Steel And Flame (Book 1)

by Damien Lake

  Earnell supplied, “They’ll make their own way east, once they get their bearings.”

  “Or west,” the major countered. “They could be deserters who have had enough of the army and decided to get out. They might want to sell us information in return for a sack full of coin.”

  “Or join up and become bandits along the road. That’s common enough as well.”

  The major nodded. “Very true, I’m afraid. I will send out sweeper teams in the morning, as soon as the oil burns out and we can leave on horseback.”

  “I can take my squad and collect the leftovers. Marik will be a help in ferreting them out from their holes.”

  “Agreed. I will tell your commanding officer I am taking over your men.”

  “Speaking of him,” Marik suddenly thought aloud. “He should be coming up from the south soon. Those Noliers are heading right for them.” He focused his vision southward. Balfourth’s group still lay beyond his range. “I can’t see them yet, but they might step on each other in the dark.”

  “Hells!” swore the major. “None of the horses can get out while the fire is burning!” He stopped, thinking hard.

  Earnell offered, “They know there are enemy forces around, so they’ll be coming on their guard. They might still miss each other.”

  “Not good enough.” He reached over to ring the bell once. Everyone below froze to look up, wondering what else had gone wrong. The major shouted over the noise of the rain and the fire. “Every man with a free hand, start throwing mud on that fire! Get it out now!”

  Men scrambled and he muttered, “This is all we need. You, keep an eye out for the second half of your deployment. You see them or anything I would want to know about, you run and tell me!”

  * * * * *

  Marik followed the remnants of the Nolier regiment as they limped south. The mounted troops who had survived were acting as scouts for the larger group, riding cautiously forward in the dark, their pace nearly as slow as the foot soldiers behind. After half a candlemark they found the road and decided the speed it afforded them would be worth the risk of any encounters they might make.

  They were almost four miles south by then. Marik strained hard as he could to see them, his limits nearly exhausted. The band Enson had sent on foot once it became clear the fire would outlast the darkness into morning remained two miles north of the Noliers, following the road to meet Balfourth. Although three-hundred men formed the group from the depot, a battle in the dark would only be approximately even in numbers if they met Balfourth’s company. Otherwise they would be outnumbered by three-to-one.

  They knew the risks, and they knew the Noliers were out there. When Marik prepared to give it up, a faint glow slightly beyond the Noliers caught his attention. He taxed his sight to push it farther than ever before, watched the glow grow, and knew it could only be one thing.

  The major taught him several imaginative oaths when Marik informed him.

  With nothing else to do, Marik left the lookout tower and went to fling mud at the bonfire. Few of the fellow workers were also fellow Kings, but he felt little worry at their absence. The depot defenders had given far more than they’d received and the fighting he witnessed should have caused no real harm to a Crimson Kings detachment. Marik spent a few minutes with a spade hurling thick mud before using the early departure the major had ordered as an excuse to call it quits.

  A construction foremen directed him to the compound’s east end where he found the low tents marking the Ninth’s personal bunking area. He poked his head into several before he found his own.

  “Here now, what do you think you’re playing at?” Dietrik demanded when Marik stuck his head inside. “You’d better scrape that muck off before you even think of tracking it all over in here!”

  “You think you’re my mother, Dietrik?”

  “I’d join a cloister with vows of celibacy if I were. I’m serious! I am not spending the night rolling in freezing sludge. Especially not after an entire day of it!”

  Dietrik threw him a rag. Marik sat inside the flap while he futilely wiped at his boots. He looked at Landon’s snoring form and asked, “Where’s Kerwin?”

  “Having his arm wrapped up. He took a slash across the forearm. Nothing serious,” he added when Marik raised his eyebrows. “What about you? The good major keep you nice and busy?”

  “Enough. I won’t have any trouble falling asleep tonight. Speaking of which, shove over. You the one who brought my bedroll in?”

