by Bell, Hilari
The sound of pounding hooves caught Jiaan’s attention, for the advanced class were using all the horses and they had dismounted and were gathered around Fasal, who was explaining something with vivid hand gestures. This was only a single horse, and it came from the direction of the camp, so it had to be someone the sentries had allowed in—in fact they must have told the rider where he could find Jiaan. So it had to be . . .
A man in the black-and-green tabard of the Mazad town guard cantered out of the trees. Jiaan wondered if he’d donned the betraying garment the moment he was out of range of the Hrum’s patrols, or more sensibly, just before arriving at the army camp. Either way, Jiaan was grateful to Commander Siddas for the consistent respect his men showed for the Farsalan army.
Of course, they’ve never seen us practice.
The practice was drawing to a close, as men lowered their swords to watch the messenger trot up to Jiaan and hold out a sealed scroll.
Jiaan eyed the sweating horse quizzically as he broke the wax. “You couldn’t have left this in the message tree? Your horse would have been grateful for it, and my people check there every few days.”
He wondered if the other Sorahb had struck again. Siddas had told him about the burning of the Hrum’s supply depot in Desafon. As far as Siddas could tell, the Hrum still didn’t know who’d done it, but the name “Sorahb” was being whispered in taverns from one end of Farsala to the other. Siddas thought it was probably local men, but Jiaan wondered. He knew that there was more than one man calling himself Sorahb these days. Several of his new recruits had committed some minor act of sabotage under that name, before coming to join the army. But the destruction of the supply depot had the same feel about it as the suggestion that the miners sell the Hrum inferior goods. Bloodless, efficient, and untraceable. Jiaan had come to believe that there was only one “Sorahb” behind most of the really effective sabotage. He’d have liked to meet the man, if he’d had any idea how to find him.
“We couldn’t wait for you to pick up the message this time, High Commander,” the messenger replied, sounding for all the world as if he spoke to Jiaan’s father instead of a youth not yet twenty. “Commander Siddas says it’s urgent.”
Jiaan’s heart stilled, and then began to pound. Siddas had sent him messages before, both through the tree and by courier; weapons delivery, news of the siege, the need for healer-priests to fight disease in the town before it spread. No message had ever been “urgent” before.
He began to read. Then he read it again, and was starting on a third time when Fasal shook his elbow. “What does it say?”
“He’s received intelligence from his spies,” said Jiaan. “Commander Siddas, that is. He—”
“I know who sent it. What intelligence?”
“The Hrum are sending reinforcements to Mazad. Governor Garren decided that Substrategus Arus’ claim that he could take the city with just one tacti is ridiculous—or at least too slow—and he’s sending another. Siddas says that two tacti, or rather a tacti and the seven hundred men Arus has left could put real pressure on the city, so he wants to destroy as many of Arus’ forces as he can before the others arrive. He says this is the best opportunity he’ll . . . we’ll have, to try something like this with any chance of success.”
Jiaan’s stomach felt cold, but Fasal’s eyes were shining.
“Does he have a plan?”
“A good one,” said Jiaan slowly. “He and his men will open the gates and attack the Hrum camp. They’ve never tried to attack before—he says the Hrum will be totally unprepared. As soon as he and his men have them fully engaged, we’re to attack from the rear.” The chill in Jiaan’s stomach was spreading. “He’s not proposing that we fight to the death, just a quick strike, to force the Hrum to turn and fight on two fronts. To give the guardsmen the advantage of a few moments’ chaos. When the Hrum begin to rally, his clarioneers will sound retreat, and we’ll all disengage at once. That will force the Hrum to either choose one target and let the other go, or to split their forces, giving each of us a better chance of escape.”
Jiaan had never told Siddas, in so many words, how inexperienced his men were, but the old commander clearly understood. It was a plan designed to use Jiaan’s army as lightly as possible—a diversion, instead of a real fight. It should work, but . . .
Jiaan’s gaze swept the meadow. Almost a thousand men looked back at him, gripping their wooden practice swords firmly. Wooden practice swords. “We’re not ready.”
