“What?” I said. I couldn’t see her face but I knew she was looking hard at me and thinking.
“Nothing.” She shrugged. “Good luck, Will,” she said, moving away.
I wanted to call her back, but had no idea what I would have said, and it would have spoiled this I’m-so-collected-and-efficient thing I was working on. She lowered her heavy iron helm onto her shoulders and her face was lost to me.
I was ready. The crossbows sat taut and deadly on their stands and I knelt behind them, consciously noting and re-noting where my personal weapons were so that I could seize them if necessary. The ranks had grown silent and expectant in the bright afternoon, all eyes towards the approaching riders. Orgos, still mounted, glanced over his shoulder to where the dust cloud had grown sharper and had sprouted men, distinct and shining in the sun. The sandy earth burst under their horses’ hooves like breaking waves and they sailed towards us, motionless in their saddles, crimson cloaks now visible at their backs, their pennanted lances raised. They were slowing down.
Orgos called to his company and they lowered their spear heads in readiness for the charge. I snapped back the catches on the crossbows. In the gatehouse, the second company waited poised to rush the raiders as they came in close. Beyond the scarlet horsemen I could just make out the Verneytha cavalry pressing them towards us like the second half of a vise. Somewhere amongst them was Mithos. It occurred to me that he didn’t know what we had discovered in the Adsine keep, let alone the news of the approaching Empire soldiers, but then neither did Greycoast or Verneytha. Like most of the things I could claim to have had a hand in, it didn’t seem to matter much now. I saw them coming towards us and I thought it again: If we could withstand the initial impact of their charge, our flank and rear attacks should leave them powerless.
Then the raiders stopped altogether just outside the flight of our arrows. We waited in silence as the dust cloud drifted away. A minute later, ten or twelve of the duke’s company came out to us.
“What’s going on?” I demanded.
“Your wagon looks a bit vulnerable, so we’ve been sent to reinforce these farmers, or whatever they are,” said a young corporal. He grinned and nodded towards the villagers bunched tightly around the wagon.
“Good,” I said, reflecting that no unit that Orgos escorted would look “vulnerable,” “but that wasn’t what I meant. Why have they stopped?”
“The raiders?” He shrugged. “Beats me.”
On the plains before us the raiders still appeared to be waiting, as if they wanted us to go to them. An arrow or two was loosed by some patriotic citizens on the citadel walls, but they fell hopelessly short. I was watching the raiders sit there as still and controlled as I had ever seen them when another shout went up: a long, pronounced hurrah that started in the citadel and spread throughout the Greycoast forces, even echoing down from the Verneytha cavalry. I turned to Lisha and the spear line in front of the wagon for an explanation, but only the handful of reinforcements seemed to know what was going on and laughed and cheered with the rest.
“Now what?” I shouted. At first they didn’t hear, and I had to clamber onto the front of the wagon and tap the young officer on the shoulder.
“What are they shouting about?” I said, conscious of a laugh creeping into my own voice as I caught something of their mood. The corporal leaned forward and pointed westwards towards the Downs and the treetops of the border forests.
I turned and looked. There was a dark ribbon of men and banners: the black flags of a great army of horsemen steadily advancing towards us.
“Reinforcements,” shouted the corporal.
“What?” I called back through the noise.
“We got word this morning,” said the corporal, “Shale has sent its entire army to smash the raiders. Two hundred cavalry and over seven hundred foot soldiers.”
I stared at him, suddenly cold.
But before I could say anything, there was another shout. A ripple went through our force, and the corporal’s smile faded as he stared off to where men were pointing: not towards the raiders, or to the army from Shale, which was advancing from the west, but behind us, to the south.
I turned, feeling a sudden swell of dread, and found that the plains at our back were suddenly awash in a thick grey mist. A moment later, the mist was blowing away, and in its place was an army that looked as if it had sprung from the earth like corn. But this army was not wearing the crimson of the raiders.
They wore white.
In the sparkle of their silver helms I saw our certain destruction.