  “Yes. It was right next to mine so I decided it wouldn’t be much trouble. Have you heard about our duty tomorrow?”

  “Clean up. I was there when Earnell volunteered.”

  “Oh well. At least we can stay away from His Mightiness.”

  “Speaking of whom, his group probably just got ambushed on the road.”

  “Oh?”

  “Enson’s troops should get there before the Noliers overrun them, if they haven’t already.”

  “Double praise to the various deities then. We won’t have to listen to Balfourth bitch about it tomorrow.”

  “Hmm,” Marik said as he wrung out his clothing. “Maybe the Noliers will do us a favor and send him on to the next life.”

  “I don’t know any gods who are that free with their blessings,” Dietrik concluded.

  “Pity.”

  Chapter 23

  Kerwin failed to return by the next morning so the three tent mates went to the empty warehouse temporarily reassigned as an infirmary. Cot rows filled the hastily constructed building. They quickly found Kerwin, who was at that moment being tended to.

  “They’ve been at it all night,” he said, cheery for a wounded man. “Lot of fellows worse off than me, so I sort of let them cut in line, if you see what I mean.”

  Men by the dozen lay atop blankets on the floor between cots, not one of which were empty.

  “It was damn noisy at first. Sounded like souls being tortured, and everyone running in every direction. But what really slowed them down was that damned fool over there.” He gestured with his unslung arm toward a partition at the ramshackle room’s far end.

  “Who?” asked Marik.

  “Can’t you guess? They hauled in that idiot son of Dornory’s in the middle of the night, screaming his crackbrain head off for a true Healer. You’d have thought he lost half his arm or his guts were trailing along behind him.”

  “And they weren’t, knowing our luck.”

  “Nah. He only had a little cut across the side of his head. Only needed a stitch or two, but he was yelling enough to raise the roof off this place. Spent half his time calling the army chirurgeons know-nothing hacks and the other demanding they fix him up right.”

  “Did he say what happened?” inquired Landon.

  “Oh, yeah!” He grinned viciously. “He’s been shouting about it, and I talked to his men who were in here a while back. Got a funny sense of the world, that boy has. Seems those Noliers left after the cut up with us and stumbled on his detachment coming north, then decided to wait off to the side, until Balfourth’s group went past. Except the group Major Enson sent came up behind them in the dark. They must have thought the whole damned lot of us was coming after them and they broke. They tried going around Balfourth’s company in the dark and when they got there, guess what they found?”

  “Balfourth and his noble peers heroically covering the rear?”

  “Right in one. Balfourth knew trouble had rolled double-ones on him and was screaming at the men to go find out what was happening. The Noliers took him for someone who knew what he was doing and decided to cut around the back and slice up the officers on their way past. Almost did us a favor, too. They got two of the others. Only nicked him. He’s been swearing and cursing them all night for having the gall to attack a noble.”

  In awe, Marik wondered, “This is the same man who’s been ranting at us all spring for not killing Fielo? And now he’s mad a noble got injured?”

  “I told you before not to try figuring hi
m out,” Landon reminded Marik. “You can’t.”

  “Yeah,” continued Kerwin. “He subscribes to the ‘honorable’ view of warfare. You can kill surfs and peasants until you wallow in blood, but harming a noble is an ‘uncivilized’ act.” He paused a moment before he added, “They got his horse, too. Almost forgot to tell you that. He was going on about it like Hall’Kyon Herself had come down and given it to him. Haven’t heard him say word one about his men who bought it.”

  “If we’re lucky,” Landon continued, “he will decide to leave the frontline and go home now that he’s been in actual combat and seen that real war isn’t the glorious spectacle he only knows from bards and minstrels.”

  “We’d better hope so.”

  “Now what?” Marik disliked the way Kerwin had said that.

  “One of these genius sawbones wanted to cheer him up by saying how lucky it was that ‘one of those mercenary fellows’ was acting as a scout against the Nolier gang and sent the extra forces in.”