“When do the reinforcements arrive?” Fasal asked.
“In three weeks. Just enough time for us to get there, set this up, and plan our escape.”
Escape for whoever survived. The Hrum wouldn’t be using practice swords.
“Then we’re as ready as we’re going to be, aren’t we?” Fasal was trying to sound calm, but excitement shivered in his voice.
Jiaan stared at him. “You’ve been training them.” The others were too far off to hear. Even the messenger had withdrawn to give them privacy, but Jiaan lowered his voice anyway. “Look me in the eyes, and tell me you think these men are ready to fight the Hrum.”
Fasal met his gaze. “They’re not. They never will be. Certainly not in the year—less now—that we have. These are peasants. They’ll never be good enough to fight the Hrum, and you knew that when you started this. But they might be good enough to create a distraction, so trained soldiers can fight the Hrum. And right now, that’s the best use of this army I can see. Is this an army, or isn’t it?”
His voice was rising and Jiaan glared at him. Fasal grimaced, but when he spoke again, his voice was very soft. “A deghan would do it.”
Jiaan snorted. He knew a deghan would do it. A deghan would do it in an instant and never count the cost. And he cared nothing for the growing contempt in Fasal’s eyes, either. Still . . .
Is this an army, or isn’t it?
What had he gathered these men for, what was he training them for, except to fight the Hrum? The plan Commander Siddas proposed, a plan that took their inexperience into account, that didn’t demand a sustained battle, was surely the best way to fight without getting too many of them killed. But men would die. Jiaan had no doubt of that. He had fought the Hrum before. However badly led, however unprepared for attack, the Hrum would never be easy opponents.
Is this an army, or isn’t it?
Jiaan looked again at the watching men. Wooden practice swords or no, their eyes were steady on his.
“All right.” He took a deep, sustaining breath. “We’ll do it.”
He turned and walked away from Fasal’s whoop of joy, away from the grins spreading across the faces of the men who were close enough to guess what was going on. He would have to delay the messenger for a day or so, to discuss tactics and how best to coordinate their movements with those of the city guard. The sinking in Jiaan’s stomach didn’t seem to be going away now that he’d made his decision, which was probably a bad sign, but he’d stick with that decision. And not because of Fasal. He could have stood up to Fasal. But he knew that this was what his father would have done.
IT WAS GOING TOO WELL. Everything had gone smooth as new cream, from the conference where Jiaan and his veterans gathered with the messenger to plan their tactics, through the journey to this dark grove on the other side of the Hrum camp. They’d avoided the two patrols they’d seen with ease, and Fasal hadn’t even argued very long about attacking them. They still had a week before the Hrum reinforcements could arrive, and the moon was so full and the weather so clear, that even Jiaan’s small, new-minted army could handle a night attack. They would be able to see the gates open, and could probably even judge for themselves the right moment to charge the Hrum’s backs—and they had agreed on a clarion signal, if for some reason Siddas wanted them to charge early.
No one had even so much as nicked himself with his new, metal sword. It was all going perfectly, and Jiaan was half insane with the tension of wondering what was going to go wrong.
Ji
aan sensed, more than heard it, when Fasal stiffened in the bushes beside him. He looked at the gates.
In the moonlight the high stone walls appeared to be a single piece of stone, unbreakable as the mountains. The great wooden gates were of a piece with them, unyielding as stone. But they moved now, swinging wide, as the portcullis lifted and men raced out running to where their units would form, all in a silence so eerie that Jiaan blinked, doubting his eyes.
Then the Hrum sentries shouted, and a drum rattled a frenzied tattoo. The camp erupted into activity as men hurtled from their tents, clothed only in their tunics, carrying breastplates, shields, helmets, some with boots in their hands, buckling on their swords as they ran.
They were still assembling their armor and pulling on their boots as they formed up into ten-man squads, and then, as the drumbeat changed, into a line three men thick. Even Jiaan, who had seen it before, shook his head in disbelief at how fast they could find formation.
