That river was swollen greatly from the rains, and the first line of wooden palisades made from sharpened stakes that I’d built on the banks encircling the fords were now a foot deep in the water. Normally, the rocky ford was covered by only a few inches of water, which probably explained why no one had ever bothered to build a bridge here. I nodded in approval. The deeper water level and muddy riverbanks would make it even more difficult for Einhard to cross. A second line of palisades encircled the first one fifty feet back, built on solid earthworks with a deep trench in front that bristled with additional stakes pointing upward at an angle. A berm of dirt and sod blocked the view of the trench from the enemy.
The Piths could try to go around my defenses, of course, but they would have to stay close to the ford on either side to have any chance at success. The water deepened remarkably fast after that, with treacherous currents just waiting for the unwary. We had sounded the river extensively when we arrived, and I knew if the Piths tried to go around, their horses would immediately be up to their bellies in water and moving slowly. Ten feet further out and they would be swimming and hopefully floundering as they fought the strong-flowing river. I doubted the Piths would choose to attack that way, though, as it would leave them vulnerable and easy targets for my archers. Sometimes, the best fortification you can have is the one that nature already provides for you.
The hardest part for me about this day was going to be sitting and watching from afar as I sent men to their deaths. I needed to see what was happening throughout the battle to make adjustments when needed. I couldn’t do that in the thick of the conflict, as Jebido had adamantly explained to me more than once.
“Have I forgotten anything?” I asked my friend as he and I mounted our horses and rode to a small knoll a hundred and fifty yards back from the river. The knoll gave us an unobstructed view of the battlefield and the far riverbank, and it was here that I would stay for the duration of the fighting to watch my plans unfold. Ten youths on foot wearing boiled leather armor stood along the knoll's crest, all of them looking excited and nervous at the same time. Several more youths waited on horseback at the base. It would be their task to relay my commands to the lords along the frontlines and my reserves, as I did not trust the horns to be heard once the battle began.
My friend shook his head. “You’ve thought of everything, Hadrack. Einhard would be a fool to attack us now.”
“Well, we both know he isn’t a fool,” I grunted as I stared moodily down at the river and my bristling army. “But he is a proud and stubborn man, which is what I am counting on.”
It took several hours for the Pith army to make its way along the road that wound through the western foothills. The sun had burnt away the clouds long ago, and I could feel the sweat from the leather lining inside my helmet dripping down my neck as we waited and watched the endless line of warriors approaching. I was trying not to let the surprise and dismay I felt at the vastness of the Pith army show on my face, though I could hear men muttering down by the palisades as more and more of the warriors appeared from the west.
“Well, you were right,” Jebido finally said sarcastically. “Einhard won’t be going around us today. But somebody sure needs to have a talk with your scouts.” Jebido nodded his head toward the river. “Because that, my boy, is a lot more than ten thousand men.”
I grunted in agreement, not trusting my voice to speak. Inside, I was reeling at the size of the force opposing us, with the first tingles of uncertainty starting to flutter in my gut. There had to be double the amount of Piths from what I had been expecting.
“We stick with the plan,” I said. “Whatever happens, we hold our bank of the river, no matter what.”
“Do you want to send for the reserves?” Jebido asked, his face looking strained and serious now.
I paused, thinking, then I shook my head. “Not yet. I don’t want Einhard to know about them until it’s necessary.”
“Speaking of the bastard,” Jebido said as he pointed.
I watched as Einhard slowly made his way on horseback toward his side of the riverbank. He was carrying a parlay branch, which didn’t surprise me in the least. I started to urge Angry down the embankment.
“Want me to go with you?” Jebido shouted from behind me.
I just shook my head and kept riding. Einhard was alone, so I would meet him alone. I could feel thousands of pairs of eyes on me as the big black made his way through my massed forces. Most of those eyes appeared anxious, I thought, which seemed justified given the unexpected size of the army opposing us. A soldier offered me his spear that bore a pennant with my wolf emblem on it, and I accepted it, thanking the man as I kept going. I reached the palisades and skirted them as Einhard paused his horse in the ford halfway between his side and mine. Angry snorted with displeasure at the coldness of the river, but he forged ahead just the same until the water was well past my knees. I guided the big black north toward the ford, then finally stopped five feet from Einhard. We both sat in silence as we assessed one another.
