The Hulmaster banner dipped and straightened; Shieldsworn trumpeters sounded the signal for Kara’s command. As one, the archers in each of the shields on the line bent their bows, held a moment, and then loosed their arrows. Almost a third of the Hulmaster soldiers carried heavy bows, and hundreds of arrows streaked through the gray skies. Council Guards reeled and fell beneath the deadly rain; distant screams echoed across the open moorland, and the approaching ranks seemed to ripple and writhe like a great, wounded serpent. Ten heartbeats later, a second volley took flight, and more of Marstel’s soldiers dropped. But now bolts and arrows arced out of Marstel’s formation in reply. The Hulmaster troops were tough targets for Marstel’s archers; most were armored in mail, and those not plying their bows carried large shields they now raised against the enemy fire. Some missiles found their mark anyway, and Hulmaster soldiers began to fall by ones and twos with cries of pain or choking screams. Then a third Hulmaster volley followed, raking Marstel’s ranks again.
“The runehelms,” Sarth murmured. Kara looked to the center of the enemy line, and scowled. The sleet of arrows seemed to make no impression at all on Rhovann’s gray constructs. The things marched straight ahead without breaking step, gathering arrow after arrow with little effect.
“Let’s hope that swords and axes work better,” she answered. Nils Wester’s First Shield held the center of the Hulmaster line; they’d be the ones to meet the runehelm assault. The enemy fire grew heavier, and now fiery bolts and jagged lances of lightning shot out from wizards and sorcerers scattered through the enemy ranks. Roars of fire and deafening thunderclaps pealed over the moor. The Hulmaster army had no spell-casters to speak of beside Sarth. Kara glanced toward the Icehammers’ end of the battle; the merchant cavalry darted and feinted at the mercenaries’ flanks, but they held their distance, waiting for the Hulmaster army to break.
“Archers! Fire as you will!” Kara called. Horns and trumpets sounded again, and regular flights of arrows became a steady hail of hissing shafts. The Hulmaster captain set her eyes on the cluster of banner-bearers where Marstel and his officers watched the unfolding battle behind the ominous formation of runehelms. She was sorely tempted to lead a charge against the enemy captains, but until she knew exactly how dangerous Rhovann’s toys were, she didn’t dare risk it.
Goaded by the deadly missiles, the Council Guard broke into a jogging charge, while the Shieldsworn raised a great chorus of war cries. With an awful sound of clattering steel and shouting warriors, the two armies finally met along the Shieldsworn line. To the left and right, the Shieldsworn wavered under the assault, but held the line; man-for-man, they were more heavily armored and better trained than the Council Guard, and Marstel’s advantage in numbers wasn’t enough to overwhelm them. But in the center, the Shieldsworn didn’t face Marstel’s hired soldiers; they faced Rhovann’s runehelms.
“Here they come,” she breathed, and allowed herself a humorless smile. She’d soon see whether the creatures were as dangerous as Geran feared, or not.
The runehelms, sixty or seventy strong, marched into Wester’s line. Black halberds rose high, and then fell with sickening power. No shield or mail could withstand the blow of weapons that heavy driven with such remorseless power; in a matter of moments, two score Hulmaster soldiers were cut down by the hideous strength of the creatures. The constructs advanced a few more steps, drawing back for another blow. Brave Shieldsworn darted inside their reach, driving spears into gray claylike flesh or hacking furiously with axe or sword, but the runehelms seemed almost impervious to their attacks. One of the monsters staggered as a big Shieldsworn fighter flung aside his shield and hewed at its knee with his war axe in a two-handed grip, carving a notch in the creature’s leg as if he had a mind to fell a tree. But the runehelm he attacked struck him a backhand blow with its left hand and sent him flying through the air. Before he could rise again, the monster buried the blade of its halberd in his chest and wrenched it free. The center of the Hulmaster line buckled under the runehelm’s inexorable assault.
So much for the hope that they might be easier to kill a few miles from Hulburg, Kara thought darkly. The only defense against the things was to not be standing wherever that halberd was coming down.
“Damn it all,” she snarled. Her Shieldsworn weren’t giving an inch to the Council Guard on either flank, but the runehelms were destroying her center before her eyes. If Wester’s shield broke, the battle might be lost. In desperation, Kara motioned to her standard-bearer and Brother Larken behind her. “To the center!” she cried. “Follow me!”
Spurring Dancer forward, she rode up into the furious melee where Wester’s shield struggled to stop foes that seemed unstoppable. Then the chaos of battle engulfed her and her bodyguards. In the space of five heartbeats, Kara found herself in the thick of the fray, unable to think about anything more than the enemies immediately around her. Her sword darted and flashed, batting away massive halberds, leaping out to find a gray throat, blurring in a brutal arc as it took a council soldier’s arm at the elbow. Dancer’s hooves lashed and struck as the big mare plunged through the fighting.
A few steps behind her, Sarth abandoned his horse and took to the air, shielding himself with a golden halo that deflected the occasional bolt or spear hurled in his direction. The sorcerer had no skill for fighting from horseback, and he knew it. From his vantage he scoured the enemy ranks with great blasts of fire, only to catch the attention of several merchant company wizards. A furious spell battle erupted in the air over the confused melee as the tiefling traded lightning bolts and brilliant darts of magical force with his adversaries. A gray-bearded mage in the colors of the Jannarsks lashed out at Sarth with a rainbow-colored ray that shattered into individual beams when it struck his spell-shield; a glancing touch of the orange ray singed a path across Sarth’s chest, blackening his robes and raising a wisp of smoke from his smoldering garb. Sarth shrugged it off, as his race was little affected by fire of any sort, and replied with a barrage of deadly ice darts that skewered the Jannarsk mage several times through and cut down a number of the Jannarsk soldiers near him as well.
Kara wheeled around, trying to assess whether she’d downed any of the runehelms in her countercharge, but the automatons still pressed forward. No blood seeped from opened throats or deep stabs in their gray flesh. “How in the Nine Hells do you slay these things?” she growled to herself. The warrior who’d chopped at its knees might have had the right idea-a shield wouldn’t help anyway, and if the things could be immobilized by cutting their legs out from under them, they’d pose little threat.
“Strike at their legs!” she shouted to her soldiers. “Give ground and slow them down by hacking at their legs!”
She decided to put her own advice into action, spurring back to meet the nearest of the creatures. She guided Dancer away from a monstrous sweep of the runehelm’s halberd, and then spurred past the creature, leaning down from the saddle to hew at its thick leg. She felt the hard shock of her steel meeting bone-or something much like bone-just above the monster’s knee, and bounded out of its reach as it turned awkwardly and lunged at her. Her standard-bearer darted in from the other side and distracted the creature, gaining its attention before backing out of its reach, and when it lunged after Merrith, Kara raced back in again to deliver another blow across the back of the same knee she’d just struck, hamstringing the runehelm. It might not bleed and it might not feel pain, but the creature was still limited by its physical nature; somewhere in its gray flesh its frame was held together with something like bone and sinew, and when those were damaged, its limbs couldn’t work. The runehelm floundered to the ground as its leg buckled, but now more of the gray monsters pressed in from all sides.