“That’s better than a fifth of my army,” Kara answered. How was she supposed to pay attention to the battle-no, the retreat-if she was supposed to be on guard against assassination or treachery too? She looked around to get her bearings in the darkened vale. They’d been fighting and falling back for hours, and with surprise she saw that they were about halfway to Hulburg already. The old earthworks were not more than a couple of miles ahead. They’d be able to reach the dike easily enough, but what then?” I’ve got to speak with him myself,” she said aloud. “Sarise, go find Captain Ironthane and tell him he’s got command of the rear guard until I return. Have Master Osting relay his report to the captain. I’m riding ahead.”
“It isn’t safe to ride alone, my lady,” one of her adjutants pointed out.
“Then you, and you, and you-come with me, if you can keep up.” Kara pointed at several of the Shieldsworn riders nearby and rode off over the darkened fields, cutting cross-country. The Vale Road was full of her soldiers, and she didn’t want them to think she was abandoning the field. She hoped that Kendurkkel wouldn’t think so, either, but so far the dwarf captain had quickly grasped her commands and intentions. He’d understand that she was not leaving them.
Kara led her small band through muddy fields thick with the stubble of last year’s planting, until they found an old lane between homesteads that more or less paralleled the Vale Road. She set her spurs to Dancer and let the big mare stretch out her legs on the road, while her guards hurried to keep up with her. The rush of cold night air drove away her weariness. After a good run, she saw a long, straight row of trees rising up across her path-the old berm, long since overgrown with thickets and young trees. Scores of torches and lanterns burned along its length. “It seems the Spearmeet’s already here,” she said to herself. She veered back toward the Vale Road and in a few more minutes of riding climbed back onto the road a short distance from the place where it cut through the embankment.
Dozens of men worked furiously to build thornbrakes across the road. Along the earthworks more Hulburgans worked with axe and hatchet to make the top of the dike defensible. Now that she was closer to the old berm, she saw that the trees and tangled briar-patches covering its slopes made it a more formidable obstacle than she remembered; the men and women of the Spearmeet were felling trees and piling up brush on the north face of the dike to improve it even more. If only she had more archers, she might have a chance to hold it-at least for a little while.
“There, m’lady,” one of her riders said to her. He pointed to an improvised banner fluttering in the torchlight, a simple white field with a blue blazon on it. “The harmach.”
“I see it,” Kara replied. She rode up to the simple banner, and there she found half a dozen Spearmeet captains gathered around Harmach Grigor, along with Master Assayer Dunstormad Goldhead, the Master Mage Ebain Ravenscar, her cousin Geran, and-surprisingly-the tiefling sorcerer Sarth she’d seen by the barrow on the Highfells. The world seems to have gone mad tonight, she thought. She leaped down from Dancer’s saddle and strode over to the harmach. She couldn’t remember the last time he’d left the city; he stood leaning on his cane, a thin cloak whipping around him in the bitter night.
“My lord Harmach,” she said formally. “I am here.”
Grigor Hulmaster looked around and found a crooked smile of relief. “Kara, I’m glad to see that you’re well,” he said. “I was afraid for you, my dear.”
“Brun Osting said I’m to bring my army here. We’re on our way. You should see my leading companies any time now, and my rear guard’s less than an hour off. But, Uncle Grigor-the Bloody Skulls won’t be far behind us. Are you sure this is where you want to stand?”
“It’s here or nowhere, Kara,” the harmach said. “Griffonwatch is taken. We have no castle to fall back to.”
Kara glanced at the other Hulburgans nearby and lowered her voice. “I heard that ghosts invaded Griffonwatch? Is that true?”
Harmach Grigor nodded. “I’m afraid that it is, and I’m sorry to say that it seems to be your stepbrother’s doing. He and his Veruna allies tried to kill us all tonight. If not for the fact that Geran and his friends took it upon themselves to arrange his escape from my prison and rescue me, I think Sergen would have succeeded.”
“That was the price the King in Copper paid for the Infiernadex after House Veruna got it for him,” Geran explained. “He agreed to send his specters to serve when called. It seems Sergen decided to call them tonight.”
“Given the circumstances, I’ve pardoned Geran of any wrongdoing in his duel with the Veruna captain and in his escape,” the harmach added. “And should we run across Sergen again, we must treat him and his Veruna allies as enemies of Hulburg.”
Kara lowered her voice. “The Verunas with my army have done their part so far tonight. They’ve fought as well as any of us. This makes no sense. Are you saying that they’ll turn on us at some point?”
“It’d be wise to expect them to,” Geran said. “They might be waiting for the right opportunity to show their true colors.”
The ranger laughed bitterly. “Geran, they’ve had many opportunities for treachery tonight. All they had to do was abandon the field, and we probably would’ve been destroyed three times over.”
Sarth cleared his throat. “Forgive me for saying so, but the explanation may be quite simple: Perhaps things have not gone as House Veruna planned tonight. After your initial defeat they may have decided that it would be folly to carry through with their plan in the face of an orc invasion.”
Kara frowned. She didn’t know how the horned man had come to be standing at Geran’s side, but she simply did not have time to satisfy her curiosity. With effort she set aside the questions still dancing in her mind and focused on the immediate crisis. “I’ll ask for a complete explanation later,” she said. “Uncle Grigor, I expect the Bloody Skulls to reach this spot in an hour, perhaps two. I would guess that I’m down to six hundred tired men-less if you tell me that the Verunas can’t be counted on. How many Spearmeet do you have with you?”
“Around eight hundred, I think,” Geran answered. “About half are here already, and the rest are marching up from Hulburg as quickly as they can.” She frowned dubiously. Geran saw her skepticism and added, “They’re not as good as your Shieldsworn or your mercenaries, but they’re fighting with their homes and families at their backs. They’ll do better than you might think, Kara.”
“I don’t think it will be enough,” Kara said. “The Bloody Skulls outnumber us by a margin of at least two to one, maybe closer to three to one.”
“We didn’t choose this fight, but it’s ours nonetheless,” Harmach Grigor told her. “Somehow, we have to find a way to win it. We simply have no alternative. Now, Kara, given what you’ve seen so far, what can we do to give ourselves the best chance for success?”
Kara looked at the old dike extending off into the darkness to either side. She noticed that a pale gray streak had appeared above the jagged shadows of the hills and peaks of the Highfells to the east. Dawn was not far off… if they lasted that long. She thought furiously, considering the problem from every angle while the others waited for her to organize her thoughts. “We’ll need to intersperse the Spearmeet and the professional soldiers,” she finally said. “Alternate a company of militia and a company of Shieldsworn or mercenaries to man the top of the dike. And then we’ll need to keep most of our cavalry together in reserve behind the dike, so that we can try to seal breaches in our line as they happen.”
“Good,” said Harmach Grigor. “What else, Kara?”
She studied the men and women swarming over the dike, and sighed. “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to pray,” she said.
TWENTY-EIGHT
11 Tarsakh, the Year of the Ageless One
If Geran was any judge of the weather, the approaching day promised to be bright and cold. The skies were cloudless, but a cold wind gusted and moaned over the vale, making the meager handful of banners and pennants over Hulburg’s defenders ruffle and snap. He wished the wind would have chosen a different quarter for the battle to come. It was blowing in the faces of the hundreds of men and women waiting along the top of the dike, and it would hinder what little archery they’d scraped together for the fight. On the other hand, orcs don’t care for bright sunlight, Geran reminded himself. The disadvantages of weather seemed equal to both sides.