Einhard was dressed in splendid plated armor and mail, with a golden helm topped by a red and black plume. He wore a black cloak lined with wolf fur. He grinned at me. “I imagine you’re surprised to see so many men along with me, my old friend.”
I nodded. “Yes, I was expecting there would be a lot more of you to kill than just these few.”
Einhard burst out laughing. “You truly are an inspiration, Hadrack. I do not believe there has ever been a time when you haven’t delighted and amazed me in some way.”
I shrugged. “It’s a talent, I guess.”
“Indeed,” Einhard said. He let his gaze roam over the fortifications behind me. “Is all of this just for me?” he asked.
I smiled. “Send your men across the river, and you’ll soon find out.”
“All in good time, Hadrack,” Einhard said. “All in good time.” I saw him focus on the knoll. “Is that old Jebido way up there?”
“It is,” I said. “He says to say hello and that you’re a turd-eating bastard.”
Einhard chuckled. “I hope he plans on staying up there, as that might be the safest place for anyone today.”
We both fell silent after that, with Einhard’s shimmering black stallion eyeing Angry with just as much disdain as I knew my horse felt for him. “It doesn’t have to end like this,” I finally said. “You can still turn back and return to Alesia and your son. The Ganderland that slaughtered your family is long gone, Einhard, and we are all better off for it. King Tyden is not the man his father was. He is good and just, and all he wants is peace between our two nations.”
“Ah yes,” Einhard said with a sigh. “King Tyden.” He waggled a finger at me. “You tricked me, Hadrack.”
“It was necessary,” I said. I paused, feeling a sharp jolt of apprehension in my chest. “Did you kill Fitz when you found out who he really was?”
Einhard looked at me in mock surprise. “Now, why would I go and do that? Even though you lied to me, Hadrack, I promised you the man’s life was safe.” Einhard smiled. “Besides, I rather like the little fellow, all things being equal.”
I couldn’t stop myself from grinning with relief. “Fitz is an interesting character,” I agreed. I looked behind Einhard at the massed Piths. “Is he with you?”
Einhard nodded, his face hardening. “I’ll set him free once you surrender to me.”
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “So, no peace, then?”
“Of course not,” Einhard said. “The Pathfinders have been clear, Hadrack. Ganderland must fall. You and I are simply pawns in all this, just like in that game you taught me years ago.”
“But we don’t have to be mindless pieces like those on that board,” I said. “We can choose another path, one which the Pathfinders were too blind to see.” I sighed in frustration at the unimpressed look on my friend’s face, then swept my hand around us. “Look at what is about to happen here, Einhard. All because of some fickle gods who rarely pay any atte
ntion to what we do anyway. Is all the death, misery, and bloodshed we are about to set into motion today worth it just to appease those aloof gods?”
Einhard shrugged as he smiled his dangerous smile. “I am just a man, Hadrack of Ganderland. A simple man with so many faults and failings that they are too numerous to mention. But, one thing I know for certain is that my god is not fickle, nor is He aloof.” Einhard sniffed then with disdain. “Perhaps the reason yours are, my friend, is because they do not exist.”
I bowed my head, knowing there was nothing left for me to say. “So, that’s it, then?”
“It is,” Einhard growled. “Surrender to me now, and I promise to be merciful with your men. Do not, and there will be no quarter given to any of you.”
I returned his hard stare with one of my own. “So be it,” I said, feeling a deep sadness inside.
“So be it,” Einhard repeated. I thought I saw regret cross his features for just a moment, then that moment passed and he turned his horse away. Einhard paused abruptly, and I heard him curse as he saw the faint black smoke that was beginning to drift over the foothills from the west. He turned to glare back at me. “What have you done, puppy?”
