She twisted and struggled, but his weight bore down on her. She snarled and spat, but even Ferro's strength was not endless. Her arms trembled, her elbows bent. His hand found her throat, and tightened round it. He muttered something through clenched teeth, squeezing and squeezing. She could not breathe any longer, and the strength was ebbing out of her.
Then, through her half-closed eyes, she saw a hand slither round his face from behind. A big, pale, three-fingered hand, caked with dry blood. A big, pale forearm followed it, and another, from the other side, folding his head tightly. He wriggled, and struggled, but there was no escape. The thick sinews flexed and squirmed under the skin and the pale fingers dug into his face, dragging his head back and to the side, further and further. He let go of Ferro, and she sagged against the stone, sucking in air. He scrabbled uselessly at the arms with his fingernails. He made a long, strange hissing sound as his head was twisted relentlessly round.
'Ssssss…' Crunch.
The arms let go and he crumpled on the floor, head hanging. Ninefingers stood behind. There was dry blood across his face, blood on his hands, blood soaked through his torn clothes. His face was pale and twitchy, streaked with dirt and sweat.
'You alright?'
'About like you,' she croaked. 'Any left?'
He put one hand on the stone beside her and leaned over, spat blood out onto the grass. 'Don't know. Couple, maybe.'
She squinted up at the summit of the hill. 'Up there?'
'Could be.'
She bent and snatched the curved sword up from the grass, started to limp up the slope, using it like a crutch. She heard Ninefingers struggling after her.
For some minutes now, Jezal had heard occasional shouting, screaming, and clashing of metal on metal. Everything was vague and distant, filtering to his ears through the blustering wind across the hilltop. He had no clue what was happening beyond the circle of stones at the hill's summit, and he was not sure he wanted to know. He strode up and down, his hands opening and closing, and all the while Quai sat on the cart, looking down at Bayaz, silent and infuriatingly calm.
It was then that he saw it. A man's head, rising up over the brow of the hill between two tall stones. Next came his shoulders, then his chest. Another appeared not far away. A second man. Two killers, advancing up the slope towards him.
One of them had piggy eyes and a heavy jaw. The other was thinner, with a tangled thatch of fair hair. They moved cautiously up onto the summit of the hill until they stood within the circle of stones, examining Jezal, and Quai, and the cart with no particular urgency.
Jezal had never fought two men at once before. He had never fought to the death before either, but he tried not to think about that. This was simply a fencing match. Nothing new. He swallowed, and drew his steels. The metal rang reassuringly as it slid out, the familiar weight in his palms was a small comfort. The two men stared at him and Jezal stared back, trying to remember what Ninefingers had told him.
Try to look weak. That, at least, did not present much difficulty. He did not doubt that he appeared suitably scared. It was the most he could do not to turn and run. He backed slowly away towards the cart, licking his lips with a nervousness that was anything but feigned.
Never take an enemy lightly. He looked them over, these two. Strong-looking men, well equipped. They both wore armour of rigid leather, carried square shields. One had a short sword, the other an axe with a heavy blade. Deadly-looking weapons, well worn. Taking them lightly was hardly his problem. They spread out, moving round to either side of him, and he watched them.
The time comes to act, you strike with no backward glances. The one on Jezal's left came at him. He saw the man snarl, saw him rear up, saw the great unwieldy backswing. It was an absurdly simple matter for him to step out of the way and let it thud into the turf beside him. On an instinct he thrust with his short steel and buried it in the man's side up to the hilt, between his breastplate and his backplate, just under his bottom rib. Even as Jezal was ripping the blade back he was ducking under the other's axe and whipping his long steel across at neck height. He danced past them and spun around, steels held ready, waiting for the referee's call.
The one he had stabbed staggered a step or two, wheezing and grabbing at his side. The other stood there, swaying, his piggy eyes bulging, his hand clutched to his neck. Blood began to pour out between his fingers from his slit throat. They fell almost at the same time, face down, right next to each other.
