by Simon Morden
“Just let them chase us, up the hill, down the hill, through the trees. They move as a mass. If you can split them up, they don’t fight so well … it’s like eating a cow.”
“One bite at a time,” she said.
Reinhardt scowled. “All credit to you, Master Büber, but we’ve killed a couple of thousand of them too.”
“That doesn’t matter,” said Büber. “They know where you are, and they’re coming to kill you. Even if we build walls of stone as high as this crag, they’ll still eventually overwhelm us. There are, how many of them left?”
“Ten thousand,” said Sophia.
“We won on the Weissach because we had nothing to defend and they had nothing to attack. If we stay here, we’ll lose.”
“But you built these ditches with your own hands, man,” said Reinhardt. “Are you now saying they’re useless?”
“Yes,” said Büber. “It was the wrong plan, and we wasted our time. We need to change it now. They’ll crush us if we stay still.”
Reinhardt spun away, then roared back around. “This is the place we decided we’d make our stand. This natural fortress. One bridge to cross. Open land for our bows. Ditches and ramparts for our spears. And you want to change all this on a whim?”
Büber sighed. “It’s not a whim. You’d never even fought a dwarf before today. Don’t you think you should at least listen to me?”
When Reinhardt took another step closer to Büber, Sophia stood between them. “Stop this. Now,” she said. She looked over her shoulder. “You’re very quiet, Master Ullmann.”
Ullmann was rubbing at a spot of congealed blood caught inside a fuller on his blade. He looked up, and she couldn’t read him at all.
“My lady,” he said.
“Give us your wisdom. Master Büber wants us to fight in the forests, where there’s a chance we’ll get separated from one another. Master Reinhardt wants us to fight behind our walls of earth, which if we defend, may well break us. You’ve fought the dwarves: what do you say?”
Ullmann gave up his cleaning, and slid his sword back into its scabbard. “There are too many of them to face at once.” He looked at his feet, anywhere but at Reinhardt. “It doesn’t matter if we kill another two thousand, or five thousand, or seven thousand. If they destroy our army, then … if they mean to take Juvavum, they will. Over-Carinthia, or the east of the palatinate near Wien haven’t had a chance to provide any militia, and perhaps they could retake the town. There are woodsmen in the north and miners in the south, too. They own a stake in their forests and salt now, and King Ironmaker will have to pry those out of their dead hands. The dwarves probably wouldn’t be able to hold on to any of the gains they’d made, and we’ll probably win in the end, whatever we decide here.”
“And afterwards Carinthia would be too weak to resist being carved up between Bavaria, Wien and the Doge. Everything would be lost.” Sophia stared bleakly in the direction of the dwarves, where she hoped Felix also was, up on the col by the lake with the remains of the Carinthian cavalry.
Büber, Reinhardt and Ullmann were looking to her to decide what to do.
“If …” she asked, “if we stand and fight, as we intended, can we kill enough of them to allow some other army to finish them?”
“We don’t have another army, my lady,” said Reinhardt.
“If München and Augsburg turn up, we do,” she said.
“There needs to be some Carinthian force left in the field.” said Ullmann, “or there’ll be nothing to stop the Bavarians from taking Juvavum.”
“The Bavarians should be here with us, shoulder to shoulder on the walls,” said Reinhardt. “It’s a disgrace that they’re not.”
Ullmann nodded. “I don’t disagree. So why not let the dwarves take München instead of Juvavum?”
His words lodged in her heart like a hook. She looked at Reinhardt, at Büber, at Ullmann. “Can we do that?”
“We can talk to them under a flag of truce – we don’t have any Dwarvish speakers, but they’ll have some German ones. Or Latin. My lady knows Latin.” Ullmann picked at his nails. “We promise to retreat to our borders; they promise not to cross them.”
“We’ve destroyed a third of their army,” said Reinhardt. “Do you think that’s enough of a message for them to comprehend?”
Büber sighed loudly, and Sophia sat down next to him. “Peter? What is it?”
