To Mag. Gabriel knew what she had done-what the inevitable outcome must be-and he stood, transfixed, for most of the minute in which she held her own against a god. He watched the dragon dwindle, the fire burn, and saw each beat of the thing’s mighty wings as a sign it had failed to take her.
And then he awoke-he must use the time she gave, or it was for nothing.
“On me!” he roared. “Ganfroy!”
Ganfroy was a broken doll cast down on the rocks, never to rise again. His trumpet was bent under him.
Gabriel raised his own ivory horn and blew.
And they came.
Danved came, his sword broken in his hands, and he stooped and plucked a stone-headed war hammer from the corpse of a red-crested daemon. Bertran came with the standard and Francis Atcourt and Phillipe de Beause followed him. Cully came and Toby pushed himself off a rock and Cat Evil and hollow-eyed Diccon who had loved Nell and knew where her corpse lay, and Ricard Lantorn, painfully aware his brother had burned to death almost at his side, and Flarch, and Adrian Goldsmith and even Nicomedes-they all came and forced themselves into ranks, even as the pages brought forward the horses.
On the left, he could see Ser Michael, pointing down the hill. On the right, Ser Milus had lost half his lances in a single, devastating moment, and the white banda on the right had halted-shocked.
Milus went into the charred corpses of his men, and took up the pole on which the company’s old Saint Catherine had hung. And by some virtue-some working, some ancient rune-it still hung, so that when he raised it, grey ash flew, and the silk banner licked out like a tongue of flame.
There was a thin cheer. It was not much of a cheer, but in the circumstances-
Gabriel ran forward, ignoring the loss of his left hand. There was no pain, and very little blood. So far.
He turned, and raised his spear-and pointed it, one-handed, into the enemy below.
“Now!” he said. “Thorn didn’t beat you and the dragon couldn’t kill you, so now we are going to WIN.”
And instead of waiting for the enemy to come up the ridge, or even to see the result of the aerial combat, the company and their allies went down into the maelstrom of battle under the shadow of death and, when they struck, the monsters flinched.
Hartmut couldn’t take his eyes from the two dragons.
The rise of their great monster should, surely, have been the end of the conflict. But now-now, as their enemy came down the ridge to his waiting spearmen-he saw how much devastation the black dragon had wreaked. In stealing flesh, he had all but destroyed the vanguard that should have formed the left of the line, and his fire had blasted the daemons on his right and a thousand other creatures.
Thousands of boglins were locked in a vicious, chitinous battle at the crest of the ridge to his far right, and there-at the ridge’s steepest, stoniest top-great bears and stone trolls were locked in the static agony of melee.
To his own left, the enemy’s irks had begun to crest the ridge, and from beyond them an Outwaller arrow fell harmlessly among his men.
Despite everything, it was still in the balance. His men were well ordered, and fresh enough.
“Up the hill!” he called. “Straight into them.”
The brigans levelled their spear points, and began a slow march up the hill. The sailors loosed a volley of bolts.
He was facing men. He could see them-good plate armour, and good swords, and he grinned. Nothing about men ever made him afraid, and he drew his sword. As it burst into flame, his people cheered. Ser Cristan pointed at the burning sword and roared a challenge. Ser Louis began to move his mounted knights to fill the open ground to the left-to clear the enemy Outwallers.
Hartmut thought-I have them.
To his left, the enemy Outwallers began to sprint forward. They were bypassing him, which gave him an instant of puzzlement, and they were moments from being overrun by Ser Louis and the cavalry. But even as the sailors poured another withering volley into the armoured men on the slopes above, they paid a terrible price as the longbow arrows fell amongst them…
Hartmut’s face furrowed as he frowned.
It was too late to avoid the combat.
But there was a banner behind the savages-blue and yellow check. Occitan. And another he didn’t know, and another-a line of mounted knights coming on his side of the slope, moving easily through the open woods behind the line of Outwallers, led by the Prince of Occitan.
He cursed God, and led his men into the company.
In the captain’s clever plan, the levy of the northern Brogat should have been enough, and the Royal Guard enough again, to hold the higher ridge and block the road. But the captain had never imagined the sheer horror of the dragon’s breath, nor the packed legions of boglins. When the north wall was lost, the timbers charred and the men seared to meat standing to the last, Rebecca Almspend and Desiderata stood for three long minutes in the centre of the camp, back to back, and killed anything they could see, wielding power in ways neither had ever directly attempted. Almspend’s power had been that of a scholar, and the Queen’s that of a lover. Until today.
Desiderata hurled power, praying aloud for a gleam of sunshine and watching, horrified, as the embodied Ash darkened the sky above-but he was locked in a death grip with his rival, and she threw only one lingering golden bolt to penetrate his hide before returning to the rising tide at her feet. A behemoth, tusks red, crushed men and tents, and behind it a line of hastenoch trampled those who fled and those who stood their ground with equal vigour. The barghasts swooped on any prey that pleased them.
Blanche Gold watched the ruin of all their hopes, and stood with a short sword by the little King’s bed. She had no great power with which to fight dragons, and she had no ops to loan her Queen. So she guarded the wet nurse and the babe, and when the north wall fell, and the things came, she killed them.
And again, Pavalo Payam saved her. Again, as before, he appeared before she was wholly done, when she had killed two boglins and had one fastened to her left thigh-he cut through the wall of the tent, and his sword moved with the easy, economical flow that she remembered-that it was almost worth the pain to see again-and the creatures died. He cleared the tent, ignored the shrieking wet nurse, nodded to her-and continued out the back wall.
Blanche stood and shook for a moment, and then realized she was bleeding on the Queen’s bedding, and took action.
But as she pressed a spare shift to her thigh, there was a roar-so long it seemed as if it came from ten thousand men, and not just a thousand.
Ser John Crayford watched the north wall lost, and cursed. Mostly, he was cursing a certain arrogant young man who’d had all the answers the day before. But also his own instinct. The size of the dragon trumped any kind of preparation.
Ser John had his own knights-a handful. And the Morean cavalry, which had been beaten badly a few days before. Ser Giorgos Comnenos. Ser Christos.
He shook his head, and turned to Ser Christos. “I must try to save my Queen,” he said.
Ser Christos saw the rout, the collapse, the chaos in the middle of the camp. A thousand peasants were being flayed alive in seconds. He glanced at Ser Alcaeus, who’d seen it all at Albinkirk. And Ser Giorgos, who’d seen it at the Inn.
Ser Alcaeus looked at Ser John, and the look shared their absolute knowledge.
One-way trip.
Ser John would have liked to say goodbye to his Helewise. He’d have preferred to catch more fish in a hundred brooks-to live forever, just stroking her back or hearing her say his name, to see the red-gold flash as the trout took a lure.