Behind him, crossbowmen began to shoot at Bell’s men. Zip! Zip! More bolts flew past, too close for comfort. Every so often, a standard-bearer or an officer got shot in the back “by accident” when someone in the ranks who didn’t care for him let fly. As a blond, Rollant knew plenty of people didn’t care for him. He couldn’t do anything about it now, and tried not to think about it.
Motion ahead and to his right caught his eye. It wasn’t, as he’d hoped, Hard-Riding Jimmy’s men sweeping down on the traitors’ flank. Instead, it was Ned of the Forest’s unicorn-riders, red dragon on gold flying from their standards, maneuvering to block Hard-Riding Jimmy and keep him from doing whatever he’d set out to do.
Well, who ever saw a dead unicorn-rider? Rollant thought, not without bitterness. If a footsoldier said that out loud to a unicorn-rider, it was guaranteed to start a fight. That didn’t mean Rollant and his comrades didn’t think such things, though.
Unicorn-riders lent a touch of style to what would otherwise be vulgar brawls. Past that, on the southron side at least, they’d never been good for much. Maybe Hard-Riding Jimmy could change that. Rollant would believe it when he saw it.
The northerners in the shooting pits ran back toward their own line. “Provincial prerogative!” they shouted, and, “King Geoffrey!”
“Freedom!” Rollant yelled back. “King Avram and freedom!” He took one hand off the flagpole to shake a fist at Bell’s men.
Still waving his sword, Lieutenant Griff ran ahead of his men toward the earthen breastwork in front of the northerners’ forward trench. “King Avram and one Detina forever!” Griff shouted. Rollant hustled forward to keep up with the company commander. Griff swung the sword again. “Avram and free-”
A crossbow quarrel caught him in the throat. He made a horrible gobbling noise and threw up both hands to clutch at the wound. The sword fell forgotten to the ground. Blood, dreadfully red, fountained out between Griff’s fingers. Seeing so much blood, Rollant knew the wound had to be mortal. Griff couldn’t have bled much more or much faster if a stone had struck off his head. He staggered on for another couple of steps. Then his knees gave out, and he crumpled to the ground.
Rollant stooped to snatch up the sword he had dropped. An officer’s blade, it was half again as long as the stubby weapon the blond carried on his hip. As he bent to take it-shifting the company standard from right hand to left at the same time-another bolt hissed malevolently over his head. If he hadn’t bent down, it might have caught him in the face. “Thank you, Thunderer,” he muttered. “I’ll do something nice for you if you let me live through this fight.”
When he straightened, he waved the standard and swung the sword. A standard-bearer, he’d found, had to have some ham in him, or the rest of the men wouldn’t follow him the way they should.
And now he had the perfect war cry to make his comrades give all they could. “For Lieutenant Griff!” he shouted, and ran on, past the company commander’s body.
“For Lieutenant Griff!” the men behind him roared.
Griff’s fall meant Sergeant Joram was in charge of the company for the time being. He ran up alongside of Roland. Joram had his own way of getting the most out of his men. Pointing to Rollant, he bellowed, “Are you sons of bitches going to let this fellow do it all by himself?”
“Sergeant-” Rollant began, and then let it go. He’d already seen that Joram didn’t have too much against blonds. The sergeant was also trying to get the men to fight hard. Later might be the time to talk about it. Now wasn’t.
“Avraaaam!” Joram yelled as he sprang up onto the parapet. He shot one traitor, threw his crossbow in the face of another, drew his shortsword, and leaped down into the trench.
“Avraaaam!” Rollant echoed. He jumped down into the trench, too, and spitted a northerner before the man in blue could shoot him.
Another northerner rushed forward, grappling with him to wrestle away the company standard. Struggling and cursing, Rollant couldn’t get his arm free enough to stab the enemy soldier. He hit him in the face with the pommel of Lieutenant Griff’s sword. Something-probably the northerner’s nose-flattened under the impact. The man howled but hung on and tried to trip him. Rollant smashed him again with the weighted pommel. The second blow persuaded the traitor he wasn’t going to get what he wanted. He lurched down the trench, his face dripping blood.
More and more southrons jumped into the trench. Northern pikemen rushed up to drive them back. That was bad-pikes had far more reach than shortswords. But southron pikemen joined the fight moments later, thrusting and parrying against their foes. Rollant was too busy trying to stay alive to pay much attention to the details. He did know that southron reinforcements eased the pressure on his comrades. The southrons were into the Army of Franklin’s trenches, and it didn’t look as if Bell’s men could throw them out again.
There was Colonel Nahath, scrambling up out of the first trench and pointing to the next one with his sword. “Come on, boys!” he cried. “Are you going to let a pack of dirty, stinking traitors slow us down?”
“No!” the soldiers shouted. They hurried after the regimental commander. The northerners they fought were dirty and stinking. Rollant and his comrades weren’t, or not so badly; they’d spent the past couple of weeks in far better quarters than their foes had. A few days in the field, though, and nobody civilized would want to get anywhere near them, either.
“Let’s go! Let’s go! Let’s go!” That was Sergeant Joram, urging his men on. Rollant waved the company standard again. Then he too fought his way up onto the high ground between the trenches. He waved the standard yet again. Joram nodded. “That’s the way to do it, Corporal!”
“King Avram!” Rollant yelled, and sprang down into the melee in the second trench. A bolt lifted his hat from his head and carried it away. He didn’t even have time to shudder at his narrow escape. He was a standard-bearer, and so a target. He was a blond in a gray uniform, and so a target. He was a blond in a gray uniform who’d had the presumption to fool his superiors into thinking he deserved to be a corporal and bear a standard-so northerners would think of it, anyhow-and so doubly or triply or quadruply a target. He was glad he’d picked up luckless Lieutenant Griff’s sword. It gave him more reach than most of his foes had. It wouldn’t do anything against crossbow quarrels, of course, but by now the trench was so packed with battling men, hardly anybody could raise a crossbow, let alone aim one.
Again, Bell’s men tried to drive the southrons out of the trench. Again, gray-clad reinforcements swamped them. Rollant climbed up over dead bodies-he hoped they were all dead-wearing blue and gained the next stretch of open ground between entrenchments.
“Fancy meeting you here,” Smitty said, panting.
Rollant looked him up and down. “You mean they haven’t killed you yet?” he demanded.
“I don’t think so.” The other soldier patted himself, as if looking for bolts or a pike or two that might have pierced him when he was busy with something else. He shook his head. “Nope. I still seem to be more or less alive. How about you?”
“About the same, I think. Come on, let’s get back to it,” Rollant said. “We’ve pushed ’em pretty hard so far.”
“Haven’t broken through yet, though.” Smitty spoke with a connoisseur’s knowledge of what he wanted. “But who knows? We just might.”
“Yes.” Rollant nodded. “We just might.” That was as much of a breather as he allowed himself. He waved the standard and rushed forward into the fight. If the southrons did break through at last, he wanted to be part of it. After so much hard struggle, he thought he’d earned the right.