Markus mounted and rode quickly to Captain Perrin, the chief of the bridging company. “Look sharp, lads,” he called, with avuncular firmness. “Go there. Now bring in the next one. Now, another, and then the next. Hurry up, fellows!”
One by one, the sections were floated out from the shore. The tubes of the pontoons were aligned perpendicular to the river’s flow, allowing the current to slip past without exerting a lot of pressure on the bridge. After six of them had been put in place, Captain Perrin himself supervised the dropping of a heavy anchor into the silty mud. Another was placed after twelve pontoons were extended. As the sections extended farther out from the shore, these anchors would help to ensure that the span remained in position, as the bridge steadily progressed toward the opposite bank.
Simultaneously, as each new pair of pontoons were arranged, additional troops maneuvered planks across the pieces of lumber and hastily lashed them together. The boards were long and thick, necessarily heavy because the bridge was designed to allow the crossing of mounted knights. Moment by moment the bridge grew across the wide but placid flowage.
The fog remained thick and obscuring, spilling farther and farther across the river as the bridge building continued. As the span passed the halfway point, the general rode out on the bobbing but secure construction and approved the work. When he saw daylight penetrating the fog past the middle of the river, he ordered Templar to come forward, and as the construction proceeded, the cleric remained near the steadily advancing end of the bridge, maintaining the magical fog as more and more sections were laid.
Meanwhile, the troops crossing at the ford continued to suffer heavy casualties. A messenger came back across, asking permission to retreat, but with a heavy heart the general ordered them to remain steadfast. Their sacrifice, he desperately hoped, would not be in vain. Each life lost distracted their foe from the unnatural fog, and the encroaching bridge, ensuring that the enemy remained fixed upon the fording troops.
Markus rode back to the west bank, galloped down to the ford, and sent yet another company into that lethal stretch of water. As they departed, determined to sell their lives at a high cost, he saw his bridging officer approaching at a gallop.
“The bridge is ready, sir!” Captain Perrin reported finally.
“Knights of the Rose-here is your road to victory! Charge!” ordered General Markus, standing aside to watch his armored riders start across. The plank road bobbed and shifted under the hooves of the heavy horses, but the bridge held, and the knights thundered across the river, toward the east bank, the enemy lines, and the besieged city beyond.
“Fall back!” General Dayr’s heart broke. He gagged on the bile raised by the bitterness of defeat. How many boats had been lost? How many men had drowned or been slain by the rain of arrows? The survivors of his wing were trapped on a small section of the riverbank, fighting for their lives against the continual attacks of the goblin cavalry on their savage, lupine mounts. The snarling jaws of the wolves snapped and drooled practically in his face, and he cut down yet another of the brutes with a chopping blow of his sword. Shaggy and fierce, the size of small ponies, the savage wolves were fleet and fearless and even more deadly than their goblin riders.
Moment by moment more men fell, trying to hold their tenuous position on the bank. For most of the afternoon his brave troops had stood firm, but the small section of dry ground they held shrank with each vicious attack. Several hundred boats were clustered along the bank just in the rear of the battle line, and it seemed the only alternative to annihilation was to load them up with his surviving troops and begin to retreat, back across the river toward the safety of their starting positions.
It galled the proud General of Crowns, but thousands of painted, beastly warriors, crowing and howling in exultation, pressed them from all sides, and Dayr knew it was better to bring some of his men back alive than to lose them all in a hopeless cause.
“Into the boats!” he ordered. “We’re going to retreat.”
The withdrawal was chaotic, swords clashing against goblin shields in the muddy-and bloody-waters at the edge of the river. Men scrambled into the boats so hastily that some of them foundered, and it was only by shouting themselves hoarse that the sergeants and captains were able to bring a semblance of order. Finally the last of the little craft pushed away from the bank, the men paddling through waters they had crossed at cost, while the whole east bank of the river was lined with jeering, hooting goblins.
“They may have used up most of their arrows,” suggested Captain Johns, one of Dayr’s few surviving commanders. Indeed, the barrage that had blanketed them on their initial approach was a desultory shower now. But that was the only thing Dayr could be thankful for. He was leaving behind more than a thousand brave men, and as the last boat pushed away, he had not gained even a single foot of ground to show for those lives.
“Stand firm, there! Raise those shields! Here they come again!”
General Rankin issued his orders from his charger, the weary, bloodied horse still trotting smartly as it carried him back and forth behind the lines of his companies, the men who had fought their way across the great central ford. They had gained the far bank, but his units had progressed no more than a hundred yards from the river’s edge. With a line barely a quarter mile long, he knew that his army was in a desperate circumstance.
The cause of their frustration, he knew, was that wall of pikemen. Hundreds of his knights and their horses had fallen there, pierced by the keen steel tips. The veteran human warriors who gripped those shafts were schooled in Mina’s armies. Rankin’s riders had assaulted them many times, desperate to break through the lines, to shatter the enemy army and race onto the plains.
But the enemy’s determination was strong. Rankin himself had led several charges, had tried to fight his way toward the enemy commander-a former Knight of Neraka he recognized as a man named Blackgaard. Each time, the pikes had drawn tight, an impermeable barrier that cut down any brave riders who dared to come close.
In the end, the Army of the Sword had been forced back to the riverbank. Here they held, exacting a bloody toll on the enemy whenever Blackgaard sent forward a contingent in an effort to drive them into the water. But all they could do was hold their ground, try to stay alive, and pray for relief from one of the other wings of the Solamnic Army.
Without a breakthrough somewhere, it seemed the whole Army of Solamnia was doomed.
“Charge!” cried General Markus. “Caergoth Steelshields, carry the day!”
The planks of the bridge thrummed and vibrated underfoot as the column of armored knights, charging only six abreast because of the narrow span, thundered toward the east bank of the great river. They burst out of the mist, galloping from the edge of the bridge onto dry land.
A small company of goblins, apparently designated to investigate the mysterious fog, stood at the edge of the bridge, but they were smashed without even slowing the momentum of the charge. Warhorses pounded on, cutting down the terrified defenders in their path. The few panicked goblins who turned to flee fared miserably as they were chopped down by swords before they could take more than a couple of steps.
Sir Templar, exhausted, collapsed at the side of the bridge but raised a hoarse cheer as the file of riders continued to thunder past. Others of his Clerist company filed onto the bridge to come and join him, all of them cheering as the knights galloped across.