  “No I wasn’t! I was in the lookout tower!”

  “That’s probably how he heard it. Anyway, boy-o over there thinks he was only attacked because we were being lazy and spooked the Noliers out of the bushes straight at him. Or maybe he thinks we did it on purpose.”

  Marik felt stunned. “That’s terrific! Was he born stupid?”

  “Most likely.”

  Dietrik interrupted the conversation. “Are you riding out with us?”

  Kerwin looked surprised. “Of course I am! I caught enough sleep last night while waiting for a free hand, and you don’t think this is going to slow me down? It’s not like it’s my sword arm. What else is going to stop me?”

  “Then lets go before he wakes. I’d rather not be around then.”

  “Good point.” He paused for a moment as he stood. “Err, say could one of you help me saddle up my horse?”

  * * * * *

  “There’s the depot garrison!” Nial pointed his flail northward along the road.

  “Finally!” Hayden swore while he loosed another shaft and pulled one of the few remaining from his mount quiver. “This is exactly why I hate the border!”

  Earnell called for further retreat, an act of wasted breath. The entire Ninth squad fell back as fast as they dared, trying to prevent it from becoming a full rout. Second Unit held point and suffered the worst damage from the heavy horse brigade they had encountered during their sweep.

  The garrison force closed. Their sudden presence startled the Nolier brigade. Since the earlier rain had saturated the ground, no errant dust cloud had betrayed their approach. Soon the Galemaran soldiers flowed around the Crimson Kings. When they hit the horse brigade on two flanks, the retreat halted, becoming a pitched battle.

  When a high-ranking uniform rode past Marik, he shouted, “Officer!” Army rank insignia were still a mystery to him, so he had no clue how to address this man.

  The depot guard captain turned his head to see who was shouting words other than a battle cry. Marik took advantage.

  “This is only half! Another heavy horse brigade is holding open a retreat line through the Green Reaches for the survivors!”

  The captain nodded to show he understood the message before returning his attention to directing his men.

  It had been the hells own shock to come on this heavy brigade. All morning Marik had searched the surrounding area with his magesight to find escapees from the depot attack. The Kings had already rounded up fourteen men they’d found slinking through the dense woods. Once the Noliers realized they were outmatched and would be taken prisoner rather than be killed outright, they accepted their lot as prisoners of war, joining their fellows herded along by the drogue riders.

  An escapee had broken from the woods before the entire squad, obvious to everyone, not merely Marik. He’d run across the open stretch east to the Green Reaches, never having a chance to outrun the mounted Kings. Or so it had seemed. When they’d spurred after the surprisingly fast runner near the forest line, cavalry had erupted from the trees.

  They were spread out, unable to hold rank in the forest. Their sudden entrance had given the riders the crucial moments needed to arrange in proper formation. How their auras had been hidden from Marik’s sight was a mystery he could devote no time to solve. The Kings were suddenly hard pressed to survive.

  Half of Second Unit’s men were dead, and the toll on the rest weighed heavy as well. Knox had been beheaded by a flashing saber when a Nolier rider swept past, a bloody fountain gushing from his neck to spray everyone around while his body tumbled to the offal-coated ground. Three others from the Fourth who Marik knew only casually fell also. Everyone sported wounds of varying degrees as the riders pushed them mercilessly.

  They had been close enough to the depot to set off the red smoke signal devised by the alchemists which denoted a desperate need for help, and they could only concentrate on staying alive, praying a lookout saw it.

  Apparently one had.

  The captain quickly studied the situation and ordered all pikemen to the fore to hold off the horses. None in the heavy brigade wielded lances. Their horses were protected by chain barding. If the Galemarans were trained well with their pikes, they should be able to split the chainmail that had protected the mounts against hastily aimed arrows and glancing sword strikes thus far.

