“Fall back!” Lieutenant Griff commanded. “They’ve broken through on this line. We’ll have to try to hold them on the next one.”
The men had hesitated to obey his order to stand. They didn’t hesitate to retreat. Rollant wondered if they could hold Thraxton the Braggart’s army on the next line. He wondered if they could hold it anywhere.
More arrows tore at them from the flank as they dropped back to look for a line they could hold. Lieutenant Griff did a good job of keeping them moving and fighting at the same time. Rollant admitted as much to himself later; while the retreat was going on, he just hoped to make it to some kind of safety before Thraxton’s men overwhelmed not only the company but the whole regiment-and possibly the whole brigade.
He was part of the group Griff had ordered to keep shooting to the front no matter what happened. Having a clear sense of what to do helped him do it. He would shoot a bolt or two from whatever cover he could find, reload, and scurry back behind another tree or bush or rock to do the same thing over again. If an enemy quarrel slammed into him from the left… then the group commanded to hold off the traitors on the flank weren’t doing their job. That was their worry, not his-except indirectly, of course.
“King Avram!” he shouted as he loosed a bolt at a fellow in an indigo tunic. The northerner went down, whether hit or merely alarmed Rollant didn’t know. He hoped he’d put that bolt right between the northerner’s eyes-and he hoped it was Baron Ormerod. He knew perfectly well that that was too much to hope for. He’d had one chance at his old liege lord. How likely were the gods to give him two?
“Avram and justice!” somebody else yelled, not far away. The traitors could roar as much as they liked, but they weren’t the only soldiers on this part of the field.
When Rollant burst out of the woods and into a good-sized clearing, he blinked in surprise-and in no little alarm. How were he and his comrades supposed to take cover crossing open ground like that? Then he saw the engines lined up almost hub to hub in the clearing. They were-they had to be-the ones that had punished the northerners before things went wrong on the flank.
Rollant’s company weren’t the only men bursting into that clearing. The soldiers in northern blue didn’t just roar when they burst into it. They howled and whooped with delight and rushed at the engines. Capturing catapults was every footsoldier’s dream.
Chains clattered as they went ratcheting over five-sided gears. The dart-throwers that were like concentrated essence of crossbowmen sprayed streams of death into the men who called Grand Duke Geoffrey their king. The traitors went down as if scythed. But men among the catapult crews fell, too: and not only men, but also the unicorns that moved the engines. Some of the traitors had got close enough for their crossbows to reach their foes.
And then stones and firepots started landing among the siege engines in the clearing. Rollant cursed. Whoever was in charge of the traitors’ catapults was doing a very smart job indeed of pushing them to the forefront of the fighting.
“We’ve got to pull out!” one of Avram’s officers shouted as a stone smashed a dart-thrower flat. That made Rollant curse again, but he could see the sense of it. The engines were up against more than they could handle here. If they stayed, they would either be wrecked or overrun and lost.
Harnessing unicorns to the catapults was but the work of a moment. Off they went, those that could go. Soldiers pulling ropes hauled a couple of them away, doing the work of beasts already slain. And the crews set fire to a couple of machines too badly damaged to take away but not so wrecked that Geoffrey’s men couldn’t get some use from them.
“Form skirmish line!” Lieutenant Griff shouted. “We have to give them time to get away!”
Militarily, the order made perfect sense. In the red balance sheet of war, catapults counted for more than a battered company’s worth of footsoldiers. That made standing- actually, dropping to one knee-out in the open no less lonely for Rollant.
He muttered prayers to the Lion God and the Thunderer. And, although he didn’t pray to them, he hoped the old gods of his people were keeping an eye on him, too. Those old gods weren’t very strong, not when measured against the ones the Detinans worshiped. The blonds had seen that, again and again. But the Detinans’ gods didn’t seem to be paying much attention to Rollant right now. Maybe the deities his people had known in days gone by would remember him when the strong gods forgot.
Here came more northerners, out into the clearing. “Give them a volley!” Griff said. “Don’t shoot till you hear my orders. Load your crossbows… Aim… Shoot!”
Rollant squeezed the trigger. His crossbow bucked against his shoulder. All around him, bowstrings twanged. Quarrels hissed through the air. Several blue-clad soldiers fell. “Die, traitors!” Rollant shouted, reloading as fast as he could.
“Steady, men,” Lieutenant Griff called. He was steadier himself than Rollant had thought he could be-certainly steadier than he had been when the battle erupted. “Make every shot count,” he urged. “We can lick them.”
Did he really believe that? Rollant didn’t, not for an instant, not while the company was standing out here in the open, trying to hold back the gods only knew how many of Thraxton’s men. But Griff sounded as if he believed it, whether he did or not. And that by itself got more from the men than they would have given to a man with panic in his voice.
A couple of soldiers not far from Rollant went down, one with a bolt in the leg, the other shrieking and clutching at his belly. But then, although quarrels kept whizzing past the men in the company and digging into the dirt not far from their feet, none struck home for a startlingly long time. That was more than luck. That was… Behind Rollant, somebody said, “A mage!”
Rollant turned his head. Sure enough, a fellow in a gray robe stood busily incanting perhaps fifty yards behind the company’s skirmish line. “I’ll be a son of a bitch,” Smitty said. “A wizard who’s really good for something. Who would’ve thunk it?”
“As long as he can keep the bolts from biting, he’s worth his weight in gold,” Rollant answered. “And as long as he can keep us safe like this, we’re worth a brigade.”
“That’s the truth,” Smitty said. “Do you suppose he can keep mosquitoes from biting, too? If he could do that, he’d be worth twice his weight in gold, easy.”
Before Rollant could come up with a response to that bit of absurdity, the mage let out a harsh cry, loud even through the din of battle. Rollant looked back over his shoulder again. The wizard was staggering, as if pummeled by invisible fists. He rallied, straightened, but then grabbed at his throat. Someone might have been strangling him, except that nobody stood anywhere close by. The northern wizards had found the mage. With another groan, he fell. His feet drummed against the ground. He did not rise.
An instant later, a crossbow bolt struck home with a meaty slap. A man only a few paces from Rollant howled. Whatever immunity the company had enjoyed died with the sorcerer in gray.
A runner dashed up to Lieutenant Griff through the hail of quarrels. Griff listened and nodded. The runner pelted away. Griff called, “Fall back, men! We’ve done our duty here. The gods-damned traitors won’t take those engines. And George’s whole wing is falling back on Merkle’s Hill. We’ll make our stand on the high ground there.”
“Where’s Merkle’s Hill?” Rollant asked. Smitty only shrugged. So did Sergeant Joram. Rollant hoped Griff knew where he was going. The lieutenant was right about one thing: the catapults had escaped Thraxton’s men. Now I have to get away from them myself, Rollant thought. He didn’t run to the far edge of the clearing, but his quickstep was fine, free, and fancy. And he didn’t get there first, or anything close to it.