SCENE LVI
Desperate Times
I leapt down from the wagon and ran to where Renthrette and Lisha sat on their mounts with the villagers.
“It’s the Empire!” I shouted, pointing wildly at the men who had appeared to the south. “Shale and the Empire! They’ve been working together all along.”
Lisha was already driving her horse out of the throng, Renthrette quickly following. I didn’t need to explain what was about to happen. The raiders and their Diamond Empire brothers, joining with the strength from Shale, would turn on the unsuspecting forces of Greycoast and Verneytha and wipe them out. In one fell swoop Shale would destroy its rivals according to whatever cozy terms Arlest had agreed on with the Empire, and our armies didn’t even know it was coming. What had looked like a pair of manageable encounters had turned into one we could not hope to survive, let alone win.
Lisha jumped down from the saddle and shouted to Renthrette, “Tell Garnet! Tell everybody. Ride to the gatehouse and tell the duke, then Mithos. Stay close to the citadel and move quickly.”
Without a word Renthrette kicked her heels into her horse’s flanks and it lunged forward. Within seconds she had left Garnet shouting at his men and was galloping over the drawbridge into the gatehouse. The sound of cheering still echoed from the citadel and the Verneytha cavalry, but it was muted now, and there was confusion at the sudden appearance of these new soldiers clad in white. On my left, Orgos was addressing his troops, his voice uneven. He glanced round to the advancing black tide of horsemen that flowed towards us from the Downs, and south to the Empire cohorts who had appeared out of the fog and were now locked in a purposeful phalanx. We were surrounded.
The Greycoast soldiers shifted restlessly, scared and unsure what to believe. Some called out questions, wanting proof there was no time to give.
“What do we do?” I shouted to Lisha, all composure gone. Our two-to-one advantage had suddenly been inverted, and then some. “What can we do? We have to retreat into the citadel!”
“They’d be on us before we could get inside,” she said. “And we’d never get that portcullis down in time to keep them out. We have to stop the three armies from joining forces. If we can keep them separate we may yet hold out, for a while.”
She didn’t sound hopeful.
“How?”
“Drive a wedge between the raiders and the Shale regular army. If we can catch them before they have ordered their ranks we’ll have them at a disadvantage.”
“Who with?” I asked, looking around desperately. “All we’ve got is forty mounted police and a few dozen villagers with pitchforks. The raiders will tear us apart!”
“Mithos will help,” Lisha replied.
“How is he going to know?” I yelled back. It was supposed to be a rhetorical question. If our meager cavalry got stuck out there alone, it would be a bloodbath.
“He’ll know,” she said, and it was determination in her eyes, not hope. It was a doomed effort, but it was the best we had. She turned back to her horse and vaulted into the saddle, where she sat small and defiant, a triangular shield on her left arm and the elegant spear of silver and ebony in her right hand. She turned to Garnet and began speaking earnestly. For a second he glanced at his small force uncertainly, and then he looked back into her eyes and nodded.
I pointed to the horses Renthrette had moved away. “Get them yoked up to the wagon again,” I yelled to a
couple of the villagers. They couldn’t have been older than fifteen, and I recognized one of them as a relative of Maia’s.
Garnet was bringing his horsemen about him and joining them with the villagers. They looked pathetically few. For a moment I faltered and looked towards the citadel. I could run the distance to the gate in under a minute and they would have to shoot me down to stop me. I glanced up and saw Renthrette, her hair trailing from her closed helm, spurring her horse away from Ironwall and heading obliquely for the Verneytha cavalry. She was crouched low in the saddle, streaking arrowlike under the eyes of the enemy.
Lisha was now talking to the villagers. Grath was amongst them, a long boar spear in his hand and a crossbow across his back. One of the riders with him was a grey-haired man whose dark skin hung in wrinkles under his eyes, but the eyes themselves were bright and he held his long hafted wood ax grimly. Behind him was the teenaged kid who had wrestled with one of the raiders the night I had got them out of the village.
