by David Hair
‘It went as expected,’ Pashil replied flatly. ‘They are dug in, and well-drilled.’
‘What were our losses?
‘Final tallies are not complete, but I estimate five thousand dead or wounded.’
So many? Dear Ahm! ‘And the enemy?’
‘At best a few hundred.’
Salim winced. ‘Then what have we gained?’
‘Today? Nothing. Unless you count reducing pressure on our food stores.’ Pashil glared towards the Rondian lines. ‘The disappointment was our southern flank, where there is no natural defence, but they’ve stationed the Argundians there, and the Necromancer-woman.’
‘Jelaska Lyndrethuse,’ Salim said. ‘How are our men?’
‘The Lakh and Gatti are dispirited. They claim you give them the impossible tasks and protect your Keshi.’ Their eyes met; both knew the accusation to be true.
What ruler does not protect his own?
‘And my Keshi?’
‘Our morale remains high. The archers have plenty of arrows, the lancers are chaffing to ride out, and the young lords are clamouring for their chance.’ Pashil lifted an eyebrow. ‘Not that any of them want to go in first tomorrow.’
Salim half-smiled. ‘And what of tomorrow?’
‘The same, over and over. It is tiredness that will break the Rondians, exhaustion from constant alertness, constant combat, constantly being under fire. In the meantime, we have plenty of conscripts, and plenty of whips to drive them on.’
They shared a long minute of silence, watching the sun set and picturing the slaughter tomorrow would bring.
‘What can your magi do to help us?’ Salim asked finally.
‘Not so much, without exposing ourselves.’ His eyes were disapproving.
Yes, I know. I let Alyssa Dulayne butcher the Dokken, then leave with most of our magi.
‘We both know the why, Pashil. If what she learned is true, then the opportunity could not be passed up. I only wish I could have given her more men.’
In that one bloody night he’d had more than eighty Dokken warriors, women and children slain, then released the best of the Hadishah, twenty-seven of Pashil’s finest warrior-magi, to follow Alyssa on this almost unbelievable mission to claim the Scytale of Corineus. That left Pashil with only thirty mostly young Hadishah. The decision had crippled his own army and the required reorganisation had cost them two whole weeks: time that Seth Korion had used well in digging in. Thousands had died for that choice already, and thousands more would follow.
But surely we have enough men to win here?
‘Attrition will win the day,’ Pashil reassured him. ‘It is inevitable. Keep a few archers firing right through the night, so that the Rondians cannot rest. Keep them on edge and they will break sooner.’
‘A good suggestion. Let it be so.’
*
‘Attrition,’ Jelaska said, as Seth’s magi gathered to review the second day of battle. ‘That’s their strategy.’
Seth yawned, wondering how many of them had managed any sleep since the attack began; he certainly hadn’t. There had been five major assaults through the day, and sporadic arrow-fire all night. But the attacks today had been half-hearted, just ill-armed rabble who had broken quickly. ‘We’re already exhausted.’
‘Not us, General.’ Jelaska gestured towards her grim Argundians. ‘My lads are happy as larks.’
Argundians: how do you tell?
‘Have you seen any magi on your flank?’ he asked. Jelaska’s Argundians were holding the weakest part of the line and they had half the reserves waiting behind her in case of a breakthrough, but there had been none yet.
‘Only a few skiffs above, and they’ve not come near me, sadly,’ she grumbled.
‘Why would they hold them back?’
‘Same reason we’re only getting conscripts thrown at us: the magi and the nobles want the glory without the danger. Often in one-sided battles, the best men hold back. Everyone wants someone else to do the dirty work.’
‘So it’ll be more of the same tomorrow?’
‘Probably. I’ll try and make sure the lads get some sleep tonight, General. The whole army doesn’t have to be awake.’ She yawned too. ‘I’m getting too old for this vulnessia.’ When he cocked an eyebrow she translated. ‘Garbage.’
‘Vulnessia . . . Sounds like the name of one of my father’s consorts,’ Seth remarked.
‘Ha! You’re starting to get the spirit of this lark, lad.’
‘I think I’ve been spending too much time with Sensini.’
Jelaska scowled. ‘That little rat . . . I heard he’s plugging Lanna Jureigh behind Severine’s back.’
