by Tim Stead
“No further,” the captain said, “or you will be within bow shot. See the positions up on the slopes? They are difficult for cavalry to attack – the scree is poor footing for the horses.”
Arbak looked. They were quite well camouflaged against the slopes, but he counted twelve. Twelve small positions, each with no more than four or five archers, he guessed, and they would have to be taken by infantry, as the Berashi implied. It would be a bloody business. He certainly did not like the idea of doing it himself, scrambling up steep slopes ankle deep in broken rock while men shot down upon him.
“It is well defended,” he said. The bulk of the Telans would be behind a slightly more substantial wall, also built of rocks and stones, set some fifty yards this side of the gate. There were few men visible on the high wall itself, but some were there, labouring on the stone gate. They would need to lift it eventually to allow cavalry to pass. But then the Seth Yarra were reputed not to have cavalry, so it was not so great an issue. Men on foot could come over the wall with ropes and ladders as long as their comrades held it.
Supplies, though, that was the issue. No army could travel without wagons and such to carry their food and tents. They could reinforce the wall, hold it with as many men as they wanted, but they could not invade Berash until the gate was opened.
Step one was to clear away the lesser positions. He must eliminate them before committing cavalry to the pass or they would wreak havoc amongst his most effective troops. He was loath to order the infantry to attack, however, knowing how many of them would die. He had no doubt that he could take the gate back. It would be a nasty couple of hours, though, and he looked around for something to ease the victory.
“They have a good position.”
The voice came from the trees to their right. The horses wheeled, the Berashi drew his sword. Arbak saw a small woman dressed in a thick cloak standing in the shade of an old pine. She was armed with a sword and a bow, and the hood of her cloak was thrown back to reveal thick red hair tied back behind her head.
Arbak didn’t recognise her, but he’d heard stories, old stories. The bow, the red hair, and the timing all pointed one way.
“Do I have the honour of addressing the lady of a thousand eyes?” he asked.
She laughed. “You’re a sharp one,” she said. “That’s the first time I’ve been recognised in two hundred years. You must be Arbak. Narak said you’d be here.”
He slid down from the saddle, managed a formal bow, and the others copied him. He felt stiff; riding for over a week with twelve hours and more in the saddle each day had been hard. There had been a time when he would have done it and been ready to swing a sword, but the grey in his hair was frosting his joints.
“Deus, you have word from the Wolf?” he asked.
“No more than you,” she replied. “But I have grave news. Two armies march on the gate from the west. The Telans have sent a regiment of men, about fifteen hundred, I would say, and Seth Yarra have sent ten thousand north from the coast.”
“Ten thousand?” Arbak was stunned. Such a large force of proper soldiers would be more than a match for his part-timers. “When will they arrive?”
“The Telans will be here tomorrow,” she said, “the Seth Yarra the day after. We must take the gate today.”
“Today? My men are tired. I have pushed them hard to get here,” he said.
“Well, shall we ask the Telans to wait?”
Arbak coloured. Of course he was being stupid, voicing concerns that made no difference. Tired or not, they would do better against eight hundred today than they would against twenty-three hundred tomorrow or twelve thousand the day after. He looked down the valley again. The Telan positions were arranged so that they could support each other. If one was attacked in isolation then two others could support it, so he must attack on both sides of the pass at once.
“It will cost a lot of lives,” he said.
“There I can help,” Pascha said. “It will go easier if they have more than one thing to worry them.”
“You have a plan?”
“I would not grace it with the name, but I can be on the high bluffs above the pass, and I can shoot down on them. There are also men beyond the gate, Berashi soldiers. They can take the wall while the enemy’s eyes are on you.”
“Some survived, then, Deus?” It was the captain who asked.
“Less than a hundred.”
“Was my uncle among them?” Simfel asked. “He was the commander, Major Tragil.”
“He is well,” Pascha smiled. “He is ashamed that the wall fell on his watch, but he will recover from that, all the sooner when you retake the gate.”
“We must move now,” Arbak was looking up at the sky. He did not want to fight at night. Darkness hid friends and enemies alike, and torchlight made good targets. It was already after noon.
“As you say, colonel,” the Durander said. “What is the plan?”
“It must be simple. We have no time to drill the men. The infantry will advance as best they can on both sides of the pass and take the archers’ positions. We will lose men, but that cannot be avoided. Our archers will support, but I prefer to leave them as far back as possible. We will need them later. When the smaller positions are cleared we will attack with cavalry, up the middle, and try to storm the wall they have built. Their numbers are not large, and we should prevail. The infantry will follow the cavalry.” It all seemed clear. Now that the moment had come his options were limited. He understood how battles went, what worked and what didn’t. As much as he disliked the idea they had no choice but a costly frontal assault.
“That’s it?”