  Pikemen halted the Nolier advance when they interposed themselves between the Kings and the riders. Mounts fell, screaming with horrible cries so like a man’s. Riders forced their horses back several steps by sawing on the reins. They spurred to flank the pikes but the captain ordered his archers to harass any who tried to circle the defenders. Every time the Noliers attempted, they were beset by a shower of arrows. Lucky shots felled two cavalrymen when they found chinks in the heavy armor.

  The Kings retreated half a mile before stopping to lick their wounds. Marik bore a cut on his forehead that bled into his left eye. Ripped breeches with scrapes down his leg had been caused when his mount crashed into a cavalryman’s horse, the Nolier’s greeves tearing into his unprotected flesh.

  “Here come more men,” he said to Dietrik, who inspected his sleeve where a blade had torn it. “I hope they aren’t leaving the depot unguarded!”

  “They’re garrison men to be sure. I have yet to see the rest of our own deployment. The major must have decided to leave them minding the house while he lets his greener men bloody their noses.”

  “They’ll need everyone they can down there. Look!”

  From the Green Reaches, the other Nolier riders emerged to join the fight. They were still invisible to his magesight. Whatever initial spell had concealed their presence remained unbroken.

  The second depot company streamed past to assist their shieldmates. Marik noticed many carried pole arms with heads shaped like an axe fused to a short blade running up the back side. Its blade curved in a hook that sported several angular notches sharpened to a razor’s edge. They looked wicked and terrible.

  “By the gods, what are those?” he asked Dietrik while the men continued past.

  His friend shrugged. Edwin, who had dismounted to examine his mount’s wounds, answered. “Rein cutters. Exactly what they need over there, too.”

  “What?”

  “You catch the reins on a horse in those notches and cut them away so the rider can’t control it. They can get in close enough to do it too, since the Noliers don’t have any lances with them to keep us at a distance.”

  “They did enough damage on their own!”

  Edwin nodded. “Good thing they didn’t have lances, else most of us would likely be worm food.”

  Fraser moved about, counting heads and injuries. He reached Marik and Dietrik, the last in his unit. “Four men gone. Not too bad then.”

  “Acceptable losses?” Marik snarled, feeling angry, his memory flashing on his comatose dreams of Ashlin’s accusations.

  “Compared to the First and Second, yes. The Second lost half their unit and the First nearly as many.”

/>   Marik bit back his feelings. Fraser was right, of course. They had been lucky, though if they had led the squad during the sudden attack, the Fourth Unit might be the one cut to ribbons.

  “Dove died, so Earnell’s combining the First and Second under Bindrift.”

  “We’re only three units now?”

  “It’s the risks we take, Marik.” Fraser wandered back toward Earnell, who spoke lowly with Bindrift and Giles.

  Ninth Squad spent the rest of the afternoon watching the battle. The Noliers were outnumbered two-to-one but their war-horses and armor covered the difference. Men armed with rein cutters dismounted to stand by the pikemen, waiting for an opportunity to snag a cavalryman’s reins. They were effective when they managed to catch the thin leather strips. Once the Noliers caught on they worked to stay clear of the evil bladed hooks.

  Pikes prevented the calvary from charging, yet the chainmail barding on the war-horses kept the long weapons from being as effective as they could have been. Swordsmen were interspersed among the pikemen to protect against the cavalry’s sabers. Since they were mounted, the cavalry held the advantage in such encounters. The soldiers refused to be drawn in. They never pressed the attack, only defended themselves and the pikemen who used their pikes to best advantage while the riders were distracted.

  As such the battle nearly became a standoff, with few victories on either side until the rein cutters slowly made the difference. Occupied with both sword and pike, the riders were gradually taken down one by one when the cutters found their mark. Once the reins were destroyed the horsemen could no longer control their mounts. Rider and horse soon fell to the Galemarans. It turned into a battle of attrition while the afternoon crawled past.

  The men who had taken down riders turned to help their shieldmates, and the casualty rate finally escalated for the Noliers, at last forcing them to break for the Green Reaches.