It was Golophin who sensed their coming first. He stiffened in the saddle of the army mule which was his preferred mount and seemed almost to sniff the air.
'Corfe,' he cried. 'The Hounds!'
The King looked at him, and nodded. He turned to Astan his bugler. 'Sound me the "halt".'
Clear and cold over the tumult of the battle the horn call rang out. As soon as the notes had died the buglers of other companies and formations took it up, and in seconds the entire battle-line had stopped moving, and the Orphans grounded their pikes. Those two miles and more of armed men and stamping horses paused as though waiting, and the field became almost quiet except for stray spatters of gunshots here and there and the neighing of impatient destriers. To the north the bells of Charibon had fallen silent.
Golophin seemed to be listening. He stood up tense and stiff in his stirrups while his mule shifted uneasily under him. Soon all the men of the army could hear it. The mad, caco shy;phonous chorus of a wolf pack in full cry, but magnified so that it rose up over the trampled and bloodstained and scorched grass of the battlefield and seemed to issue from the very air about their heads.
'Arquebusiers, stand by!' Corfe shouted, raising the Answerer, and down through the army the order was re shy;peated, while the Cathedrallers clicked open their saddle-holsters and reached for their matchlocks.
They came in a huge pack, hundreds, thousands of them. From the centre of Charibon they poured along the streets in a fanged, hairy torrent, their eyes glaring madly and their claws clicking and sliding on the cobbles. The human troops of Aruan made way for them in terror, shrinking against walls and ducking into doorways. But the Hounds ignored them. Running now on four legs, now on two, they burst out of the narrow streets and formed up vast as a cloud on the plain before Charibon, marshalled by mail-clad Inceptines. Lycan-thropes of every shape and variety imaginable milled there, yapping and snarling and hissing their hatred at the silent ranks of the Torunnans, a tableau from some primeval night shy;mare.
The Almarkans, who were caught between the two lines, streamed west in utter panic, collapsing the last of their tents behind them, some dropping their weapons as they ran. They were not professionals but shepherds of the Narian Hills, fishermen from the shores of the Hardic Sea, and they wanted no part of the slaughter to come.
Corfe stared narrowly at the mobs of shifters who snapped and spat by the thousand before his men, but yet obeyed the commands of their Inceptine leaders and remained in place. He shaded his eyes and looked up at the high buildings of Charibon itself, less than a mile away now, and wondered if perhaps one of the figures he saw standing there was the architect of these monstrosities. A small group of men was watching from the tower next to the cathedral – one of them must be Aruan, surely. And even as he watched the air seemed to shimmer about them, and ere he looked away, rubbing his watering eyes, he was sure their number had increased by one.
In that moment, the Hounds of God sprang forward. They loped through the ruined camp of the Almarkans looking from afar like a tide of rats, and the roaring, howling and snarling they made as they came on made the horses rear up and fight their bridles in fear. Corfe gave no order, for his men knew what to do. The Hounds ran straight up to his line in a boiling mass, and with them came an overpowering, awful stink, heavy as smoke.
With forty yards to go the Orphans levelled their pikes once more, and every firearm in the entire army was discharged in one long, stertorous volley that seemed to go on for ever. The front of the army was hidden in a solid wall of smoke and a moment later hundreds and hundreds of werewolves and shifters of all shapes and misshapes came hurtling out of it and threw themselves upon the Torunnan front rank.
The army seemed to shudder at the impact, and was at once engaged in hand-to-hand combat all along its length, and Corfe could see soldiers being flung through the air and smashed and clawed off their feet. But every time a shifter struck one of Corfe's men, no matter how glancing the blow, it shrieked and at once collapsed. Soon at the feet of the Orphans and the Torunnans of the front line a horrible tidemark built up, a barricade of nude bodies. For when the shifters were so much as grazed by the spiked iron of the Torunnan armour, the Dweomer left them, and their beast-bodies melted away.
As the smoke of the initial volley cleared and drifted in rent patches out to sea, it was possible to perceive the carnage that the arquebusiers had wrought. Thousands of naked corpses littered the plain, in places lying piled in mounds three and four deep. The grass was dark and slimy with their blood.
The attack of the Hounds faltered. Even through the blood rage that impelled them they finally realised their mistake, and began to pull back from that deadly line of iron-clad men. They streamed away in their hundreds, trampling their Inceptine officers or, snarling, beating them aside. But there Was to be no chance even in retreat. As soon as they broke off the army's arquebuses were levelled again, and Corfe heard the voices of his officers bellowing out. Another volley, and another. Every round his men fired was made not of lead, but of pure iron, and the heavy bullets snicked and whined and scythed across the battlefield so that the surviving Hounds were cut down in swathes as they withdrew. When the smoke finally cleared again the plain was empty of life, and the corpses of Aruan's most feared troops littered it like a ghastly windfall. They had been utterly destroyed. An eerie silence fell over the field, as though all men were astounded by the sight.
Corfe turned to Astan his bugler and simply nodded. The tribesman put his horn to his lips and blew. The Torunnan advance began again.
'Golophin has betrayed us,' Aruan said, his voice harsh as stone. 'He has told the Torunnans how to kill us.'
Bardolin stood with the last shifting threads of the Dweo shy;mer dwindling about him. His clothes smelled slightly scorched and his face was wan with fatigue. 'Any hedge witch could have told them the same.'
'There are none left in Torunna. No, it was Golophin. He has chosen his side at last. A pity. I thought he would see sense in the end.' Aruan's eyes seemed slightly out of focus, as if they could not quite take in the enormity of the spectacle before them.
"Their infantry are entering the city’ he said. 'Bardolin, in God's name, what kind of men are these? Does nothing daunt them?'
The Hebrian mage did not answer his question. 'The Hounds have failed us, for the moment. There are others we can call on when the time is right. But for now we must fight the enemy sword to sword. Reinforcements are on their way from the north, and the south. Corfe has made a brave fight of it, but he cannot win, not against the numbers we will bring to bear on him.'
Aruan clapped him on the shoulder. 'That is what I like to hear. I am glad you came, Bardolin. I have need of your good sense. A man must be a stone not to lose a little of his equi shy;librium at a time like this.'
'Then I had best give you my news before you lose any more. Yesterday an army of Torunnans and Merduks under Formio defeated our forces in a battle near the town of Staed in southern Torunna. The invasion has failed.'
Aruan did not move or speak, but a muscle clenched and unclenched like a restless worm under the skin of his jaw. 'Is that all?'
'No. Our spies tell me that after the battle Formio received a young man at his headquarters who claims to be heir to the throne of Torunna, Abeleyn's illegitimate son by his one-time mistress. He told the Fimbrian Regent that Queen Isolla is dead. Murad killed her in the Levangore before being slain himself.' Bardolin looked down, and his voice changed. 'Richard Hawkwood is dead also.'