“You didn’t think that I would let you bring your siege engines here just so they could destroy my defenses, now did you, old friend?” I asked mockingly.
I turned Angry away before he could answer, heading for my side of the river with Einhard’s molten gaze burning into my back the entire way. I paused at the riverbank and jammed the butt end of the spear I held into the soggy soil as my men finally broke their silence and began to cheer. The iron point twinkled in the sunlight as the wolf pennant below it snapped and crackled in the wind. I glanced one last time at Einhard, who still sat his horse watching me as he smoldered in helpless fury.
I knew by the look on his face that only one of us was going to survive this day.
20: The Battle of Land’s Edge
“I guess Einhard didn’t see that coming,” Jebido chuckled when I returned to the knoll. “Maybe he would have if he had two eyes instead of one.”
I didn’t say anything as I studied the thick smoke rising to the west. I had sent Malo and his three hundred House Agents deep within the foothills many days ago, with instructions to stay out of sight until the enemy army had passed. I had bet that the Piths would leave the baggage and siege trains behind in their eagerness to reach my forces, especially with the soggy roads, and I had been right. Einhard, being a cautious man, had undoubtedly left a rearguard to watch over the Afrenian mercenaries and their toys. But I knew he was not expecting any kind of serious attack, since as far as he was aware, my entire army lay entrenched on the far side of the river. Nor would that rearguard who were most likely drawn from Pith youths have been prepared to deal with men like the House Agents, who were even more ferocious warriors than the Piths themselves. Now, all I could hope was that Malo had succeeded completely in his task. If even one of those siege engines had survived his attack, then it would make short work of my fortifications, and we would all die.
“Fitz is alive,” I grunted. I glanced at my friend. “Einhard kept his word.”
Jebido nodded. “Well, that’s some good news, at least. Where did all those Piths come from?”
“Einhard didn’t say,” I responded. “And I didn’t ask him.” Angry snapped at a horsefly in irritation and it took me a moment to regain control of him. “He promised no quarter for any of us,” I added in a flat voice.
“Ah,” Jebido said with a grimace. “That’s hardly surprising.”
“No,” I agreed.
The Piths were massing in the fields in a long line well out of range of my Wolf’s Teeth. I could tell they weren’t preparing to attack yet, but it was clear Einhard had been warned about what the longbows could do. I wondered if the Piths were waiting for a siege engine to appear, lumbering down the road like some great, fearsome beast. Had Malo failed me in the end? It was agonizing to be sitting helpless on that knoll, not knowing the answer to those questions. Purple-robed Pathfinders paced on foot all along the riders' front ranks, chanting loudly and waving small round pots hung from silver chains that billowed clouds of white smoke. I knew incense burned inside those pots, which was meant to represent the breath of the Master and give strength to the warriors. I dearly hoped that this day it proved to be ineffective.
My army stood fingering their weapons and watching the Piths, their cheers from earlier now extinguished as sober reality began to set in. I could hear indifferent birds chirping as they flew overhead and the creak of armor and weapons shifting in sweating hands, along with the occasional tortured rattle of men retching. Nothing plays more with the mind of a soldier about to go into battle than waiting for it to start. Once the action begins, you no longer have time to dwell on all the terrible things that can happen during the fighting. But before that, during the waiting time, that is when a man’s imagination can become worse even than the enemy itself. The key is to get to the fighting before the fear of the unknown turns bowels into steaming brown liquid that rolls down legs or starts hands shaking so much that men can’t even grasp a weapon anymore. My strategy depended on the Piths bringing the fight to us, however, and not the other way around, so all we could do was wait and let the cunning phantoms within our own minds play havoc until the bloodshed finally began.
The army we’d gathered had undergone a fair amount of training during the wait in Corwick, but that training had essentially ended the moment we set out for Halhaven. It’s impractical to ask exhausted men who have marched all day long to practice battle formations at night, and I prayed that the training they’d had would be enough. Hopefully, the men I’d chosen to lead my various troops would be able to steady them when the Pith advance finally came.