“We’ll need that extra hundred infantry,” I shouted to Lisha. “Somebody get the duke and A Company out of that gatehouse and drop the portcullis. They are wasted in there.”
The boys had brought the horses over and were hurriedly hitching them up. Behind the spear line by the wagon were two men and a woman cradling heavy crossbows in their bare arms.
“You three,” I shouted. “Get up here. One in the front, two in the back. We need a driver, someone without a mount.”
One of the boys finished harnessing the horses and swung himself up into the front of the wagon. He was lithe and dark of skin and eyes.
“Can you drive this thing?” I asked uncertainly.
“As fast as it will go,” he said with a grim smile. I nodded and turned to the handful of Greycoast regulars who had been sent to reinforce us.
“Corporal, get a couple of your spearmen up here. We might need them.”
The corporal gave me a long, disbelieving look and said, “You can say that again. How many can you take?”
“No more than three.”
It was already getting pretty crowded up there. I stood in the center, protected to the waist by the folded sides of the wagon, my arms gripping the two scorpion bolt throwers. On either side of me knelt a villager with a crossbow, the teenaged kid on my right, a powerful-looking woman on my left. Another crossbowman rode in the front next to the boy. A couple of axes and shields were passed up to them and they looked about as ready as they ever would be. We could only get two more aboard comfortably, so the Greycoast spearmen, with their silver hauberks and curved body-sized shields, clambered up into the back, one at the tail, one next to the woman. I glanced around and saw Lisha watching. Renthrette must have reached Mithos by now, unless she’d been cut off by the raiders.
Don’t think about that.
Garnet appeared by the side of the wagon, looking down at me from Tarsha’s back.
“Ready?” he said.
I glanced towards the advancing Shale horses.
“No,” I whispered. “But let’s go anyway.”
Lisha called out, “Will, you go first. You’ll need the lead time. Head directly between the fronts and attack whichever side gets closest to you. Don’t get stuck between them or we’ll never escape. Pull to one side and watch what Mithos does. Don’t let them split our force, for God’s sake. Do as much damage as you can and get out!”
I released the axle clamps, and the wagon rocked unsteadily. The spearmen held on to the sides and glanced at each other, suddenly confronted by the reality of what we were about to do. I looked at the boy in the driver’s seat and said, “Did you get all that?”
He nodded. There was a momentary pause in which I took a deep breath.
“Go,” I said.
SCENE LVII
Desperate Measures
With a shout and a whip crack to the horses, the wagon surged away from the Empire troops behind us. In the back I stumbled and hung on as we picked up speed. On our right sat the raiders, waiting, while on our left the massive banners of Shale grew steadily closer. Between them we went, as fast as the horses would take us, the noise of our heavy wheels filling our ears. The wind stung my eyes and great columns of dust and grit plumed out from the wagon’s sides and rear. A few seconds later came a cry from behind us, and we turned to see our cavalry charging after us, gaining all the time.
Suddenly the raiders responded, recognizing the attack for what it was and turning their horses towards us. There was a moment’s confusion, and then the scarlet wave was united and moving towards us again, kicking their steeds into a fast and heavy charge. We were already too close for them to use their bows, so they lowered their lance tips and aimed them at our hearts. Suddenly I could hear nothing but battle cries and the low, dragging roar of horse hooves on the hard ground.
On the left, the Shale cavalry, the two hundred who would fight from the saddle, broke into a full charge. There was no longer any doubt whose side they were on.
And we were going to get trapped between them and the raiders.
“Pull to the right!” I roared at the boy. “Cut across their front line.”
With a sudden lurch the wagon swept round and across the path of the raiders. Our cavalry escort split, Lisha taking the irregulars with us, Garnet holding the Greycoast cavalry back. The raiders came on.
We scrambled to the opposite side of the wagon on our hands and knees as the floor kicked beneath us. When I stood up the enemy were less than a hundred yards away and closing fast on the wagon’s side.
Wait, I thought. Wait. . .
“Shoot!” I shouted.
