He nodded and ran back to his men, yelling orders. Sasha turned and spared a look down at the Rhodaani formations. Black smoke rose, and fires spread. It was hard to see the formation clearly, just glints of steel through the smoke. On the wide flanks, Rhodaani cavalry was charging, accompanied by talmaad and Lenay cavalry back for a second charge. It met little opposing cavalry, but gathering now before the Regent's artillery were great rows of pikemen, apparently organised for just that purpose. Their pikes were huge, and their lines bristled like a porcupine. Cavalry hated that. It seemed the Regent had put some thought into how to protect his artillery from cavalry at least.
Andreyis came racing back from his latest mission, and Sasha sent him on a new one. “Tell Kessligh we're pulling off the ridge! We'll protect the artillery and try to make a new line for them to pass, but if we stay here we'll lose everything.”
He left. Yasmyn had been sent to carry another officer's message, and she had no idea where Daish was. Sasha turned and galloped up the line once more, to where her left flank was about to find itself without artillery cover.
She'd just reached the bluff when yells and running men alerted her that the line behind her had been breached. She spun her horse and saw a swarm of men-at-arms pushing through the Ilduuris and across the path she'd just ridden. Rear ranks were peeling off the adjoining lines to attack them, but as they did so, a second portion of newly thinned line also collapsed. The line now dissolved into a mass of fighting, flailing men with no semblance of order. The chaos extended a hundred paces across, and was growing wider. She, and everyone on this side, was now trapped.
An officer ran to her with wild-eyed desperation, shouting questions she could barely hear. She did not bother yelling back, but instead gestured with her hands-a firm line to hold along the ridge so they did not get cut off again, and this new front upon the ridge itself should fall back past the bluff and contract upon itself to make a pocket. She did it as calmly as she could, despite the fighting barely twenty paces from her side, and the officer seemed to absorb that calm, take deep breaths, then turned to run back and yell orders.
Sasha spun and galloped about the corner and onto the Ipshaal front. Soon she was met by Captain Idraalgen, senior officer on this flank.
“We're cut off, the middle just folded!” she yelled at him, dismounting from her horse. “We're about three thousand stuck on this side, and our artillery is retreating!”
Idraalgen did not look very surprised. “Do we attack?” he asked cheerfully.
Sasha laughed. “Yes, but backwards! Those trails up the mountains, can we use them?”
“Any trail is enough for Ilduuri,” he replied. “We'll contract into a tight pocket and funnel men up the trails from behind. They can chase us if they wish, but the trails are narrow-one Ilduuri can stop a whole army if positioned well.”
“Then that's the plan!” Sasha shouted, and slapped him on the shoulder. But she couldn't take her horse. Probably she should have had the stallion killed so that the Regent would not gain another mount, but she had a man take him off beyond the left flank and tie him to a tree. Killing horses was bad luck, and she was superstitious enough to think that a worse threat to this battle than her enemies gaining one more steed.
With her shield on one arm, Sasha took position by one of the trails where it began to climb through steep rocks and precarious trees, shouting for the rear ranks to make an orderly ascent. They came running past her, slinging shields to their backs and swords into their scabbards, then onto the trail at speed. After long fighting, battered, sweaty, and bloody, they ran up the trail, climbing fast in the knowledge that in single file, one slow man condemned every man behind.
Soon the extended right flank of their pocket was falling back from the bluff, amidst triumphant cries and yells from the Regent's men. Directly before her she could hear Ilduuris yelling back, a few in Saalsi, words to the effect that all the piled corpses at their feet did not look like much of a victory.
The pocket drew closer, armoured flanks closing in on all sides, and arrows began to fly more thickly as the Regent's men identified the source of the trail above. Sasha found shelter behind a tree trunk, her shield raised, and figured her men were down from three thousand to just a few hundred. Now it became tricky.