Jezal frowned at the blood on his long steel. He frowned at the two corpses he had made. Almost without thinking he had killed two men. He should have felt guilty, but he felt numb. No. He felt proud. He felt exhilarated! He looked up at Quai, watching him calmly from the back of the cart.
'I did it,' he muttered, and the apprentice nodded slowly. 'I did it!' he shouted, waving his bloody short steel in the air.
Quai frowned, and then his eyes went wide. 'Behind you!' he shouted, half jumping up out of his seat. Jezal turned, bringing up his steels, saw something moving out of the very corner of his eye.
There was a mighty crunching and his head exploded with brilliant light.
Then all was darkness.
* * *
The Fruits of Boldness
« ^ »
The Northmen stood on the hill, a thin row of dark figures with the white sky behind them. It was still early, and the sun was nothing more than a bright smear among thick clouds. Patches of half-melted snow were scattered cold and dirty in the hollows of the valley sides, a thin layer of mist was still clinging to the valley floor.
West watched that row of black shapes, and frowned. He did not like the flavour of this. Too many for a scouting, or a foraging party, far too few to mount any challenge, and yet they stayed there on the high ground, watching calmly as Ladisla's army continued its interminable, clumsy deployment in the valley beneath them.
The Prince's staff, and a small detachment of his guards, had made their headquarters on a grassy knoll opposite the Northmen's hill. It had seemed a fine, dry spot when the scouts found it early that morning, well below the enemy perhaps, but still high enough to get a good view of the valley. Since then the passage of thousands of sliding boots, squashing hooves, and churning cartwheels, had ground the wet earth to sticky black muck. West's own boots and those of the other men around were caked with it, their uniforms spattered with it. Even Prince Ladisla's pristine whites had acquired a few smears.
A couple of hundred strides ahead, on lower ground, was the centre of the Union battle line. Four battalions of the King's Own infantry formed the backbone, each one a neat block of bright red cloth and dull steel, looking at this distance as though they had been positioned with a giant ruler. In front of them were a few thin ranks of flatbowmen in their leather jerkins and steel caps; behind were the cavalry, dismounted for the time being, the riders looking strangely ungainly in full armour. Spread out to either side were the haphazard shapes of the levy battalions, with their assortment of mismatched equipment, their officers bellowing and waving their arms, trying to get the gaps to close up, the skewed ranks to straighten, like sheepdogs barking at a flock of wayward sheep.
Ten thousand men, perhaps, all told. Every one of them, West knew, was looking up at that thin screen of Northmen, no doubt with the same nervous mixture of fear and excitement, curiosity and anger that he was feeling at his first sight of the enemy.
They hardly seemed too fearsome through his eye-glass. Shaggy-headed men, dressed in ragged hides and furs, gripping primitive looking weapons. Just what the least imaginative members of the Prince's staff might have been expecting. They scarcely looked like any part of the army that Threetrees had described, and West did not like that. There was no way of knowing what was on the far side of that hill, no reason for those men to be there but to distract them, or draw them on. Not everyone shared his doubts, however.
'They mock us!' snapped Smund, squinting up through his own eye-glass. 'We should give them a taste of Union lances!
A swift charge and our horsemen will sweep that rabble aside and carry that hill!' He spoke almost as if the carrying of that hill, irrelevant except for the fact that the Northmen were standing on it, would bring the campaign to a swift and glorious conclusion.
West could do nothing but grit his teeth and shake his head, as he had done a hundred times already today. 'They have the high ground,' he explained, taking care to speak slowly and patiently. 'Poor terrain for a charge, and they may have support. Bethod's main body, for all we know, just over the rise.'
'They look like nothing more than scouts,' muttered Ladisla.
'Looks can lie, your Highness, and that hill is worthless. Time is with us. Marshal Burr will be marching to our aid, while Bethod can expect no help. We have no reason to seek a battle now.'
Smund snorted. 'No reason except that this is a war, and the enemy stand before us on Union soil! You are always carping on the poor state of the men's morale, Colonel!' He jabbed his finger up at the hill. 'What could be more damaging to their spirits than to sit idle in the face of the enemy?'