Seth wrinkled his nose in distaste. First Severine, which had been unbelievable enough, and then there were those rumours about Calipha Amiza in Ardijah. But Lanna as well? He liked Lanna. She’d once hinted that if he wanted, she was willing. But it hadn’t felt right. It never seemed to, with any woman he met. ‘Should I speak to him?’
‘No!’ Jelaska snorted. ‘There’s no law against it out here.’
‘How does the scrawny little rat do it?’
‘Women like men who know what they’re doing – or who look as if they know what they’re doing. Meesterhaften – masterly men, as we say in Argundy – they project confidence and purpose: an attractive quality that comes in all shapes and sizes.’ She looked at him critically. ‘In case you’re wondering, you don’t have it, but it’s coming.’
‘Then there’s hope for me yet?’
‘Yes, General, there is.’ Jelaska chuckled sympathetically, then she went back to yelling at her Argundians.
*
Ramon slipped into the space beneath the wagon where Severine Tiseme was sleeping in a blanket with Julietta tucked against her. He must have triggered wards as he entered because Sevvie’s eyes flashed open, her body tensing until she recognised him. ‘Wha’ you wan’?’ she mumbled.
‘To see my daughter. And her mother, of course.’
‘Piss off. I’m tired,’ she said. ‘What’s happening?’
‘Nothing much. The Keshi are still firing their rukking arrows into the camp, but only a few, to keep us on our toes. As long as you keep a good shield above your head, you’re mostly all right. We’ve got sensing-wards in front of the lines to warn of any raids, and we’re rotating the cohorts. Most of the camp’s asleep.’ He pulled Julietta into his arms. ‘Buona sera, little one: it’s Papa.’ The infant wriggled into a fresh position without waking. Her tiny round face made him feel soft as wool inside. ‘She knows me,’ he said proudly.
‘She loves her mother best,’ Sevvie replied. ‘Because I have tits full of milk. I should have been born a cow.’
‘Who says you weren’t?’ He rocked Julietta in his arms, marvelling at the delicate detail of her face. ‘How are you feeling, Sevvie? Any stronger?’
She looked away. ‘I’m so tired. Being Julietta’s milkmaid isn’t easy. All my energy goes into her.’
‘We need you out there, even if it’s just to set wards and scry the enemy lines for movement.’
‘No – stop asking! Your daughter needs me!’
‘So do our soldiers! We have wet-nurses by the dozen – let someone else feed her.’
Severine looked appalled. ‘I’m not letting some dirty Noorie woman breastfeed my baby! How could you even suggest such a thing?’ She snatched Julietta away, making her wake and start crying. ‘Now look what you’ve done! Go away and leave us alone!’
They exchanged hot glares, then he swore and rolled from beneath the wagon. He unloosed a salvo of words behind him. ‘You’re letting us all down with your . . . hiding. You could get up if you wanted. You know you could.’
She burst into tears and from left and right he saw Khotri women glaring at him. A few shouted abuse in their own tongue; he didn’t need to know the words to get the gist. He stumbled away and took up their suggestion, heading to the ditches and pissing away his anger and disappointment.
With no wel
come in his own bed, Ramon drifted towards the healers’ tents, close to the river and as far from the firing zone as possible. Lanna and Carmina were assisted by two dozen nurses and around forty Khotri women who’d volunteered. The grey-haired senior nurse, a Pallacian man named Rousham, saw every man brought in and assessed his needs, freeing the two mage-healers to tend the worst cases. Ramon passed down the lines of men lying in bloodstained blankets, some asleep, most awake and in pain. Lanna was bent over a man with two arrows imbedded in his ribcage. His breath was coming in agonised wheezing, sucking gusts. Pale light seeped from her hands into the wound, while a bubble of light pulsed in his open mouth, Air-gnosis pumping clean air into his lungs.
He died as Ramon arrived, giving up as if all this effort was just not worth it.
Lanna sagged as well, her compassionate face first going sickly, then resigned. She looked up at Ramon blankly. ‘What?’
‘I’m just doing the rounds.’ He put a hand on her shoulder, wanting to comfort her.
‘Don’t touch me,’ she snapped, shrugging his hand away. Then she sighed. ‘Sorry. Carmina heard a rumour that you’re screwing me, which is ripe because I’ve not noticed.’