I squinted down the grooves of the right-hand crossbow and squeezed the trigger. The bolt appeared in the breast of a raider and threw him backwards and out of the saddle. On either side of me the other crossbows snapped, and I think another rider went down. They came closer, growing huge and distinct in just a few seconds. I shot again, moving so hurriedly and clumsily to the other crossbow that I didn’t even see if I’d hit anything. The others were fumbling for their axes and spears now, waiting for them to get close enough. Twice more I shot into the sea of scarlet and bronze and twice more men fell, only to be replaced by more. They were too close now. It was with something like despair that I picked up my shield and drew my broadsword.
Then they were upon us, breaking against the half side of the open wagon like the immense, curling head of a wave hurling itself down onto an outcrop of rock. A lance tip stuck hard into the wagon timbers, cracking them apart with the force of the charge. I stepped back, horrified. The crossbowman at the front died instantly, thrust through with a lance. I threw myself forward and hacked at the raider’s horse, but my blade slid off its leather barding. One of the Greycoast soldiers raised his spear like a javelin and pitched it into the throat of a horseman. The blood gushed down his breastplate and he lolled senseless from the saddle. As the spearman reached out to drag his weapon from the corpse, he was struck down by a lunge from another raider, an officer with a lateral crest across his faceless helm.
With a cry of outrage I attacked, bashing his lance aside with my shield and bringing my sword down hard across his head. The sound of battle was loud in my ears and I struck again, lashing out senselessly as the blade glanced off the hard bronze. Then, as he tried to turn his lance on me, he shifted and leaned to one side. My sword came down hard across his shoulder blade and I felt the edge bite through muscle and bone. This time there was no horror, only exultation, and I struck twice more before he fell.
A change came over the enemy. For a second they faltered at the loss of their officer, and it was in that second that Garnet brought his cavalry hard into their flank. Four or five of them went down before they knew where the attack was coming from, and on the other side of the wagon, the village fighters traded blows with an equally startled wing of the enemy. I don’t think it had occurred to them that we would actually attack with so sorry a force.
The surprise didn’t last. A moment later we wer
e unable to move. One of the horses fastened to the wagon was dead. The boy cut it free, but we would be significantly slowed. The other Greycoast regular had received a lance tip in his leg and could do little more than defend himself with his oblong shield. The crossbow woman had died protecting the rear of the wagon with a wood ax. I saw her land several blows before she fell, and even after she was hit and dying she heaved her ax at her assailant and struck his thigh. They went down together. The splintered wagon was splashed all over with blood. All around me came the clash of weapons and the roar of voices meshed together in rage and defiance and pain.
When the charge began I saw Garnet briefly on the stamping and tossing warhorse, his ax high above his horned head. I had seen him bring it down hard, but after that he was swallowed by the chaos of the struggle and I couldn’t say if he was alive or dead. I hadn’t seen Lisha since we clashed with the raiders and I only knew that several of the villagers’ horses had veered off free and riderless. With sudden, blinding conviction I saw that we could not survive. It was all I could do to keep my sword and shield tightly in my hands as I looked about me and saw only defeat.
The raiders boiled around our battered wooden platform, lunging with their lances, and all we could do was parry desperately with our shields and fall back to the opposite side of the wagon. I was pinned there, fending off the deadly lance tips with broad swings of my sword. My arms were shaking with exertion and frustrated rage. Then, as I looked for the black pennants of the Shale cavalry that was to be our utter destruction, I caught the green and brass of the Verneytha horsemen as they slammed into the back of the raiders.
It took a moment for the enemy to realize what had happened, and several of them were unhorsed by opportunist spear lunges as they twisted in their saddles to look behind them. One tore the helm from his head, as if unable to see properly, as he tried to face Mithos and his men. They were hemmed in and under attack from all sides. In the center of their force were raiders pressed together by their own horsemen, unable to push through to the enemy and fight. Horses reared in confusion, and at least one raider was thrown and trampled in the press. Before they could turn to fight the Verneytha cavalry, many had been thrust through by the green-pennanted spears.
Act of Will Page 33