Grossbeak grinned at him even as two more of their brothers died under the stone fists.
“Best day’s work you’ve ever done,” he said. He threw the Emperor over Derkensun’s horse. “Go, boy. Go live. That’s an order. My fucking last.” Grossbeak took his axe, and flung himself on the troll who’d just burst through the gate.
For ten heartbeats of a terrified man, his axe was everywhere.
And then the grey troll fell.
He stood on its chest and roared his battle cry, and three of them went for him-the last of the guard in the gate, alone against them all. His axe went back.
“Save the Emperor,” he cried.
Derkensun had his leg over his saddle, his weight already forward, and the Emperor’s chest in front of him. He got his horse’s head around to see the chaos of a rout-twelve hundred men of the city regiments running for their horses, or pulling pins from the loose soil or simply cutting their reins. All around him, men were fleeing, and suddenly there were boglins and other creatures among the horses.
At some point, Derkensun had determined he was not going to die there. He threw his axe at the trolls, backed his mount three steps and turned her.
“Follow me!” he roared. And ran for the road to Albinkirk.
As night fell, Ser Hartmut sat in his camp, on his stool, and listened to his army feed on the defeated. There were no prisoners. Even their single captive from the morning had been taken and stripped to his bones when the enemy broke and the battle collapsed.
He sat and wished he had wine. After a time, Thorn came.
“I wish you the joy of your victory,” Ser Hartmut said.
“Your victory, surely,” Thorn said in his deep, a-harmonic voice.
“Where is your master?” Hartmut asked.
“Away,” Thorn answered.
Ser Hartmut cleared his throat. “Now what? The enemy is beaten. Was the Emperor killed?”
Thorn spread his stone claws. “I fear, given our army’s propensities, that it is difficult to ever ascertain who was killed. I saw him fall before I could turn my workings upon him. It’s as well-he must be mightily protected.”
Ser Hartmut shook his head. “If he went down, we can have the whole thing,” he said. “There’s no one to hold it but a slip of a girl and their militia. Not a knight amongst them.”
“That is your dream, not mine,” Thorn said. “Yours and Ser Kevin’s. I gather he won his spurs today?”
“Most men fight well, when the enemy has broken and shows his back,” Ser Hartmut said.
“You mean he did not fight well?” Thorn asked.
Ser Hartmut shrugged. “He killed men as they ran. He had no opportunity to show his metal.” He leaned back. “I ask again-now what?”
Thorn shook his great horned head. “We smash the Inn of Dorling into the earth as a message,” he said. “And then we turn on Albinkirk.”
“Albinkirk and not the Empire?” Ser Hartmut asked. “Must we? The Empire is ours for the plucking.”
“Do you think your compatriot, de Vrailly, will face us?” Thorn shrugged again. “It matters not. Tomorrow, every beast and creature that hears the call of my power in the Hills-aye, and all the way north to the ice-will come to my bidding. The greatest victory won by the Wild in a century.” Thorn straightened, and his stone fists shot up. “Now we will be masters in our own house.”
As if conjured, Ash came. This time, he came like a tail of black cloud-the ash of his name-and he twined about them for a moment before manifesting. He came as a naked man.
Half of him was jet black, and the other half ivory white.
“Oh, the Wyrm will dance to my tune tonight,” he said. “A mighty victory, as men reckon such things. Utterly unimportant in the great turning of the spheres, but what is? Eh? Is anything worth all this striving and dying?” He laughed. “It’s worth it if you win. Not so worth it if you get digested while you’re even a little alive.” He laughed again. “I have waited in this pivot moment for almost an eternity, and never the Wyrm faces me! Storm the Inn and kill all his people.”
“Then Albinkirk?” Thorn asked, gravely.
“Then Lissen Carak, boy. Then we see some real fun.” Ash cackled. “Then I open the gates and let in my allies, and we feast for eternity!” Then, soberly, “You did very well. I like to win. It is so much nicer than losing. Thank you both.”
He vanished.
Farther to the south and west, night was falling on the rout, and tired men gave way to despair, lagged, and were eaten.
Janos Turkos was not yet one of the victims. His Huran warriors had not fought at all, but simply watched the disaster unfold with wary eyes. When the stradiotes began to mount their horses, Big Pine trotted back to the slight rise where the imperial riding officer sat on his small horse and smoked.
“We go,” he said. “You, too, unless you want to be food.” The Imperial Standard had gone down, and there were boglins above them in the great earthworks.
Turkos sighed, barely resisting tears. He knocked the dottle out of his pipe. He hadn’t even drawn his sword, but he knew his duty-to both his Emperor and to his people.
The Huran psiloi were in among the sheepfolds at the leftmost end of the imperial line. Despite hours of effort by boglins and stone trolls and now by the antlered hasternoch, not one Wild creature had flanked the Emperor’s line to find the ambush he had laid for anyone foolish enough to believe that the flank was open.
Long experience of war in the woods had also caused him to secure his retreat. He raised a hunting horn and blew it once.
Two hundred Huran rose from their places-many had lain without moving all day-and ran. They did it with no fuss and no discussion.
Six miles to the south the Huran rallied. It was the place they had chosen, and they ran to it and lay down behind a long stone wall, flanked on one side by a marsh and on the other by a stand of trees-a reaching tendril of the Wild woods that were just in sight across the last miles of downs and green hills.
They had run the six miles in a little less than two hours, without stopping, and now they lay down, drank water, and ate pemmican.
Turkos climbed a tree. When he came down, Big Tree was waiting with crossed arms.
“Going the wrong way,” Big Tree said.
“We are not done yet,” Turkos said. “There’s another army out there-the army our Lord Emperor was supposed to have waited for.” The light was failing, but there were men coming over the green fields. Men, and other things.
“Why do we wait?” Big Tree asked.
“Now we gather survivors, if we can,” he said.
Big Tree looked into the distance and spat on the ground. “Like a busted ambush?” he asked.
Turkos nodded.
The first men to reach them were cavalrymen. Most were survivors of the Scholae. There was a full troop in good order on exhausted horses.
Turkos met them in the field and their officer all but fell from his horse in surprise. “Christ is Risen!” he called. Closer to, Turkos could see the man was a rich aristocrat in a superb scale corselet and filthy silk breeches. The front of his horse was crusty with black blood.
“Dismount!” the man croaked, and his troopers-more than twenty of them-slipped from their saddles. Some slumped to the ground and sat until veterans pushed them and their tired mounts towards the stream.
“Ser Giorgos Comnenos,” the man said. “Thank Christ you are here. I don’t think we could have lasted another hour.” The man was all but crying.
Turkos put his arms around the man, although a stranger. “And the Emperor?” he asked.
Comnenos shrugged. “I have no idea,” he said. “We charged three times. Then the monsters came. I confess-we ran.” He looked off across the hills. “We were lucky-we were in the second line, resting, when the centre broke.”
Comnenos nodded politely to the painted warrior who appeared at his side and offered him a flask of very strong liquor. “You must be Turkos,” he said.