‘Nor I. You know the way this army gossips.’
‘I surely do. Look, I’ve got another four serious cases before I can sleep. So unless you’re here to help, piss off.’ She gestured to the far end of the tent. ‘Seth’s helping Carmina. He’s a good healer; he missed his calling.’
Ramon conjured light in his hand. ‘What do you need? I’ve enough of an affinity to cleanse a wound.’
She looked up and her face softened a little. She pointed to a row of prostrate men. ‘Those men need their dressings changed and any infection cleansed. Get to it.’
*
Fridryk Kippenegger stalked along the rows of sweating, nervous men lining the barricades. It was afternoon on the fourth day of battle, though the first three barely counted in his mind. The incessant arrows were just annoying, and the attacks by the enemy spearmen had been dismal. Minaus Bullhead, looking down from his throne of skulls, would have seen little to rouse him. The Schlessen war-god admired mighty hand-to-hand clashes, not cowardly skulking and the hurling of missiles.
But this looked more promising.
The enemy archers were back, but this time they were bearing wicker shields and scimitars, not bows. They were far better armed than the conscripts, and they could at least march in straight lines, not a thing Kip really valued, but it did imply some measure of competence. They were massed in ranks twenty- or thirty-deep, ready to attack. The drums began to pound and his heart took up the rhythm.
‘Look at them!’ he called to his men. ‘Plenty for us all!’ He pointed skywards, ‘And for you, Minaus!’
His men held the south end of the natural ridge, buttressing onto Jelaska’s narrow, flat section. The Argundians had worked hard to strengthen the line, digging a ditch across their front, raising earthworks and wooden palisades. And of course, Jelaska herself was there. Kip could see the Argundian standing alongside Baltus Prenton’s skiff, which was ready to take to the air: a little surprise for the enemy. Then his eyes were drawn to his own front as the drums rolled then fell silent.
‘Minaus is watching, my Bullheads!’ Kip shouted. ‘He drinks to your courage!’
‘MINAUS!’ his men shouted, Pallacians all. They’d cheerily adopted the Schlessen war-god as their patron following Shaliyah, where Kip had kept them alive through the disaster.
‘Kore be my shield!’ one man added nervously.
‘Kore is a weakling!’ Kip roared at the man. ‘Only the Bullhead gives strength in battle! Minaus is your strong arm! Minaus is your blade!’ He slapped the man on the shoulder. ‘Rejoice! The test is now! We are strong and the enemy is puny!’
His diatribe was interrupted by another massive drum-roll that became a steady beat and then the Keshi were marching forward, their footfalls shaking the earth. Estellan archers began to shoot, each arrow dropping a marching man in his tracks, but they were few, and the Keshi just strode over the bodies.
‘Why are we here?’ Kip shouted.
‘TO KILL!’
‘Who will we kill?’
‘THOSE CUNNIS!’ And his men grabbed at imaginary cocks and waggled them contemptuously at the Keshi. As the Keshi came closer and their faces became clearer, Kip could feel their anger: they knew what the gesture meant.
With a wild cry, the attackers suddenly burst into a run, and the Rondians readied their javelins. Kip let the Keshi get close, sprinting through a withering storm of Estellan arrows and reaching the base of the mound some thirty yards below. As they bunched and slowed, he bellowed, ‘THROW!’
The javelins, a wall of them, were hurled with brutal force into the faces of the climbing Keshi. Their wicker shields failed to protect them; the javelins burst through and transfixed the men behind. The entire front rank of the enemy went down as Kip brandished his massive zweihandle. The next rank of Keshi hurdled the bodies of their comrades, eyes bulging and mouths screaming as they threw themselves up the slope.
They were met by barricades topped with interlocked shields, and the legionaries slamming their shortswords through the gaps into faces and chests. The first Keshi were trapped by the wall before them and the mass of men behind and had nowhere to go; they couldn’t even drop and crawl away as they were slowly hacked apart, dying on their feet, and impeding the men behind them. Those following could barely keep their feet, let alone fight, but the wall began to waver from the pressure of those pushing on it.
