He shot again when the northerners were only fifty yards or so from the parapet. One of their bolts dug into the rampart and kicked dirt up into his face. As he rubbed his eyes, a repeating crossbow opened up behind him, hosing death into the men from the Army of Franklin at close range. They crumpled, one after another after another.
That was too much for flesh and blood to bear. Instead of swarming forward into the trenches, the men in blue in front of Rollant broke and ran. He couldn’t imagine how they’d come as far as they had. John the Lister’s soldiers and engineers had hit the traitors with everything they had as soon as they came into range. How many northerners were already down, dead or dying or-luckily-only wounded? Hundreds? No, surely thousands.
Beside Rollant, Smitty shouted, “See how much the Lion God loves you now, you bastards!” He shot a running man in the back, then turned to Rollant in surprise. “Why aren’t you filling ’em full of holes, too?”
“I don’t know,” the blond answered. “Sometimes enough is enough, I guess.” As he watched, the repeating crossbow cut down more men from behind. Even his blood lust was sated.
“Be ready to go after them if we get the order to pursue,” Lieutenant Griff said.
“Pursue?” That startled Smitty and Rollant, who both echoed it. Rollant added, “I don’t think we’ve got the men to chase them.”
Colonel Nahath said, “Anyone who ordered us to pursue, given what we have and what Bell and the traitors have…” The regimental commander shook his gray-haired head. “He’d have to be crazy.”
That hadn’t always stopped officers on either side. Rollant knew as much. If someone wearing a brigadier’s star on each epaulet saw the northerners fleeing and decided they needed a clout in the backside, he’d order a pursuit. And if it got the regiment slaughtered, how much would he care?
But the order didn’t come. The din of battle got louder over to the right. “The sons of bitches are in the trenches there,” Smitty said.
“They can go in, but let’s see how many come out,” Rollant said savagely. He’d already done his duty and more. He would have been perfectly content to stay right where he was. If Bell’s men nerved themselves for another charge at this part of the line, he’d fight them off again. If they didn’t…
If they didn’t, as things turned out, he and his comrades would go to them. Colonel Nahath said, “Men, we’re shifting to the right, to make sure the traitors don’t break our line and cut us in half.”
Rollant had plunged the butt end of the company standard’s staff into the soft, damp dirt at the bottom of the trench. He snatched up the flag and carried it through the trenches toward the thicker fighting at the center of the southrons’ line. As long as he carried it, he wouldn’t be able to shoot at the traitors. He’d have to do his fighting with his shortsword. Sometimes, that meant he didn’t do any fighting. He didn’t think that would happen today.
Outside the parapet, a northern officer shouted, “For gods’ sake, men, rally! We can whip them yet. For gods’ sake, we can. All you have to do is fight hard, for-”
Smitty raised his crossbow to his shoulder and shot. No standard hampered him. The officer’s exhortation ended in a shriek. “Got the preachy son of a bitch!” Smitty said exultantly.
The traitors cried out in dismay. “For Gods’ Sake John is down!” one of them exclaimed.
“I think you just shot a brigadier,” Rollant told Smitty.
His friend set another bolt in the groove of his crossbow and grunted with effort as he yanked back the bowstring. “Too bad the bastard wasn’t a full general,” he said. Detinans were seldom satisfied with anything, no matter how fine it was. Not for the first time, Rollant wondered whether that was their greatest strength or greatest weakness. Most blonds lacked that restless urge to change things. The lack made them have a harder time keeping up with their swarthy neighbors.
A southron officer still on his feet despite a bloody bandage on his head and another wrapped around his left arm waved a sword with his good hand. “Go on in there, boys, and give ’em hells!”
“Avram!” Rollant shouted. “Avram and freedom!” It was getting dark. Before long, nobody would be able to see anybody else, to see his gray uniform or his blond hair or which standard he bore. His own side would be almost as likely as the enemy to shoot him unless he kept yelling. “Avram and freedom!” he cried once more, louder than ever.
Some of the soldiers battling around the farmhouse shouted the same thing. Others called Geoffrey’s name and cried out for provincial prerogative. Rollant’s comrades poured a volley of crossbow quarrels into those men, then rushed at them, drawing shortswords as they charged. Pikemen came up with the crossbowmen in Colonel Nahath’s regiment. They too stormed toward the northerners.
But more soldiers yelling for false King Geoffrey burst out of the trench line they’d overrun and reinforced their comrades already in the farmyard. If the southrons wanted to drive them back-indeed, if the southrons wanted to keep them from breaking through-they would have their work cut out for them.
“Avram!” Rollant shouted again. He shifted the company standard to his left hand and yanked out his shortsword. “Avram and freedom! Avram and victory!”
“Bugger Avram with a pine cone, you stinking southron son of a bitch!” a man in blue cried furiously. He too had a shortsword. He and Rollant hacked at each other. Rollant’s sword bit flesh. The northerner groaned. Rollant slashed him again, this time across the face. He reeled back, hands clutched to the spurting wound.
Lightning smashed down out of a clear though quickly darkening sky. Southrons near Rollant screamed, their cries almost drowned in a thunderclap like the end of the world. The stink of charred flesh made the blond want to gag. A couple of minutes later, another lightning bolt smote Colonel Nahath’s men. This one struck close enough to make every hair on Rollant’s body stand erect. The sensation was extraordinarily distinct and extraordinarily unpleasant.
“Where are our wizards?” That cry had risen from southron armies ever since the war was new. Southron mages usually managed to do just enough to keep the traitors’ wizards from destroying southron soldiers altogether. That was enough to have brought King Avram’s armies to the edge of victory. It wasn’t enough to keep a lot of men in gray tunics and pantaloons from dying unnecessarily. Rollant didn’t want to be one of those unnecessarily dead men. He didn’t even want to be a necessarily dead man. He wanted to live. How could he gloat at the beaten traitors if he didn’t?
Yet another bolt of sorcerous lightning smashed into the battlefield, this one striking the two-story farmhouse where dozens of southrons sheltered and from which they shot at their foes. When nothing much seemed to happen, one more thunderbolt hit the farmhouse. Its roof caught fire. Some of the southrons inside fled. Others must have thought a burning farmhouse safer than the hellsish battle all around, for they stayed where they were.
Rollant did his best to ignore the northerners’ magics. If they slew him, they slew him, and he couldn’t do much about it (he knew the protective amulet he wore around his neck was not proof against sorceries of that magnitude). And if he stood around gaping at them, some resolutely unsorcerous traitor would shoot him or spear him or run him through. All he could do was fight his own fight and hope John the Lister’s wizards eventually realized they had something important to do here.