“Let’s not do this. Let’s not pretend to ourselves that Ironmaker will keep his word. Let’s not sell our neighbours as worm-food as the cost for saving our own skins. Let’s not overlook the protection we’ve extended to Rosenheim and Simbach. Let’s not take the fucking cowards’ way out of hiding behind a line on the fucking map while everything around us burns.”
He got up slowly, leaving the place where he’d been sitting damp and stained with blood. “We’ve been here before. We’ve been here so many, many times in the last thousand years that you’d have thought we’d have learnt something from it by now. This is our business. Ironmaker has to be stopped, and I don’t see the lords of München or Augsburg or the King of the Franks or the Protector of Wien lining up to do this. No, it’s a thirteen-year-old boy instead. And if he were here, he’d want us to fight on in whichever way we can until we’ve finished what we came here to do. You know it, all of you.”
He was right. Of course he was right. Anything else was unworthy of them, of her. She had to trust. To believe.
“How do we do this, then?”
“We destroy the bridge, swim the Enn, and we drag them one by one into the forest.”
He was serious, absolutely and utterly serious; deep conviction written across his scarred face.
“What if they cross too? What if they march on Rosenheim, or Juvavum, while we’re still pecking away at them?”
“My lady, they won’t be able to march on anywhere because they won’t be able to turn their backs on us. The reason they’re still in this valley is not because of the walls we’ve built but because of the army we’ve raised, and it’s not our walls they have to take, it’s our lives. Deny them the chance to do that, and they’re still stuck here.” He held out his crusted hands imploringly. “Our strength is in our arms and our hearts. I see that now. Please see it with me.”
He so rarely asked for anything. She couldn’t even remember the last time she’d heard him say please.
“Can we bring down the bridge?” she asked. It wasn’t that wide, but it had spanned the river solidly enough to take the annual spring flood for at least a hundred years.
Reinhardt gritted his teeth. “Given a century of men with crowbars and a full day, I could reduce it to rubble. We came to build, though, not tear down. I think it’s too late. Which is why we should stay with Felix’s plan.”
That was just a little bit cunning, invoking Felix’s name. Sophia bit her tongue at its mention and blinked away the tears.
“How many men could you spare, Master Reinhardt? If Master Büber was going to take part of our army across the Enn and attack from behind, how many centuries do we need to defend here?”
“All of them, my lady,” said Reinhardt. “All of them, and more.”
She buried her head in her hands. They could make their stand here. They could fight in the woods. They could sue for peace. If she chose badly, Carinthia was lost.
She stayed still for the longest time, so much so that she only moved when Büber’s shadow crossed her. She looked up to see him beside the palisade, looking out through a distance-pipe over the valley.
“What are they doing, Master Büber?”
With the lens at his eye, he tracked between the far bank and the valley-side.
“Taking apart our earthwork, my lady. They mean to use their wagons again, and my guess is they’ll be able to bring them up all the way to our lines this time.”
It suddenly became simple.
“Master Büber. Go and talk to the centurions. Take whoever will go with you. The rest of us will hold out here as long as
we can, then turn and run.” She turned to Reinhardt. “Put no more than two centuries of spears on the first embankment facing the bridge. The bows will be up here with me.”
“Two, my lady?” His voice was weak, uncomprehending.
“No more than that, yes. When they fail, the crag will be surrounded quickly. Everyone else will be behind the second embankment, and you’ll have to lead as many of them as you can save back to the bridge at Rosenheim, and try and protect that from the dwarves as best you can. Put pickets on the west bank, too, in case they cross the hills rather than follow the road.”
Then she looked at Ullmann, who must have realised she was keeping something special for him.
“My lady?”
“I need your Black Company. I have no intention of sacrificing the lives of the bowmen for nothing. Nor yours. But we will have to fight our way out. Do you understand?”
She was certain he did. She wanted him separated from his own personal army. Whether he agreed with her was, for the moment, irrelevant. He couldn’t refuse her openly.
