“What of the Veruna brigands waiting outside Griffonwatch?” Mirya asked. “What’s to be done about them?”
Geran frowned. As much as he wanted to use the Spearmeet to storm the Veruna merchant yards and put an abrupt stop to Sergen’s designs, the threat of the Bloody Skulls simply dwarfed his cousin’s treachery. “Sergen will have to wait until tomorrow,” he finally said. “We’ll ignore them. They can’t do much harm that can’t be undone in a few days.”
The harmach looked dubious. “Yours is a counsel of desperation, Geran. You know what it is to stake your life on chance, but most of the rest of us do not. It’s harder for us than you might think.”
Geran lowered his voice and leaned close to his uncle. “I understand, Uncle Grigor. But consider this: Either we tell our folk to hide in cellars and scatter to the Highfells, or we try to fight off the orcs. If we fight and lose, well, how much worse can that be than if we hadn’t fought at all? Hulburg’s sacked and our people enslaved in either case. Will the Bloody Skulls show us any more mercy if we spare them another battle? We might as well die fighting.”
Harmach Grigor weighed Geran’s words for a long moment. Then, slowly, he stood and turned to face the assembled Hulburgans crowding the tavern floor. The townsfolk awaited his words in a hushed silence. “You’ve all heard what I’ve heard,” he said. “We failed to stop the Bloody Skulls at the head of the Winterspear. My nephew believes we may have one more chance to break the horde before it drowns Hulburg in fire and steel. I need every last man of the Spearmeet to march at once for Lendon’s Dike. If we can hold off the orcs until dawn, then perhaps daylight will show us better reason to hope than we can find tonight.” Grigor seemed to stand a little taller, and his voice grew stronger. He struck his cane to the floorboards. “I want word sent through all the town for women, children, the infirm, the elderly, all those who cannot bend a bow or hold a spear, to seek refuge immediately. But tell any man or woman who can carry an axe or a hunting bow to come to Lendon’s Dike-I don’t care whose colors they wear!”
Geran drew his sword and thrust the point into the air. “For Hulburg!” he shouted. “For the harmach!”
“Hulburg! The harmach!” a dozen voices shouted in reply. Then a hundred more joined in, until the tavern trembled with the thunder of their shouts. “Hulburg! The harmach!”
“Captains, gather your musters!” the harmach called, his voice carrying through the din. “Sons and daughters of Hulburg, take up your spears and stand together! We march!”
TWENTY-SEVEN
11 Tarsakh, the Year of the Ageless One
The hour after moonset was the worst of the night. Somehow in the darkness the small mercenary contingents of House Marstel and the Double Moon Coster became separated from the rapidly diminishing army of Hulburg and simply vanished into the night. Kara sent her best scouts to find the missing detachments and lead them back to the Vale Road, but she dared not wait for their return. The Red Claw wolf riders snarled and darted at her army’s heels at every step, and behind them came the great mass of the Bloody Skull horde. Now that the Bloody Skulls were in the Vale, she had no real hope of stopping them short of Hulburg. All she could do was try to beat the horde to the town and pray that her battered and bloodied soldiers could hold the castles and the fortified merchant compounds. The orcs would tire of their sport and withdraw after a few days, leaving those lucky enough to find shelter behind strong walls and locked gates alive to rebuild… but if she allowed the wolf riders to surround her and bring her to bay, she would not even be able to manage that much. Without her soldiers, Griffonwatch and Daggergard would fall, and then nothing at all would be left of Hulburg.
“Stay together, stay in good order!” she called to the weary companies around her. “If you fall out of ranks, the wolf riders will have you! They can’t drag us down if we stay in ranks and keep to our places as we march!”
So many have fallen already, she thought dully. Kara was exhausted herself, bruised and nicked in a dozen places from the furious cavalry skirmishes of the last few hours, but she couldn’t allow her soldiers to see her flagging or giving in to despair. She wheeled Dancer around and patted the big mare’s neck, studying the dark vale behind her retreating army. Half a dozen fires blazed in the blackness where outlying farms and homesteads had already been overrun by bloodthirsty savages. There will be many more of those before sunrise, she told herself.
Her broken companies filed into a narrow cut where the road passed through a belt of beechwoods. She peered into the gloom, searching for danger. Her spellscar-changed eyes, so brilliant by daylight, shimmered with the greenish-blue radiance of glacier ice in darkness; she could see as well as a cat by night, a small consolation for the havoc the Spellplague had wreaked in her. The woods offered little as a place to make a stand, but she had to do something to keep the wolf riders away from her troops.
Kara tapped her heels to Dancer’s flanks and cantered over to the Icehammer company, her standard-bearer and her adjutants following her. The mercenaries trudged along in grim silence in the middle of her force. Kara reined in to walk alongside the rearmost ranks. “Where’s your captain?” she asked the dwarves there.
“I’m here, Lady Hulmaster.” The black-bearded dwarf Kendurkkel pushed his way through the marching files of his company. He carried a heavy crossbow over his shoulder and a battle axe with its haft thrust through his belt, but still he gripped his pipe between his teeth. “What d’you want?”
“We need to teach the goblins not to follow us too closely,” Kara said. “You’ve got crossbowmen among your company, and most of them are dwarves who can see in the dark better than the rest of us. I want you to set up a skirmish line here in these trees and greet the goblins with a volley or two when they follow us in here.”
“You’re wantin’ me lads t’take a turn at rearguard, you mean.” Kendurkkel frowned. “If those wolf riders go ’round the woods, they’ll catch us here neat as you please, and me poor mother won’t ever lay eyes on her foolish son agin’.”
“I’ll be waiting with all the riders we have left just on the other side of the woods,” Kara answered. “If the goblins go around you, we’ll hold them off and give you a chance to get clear.”
Kendurkkel looked up at her, taking her measure. “I don’t doubt you’ll do as you say, but this sort o’ extra work ain’t in me contract, Lady Hulmaster.”
Kara restrained a sudden impulse to simply ride the Icehammer captain down under her hooves and leaned over her pommel to fix her eyes on the dwarf’s face. She lowered her voice even further. “You may not have noticed, Captain, but this is now a question of survival, not contracts. If our hodgepodge army breaks apart in the next mile because the wolf riders cut us apart from behind, there’s an excellent chance that none of us will reach Hulburg alive. It’s in your own best interest to give the goblins a bloody nose or at least make them ride around the woods.”
The dwarf chewed on the stem of his pipe, staring coldly up at her. Then he sighed and said, “All right, Lady Hulmaster. We’ll do as you ask. This whole business is sourin’ fast anyway, so I s’pose we ain’t got much t’lose.” The dwarf turned away and shouted to his mercenaries. “Icehammers, off the road! We’re t’lay a little ambush right here for any goblins or worgs stupid ’nough t’ stick their heads in a noose.”
“Three good volleys are all we need,” Kara told him. She watched the Icehammers scramble into the woods on each side of the road and left Kendurkkel pointing with the stem of his pipe and barking orders to his men.
She cantered a couple of hundred yards farther on to the place where the road broke out into open fields again, and collected all the cavalry she had left-twoscore Shieldsworn and about twice that number of men and women called out from the various merchant contingents. She sent pickets out to each side to watch for wolf riders coming around the small belt of woods then settled down to wait. She would have preferred to stay close to the Icehammers, but it was simply too important to make sure that the hundred riders she had at this spot went in the right direction when the enemy appeared. She was afraid that the merchant armsmen would simply ride off for home if she didn’t remain to hold them in place.