But the town guardsmen had emerged from the gates and formed their own units, blocks of about twenty men each. They looked sloppier than the Hrum, but they had almost as many men, Jiaan noted with a leap of hope, and they’d had plenty of time to arm and prepare. When Jiaan’s army joined them they would outnumber the Hrum by almost three to one—and if that was dishonorable, Jiaan didn’t care. It was Farsala’s turn!
When the clarion sounded, the thunder of the Farsalan battle cry almost drowned the higher notes of the horn as Siddas’ guardsmen charged.
The drumbeat altered again, and the Hrum marched out to meet them. Some of them were still trying to fasten the buckles on their breastplates. And they had no long lances this time, no knowledge of the enemy’s plans—this time the Hrum would be surprised!
There were about two thousand yards between the Hrum camp and the city walls, and months of siege had removed all the brush and rubble, so Jiaan had a clear view of the meeting of the two armies. Mazad’s guardsmen were running, shouting, and they crashed into the Hrum’s line like a storm wave hitting a wall.
The Hrum line swayed and bent under the impact. Metal clanged on metal, thudded on wooden shields, and screams and shrieks added themselves to the din. Jiaan’s mind had expected those sounds, but his body remembered the last time he’d heard them and his blood ran cold and thin, too thin to sustain his racing heart. He shuddered, trying to control his breathing. He had to watch, to be aware, to get his men ready . . .
Jiaan never knew quite what it was—the battle looked the same, as swords rose and fell, and men struggled to break the Hrum’s tight formation. Perhaps something in the sound changed, though men still shouted and cried out in pain. The sound was . . . different.
Jiaan had already stood, breaking cover, and lifted his hand to signal his men when the clarion sounded. His hand swept down.
The men charged without shouting, as Jiaan and his squad commanders had drilled into them over and over on the week of the march—No reason to warn them we’re coming, lads. But they couldn’t cross the Hrum camp in total silence.
Jiaan, trotting Rakesh behind the running mob and trying to watch over everything at once, saw a woman in a servant’s drab gown emerge from a tent with an armload of cloth, probably intended for bandages. She screamed when she saw the men racing toward her, then threw her bundle in their direction and leaped back into the tent again. One of his men tripped on the cloth, Jiaan noted with resignation, but he staggered back to his feet and ran on.
Crashing between the tents Jiaan couldn’t see everything, but he heard a man shouting warning, and what sounded like someone running into a stack of cooking pots. Still, among the shouts, screams, and clangor of the battle, any noise from the camp would be lost.
They got past the tents and Jiaan saw that the Hrum had pushed the town guard back several yards, and they were about to gain more ground . . . except for Jiaan’s army.
The muscles of his cheeks ached, and Jiaan realized he was grinning, a frozen, teeth-gritting grin. His own men were only a few dozen yards from the Hrum’s backs, and would reach them in seconds. Jiaan raised his arm again, and waved to signal the archers.
The Hrum’s first warning of the Farsalan army’s presence was the arrival of their arrows. Given the fact that their allies stood just beyond their intended targets, Jiaan had refused to allow any but the best and steadiest of his archers to use their bows—and that at a range where a skilled archer couldn’t possibly miss.
The arrows’ hiss-and-thud was so soft compared to the clamor around them that only the Hrum whose neighbors fell, with feathered shafts protruding from their backs, were warned at all. A handful of Hrum were starting to turn when Jiaan’s men reached them.
The cavalry consisted of Jiaan, Fasal, and five other men from the advanced class who Fasal thought might be more useful on horseback than on foot. Like the archers, they were supposed to keep to the rear and only go in if the foot soldiers found themselves in trouble.
But as the third rank of the Hrum line spun, raised their shields, and began to fight, Jiaan realized that his whole army was in trouble.
He saw one man go down, not wounded, merely knocked aside by a blow from a Hrum’s shield, while his partner engaged the Hrum desperately with his sword. Jiaan pulled out a javelin and clapped his heels to Rakesh’s flanks.
A roar rose from the front line, as the second line of Hrum turned to face the threat at their backs, and the town guard fell on the first line with renewed ferocity.