A sergeant alerted her to the endgame, racing from the line now only ten paces away, waving frantically at her to run. Sasha slung her shield and ran straight up the path. Arrows struck about her, and she realised the other advantage to having the shield on the back as Ilduuris wore it while climbing. She'd been in the saddle rather than fighting on foot, so her legs were relatively fresh, yet still it hurt. Fifty paces up she paused where Ilduuri archers had halted to sit just off the path, with an increasingly sheer drop below, and expend their remaining arrows on the men who now closed about the remaining Ilduuri.
Sasha took a knee alongside them and looked down upon the final act. Wounded men, she realised, seeing the last formation of perhaps twenty men fighting amidst the trees, their balance unsteady, clearly too wounded to make this retreat. The last healthy Ilduuri made the trail and climbed, and a gap opened behind him as the wounded men fought, and fell, one, then two, then two more. They could not have gone first-the path was too narrow and they'd have slowed the entire Ilduuri retreat if their comrades had carried them. That would have cost far more lives than just these twenty.
Sasha drew her sword, and yelled an old Lenay war cry. The spirits of these mountains would hear, she was sure of it. The last Ilduuri fell, throwing his blade at an enemy in final defiance.
“Get those fucks when they come up the path,” Sasha told the archers, and left them with a whack on the helmet. The archers put arrows to bowstrings and loosed downslope as men-at-arms tried to follow.
Sasha resumed running, confident that they would not be followed for long. The path was strictly single file, and treacherously steep to any who left it. Five Ilduuri, mixing bows and swords, could hold it indefinitely against any number of foes. In Ilduur, they trained for precisely that, shutting off large numbers of remote paths to invaders through the mountains. A few dozen determined men here could stop armies.
The path angled up and across the mountain face, trees growing sparsely, affording her a view of all the battlefield as she ran. Below to her left was the ridge above the Dhemerhill Valley. Ahead was her artillery position, now vacated save for one huge blaze that blocked the way-one of the hellfire ammunition wagons set afire to block the retreat. Behind it, the ridge was all feudal soldiers, many now pointing and looking up at the Ilduuri retreat, but with no way of stopping it.
The valley below was seething with the Regent's army, and the banks of the Ipshaal were now clearing, as men found it safe to enter the valley. Ahead of them, toward Jahnd, silver-armoured men were falling back across the valley in scattered groups. The land behind them was ablaze, and even now swarming with cavalry. Those were friendly, covering the Rhodaani Steel's retreat. A large force of horsemen, but too light of build, and lately too tired, to make any great impact upon the walls of infantry before them.
Her breath came hard as she found her running rhythm, climbing higher and higher across the face of the mountain. It seemed almost as though she were flying, high above the greatest battle in the history of all humanity, in the company of thousands of newly liberated souls.
General Geralin was not dead. Nor, Kessligh observed, was he feathered with serrin arrows. He dismounted before Kessligh's command party, ashen-faced and soot-streaked. One of his accompanying officers had to be carried from the saddle, bleeding profusely. There were only two such officers, where there should have been an entourage.
Geralin looked about at the army that retreated past him. Men who had marched so upright and proud, in perfect lines and squares, now limped and straggled in small groups, their shields battered, their armour blackened in parts by smoke and ash. There were not nearly so many of them here as there should have been. Not so many at all.
He looked at Kessligh, and at Damon, who sat in his saddle alongside. Damon had come hoping to see far more Rhodaanis returning than this.
“How'd your plan go?” Damon called to him, in brutal dark humour. In his eyes was not amusement, but something closer to hatred. Damon hated fools above all else. Wallowing in a village duckpond, they were harmless. Leading armies, far less so.
General Geralin looked once more at what was left of his army, then drew a knife and cut his own throat. He fell awkwardly, then lay still. Hardly anyone noticed.
“That bad, huh?” Damon asked.
“Should have done it myself,” said Kessligh.
“They'd have all left and wouldn't have cost the Regent anything at all,” Damon replied. “This bought us something, at least. I want to go and welcome Sasha. Back soon.”
He left at a canter, messengers and several juniors following. Kessligh remained in his dust, contemplating the body of a once proud general, and wondering if humans would ever learn as serrin did to see what was truly before them, instead of what they wished to be so.