My biggest concern now—and perhaps the biggest flaw in my overall strategy—was that Einhard would try to overwhelm one of the fords while ignoring the other one. It hadn’t been as big a worry when I thought he had a much smaller force, believing with my fortifications that we could hold them off. I had even placed reserves in the center to bolster either ford just in case he tried that. But now that Einhard had twice the number of warriors than I had been expecting, I knew even those reserves might not be enough to hold back the Piths.
“He’s going to go for one of the fords,” Jebido said, clearly having the same thoughts as me.
“Probably,” I grunted. I looked at him. “But which one?”
“Ours,” Jebido said confidently, gesturing to the defenses below. “The passage is wider and the current isn’t as strong as it is at the northern one. He’ll be able to get more men across faster here.”
And that’s exactly what he did.
The Pathfinders finally finished their chanting, and the Piths began to cheer as the purple-robed priests left the field. I signaled for the men below to take their final positions just as the Piths started to draw their weapons. Fifteen hundred pikemen marched forward to the second palisade, encircling it seven ranks deep, with the first few ranks leveling their spears across the wooden barrier. Bundles of additional spears were interspersed along the back line to be used by the last two ranks as throwing weapons. Two units of two hundred men each set up a shield wall at an angle on either side of the palisade, protecting the main body’s flanks in case the Piths tried to get across the river through the deeper water. The rest of the pikemen formed a wall fifty feet back from the main force, protecting my archers from the Pith arrows that I knew would soon start to fly. Behind them, the mounted men-at-arms waited patiently with their great lances ready in case any Piths managed to breach our lines.
“You,” I shouted at one of the young riders. “Go tell Baine to join his archers with Tyris’. The Piths won’t be attacking the northern ford. They’re sending everything at the southern one.”
“Yes, my lord,” the youth said, his eyes wide with excitement as he pounded away. I glanced behind me to our supply wagons, where hundreds of boys waited with arml
oads of arrows. I expected it to be a long day, and those boys would likely get little rest as they ran back and forth, restocking the arrow bags of the archers on the front lines with more shafts.
Jebido nudged my arm. “Baine is moving, Hadrack,” he said.
I could see my friend in his familiar black leather armor leading his men along the shore from the north, where they quickly meshed with Tyris’ men. The Wolf’s Teeth were in the forefront, far enough back that the lighter Pith bows couldn’t reach them, but well within striking distance of the ford with their longbows.
Drums began to pound across the river, and I glanced at Jebido. “Here we go,” I grunted.
I do not believe I have ever felt such nervousness heading into a battle. My hand itched to draw Wolf’s Head and rush to the front of the line, and it took all of my willpower not to as the Piths finally charged with a roar that rose from twenty thousand eager throats. The ground began to shake even though we were almost a mile away across the river. I could only stare, mesmerized by the sight of so many warriors and horses bearing down on us all at once. I had briefly considered drawing more men from the northern ford or my reserves in the middle when it became clear where Einhard would attack, but I decided not to in the end. Einhard was undoubtedly expecting me to do just that, and I wanted to send him a clear message that I believed my defenses were sound and that I wouldn’t need them. Besides, I was certain the moment I drew those troops away that the mobile Pith warriors would shift toward the weakened northern ford and attack it instead.
“Mother protect us,” I heard Jebido whisper in awe beside me.
The lead Pith riders were fifty yards from the shoreline when the first of the arrows from the longbows started to fall amongst them. Warriors were snatched from their saddles all along the line, but they came on regardless, pressed in so densely that I could see nothing but flying clods of grass and dirt, sweat-streaked horseflesh, and whooping men. The lords in the front ranks began shouting at their men to raise shields as Pith archers on the flanks sent a withering barrage of arrows toward my defenses at the palisades. But the soldiers positioned there followed their training better than I could have hoped for, and the heavy shields of the pikemen just shrugged off the Pith shafts. Not one of our men fell under that first hailstorm of arrows. I could hear them cheering and mocking the Piths now as the lead riders surged into the shallow water covering the ford as it sprayed upward in sheets around their horses’ hooves.
The Wolf At War Page 29