'A sharp and purposeless defeat?' growled West.
It was an unfortunate chance that one of the Northmen chose that moment to loose an arrow down into the valley. A tiny black sliver sailed up into the sky. It came only from a shortbow. Even with the advantage of height the shaft plopped down harmlessly into open ground a hundred strides or more from the front lines. A singularly pointless gesture, but its effect on Prince Ladisla was immediate.
He abandoned his folding field chair and leaped to his feet. 'Damn them!' he cursed, 'they are mocking us! Issue orders!' He strode up and down, shaking his fist. 'Have the cavalry form up for a charge immediately!'
'Your Highness, I urge you to reconsider—'
'Damn it, West!' The heir to the throne hurled his hat down on the muddy ground. 'You oppose me at every turn! Would your friend Colonel Glokta have hesitated with the enemy before him?'
West swallowed. 'Colonel Glokta was captured by the Gurkish, and caused the deaths of every man under his command.' He bent slowly and picked up the hat, offered it respectfully up to the Prince, wondering all the while whether he had just brought his career to an abrupt end.
Ladisla ground his teeth, breathing hard through his nose, snatched the hat out of West's hand. 'I have made my decision! Mine is the burden of command, and mine alone!' He turned back towards the valley. 'Sound the charge!'
West felt suddenly, terribly tired. It seemed he scarcely had the strength to stand as the confident bugle call rang out in the crisp air, as the horsemen struggled into their saddles, eased forward between the blocks of infantry, trotted down the gentle slope, lances up. They broke into a gallop as they crossed the valley floor, half-obscured in a sea of mist, the thunder of their hoof-beats echoing round the valley. A few scattered arrows fell among them, glancing harmlessly from their heavy armour as they streamed forward. They began to lose momentum as they hit the upward slope, their lines breaking as they pushed on over the gorse and the broken ground, but the sight of all that weight of steel and horseflesh had its effect on the Northmen above. Their ragged line began to waver, then to break. They turned tail and fled, some of them tossing away their weapons as they disappeared over the brow of the hill.
'That's the damn recipe!' yelled Lord Smund. 'Drive 'em, damn it! Drive 'em!'
'Ride them down!' laughed Prince Ladisla, tearing off his hat again and waving it in the air. A scattering of cheers floated up from the levies in the valley, over the distant hammering of hooves.
'Drive them,' muttered West, clenching his fists. 'Please.'
The riders crested the ridge and gradually disappeared from view. Silence fell over the valley. A long, strange, unexpected silence. A few crows circled overhead, croaking their harsh calls to one another. West would have given anything for their view of the battlefield. The tension was almost unbearable. He strode back and forth while the long minutes stretched out, and still no sign.
'Taking their time, eh?'
Pike was standing right next to him, his daughter just behind. West winced and looked away. He still found it somehow painful to look at that burned face for long, especially coming on him sudden and unannounced. 'What are you two doing here?'
The convict shrugged his shoulders. 'There's plenty for a smith to do before a battle. Even more after it. Not much while the fighting's happening, though.' He grinned, slabs of burned flesh folding up like leather on one side of his face. 'Thought I'd take a look at Union arms in action. Besides, what safer place could there be than the Prince's headquarters?'
'Don't mind us,' muttered Cathil, a thin smile on her face, 'we'll make sure to keep out of your way.'
West frowned. If that was a reference to his being constantly in their way he was in no mood to enjoy it. There was still no sign of the cavalry.
'Where the hell are they?' snapped Smund.
The Prince took a break from chewing down his fingernails. 'Give 'em time, Lord Smund, give 'em time.'
'Why doesn't this mist dry up?' murmured West. There was enough sunlight breaking through the clouds now, but the mist only seemed to be thickening, creeping up the valley towards the archers. 'Damn mist, it'll work against us.'
'That's them!' yelled one of the Prince's staff, shrill with excitement, finger stretched out rigid towards the crest of the hill.