The path descended onto a flat shoulder where a small town overlooked the convergence of the Ilmerhill and Dhemerhill Valleys. The town was full of activity, Ilduuri men bustling through, wagons on the hillside road hauling ammunition to the artillery's new position. Sasha arrived at a walk, within the tail of her army, and received a rousing cheer from the Ilduuris gathered there.
She saluted them without enthusiasm. “Wounded heroes remained behind and gave their lives to guard our retreat!” she called to those who cheered. “Save your cheers for them-they fell to the last man and went down swinging.”
At the base of the slope she looked about at the town and drew a few more deep breaths-they'd slowed to a walk once it was clear they were not being chased. The walk had given her a good look at the battlefield, and she'd left several of the best runners behind on the trail to bring back reports of the Regent's advancing formations.
Captain Idraalgen was waiting, and filled her in on the Ilduuris' new position, at the wooden barrier wall they'd built earlier in parallel to the stone wall across the valley below, a fallback they'd all known was coming.
“We've good artillery position just up from the town too,” he added, “but not close enough to the wall, so the range will be lacking.”
Sasha made a face. “Artillery's not built for mountains. How many did we lose?”
“A third of it. We sabotaged most, set it on fire; I think they only captured one working ballista….”
“Look, we're not going to be able to fit more than a portion of the force up here, so let's make preparations to move most of them down to defend the wall. And I want them fed.”
Suddenly Damon was riding up the road between wagons, horsemen, and soldiers. He dismounted at her side, as Idraalgen hurried off to see to her orders.
“So how's your day been?” Sasha asked him wryly. He looked very martial indeed in full armour, sweaty and rugged with blood droplets on one cheek. Not his own blood, Sasha noted with approval.
“Oh, fair.” His lip curled. “Not dead yet.”
“But the day is young.” Actually the day was getting quite old, shadows long as the sun set in the direction of the Ipshaal. But it was the traditional Lenay exchange for such circumstances. They tapped fists. “Rhodaanis?”
“Smashed. General Geralin killed himself.”
Sasha snorted. “It was a bad position, but fuck. Solid squares? What was wrong with him?”
“Nothing his own knife couldn't solve, apparently. We're not going to hold this wall.”
“Were never going to. Let's just hold it today, give them a night to think about it.”
“I know Rhillian's got all kinds of ideas for what the talmaad can do by night,” said Damon.
“Aye, well, she's not going to kill this army by sneaking a few arrows in the dark.”
Damon nodded grimly. “One of your messengers was telling me you think we've underestimated their force. How many do you think?”
“Here?” Sasha wiped hair from her face. “One thirty.”
“We missed thirty thousand?”
Sasha shrugged. “How many Bacosh lords do you think heard of the victory at Sonnai Plain, concluded they were missing out on the greatest triumph of Bacosh history, and sent in all the force they had to link up with Balthaar?”
“You think?”
“All I know is that there's well more than a hundred thousand here. I've seen a lot of big forces lately and I think I can guess.”
Damon sighed. “Well. It was near impossible to begin with, what's another thirty thousand?”
“Damon,” said Sasha, drawing his attention. Then she smiled. “Biggest battle ever. I mean in all the history of Rhodia. We're Lenay. We're in it. Where else would you rather be?”
“Anywhere,” said Damon. Sasha laughed. She knew Damon didn't embrace that sort of thing; she was merely needling him, as he now needled her back. “You haven't asked after Lenayin yet.”
“I don't need to.” For a brief moment, Damon seemed genuinely touched. “And I saw them withdraw in good order.”
“We lost a bit more than a thousand. Light under the circumstances.”
“Aye. Light.”
Damon's eyes gleamed. “We must have taken at least ten times that. Twenty times, maybe. It was extraordinary.”
“And you led it, King Damon.” Damon stared at her for a moment, eyes still gleaming. That was what Sasha had been looking for from Damon. Perhaps for the entire time she'd known him. Only now did she see it. The look of a Lenay king at war.
“Tell it to Koenyg,” he replied.
“I fucking will. And so will you.”
