“Fuck it,” he said. He smiled without mirth. “Wedge. Two wedges.”
Ser Christos and the Moreans could form a wedge very fast.
The two men touched gauntlets. “Save the Queen,” Ser John said. “I will try to clear the wall.”
Ser Christos thought a moment. “Then let’s make this worth our lives,” he said. He shouted a series of orders at the Moreans-the virtually untrusted Moreans-who were standing, untested, on the southernmost walls.
The Moreans took their hodge-podge of weapons and began to form their taxeis in close order. There were Nordikaans and mountaineers and dismounted city cavalry. There were stradiotes and old, veteran infantrymen from Thrake, and young camp servants who’d scarcely ever touched a weapon.
“They will not run again,” Ser Giorgos said. “Neither will we. Let’s go.”
Ser John was almost happy.
“Let’s make a song,” he said, like the northerner he was.
The two wedges had little space in which to gather momentum-and the camp was an utter shambles. But there was not enough cover for the boglins to stand a charge of heavy horsemen.
The wedges cracked open the front of their wave of terror, and the close-ordered Moreans crashed into the disorder they created. The big axes began to swing. The spears licked out, and the shields remained tight, and a thousand boglins died. And still, the Morean infantry line pressed forward-step by step.
Ser Christos led his men brilliantly, and his sword was like a living rod of lightning, and a great wight died on it, head opened to its mandibles in a single mighty blow. And his wedge drove deep into the centre of the camp, where the hooves of his horses dealt more death than any weapon of man. At the edges of the squadron, men fell from horses tripped by tent stakes and died horrible deaths, consumed still living by myriad enemies, but the wedge itself trampled the enemy to a sticky ruin and cut their way to the Queen, where Ser Ranald’s dwindling Royal Guard opened ranks to let them in. Exhausted men all but fell to the ground in the respite the cavalry gave them-men who had swung an axe or halberd for ten solid minutes, and felt as if they’d aged two years.
Ser Alcaeus asked no permission, but grabbed the Queen and threw her over his saddle. Beside him, men did the same for her women-the three still alive-and the babe. Ser Giorgos pulled a tall woman with bright gold hair onto his crupper and found that she had the King of Alba in her arms.
The line of Morean infantry was inexorable and despite men lost, the phalanx appeared untouched-men fell, and were stepped on. The spears and axes rolled another pace forward.
Boglins are living creatures. They seek to live.
Many began to seek life through flight.
Ser John Crayford cut his way to the north wall. He led his men along the relatively open ground that had been the camp’s parade-he cleared the west face of the Royal Guard’s square, buying men time to drink a sip of water, or merely take a breath-and then he struck the full, packed mass of the enemy in the north-west corner.
He broke his lance, and drew his sword. The boglins were small-too small for a short weapon-and he had to reach down to kill them. His charger did it better than he.
On they plunged, and for the first time in many years, Ser John remembered the joy of combat. The pounding rhythm of the gallop, the surge of near perfect exhilaration to see the men on either side of him, the feeling of oneness with his horse.
The feeling of a living thing coming to pieces under your weapon.
He got his horse onto the ramp to the north wall. Behind him, his banner moved, and still he cut-his charger killed-and they were up on the earthen bank of the wall.
All the ground down to the burning first line seemed to be teeming with enemies. Like a termite’s nest, kicked.
He wished for a mighty adversary-a wight, or a cave troll. But instead, he simply fought well-carefully, as was his wont-and cleared the wall a few steps at a time, minding his horse’s safety, and killing.
And killing.
And killing.
In time, he could not really raise his arm. His horse was bleeding-and sluggish-and had boglins fixed to it like leeches. Ser John couldn’t smile. But he might have, given time. In the centre of the camp, the Morean phalanx had cleared the Royal Guard. One glance told him the Queen was safe. His charger-game to the end-stumbled. And there were no more miracles.
“Goodbye, Helewise,” he said out loud. Then he rolled off his saddle into the monsters, and killed until they finally dragged him down.
Miles to the north, Harmodius stood almost alone. The battle line had swept over the ridge in front. He had nothing to do with that, and in fact-such was his mood-would not willingly have killed any living thing except a dragon.
He watched the two vast predators duel. After an initial, vicious encounter with power and talon, they had taken to making long, bloody passes-each circling for altitude and speed, and then coming back together again. He could follow them in the aethereal as well-where the whole of the place was an increasing fog of falsehood and spent ops. Harmodius had never seen power used on such a scale, and for the first time in his long life he sensed that a locale might itself be drained of potentia. Certainly something was happening in the aethereal that was beyond his experience. He watched it.
To the south, he saw it-in the misty aethereal-as Mortirmir opened up.
That was humbling.
More potentia drained. In the centre of the hermetical combat, in the real, trees-late spring trees-began to lose their leaves. And then to die.
And above them, the rainy day began to turn to storm. Harmodius saw it happen-as if nature abhorred the fighting and strove to extinguish it. More and blacker clouds were rushing in. The rain grew stronger.
The Queen still lived, a banner of gold to the south.
The Faery Knight still lived, to the west, and Mogon, to the east.
Harmodius watched, and waited.
Morgon Mortirmir had no reason to be cautious. And a great deal of youthful arrogance that was, on this day and in this place, well-earned.
He killed.
He pounded Thorn’s horde with balls of fire and when a shaman or a fledgling hedge mage among them showed his talent, Morgon concentrated his efforts until that target was dead-and went back to flensing the unprotected.
Around him, the white banda-all but broken by the dragon and stricken by its losses-re-purposed themselves as his bodyguard. He was content with that. He moved when he had to-clearing away the last schiltron of irks covering the flank of the Galles-and then, because they were intermixed with the company, passing over them to grind cave trolls to sand.
Nothing could stand before him. He offered no mercy. He unleashed workings no practitioner had ever considered, because so few men of his power had ever been willing to walk in front of an infantry line. He broke shields and baffled visions. He mimicked darkness and light. He raised phantoms, and then, bored, dropped lines of fire that broke ranks.
Eventually-horrified-the Wild threw everything it had left at him-power and creatures alike. Instead of concentrating their efforts on flanking the company and winning the battle, the Wild responded instinctively to Power.
Ser Gavin rode easily by Prince Tancredo as they cleared the ridge, moving from west to east-crushing knots of resistance-and then Sauce came.
“We’re in it!” she roared. “Come on!” When no one moved faster, she said, “We’re dying! Get a fucking move on!”
Gavin ignored the prince’s sputtering outrage. He raised his lance. “Lead us!” he called.
Sauce turned her horse. They rode side by side for long minutes, and behind them, the Occitan knights and farther down the ridge, Lord Montjoy’s western knights formed a long, thick line.
Riding sideways on a hill always tempts a horse to descend, and over the next third of a mile they went too far down so that, when they came to the edge of the main battle, the banners of the Galles were high above them, almost due north. The company’s Saint Catherine could just be seen, and a big, black banner and, farther along, a bubble of gold that seemed to move and cast fire.
Gavin turned to the prince. “Your grace, we must charge. That is my brother’s standard.”
The prince looked up the hill-scattered with rocks, and overhung with trees of every side.
“This is not the ground,” he said slowly. And then shook his head.
“Yes,” he said suddenly. “Form! Form on me!” he roared in Occitan, and a hundred knights rode to his side-men fell in the rush to join their prince.