“You have your orders, and you need to hurry,” she said. Ullmann and Reinhardt realised they’d been dismissed, along with their advice, and Sophia thought it was better that Büber got among the troops now, rather than staring up the valley through his distance-pipe, looking for a likely crossing point.
“You can do that later,” she told him. “Go and collect your men, while we still have some.”
Büber closed the tube and carefully replaced the covers over the lenses. Everything he touched was left with a rime of bloody fingerprints. He walked past her on the way to the gate, and she whispered, “HaShem go with you, Peter.”
He paused, nodded, then carried on.
93
The sun crawled across the sky until it lanced straight down the valley, turning the dark river into a white-gold line too bright to look at. Across on the west side of the valley, the dwarves were lining up their wagons on the flat ground. They’d all but demolished the embankment – at least the part Ullmann could see past the shoulder of the hill – and they’d taken out a few of the small drystone walls that divided the farm land, all outside of bow-shot.
Büber had marched off before midday, taking two-thirds of the centuries with him into the forest behind the Kufstein crag. He’d taken the Crossed, despite Sophia’s releasing them from their sentences. Or perhaps because of it. He’d also taken both centuries of Jews, and Aelinn’s mob of domestic servants, stable boys and porters. There’d been nothing he could do about that.
He’d watched the trees swallow them, one by one, until none were left. If they were out of his sight, they were out of Sophia’s too.
Büber could take his army wherever he wanted: over the mountains and back to Juvavum if he chose. He could leave them all here to die, and rude, rough Peter Büber would be prince.
Ullmann glanced over his shoulder at Sophia, who was adjusting her skirts so that she could fight and run in them better. There were rumours about her and Büber. He knew them false, because he’d started them: but with Felix gone, he’d be using those rumours differently now.
Below the crag were the remnants of their spearmen: two centuries on the first wall, two more on the second one, which didn’t stretch any significant distance. The dwarves could go around the end. Everything appeared small and weak in comparison to the force massing opposite them.
The top of crag itself was covered with crossbowmen, slowly lining up at the palisade and checking their angles. The bridge, both ditches, and the ground either side were all in range. As in the earlier engagements, it would be a bloody slaughter, except this time they knew it wouldn’t be enough.
There was still time for him to walk the short distance between the two armies, and talk terms. Considering their own small losses compared to those they’d inflicted on the dwarves, they should have the upper hand in any negotiations. What was wrong with setting the dwarves on Bavaria, as long as they left Carinthia alone? If München wasn’t going to send anyone to fight on their side, then they deserved to be besieged – again.
Then he remembered he’d ordered the ruler of München to be killed. Had it been done, and, importantly, had it been done secretly? Where was Augsburg? Most likely relying on Carinthia to sort out its problems like the Bavarians had always done.
They’d be next, the proud, vainglorious lords of Bavaria. They’d go the way of Fuchs, stabbed with a Carinthian spear in the hands of a Bavarian housewife.
His anger was directed in all directions at once. It was the dwarves’ fault for going to war, Felix’s fault for refusing to hire mercenaries, Büber’s fault for taking away the best part of their army, Sophia’s fault for allowing him to do so. He needed Carinthia intact if any of his plans were to ripen and bear fruit.
If, if, if. If he’d been in charge now, those mistakes simply wouldn’t have been made. He gripped the top of the palisade and watched the play of light and shadow across the valley.
The first wagon rolled forward. He thought he might have imagined the movement, but it was followed by a second, then a third.
The bowmen had noticed, too, and were growing quietly serious, pointing.
“My lady?” he called. “They’ve started.”
She stopped her impromptu cutting and lacing and ran across, darting between the bowmen to press in next to him at the palisade. Her mouth made a thin, grim line.
“Regrets, my lady?” Even now, she could send out the white flag of truce.
“Plenty, Master Ullmann, but none about the company I keep.”
The men around her cheered at that, and Ullmann thought them fools. Better they had ten times the spears and five times the bows; a proper army, silent and disciplined, swift and deadly.
