by Tim Stead
His scouts brought in a survivor. She was a woman of fifty years, grey and wiry. Her clothes were torn and dirty and she was wild eyed, cringing under the frightened, gentle touch of the Avilian soldiers.
They fed her, put her in a wagon, found a cloak to wrap around her, and by evening she had regained some of her composure. Skal questioned her himself, and he, too, was gentle. It was like talking to an ancient piece of glass that could shatter at too loud a word.
He learned that they were close; closer than he had dared to imagine – he was just two days behind. There was a village, too, a village a day’s ride from here, a day’s walk. He knew that Seth Yarra would be there now, killing people, burning houses. The men would want to leave at once, ride all night, fall on the enemy at dawn. Hanishaw asked him what he was going to do.
“Will any of our people be alive by morning, do you think?” he asked.
Hanishaw shook his head. “They’re already dead,” he said.
“There is another village beyond that one – half a day’s travel. It is where they will go next.”
“Then we must ride now!”
“There is no need for haste. I have studied every field they have defiled with their presence. The Seth Yarra rest after a day’s work. They make camp by the village, move on the next day. They leave middens, camp fires, tracks like a trader caravan. They do not care if we follow, and they are not in a hurry. We will leave here in the morning, and by dusk we will be where we need to be, and have the night to rest again before they come.”
Rest. There would be no rest. The men were keen for blood, but Skal needed time to think. He could not afford to be so hot headed. That was the road to mindless, toe to toe warfare, the reduction of conflict to mere numbers. It was the first failing of a poor commander. Skal now had a second, precious advantage. He had the choice of ground; the luxury of preparation.
The next day he pushed them even harder, but not one man complained. Skal had grown up a lord, full of contempt for the common man, but this scratch regiment of apprentices and volunteers impressed him. They marched with the same grim determination that he felt in his own heart, and yet there was little for them to gain. They would obey orders, they would fight and some of them would die, and at the end of it all they would be what they were. The survivors would go back to the city and pick up their lives if they could. The glory of any victory would go to Skal.
The sun was still not set when they crested a rise and saw the village laid out like a map, a picture of rural tranquillity. It was a good sized place, perhaps three hundred people, eighty houses of traditional form, whitewashed and tiled, straddling a river, adorned with fruit trees and boasting the sort of chaotic but harmonious street plan that found favour with Avilian poets. There was a tall barn, white walled and half timbered, an orchard, a large central square. It was pretty.
He could see people in the village, living people, going about their business in the way that people had done for years. The sight of it eased a tension inside Skal, and he knew that for all his reasoning and certainty he was glad to be right. He left most of his men on the skyline and rode down to the village with Hanishaw and his other two lieutenants, and ten men besides.
People gathered around them in the square, curious, but not talkative. All villages like this had a head man, a head woman, and it was their job to speak to strangers. Skal waited patiently. It was obvious who the head man was when he appeared, slowly walking through the gathered villagers who opened before him, then closed up again, eager not to miss a word.
He was not an old man, but heavy set, muscular, with about fifty summers behind him. He did not speak until he was standing before Skal’s mount.
“My lords, I welcome you to the village of Henfray” he said. “How may we serve you?” Despite his words there was no trace of humility in his voice. Skal looked down at him, and for a moment the thought flashed through his mind that he should put this disrespectful farmer in his place, but he put it aside. There was a job to be done here. He could see the man’s eyes stray to the soldiers on the ridge.
“I am Colonel Hebberd, volunteer regiment of the Seventh Friend, and it is we who shall serve you, headman,” Skal said. “You know there is a war being fought?” He could not resist the urge to teach, to test the man.
“Some word of it has been spoken,” the man said. His eyes flicked again to the soldiers. Soldiers were never a good thing, his eyes said. Skal leaned forwards as though to impart something in a quiet voice, something that he did not want the rest of the village to hear, but he did not lower his voice.
“It is here,” he said. “Seth Yarra soldiers have burned seven of our villages, and they will be here in the morning. We are here to protect you.”
“Here?” the headman asked. He looked sceptical. Skal pointed down the road, and hundreds of eyes followed his arm.
“There,” he said. “In the morning they will come down that road.”
The headman looked at him, then down the road which tracked innocently along the banks of the river in the shade of tall poplars and willows, then back at Skal. He nodded.
“It is our village,” he said. “We will fight.”
Skal looked over his head at the people pressed into the square. There were a couple of hundred men that he might have considered to be in the right age group, and he saw nods and determined looks. Better not to tell them what they had seen in the other villages, he thought.
“You have weapons?” he asked.
“Some.”
“I don’t want a crowd with pitchforks and sticks,” he said. “I’ll take bowmen, though, and anyone with experience. There must be discipline, headman.” He could see something in the way the man stood, the way he looked. “You were a soldier,” he said.