“That is it. If you are looking for subtlety or genius then I have none. No plan survives the first ten minutes of a battle, so I hope it will be over by then. Deus, sow confusion as you may, and if the Berashi take the wall have them hold off until the cavalry move up.”
“As you wish, colonel.”
A remarkable thing happened. As soon as Pascha said the words she dissolved into a mass of wings and beaks, and a hundred sparrows flew into the trees in a rush of beaten air. They all stood still for a moment.
“Well, I have never seen such a thing,” the captain said.
“Nor I.” Arbak climbed back into the saddle, wheeled his horse and trotted back along the pass. He could see his men setting up tents. He could see fires kindled. It pained him that some of those tents would be unused tonight. The men hammering in the pegs and spreading their bedrolls would be lying on the stones of the pass, no longer carpenters or smiths, but dead soldiers all.
He called them to assemble, and they did, Avilians and Berashis and Duranders all mixed together. They listened to his words, and he saw the fear in their eyes, the doubt, and on some faces a look of resignation.
“They will be brave for you, Sheshay,” Sheyani said. She sat atop her horse not an arm’s reach from him, and her pipes were in her hand.
“You will play for them?” he asked.
“I will play, and they will be soldiers without equal.”
Arbak looked at the men again. Soldiers without equal? He had heard her play, and he knew that her music worked miracles, but the Avilians were green men, and until they had fought there would always be doubt, fear, and the fear or fear itself. The Duranders looked eager. Perhaps that would lift his own men’s’ spirits.
He led them back to the pass. The infantry lined up, a thousand men each side. There was no subtlety about this. The Telans could see them. They had arrows on the string and the pass was too narrow to escape.
He heard a shout. A body rolled out from the nearest of the archer’s hides. He saw heads bobbing around behind the wall. His eye caught a flash in the air and another man stood up from behind the wall, clawing at something at his neck.
Passerina. He counted until he saw another flash. He was looking for it this time, but almost missed it because it struck at the second hide, the one opposite the first. There was more shouting from the Telans. Arbak
drew his blade. Useless as it was, it would signal the advance. He wished for his right hand, for the simplicity of soldiering as he had known it.
“Advance!” he shouted. “Keep those shields high. Arrows come down.”
He watched as the men moved forwards. Arrows began to strike at them. Men began to die, but it was not as bad as he had feared. The thin rain of deadly accurate arrows from above kept the Telans confused. By now seven had fallen. A couple of men from one of the hides abandoned it, rushing back to join their comrades further up the valley. A second hide was overwhelmed by his men. He saw swords rise and fall, and then they were moving on.
“Move up!” he called, and he eased his own mount forwards another fifty yards. Each pair of hides that fell allowed them to draw closer for their charge.
He heard Sheyani start to play. It was a simple tune with a strange rhythm, but he found that it stirred his blood. Doubts began to fade from his mind, and he glanced across at the Durander colonel. Coyan was sitting with his eyes half closed, half a smile on his lips. He noticed Arbak’s glance.
“Her skill is a wonder, colonel,” he said. “It is as though Hammerdan himself piped for them.”
The men heard it too. The Durander infantry first. They began striking their swords against their shields, picking up the beat. Crash, pause, crash, pause, crash crash. Simple as that, but the sound was a sound of power. Men’s feet were surer on the loose rock, their shields held firmer against the arrows that fell among them.
The second pair of hides fell, and Arbak began to feel the certainty of their victory. In the distance he saw men on the high wall. They were keeping low and spreading out. These must be the Berashi troops who had attempted to defend the wall against Telan treachery, and now they were moving with stealth, all Telan eyes being fixed on the advance down the valley.
The men’s feet began to imitate the rhythm of Sheyani’s battle song. It almost seemed as though the arrows bounced off them as they tramped relentlessly down the pass. Arbak felt his own impatience building, an eagerness to be part of the slaughter. He knew it was the music, the magic of the pipes, and he reached into his pocket to find his copper medallion, the thing that would make him immune, but it was not there. He had left it in his saddlebags, or even on one of the wagons.
He cursed to himself. He needed a clear head, but he was not inclined to tell Sheyani to stop playing. Her music was the music of victory, and his men needed that strength. He would have to resist. Surely it would be easier to resist if he knew it was only the music?
The cavalry moved forwards now at walking pace, the horses impatiently stamping their way down the centre of the pass two hundred yards behind the infantry. The hides were falling quickly now. Passerina’s arrows falling from above and the tide of death sweeping towards them turned some of the Telan archers and they broke from their cover and ran to join the main force.
Now. It was now! No obstacle remained but the low wall behind which the Telans crouched. He glanced around him and saw the impatience, the lust for blood filling the eyes of all the riders. Swords were drawn, lances levelled in the front rank.