The good humour started to drain away, and he looked out again over the river. A murmuring started, and Sophia’s eyes narrowed.
“The distance-pipe,” she called. “Bring me the distance-pipe.”
It was passed forward, and by the time it was put into her hands, she was visibly trembling. She held it to her eye, twisting the tubes for focus. She grew still.
Then she was thrusting the apparatus at Ullmann and stumbling away. The bowmen parted before and closed behind her.
Ullmann lifted the unfamiliar device to his face. Everything was blurred, and green, then blue, but eventually he got it under control. He scanned the advancing wagons – gods, they looked so close – and finally lighted on the lead vehicle.
A thin, sharpened stake had been crudely nailed to the front of it, and impaled on top was a head, bouncing and jolting with every imperfect revolution of the wheels.
The spike came out through a crown of matted dark hair, and, despite the blood and mud, it was obvious whose head it was.
How they’d recognised him was anyone’s guess – none of the dwarves had seen Felix before, and he’d carried no distinguishing tokens, no crown, no seal. Even the armour he’d worn was plain, and the Sword of Carinthia … ah. So they had long memories, and the ancient, once-magical weapon had given him away.
The prince was dead, and there was no one to take his throne after him. He slipped down from the palisade, and went to find Sophia.
She was white, her eyes large and dark and staring. Her whole frame rose and fell in time with her deliberate, deep breaths. He wasn’t even sure that she was aware of his, or anyone else’s presence, when she suddenly hissed: “And you’d have me make a deal with these, these creatures?”
Ullmann thought of a dozen different replies, none of which would help, so he stayed silent.
“They cut off his head.”
They had. No one could deny it, because the head was there in plain sight, stuck on a pole and getting closer with each passing moment.
“They will pay for this.”
But not today, not with the army she’d purposefully split in two. Ullmann would remind her of that.
“My lady, I think we need to retreat. Save what we can of the men.”
> “No,” she said baldly. She started towards the palisade, every step agony.
“My lady, I insist.” He reached out and pulled back on her sleeve.
She drew her sword and, in one fluid move, swung it down to where his neck and shoulder met. It stopped at the collar of his mail shirt.
“You insist? Or what? You’ll rid yourself of another troublesome woman?” Her knuckles had turned as white as her face. “A dagger through the ribs maybe?”
She lifted the sword-blade away, holding it high.
“We both have our parts to play, Master Ullmann. See that you play yours.” She strode off to be among the bowmen, who were sombrely going about the business of cocking their bows, pressing bolts onto the stock, saying their last prayers to whichever of the Aesir they thought might help them best.
Ullmann closed his eyes and raised his own entreaty. Gods, she knows. How could she know? How long has she known? With Felix dead, there’d be nothing to stop her doing whatever it was she wanted to do to him, because she was all they had now. The people loved her despite all the reasons they had not to. They would, quite literally, follow her to the gates of the underworld if she asked.
How had it turned out this way? His chest constricted as he imagined the weight of the huge stone used in pressing settle on him. He turned away and leant forward, hands on knees, in an attempt to get more air in.
It wasn’t over yet, though. A hundred different things could happen in battle, and almost all of them unexpected. There was no reason – no good reason – to give up hope. She was the only person who knew. If, may the gods forbid it, something was to happen to her, then that was that. The secret would be dead.
He took another breath and found that he’d recovered enough. Going through the still-open gate, he went down the lee side of the crag to find his men.
“Form up,” said Ullmann. “No one’s going to find us unready.”
They lined up, four ranks deep, and did it quickly. He could take pride in that.
He paced in front of them. “When the time comes, it’ll be hard fighting. The bowmen from the crag need to run the four or five stadia to the trees, and we’re to protect them until they’re safe. When we’re certain of that, we retreat, too. Anyone gets separated, we’ll regroup at Rosenheim. It’s more than likely that the dwarves will stop for the day here, but if they pursue us, we have to stand in the way. Any questions?”