‘SWITCH!’ Kip ordered the first rotation, pouring kinesis into the mass in front of him and buying a second for the switch of ranks, then following up with mage-bolts. But his whole section was wobbling from the sheer weight of numbers: momentum was shifting against his men. He recognised it instinctively and knew he had to act.
Leaping to the top of the barricade he swung the zweihandle without finesse, just brute strength and heavy steel, shattering the first Keshi’s scimitar and his helm beneath, then wrenching the blade free and plunging it into a second man, straight through his shield and breastplate. Scimitars and spears scoured his gnostic shields, ripping through in showers of sparks as steel bit into his shins and thighs, though not deeply. He hacked about him ferociously, carving a space. Javelins flew all around him as his reserves followed him, bigger men than their foes and more heavily armed. Keshi blades snapped, caught in shields, or glanced off armour, the wounds they inflicted superficial, but the Pallacian shortsword thrusts were practised and deadly.
‘VORWAERTS! VORWAERTS!’ Kip bellowed, carrying his men with him as he stormed down the slope, sending a shockwave through the mass before him.
‘THIRD RANK!’ his officers bellowed, and the next rotation of men pushed through: flankmen, the best swordsmen and most suited to a broken mêlée. They dashed into the Keshi, and individual duels broke out, one-sided and brief. Kip went with them, hacking down men who barely saw him coming as they turned to flee.
Blue fire flashed into his shields and through, searing his left forearm and as he bellowed in rage he saw a black-robed figure darting through the press. Hadishah!
He went for the assassin, ploughing through the mêlée. The Hadishah saw him coming and fired again but Kip’s shields were ready. The Keshi were scattering, opening the space between him and the assassin. More mage-fire struck and he staggered on, then he was swinging his blade as fire burst around him. The world became a red-orange tunnel with a black shape at the end of it. His zweihandle swept through the Hadishah’s shields, smashed ribs and embedded itself in the assassin’s spine. The Keshi went down in a heap as he spun and hacked and spun and hacked, over and again, because some magi just didn’t know how to die.
Verdamnt Shizen!
Some brave soul grabbed his right arm. ‘Sir! Hold, sir! She’s dead, she’s dead!’
She?
His vision cleared. The Hadishah lay hacked in half a few yards away, and her head
was another foot from the stump of her neck. She’d been maybe twenty, with big soft eyes and perfect skin. Kip spat the sudden ill taste from his mouth, then looked around.
‘You weren’t to know, sir.’
‘Bloodmaidens,’ he snarled. ‘My people have woman warriors also, sworn to the Bullhead. When they die they join his Stormriders. I’ve sent dozens to his ranks!’ It was bravado, but he needed it: his clothes were still smouldering and his gnosis was strained. The Keshi were falling back to their lines, but their cavalry were circling, hoping to catch the Rondian footmen in the open. It was time to pull back.
They hurried back to the barricades, his officer shouting out orders: ‘Clear the dead! Wounded to the rear! Recover your javelins! Fix those barricades!’
Kip sucked air into his big chest, then lifted his head. ‘The Bullhead is speaking to me, bruden!’ he shouted. ‘He is pleased! His goblet is full of Keshi blood!’
They cheered his savagery, cheered themselves. He was proud of them, and though he’d not show it now, he was grudgingly respectful of their enemy too. Minaus was known to accept brave heathens into his Stormriders.
We sent you many Keshi today, Bullhead, and a new Bloodmaiden for your guard.
Away to his right, the fighting wore on. Like the Pallacians, the Argundians were bigger and stronger, man for man, than their foes. They bore huge ash spears which could be wielded by men two and three ranks back, presenting a forest of spearheads. Jelaska wasn’t even needed; her lines held by sheer brute strength.
Then Kip sensed a rush of power in the skies above and lifted his eyes to see Baltus Prenton’s skiff sweeping over the enemy assailing Jelaska’s position. Hugh Gerant was in the bow, hurling a bundle of the enemy’s own arrows, recovered from the incessant barrage. With an explosion of kinetic force, he sent them into the horde below, streaking downwards with deadly force. Kip’s eyes widened as he saw the impact, a circle of some ten yards of close-packed men collapsing en masse, and those around them recoiling. Baltus swept on, Hugh already preparing another bundle, while two enemy skiffs converged on their position.