Arbak let out a cry that was an inarticulate bellow, but all his men understood, and they surged forwards, an angry steel tide sweeping towards a defensive line that now seemed wholly inadequate. Inside, deep inside Arbak heard his own voice begging him not to charge, telling him to hang back, explaining to him that with only a weak left hand he was just so much practice meat for the Telan swordsmen, but he ignored the voice, swung his blade generously through the air.
An arrow struck his left shoulder and glanced off the armour plate. He hardly noticed. The low wall flashed below his horse and he was among the enemy, one of the first. Even as he swung at the men who swarmed around him he saw a dozen of them fall. The Berashi on the high wall had loosed their first volley.
A sword bit his right arm, and a moment later his mount screamed and twisted beneath him. By good fortune he was not trapped as it fell, but thrown on top of a Telan swordsman. He scrambled to his feet. The voice within was louder now, and the degree of his danger began to penetrate.
Two men came at him, both running, and more by luck than judgement he cut one of them, but went down again as the wounded man crashed into him. He struck at the man’s head with the hilt of his sword, and again, and again. Tried to kick himself free of the weight before the other killed him, but as he rolled away he saw the man face down with an arrow in his back. A lucky escape.
A horse appeared beside him, and he only just managed to stop himself striking up at the rider. It was the Berashi captain, Miresh. The man had a riderless horse in tow, the reins in one hand. He pushed them into Arbak’s. He cursed his one hand again, and himself for a fool. He had to sheath the sword to mount the horse, feeling all the time the itch of an arrow or a sword between his shoulders.
By some miracle he managed to scramble up and draw his blade again. He swept the area before the wall with anxious eyes, but all he saw was victory. Telan dead lay everywhere. Even as he looked he saw a hundred fleeing up the pass, but he had left his archers there, and as he watched the fleeing men ran into a hail of arrows that shattered their numbers. Those that remained threw their arms away and raised their hands, calling for mercy.
It was over.
Arbak raised his sword and held it above his head, the signal for his men to accept the surrender, to stop killing. A moment later he was aware that the music had stopped, and a dazed calm descended on the pass. He had never known so swift and complete a victory. He looked around at his men and saw smiles and bloody swords. What now? He must get men onto the walls, archers, in case the Telans came sooner than expected. He put his blade away and turned his mount towards the distant camp, but the world did not stop turning with his horse. It spun about him, and a ringing filled his ears. The valley became edged with black, and the ground was rushing up to meet him. Then nothing.
38. Finchbeak Road
On the other side of Terras, Narak waited. Dawn had come and gone, and today would see the fate of the world decided, at least for now. He stood with five hundred Avilian infantry on the edge of a shallow lake, drawn up in lines that stretched from the water to the foot of a short rise. It was not a good position, defensively. They could be easily flanked by a large enough force, but that was the idea.
He heard a horse snorting and looked anxiously behind, to the left. The noise had carried easily in the still air, and would carry well down the valley. He dismissed the worry. No one would hear it. There would be too much noise.
Aidon stood beside him. The heir to the dukedom had not been very vocal, and Narak suspected that the boy was in awe of the company he was keeping. He could not help thinking of him as a boy. He had wines twice Aidon’s age in his cellar.
“Your father seemed better this morning,” he said.
Aidon jerked as though woken from a reverie. “Yes,” he said “Yes. I think it is the coming battle.”
Narak felt sympathy for the boy. His father had not told him. Both of his sons were ignorant of their father’s failing health, and he believed that he knew what their father was anticipating. He was not a man to die in bed of a wasting disease, and now there was to be a battle. It could not be plainer. Yet he had not considered for a moment that he should intervene. How a man chose to die was his own business, and so was the way he behaved with his family.
“Well, I’m sure we will be up to our ears in blood soon enough,” he said.
Aidon gave him a sidelong look.
“Deus, may I ask a question?”
Narak studied the boy. He was certainly built like a man – tall and broad shouldered – his armour was spotless, chased in silver and gold with the five leaves of the Avilian royal crest, and he was fair of face.
“What is it?”
“How do you know what they will do?”
Narak laughed. “Nothing is certain,” he said.
“And yet you are never wrong, Deus.”
“It seem
s that way to you, but believe me I have made more mistakes than most. It helps to have seen so many years.”
“Can you see what is in their commander’s mind?”
“No, but I understand what is in my own, and I can make adjustments. The Seth Yarra, for example, are a people of fixed ways. They have prepared most carefully for this war, but they will not fare well because their plans assume that we are like them, that we will do as they do, but we shall not.”
“But how do you know this?”
“I have fought them before. Centuries ago they faced us, and they suffered greatly because they have no cavalry. They lacked the power and speed that horse soldiers gave us. If this had happened to you, if you were beaten by some technical advantage that favoured your enemy, what would you do?”