“I was,” the headman said. “Sergeant in Lord Kellan’s regiment, ten years service.”
Preserve us from sergeants, Skal thought, especially veterans. “Then you understand the need for discipline,” he said. “We are going to surprise the enemy. We are going to trap them in your village. I want it empty. Is there anywhere they can go?”
“They can be sent to Kells Bay,” the headman said. “Many have relatives there. It will be for a day?”
“Two or three,” again, he certainly didn’t want hundreds of people milling around if he had to hunt down stragglers. “Best if they stay until called.”
“Then I will do the calling,” the headman said. Skal decided to let that pass. The former sergeant must have a special relationship with the gods to be so sure that he would survive a battle. He nodded and smiled.
It all happened surprisingly quickly. Within an hour the villagers had packed up and left, whipped out of their homes by the acerbic tongue of their headman. Skal could see exactly what sort of sergeant he had been; good, but not popular. By sunset the place was an armed camp. He had given orders for the men to leave the houses untouched. The last thing he needed now was for the forty men who had stayed with them to become disaffected before Seth Yarra arrived.
He had posted men down the road, and on the ridges above the village, but he did not expect his enemy until mid-morning. They would break camp after dawn, and it was a few hours walk from there to here.
But how to defend the village? He reminded himself that he was not there to defend the village. He was there to stop Seth Yarra soldiers pillaging the south of Avilian. If he could save the village at the same time, that would be desirable, but it was something extra.
His first instinct was to put men in the village itself, to hide them in the houses and allow the enemy to enter before launching his assault. It was a bad idea. The degree of control he would have of anything subsequent was small. He could blow a horn, start the battle, and after that it would be in the hands of the gods.
The lie of the land was the key. If Seth Yarra came down the road they would be doomed. The high ridges above the village gave him somewhere to hide his cavalry. The houses would provide cover for infantry and archers, and
the river provided a physical barrier against which he could press them. Beyond the river there were trees, and he would put his village volunteers there to deal with any stragglers who managed to cross the water.
He had to trust they would come down that road. He had studied their trail through seven villages, and he saw nothing to indicate that they would show any caution.
He gave his orders, ate a sparse evening meal with his officers, and tried to sleep.
Morning came with agonising reluctance. Skal was up at the first hint of light above the incoming road, prowling around the positions he had set, making sure that the men had set up defences that would hold. His infantry was the anvil, and the cavalry the hammer that would beat against them with Seth Yarra in between.
He rode up the slope and woke his cavalry officers, rode out to the scouts and ensured that they were awake and alert. He was back in the village by the time the sun was clear of the trees, his horse tethered, walking up and down between the houses, checking everything over and over again.
Hanishaw ambushed him.
“The men are ready, colonel,” he said. “In fact they’re keen. You’re making them nervous.”
He turned to snap at the officer, to tell him he was presumptuous to speak to his commander that way, but the words died. Hanishaw was not correcting him. He could see ghosts in the man’s eyes. It was something that he had read about. Some men foresaw their own death in battle, and as often as not they were wrong. It meant nothing, but it could hamper a man, make him give up when he didn’t need to.
“You’re probably right,” he said.
“This is my first battle,” the lieutenant said. “My family are not really fighters.”
Skal accepted the distraction. “What were you? Before you joined the Seventh Friend?”
Hanishaw shrugged. “Not much,” he said. “My father worked for a merchant. I was learning numbers and book keeping from him. Not exciting, but steady work, and nobody gets killed.”
“You volunteered?”
“Yes. It seemed the rebellious, exciting thing to do. Doesn’t feel so clever now.”
Skal looked at Hanishaw. The man was educated, bright. It was why he was chosen as an officer. There was a natural authority there, too, and the men respected him. He wasn’t soft, but he didn’t ask too much, and he listened. Enlisted men always liked an officer who listened. He was older than Skal, a year or two, but in so many ways he seemed younger. Skal was born to this and trained his whole life. War and command was the role of his defunct blood.
“You’ll be all right,” Skal said. “Stay tight with your men. Don’t be a hero. That’s my job.” He smiled, and Hanishaw smiled back. It was the sort of humour you heard before a battle. Anything actually funny would be wasted.
Hanishaw nodded.
Skal put a hand on his shoulder and looked him in the eye. “Expect to survive, lieutenant,” he said. “We have all the advantages, and I have a bottle of Maritan’s Fire in my saddlebag, and I can’t drink the whole thing myself.”
“Heclith? You brought Heclith?”
“When the victory is won we will celebrate. It is traditional, and you must not think of defeat, Hanishaw. Such thoughts do not become a soldier, and certainly have no place in the mind of an officer of the Seventh Friend. We make the traditions of the regiment, young as it is, and they will be happy ones.”
He left Hanishaw. The ghosts were gone from his eyes, and that was a good thing. The men could see them, even if they did not know what it was they were seeing, and a ghost eyed officer took the heart of the men.