West raised his eye-glass, breathless, scanned quickly across the green line. He saw the spear-points, stiff, and regular, rising slowly over the brow. He felt a surge of relief. Rarely had he been happier to be proved wrong.
'It's them!' yelled Smund, grinning broadly. 'They're back! What did I tell you? They're…' Helmets appeared beneath the spear-points, and then mailed shoulders. West felt the relief seeping away, horror creeping up his throat. An organised body of armoured men, their round shields painted with faces, and animals, and trees, and a hundred other patterns, no two alike. More men appeared over the crest of the hill to either side of them. More mailed figures.
Bethod's Carls.
They halted just beyond the highest point of the hill. A scattering of men came forward from the even ranks, knelt in the short grass.
Ladisla lowered his eye-glass. 'Are those… ?'
'Flatbows,' muttered West.
The first volley drifted up, gently almost, a shifting grey cloud of bolts, like a flock of well trained birds. They were silent for a moment, then the angry rattling of the bow strings reached West's ears. The bolts began to drop towards the Union lines. They fell among the King's Own, clattered down onto their heavy shields, their heavy armour. There were some cries, a few gaps appeared in their lines.
The mood in the headquarters had turned, in the space of a minute, from brash confidence, to mute surprise, to stupefied dismay. 'They have flatbows?' someone spluttered. West stared at the archers on the hill through his eye-glass, slowly cranking back their bowstrings, pulling bolts from their quivers, fitting them into position. The range had been well judged. Not only did they have flatbows, but they knew how to use them. West hurried over to Prince Ladisla, who was gaping at a wounded man being carried, head lolling, from between the ranks of the King's Own.
'Your Highness, we must advance and close the distance so that our archers can return fire, or withdraw to higher ground!' Ladisla only stared at him, giving no sign that he had heard, let alone understood. A second volley arced down into the infantry in front of them. This time it fell among the levies, a unit without shields or armour. Holes opened up all across the ragged formation, holes filled by the rising mist, and the whole battalion seemed to groan and waver. Some wounded man began to make a thin, animal screeching, and would not stop. 'Your Highness, do we advance, or withdraw?'
'I… we…' Ladisla gaped over at Lord Smund, but for once the young nobleman was at a loss for words. He looked even more stupefied than the Prince, if that was possible. Ladisla's lower lip trembled. 'How… I… Colonel West, what is your opinion?'
The temptation to remin
d the Crown Prince that his was the burden of command, and his alone, was almost overpowering, but West bit his tongue. Without some sense of purpose, this rag-tag army might swiftly dissolve. Better to do the wrong thing, than nothing at all. He turned to the nearest bugler. 'Sound the retreat!' he roared.
The bugles called the withdrawal: blaring, discordant. Hard to believe they were the same instruments that had so brazenly called the charge just a few short minutes before. The battalions began to edge slowly backwards. Another volley fell among the levies, and another. Their formations were beginning to come apart, men hurrying backwards to escape the murderous fire, stumbling over each other, ranks dissolving into mobs, the air full of shrieks and confusion. West could scarcely tell where the next set of flatbow bolts fell, the mist had risen so high. The Union battalions had become nothing more than wobbling spears and the odd insubstantial helmet above a grey cloud. Even here, high up among the baggage, the mist was curling round West's ankles.
Up on the hill the Carls began to move. They thrust their weapons in the air and clashed them against their painted shields. They gave a great shout, but not the deep roar that West might have expected. Instead, a weird and chilling howl floated over the valley, a keening wail that cut through the rattling and scraping of metal and into the ears of those watching, down below. A mindless, a furious, a primitive sound. A sound made by monsters, not by men.
Prince Ladisla and his staff gawped at one another, and stuttered, and stared, as the Carls began to tramp down the hill, rank upon rank of them, towards the thickening mist in the valley's bottom where the Union troops were still blindly trying to pull back. West shouldered his way through the frozen officers to the bugler.
'Battle lines!'
The lad turned from staring at the advancing Northmen to staring at West, his bugle hanging from his nerveless ringers.
Before They Are Hanged Page 25