A woman was running past, she hadn’t seen him. He reached out and grabbed her by the arm, so that she swung round and thumped against his shoulder. She looked utterly bewildered.
‘This village,’ he said. ‘What’s it called?’
She looked at him as if he was some kind of weird mythical beast. ‘Primen,’ she said. ‘This is Primen.’
Juifrez winced. ‘You’re sure?’
‘Of course I’m sure. I live here.’
‘Damn,’ Juifrez replied, and let her go; no rabbit ever ran faster.
Fuck, he muttered under his breath. Wrong village. These are our people, loyal subjects of the Foundation. This is absurd. He took a moment to pull himself together, make sure he was breathing properly, stable on his feet; then he took a deep breath to shout out orders, call off the attack. That was when a man darted out of the mist and hit him over the head with a stool.
When he came round, he could hear voices; screaming and shouting and swearing, but different. These were battle-noises. That can’t be right, we hit the wrong village, he told himself; then he recognised a voice with the low, rolling accent of Scona, someone trying to make orders heard over the noise. Right village? he asked himself. No, can’t be. It took him several seconds to work out what had happened; that somehow someone had got through to the next village down the line and called out the Scona archers to come and save them. Wonderful, Master Juifrez lamented, shaking his head in disbelief. Not only have I massacred the wrong village. I’ve managed to turn them over to the enemy. How the hell am I going to explain this when I get home?
There were men coming. Boosting himself sideways like a scuttling crab, Master Juifrez managed to scramble under the dead body of the man he’d killed, just as a dozen or so men walked out of the mist. He couldn’t see them clearly, peeping out from under the arm of a dead man, but they were wearing mailshirts and helmets and carrying bows; all he really needed to know, under the circumstances. He lay as still as he could and prayed he wouldn’t sneeze.
‘… Hiding to nothing,’ one of the men said, in a voice that was all Scona. ‘We’re outnumbered four to one and we can’t see to shoot. We aren’t even supposed to be here, for crying out loud. We want to get out of here while we still can.’
‘Can’t see a bloody thing,’ replied another. ‘Definitely wasting our time. Where’d you get that four-to-one stuff from, anyway?’
‘Someone said,’ the first voice replied. ‘They said it was four platoons of heavy infantry, just sort of appeared out of nowhere. I don’t mind an even fight, but four platoons-’
‘Not up to us,’ a third voice interrupted. ‘The obvious thing’d be to space out, surround the village, pick ’em off as they come out.’
‘And let ’em burn down the village?’
‘Do they look like they’re burning down the village? Get real.’
The voices receded. When he was certain they’d gone, Juifrez pushed the body aside and staggered to his feet; he had cramp, and pins and needles in both legs, so there was no way he was going anywhere quickly. Absurd, he thought, if I get killed because I can’t run because I’ve got pins and needles.
It was time to get a grip, he reflected, as he stood on one leg, leaning against the doorframe of the hut. After all, he was meant to be the officer commanding this situation, the man in control, or at least wrestling for control with his opposite number, the enemy captain. As it was, all he’d done since they’d charged down into the valley was collide with a wall, kill a loyal civilian, get bashed silly and hide from the enemy. He found that he wasn’t too worried about that; but he did have a responsibility to a hundred and fifty men under his command, and it was time he did something about that.
Assuming he could find them, of course. If anything, the fog was thicker than ever. He tried to call his mind to order, but his mental parliament was a confused racket of shouting and screaming. All he could think of to do was to wander into the fog and try and find some of his men. It sounded like a fairly foolproof way to get killed, but he was aware of no other options. An extended scrabble on his hands and knees eventually revealed his halberd. He punted himself upright, muttered something under his breath and headed into the fog.
It was a case of fortune favouring the brave, or fool’s luck, or at the very least serendipity of an extravagantly high order; but the first men he met were a dozen halberdiers. They’d formed a loose and unwieldy hedgehog formation, a slightly bent oval with everybody facing outwards, so that the men at the rear were walking backwards. Because nobody was navigating and the fog was so thick, they lurched from side to side like a party of drunks, or a boatload of inexperienced oarsmen trying to paddle a longboat against a stiff current. One lurch carried them up against the side of a barn, and the three men on the end were squeezed into the wall and nearly crushed before the formation changed course and staggered the other way. It didn’t help, of course, that the men had their helmets down with the cheekplates fastened, which made it virtually impossible for them to hear a thing.
It was a start, nevertheless and Juifrez hurried towards them, waving his arms. At once the formation came to a rapid, disorganised halt, shuddering like a flimsy cart hitting a tree. Someone shouted at him. ‘Go away!’ or something like that. ‘It’s me,’ he yelled back, ‘Master Juifrez. Halt and hold your line. Stop!’
Somehow he got the impression they weren’t terribly pleased to see him. They stood where they were, halberds still resolutely extended as if he were a squadron of heavy cavalry bearing down on them from all directions. ‘Who goes there?’ somebody called out nervously. ‘Advance and be recognised.’
‘Oh, for…’ said Juifrez. ‘It’s me. Master Juifrez. Don’t you recognise me?’
‘Sir! ’ The man who’d challenged him snapped to attention and – yes – actually saluted.
‘Cut that out and let me through,’ Juifrez growled, and he shouldered his way into the front edge of the formation. ‘Right,’ he called out, ‘with me. Let’s move. And for pity’s sake, keep up.’
In the event, of course, he proved to be much more of a hindrance than a help. Now that there was an officer present, the men immediately stopped trying to navigate the formation themselves and kept going along the most recent straight line they’d been following until they heard the officer give a command. That as, of course, the way it should be, according to drills and regulations; but Juifrez couldn’t see any more than anyone else, and the idea of him giving clear, precise, simultaneous orders to a dozen men, half of whom were facing the other way, was clearly absurd. It occurred to him, Do we actually need to huddle up like this? Nobody’s attacked us. Why don’t we just form a column and march out of here?
Another body of men walked out of the mist, almost colliding with them before either party knew what was going on. The meeting was so sudden that no one even had time to raise their halberds; just as well, since both parties were armed with halberds… They’re Us, Juifrez realised with a start. ‘It’s all right,’ he shouted, before anybody got hurt, ‘it’s us. Shastel. It’s all right.’
From somewhere in the thick of the other party, Juifrez heard a voice he recognised yelling orders, one of the sergeants. ‘Conort,’ he shouted, ‘it’s me, Juifrez.’
‘Sir!’ the sergeant barked back.
Juifrez closed his eyes for a moment; he was shocked to realise that the emotion washing over him was relief at the end of a period of great fear, which he hadn’t been allowing himself to recognise. I was terrified; and now I’ve found some more men and an experienced NCO, apparently it’s all going to be all right. ‘Sergeant, form the men into column. How many have you got with you?’
It turned out that Conort had reassembled the most part of the second platoon; together, they were now about fifty strong, a force large enough to be able to deal with anything they were likely to bump into. ‘All right,’ Juifrez said, ‘what we’ve got to do now is find the rest of us and get out of here. Their lot don’t want to fight here, and neither do we. Sergeant, form the men into a double line. We’re going to take this village through like a partridge drive.’