to run away.”
“But we—”
It was his turn to interrupt. “They have not lost heart, and their courage is still strong. Felix is therefore alive. Does my lady understand?”
“Yes. I understand.” She did, but it didn’t help. She needed to know the truth.
“So my lord Felix’s commands still stand,” said Reinhardt. “He’d be angry if we changed them now.”
“He might be angry if we change the order of battle,” said Büber, arriving as silently as a ghost and as bloody as a butcher, “but he’ll be livid if we throw the war away doing something we know won’t work.”
Sophia’s eyes widened at the sight of him, and Reinhardt managed, “Gods, Peter,” be
fore he was struck dumb.
Büber ignored him for the moment. “My lady, the eastern side of the river is secure.”
She recovered. It wasn’t like she hadn’t seen him covered in other people’s blood before. “Secure?”
“All the dwarves there are dead, my lady, save the few who had the wit to run away.” His arms were red up to past his elbows, as if he’d purposefully washed them in gore. “I’ve lost twenty-five men. So I’ve been told, anyway. And I’ve gained as many axes, hammers, mail shirts, helmets and the like as you might want.”
She couldn’t celebrate. She wasn’t even sure of the reaction Büber wanted, since his winning a battle against overwhelming odds clearly wasn’t what he wanted to talk about.
“Thank you, Master Büber,” she said; then she left them for a moment, and went to the barrel that they’d drunk from the previous night. There was still some beer left inside, so she heaved the barrel to the log where they’d sat the night before, and poured him a mug.
She presented it to him, and he took it from her. She was left red where his fingers had momentarily touched hers. Büber drained the mug in three gulps and tossed it empty back into the grass.
“You say we’re going to lose the war,” she asked him, “despite what you’ve just done.”
Büber sat down on the log. She’d seen him like that before too, after the library, when he’d gone berserk for the the first time. After she’d manage to convince him that she, Cohen and the others were on his side, he’d subsided into a melancholic flatness that was the opposite of rage.
He’d done his fighting. He’d won. And now, even though they might be pitched back into the fray at any moment, he’d stopped.
He stared at his hands. “We beat them because we kept moving. They hate the forest, the sky, the grass, the wind and the rain. But they hate the forest most of all. If we’d fought them between here and the wall, we’d be packing up our tents and going home already.”
“What did you do, Peter?” she asked. “Tell us what you did.”