The Seth Yarra column was sighted an hour before midday. It was a glorious day for winter. The sun was benign in a perfect blue sky. Nothing more than a light breeze stirred the bare branches of the trees, hopped dead leaves along the grass down by the river meadow.
Skal and his men waited, still and silent. Skal was unimpressed. At eighteen he knew more about strategy that whoever commanded these invaders. They marched without scouts or outriders in a column six men abreast, grinding up the road like a fat snake. As they drew closer he saw that they were poorly armoured, poorly armed. It was like reading a history book. These men could have been the same troops that faced Remard’s armies four hundred years ago. They displayed no caution. He remembered the words from one of his strategy texts – they fought as though life were a burden, and death an honour.
They have not changed, he thought.
Skal had chosen to stay with the infantry, the point of first contact, the place where everything could go wrong. He trusted the cavalry to charge at the sound of the horn, and theirs was a simple job: to kill, disperse and confuse the enemy; ride through them, and ride through them again; run down any that fled.
He watched them draw closer, his shape hidden in a shrub that grew at the corner of a house. Men waited behind him, swords drawn, bows and arrows in hand. He raised his sword, watched the rock he had decided was the correct point, and as the column of men passed it dropped his blade. It was the signal.
His men rushed from both sides of the main street, pushing wagons across to block the enemy’s march. Behind the wagons archers set themselves and loosed their shafts. In those few seconds the Seth Yarra column burst apart, men running out to widen their front, rushing to advance upon Skal’s troops. They began to fall in numbers as volley after volley bit into them. Their own archers replied, but the wagons served their second purpose, and only a handful of Avilians fell.
Close enough. Skal gave the second signal and the horn was blown. There was a moment of hesitation. The enemy heard the horn, and knew it must signal some new attack. Skal saw their steps falter, their heads turning from side to side as another volley cut them down.
The thunder of hooves announced the cavalry. The Seth Yarra flank turned to face it, but they had no pikes, and the horses ploughed through them like waist deep water, slowing, but battering past. Long cavalry swords rained down mayhem, and about a hundred Seth Yarra saw their opportunity. While the horses were among them the Avilian archers stilled their bows, and the enemy leaped onto the wagons and attacked.
Skal had placed himself at the head of his men. He knew his own worth as a swordsman. He brushed aside the blade of the first man to attack him, and ran him through. He remembered Harad’s lessons. Killing men is not like fencing. There’s no room for fine touches in battle. Every second that your blade is stuck in one man’s body is a second that another can use to skewer you. He stepped back, pulled free, and stepped over the dead man to meet the next. This one, too, was easy. The man hacked downwards, two handed, and Skal caught the blow on the forte of his blade, thrust with his dagger. If you can kill a man with your dagger, do. A dagger is more useful in a melee. It takes less room, turns faster. He jumped back and the second man fell onto the body of the first. A third man came over the wagon in front of him, and this man had armour, a black tunic beneath it. A cleanser.
The cleanser was a better swordsman. He had a defence, and repulsed Skal’s first attack before launching one of his own, causing Skal to take a step back. Skal pushed forwards again, regaining the ground, trying to push the cleanser onto the two fallen men. Bodies are a tripping weapon. One foot on a dead man’s arm will throw your footing, or your enemy’s. The man blocked him, attacked again under his guard, but Skal had seen moves like that before, so many times. He took the attack on his dagger and snapped out a thrust at the cleanser’s face which his opponent barely avoided. Indeed, when they faced each other again the man had blood on the side of his head. Skal felt his lips stretch into a smile. It was only a matter of time.
The Avilian fighting at Skal’s side fell, and his place was taken by a Seth Yarra soldier. The cleanser saw the opportunity and seized it at once, launching a ferocious attack with dagger and sword. If they had been face to face on the practice ground Skal would simply have absorbed the attack, taking it apart one element at a time, but out of the corner of his eye he saw the other Seth Yarra, a leather armoured infantryman, sw
ing his blade high at Skal’s neck.
It was a clumsy stroke but it didn’t need to be anything else. If he used either weapon to parry it he would open himself up to the cleanser. If he concentrated on the cleanser the infantryman would injure or kill him. He couldn’t jump back because of the press of men behind him, and his left side, too was blocked.
Skal knew that he was going to die, but the feeling lasted less than a fraction of a second. An Avilian sword caught the haymaker, deflected it from his head, and he turned the cleanser’s blade, chopped down on the man’s unprotected neck with the hilt of his sword, kicked him, and drove his dagger into the exposed neck.
War is a team sport. It was the admonition most often directed at him by Harad. You may be bloody good, but two men with half your skill will kill you more often than not.
He saw the truth of it, glanced across at the man who had saved his life, and saw a face he didn’t recognise. He wasn’t an officer; not even a man who stood out among the others; just one of the men.