Alfriedo Renine walked gingerly along the bank of the Dhemerhill River, General Zulmaher and a handful of other Rhodaani lords accompanying him. The Rhodaanis were camped between the Lenays and the Torovans, a small group of perhaps two thousand noble cavalry squeezed between much larger forces. They had not yet seen battle, though Alfriedo's thighs felt as though they'd been through a war. He'd always liked to ride, though in Tracato he'd had the luxury to dismount and rest when he chose. Not here.
His short sword felt heavy against his leg as he walked. Men along the riverbank washed or gathered water by torch- or lamplight, as the river, barely twenty paces across at the widest, gleamed with the reflections of fires, dotted like the stars in the night sky above. Clusters of horses whinnied and munched on the grass, and food cooked on a thousand campfires. On either side of the valley loomed hillsides and mountains, upon the sides of which no man now dared to venture. The night belonged to the serrin, and cavalrymen here in the eastern Dhemerhill made their camp as close to the central river as possible. Up the hillslopes the trees grew more thickly, and serrin could move unseen and unheard. Sentries stood watch the length of the campsite's long, winding flanks tonight, and no man envied them the duty.
With the Lenay king's tents still a distance ahead, they approached another large tent. Seated within a roughly fenced enclosure between trees were prisoners, guarded by Lenay men in black armour. Alfriedo slowed to look. Some prisoners were serrin, others human. Enoran, he guessed. All were tightly bound, many wounded. In the river itself, more prisoners had been tied to stakes, so that only their heads were above water. From within the adjoining tent came screams. There were no campfires near the tent. Even hardened Lenay warriors preferred to seek their rest further away.
King Koenyg's tent was near a small bridge across the river. Many Lenays stood guard around it, or sat about nearby fires to eat, drink and talk, yet never did they cease to be alert. Many in particular kept an eye on the river, for there were rumours through the camp that serrin could float downstream underwater, breathing from sheepskin bladders, and emerge within the camp to slit men's throats as they slept. Alfriedo did not think it possible, an air-filled bladder would surely float, and the campsites along the river stretched several thousand paces at least, all watchful with sleepless men. Yet f
or gods-fearing Verenthane men to be invaders here in the land of the serrin could be an unnerving thing, particularly now that the sun had set. Men told stories, and believed things that were not proven true.
The guards before the tent flaps showed no signs of admitting new visitors. From within, Alfriedo heard conversation, and saw shadows cast against the tent walls.
“They won't let you in,” said an accented voice to one side, in Larosan. Seated against a tree by the riverbank was a man in Torovan armour. He was young, perhaps twenty, with a mop of untidy hair recently flattened beneath a helmet. His legs, sprawled before him, were long. “King Koenyg likes to make everyone wait.”
Other Torovan nobles sat or stood nearby, some talking, others sharing a smoking pipe. Alfriedo walked to him, and the tall man climbed achingly to his feet.
“I am Alfriedo Renine, Lord of Rhodaan,” he introduced himself.
“Carlito Rochel, Duke of Pazira.”
“You are a friend to Sashandra Lenayin,” Alfriedo observed as they shook hands. Carlito frowned, as though he thought the young lord was accusing him of something. “I was a friend to Sashandra's sister Alythia,” he explained. “She told me something of Sashandra's adventures with your father, Alexanda Rochel.”
“Ah,” said Carlito, with dawning realisation. “Alfriedo Renine. The boy lord of Rhodaan, of course. Please, we shall sit, my legs are killing me.” Alfriedo smiled and joined Carlito beneath the tree. “Please, gentlemen,” the duke addressed the other Rhodaanis, “sit on the grass, share some wine. We have good Pazira wine, none of that Petrodor horse piss that is all you Rhodaanis seem to drink.”
A skin was unstoppered as the Pazira men gave hospitality.
“So,” said Carlito. “Princess Alythia Lenayin. I heard what happened to her, very sad.”
“She was like a sister.”
“Very sad. Sashandra was very sad too. I know her a little, yes, from when she was with the Army of Lenayin, and before.”
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