Havaral nodded. ‘Damn this wind,’ he then growled, blinking.
The first shade of blue appearing among the flag-stations lifted them into a canter, and they swung out, away from the skirmishers. As the horseshoe formation took shape, the foot soldiers suddenly recoiled in comprehension. The flags spun to show the deeper blue side, announcing the inward wheel and the charge.
The skirmishers had drawn out too far – Havaral could see that plain – and the pike line was still trudging at its turgid pace, only halfway down the far slope.
Havaral brought his lance down and slid its butt into the arm’s length leather sheath affixed to the saddle. He heard and felt the solid impact the end made with the bronze socket.
‘They’re all caught!’ Kullis shouted. ‘We’re too fast!’
The captain said nothing. He saw javelins launched from arms, saw lances dip to knock most of them away before they could strike the chests of horses. A few animals screamed, but now the voices of the Wardens filled the air, rising above the thunder of horse hoofs.
Borrowed anger this might be, but it will do.
Skirmishers scattered like jackrabbits.
A few hundred Legion soldiers were about to die, and the tears streamed from Havaral’s eyes, making cold tracks down his cheeks.
It begins. Oh, blessed Mother Dark, it begins.
* * *
Sevegg cursed and then turned to Hunn Raal. ‘They went too far, the fools. Who commands them?’
‘Lieutenant Altras.’
‘Altras! Cousin, he’s a quartermaster’s aide!’
‘And so very eager, like a pup off its leash.’
She looked at the captain at her side. His profile was sharp, almost majestic if one did not look too closely. If witnessing the imminent slaughter of three hundred Legion soldiers affected him, there was no discernible sign. A different flavour of command, then. Lord Urusander would never have done it this way. And yet, there is no value in questioning this. She studied her cousin’s face, remembering how that expression crumpled in lovemaking, achieving nothing so much childlike as dissolute.
On the field below, the wings of the Warden cavalry tightened their deadly noose about the skirmishers. Lances dipped, caught hold of bodies and lifted them into the air, or drove them into the ground. Most weapons took soldiers from behind.
From the corner of her eye she caught Hunn Raal’s gesture, an almost lazy wave of one gauntleted hand.
Behind them, the outer units of Legion cavalry on the back-slope lurched into motion, quickly surging into a canter. Then, pivoting as if one end was fixed to the ground, the troops wheeled to face the slope. The riders leaned forward as their mounts climbed.
He should have ordered this earlier. A hundred heartbeats. Five hundred. Not a single skirmisher will be left.
As if reading her mind, Hunn Raal said, ‘I had a list of malcontents. Soldiers too inclined to question what is necessary to bring peace to the realm. They argued at the campfires. They muttered about desertion.’
Sevegg said nothing. There was no crime in asking questions. The last accusation was absurd. Deserters never talked about it beforehand. Instead, it was the opposite. They went quiet in the days before disappearing. Every soldier knew the signs.
The foremost ranks of the Legion cavalry crested the slope, swept over and then flowed down in a solid mass, arriving on the field of battle beyond the Warden flanks. She saw the first of the enemy riders discover the threat, and confusion take hold, lances lifting to allow the quick about-face. The centre formation, where the bulk of Rend’s force still advanced at the trot, began to bulge.
‘See that,’ Hunn Raal suddenly said. ‘He abandons his flanks to a mauling, and sets eyes only for our pikes.’
‘Those armoured mounts of theirs are surprisingly agile,’ Sevegg said, seeing how the outside ranks were already settling, lances dipping as they rode out to meet the Legion cavalry.
‘Outnumbered,’ Raal said, ‘and on weary beasts.’
The way ahead for Rend’s centre was now clear, with only motionless bodies to ride over as they approached the slope. Three-quarters of the way down the hillside, Raal’s pikes now halted, setting their weapons and anchoring the heels against the unyielding, frozen ground.
In the past war against the Jheleck, the pike had proved its efficacy. But the giant wolves charged without discipline, and proved too foolish and too brave and too stubborn to change their ways. Even so, Sevegg could not see how the Wardens could answer that bristling line of barbed iron points. ‘Rend has lost his mind,’ she said, ‘if he hopes to break our centre.’
Hunn Raal grunted. ‘I admit to some curiosity about that. We’ll see soon enough what he has in mind.’
The Legion cavalry had turned inward, rising to the charge. The Wardens answered. Moments later, the leading edges collided.
* * *
On the crest of her hilltop, Renarr flinched at the distant impact. She saw bodies silently rising as if invisible hands had reached down from the empty sky, snatching them from their saddles. Their limbs flailed, and blooms of red snapped sudden as flags in the midst of the crush. Horses went down, thrashing and kicking. An instant later, the thunder of that collision reached her.
The whores were shouting, while the children now crowded between the men and women along the ridge, silent and watching with wide eyes, some with thumbs in their mouths, others pulling on pipes.
Renarr could see how, in the initial impact, many more Legion horses staggered and fell than did those of the Wardens. She suspected that this was unanticipated. An advantage of the wooden armour of the enemy’s mounts, she supposed, which while providing surprising defence did little to slow the swiftness and agility of the beasts. Even so, the Legion’s superior numbers checked that counterattack, absorbing the blow, and now, as riders fought in the crowded, churning maelstrom, the Wardens began giving ground.
She looked to the centre, and saw the foremost Wardens reach the base of the slope. Flags rippled, changing colour in a wave leading out from the stations upon the opposite hillside, and all at once the Wardens charged up the slope.
The pikes awaiting them glinted in the sun like the thread of a mountain stream.
Sensing someone at her side, Renarr glanced down and saw the girl with the bloodied face. Tears had cleaned her cheeks in narrow, crooked trails, but her pale eyes, fixed upon the battle below, were dry.
* * *
His lover’s face was everywhere now, upon all sides. Beneath the rims of helms, among his kin and among the enemy surging around him. He sobbed as he fought, howled as he cut down that dear man again and again, and screamed each time one of his comrades fell. He had left his lance buried halfway through a horse, the point driving into its chest and reaching all the way to its gut. Disbelief had flashed through Havaral then: he’d felt little resistance along the weapon’s shaft. The point had slipped past every possible obstacle. The horse’s rider had attempted to swing his heavy longsword at the captain, but the beast collapsing under him had tugged him away, and moments later a Warden’s lance cut clean through his neck, sending the head spinning.
His troop was falling back, collapsing inward. Lord Rend had done nothing to prevent it, and Havaral understood the role his flank now inherited, as a sacrificial bulwark protecting the centre. They would fight on, without hope of victory or even escape, and in this forlorn fate their only task was to take a long time in dying.
He knew nothing of the rest of the battle. The few flags he caught sight of, barely glimpsed and distant on the far slope, were all black.
He swung his sword, hacking at Legion soldiers. The multitude of his lover’s face showed twisted, enraged expressions, filled with hate and fury, with terror. Others showed him that face in grey, clouded confusion, as they sank back, or slid from their saddles. The surprise of death was one no actor on a stage could capture, because its truth cast an inhuman shade upon the eyes, and that shade spread out to claim the skin of the face, rushing down to bleach the throat. It was silent and it was, horribly, irrefutable.