The Hrum Jiaan was watching smashed the sword from the peasant soldier’s hand, and lifted his own blade to cut the man down. Jiaan’s javelin, cast overhand in the clean, swift sweep his father had taught him, caught the man in the side of his neck, not the center as Jiaan had intended, but at least it had missed his armor and hit flesh. Blood poured blackly over the Hrum’s shoulder and breastplate as he fell to his knees, dropping his sword.
Jiaan’s peasant soldier darted to pick it up, and Rakesh wheeled away before Jiaan’s heels even touched his sides.
Jiaan drew his sword. He watched another of his soldiers cut into the back of a Hrum soldier’s knee, and as the man fell, half turning, helpless, the soldier lifted his sword and froze, staring at the man he could kill.
The Hrum soldiers in front of the fallen man were engaged with the guardsmen, but the Hrum soldier beside the fallen man had no such difficulties. Jiaan swung at the arm he raised, and the Hrum’s sword fell as the man’s wrist spurted blood, broken and half severed. Jiaan struck at the next man’s throat, but hit his face instead. The Hrum’s helmet deflected part of the blow, but Jiaan felt his sword grate over bone. The man cried out, swinging his own sword, and only Rakesh’s nimble leap kept the blade from severing Jiaan’s thigh.
Jiaan swung again. The Hrum’s shield blocked the blow, the force of it numbing his wrist. Then the counterblow came and Jiaan parried desperately, and parried again.
In the shadow of the helmet, the Hrum’s blood-covered face showed no expression, but Jiaan sensed his grim satisfaction as Jiaan backed up a few feet, then a few more . . .
The Hrum’s mouth opened in a soundless scream as the peasant Jiaan had rescued hacked into his neck like a butcher felling an ox. The peasant nodded at Jiaan and turned back to the line, seeking more targets.
But the Hrum were moving again. Somehow, even in the press of battle, they were reforming their lines. Where there had been three ranks now there were four, two facing in each direction, and their formation was growing more solid before Jiaan’s eyes. It was time—
Siddas’ clarioneer blew the retreat, the signal for Jiaan and his men to disengage, turn and run, after which the guardsmen themselves would turn and flee. But disengaging wasn’t as easy as it had sounded when they planned this. Several men could and did run, but men who were exchanging frantic blows and parries couldn’t simply turn their backs and walk away.
Jiaan cantered down the line, disrupting fights, using Rakesh’s big body more than his sword. He saw a Farsalan sword shatter under a
Hrum blade, and hurtled Rakesh forward to slice his own sword into the Hrum’s exposed neck. It cut half through and wedged, wedged in the man’s spine, Jiaan realized. The Hrum dropped his sword, looking up at Jiaan even as life drained from his eyes. His body began to fall, pulling the sword with it, and Jiaan gritted his teeth and shoved his boot against the man’s face, pulling his sword free in a splatter of blood. His stomach heaved, but he fought it down.
“Run, you bastards!” It was his own voice, screaming, and he realized he’d been screaming similar words for some time, hardly aware of it.
He charged Rakesh at another skirmish, riding between two peasants and a Hrum soldier who appeared to be pressing both of them, striking at the Hrum almost blindly, counting on Rakesh to save him. When the town guard fled, any of his men who were left here would die. “Run!”
Then he realized that the town guard was retreating, not running, but backing off, and the Hrum followed them. Several of them looked as if they wanted to stay and fight Jiaan’s force, but they were too well disciplined to break their formation. All down the line Jiaan’s men were withdrawing, turning, running back through the Hrum camp.
A quick glance up and down the line showed Jiaan no more he could do. But he noticed—for the first time, he had a chance to notice—the bodies lying on the trampled earth. Some wore Hrum armor, but more, far more wore the thick leather that was all Farsalan peasants-turned-soldier could afford.
“Get out of here, you idiot!” It was Fasal’s voice, screaming almost in Jiaan’s ear, and it was Fasal’s heel thudding into Rakesh’s hindquarters that sent Jiaan galloping away, through the Hrum tents and into the quiet darkness of the trees.