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.
To the west, some of the Count of the Border’s better disciplined men were higher on the ridge side and better formed. Sauce rode at them, waving. To her shock, a crossbow bolt hit her breastplate-and whanged away into the trees. She rocked in her war saddle and turned her helmeted head to see a line of crossbowmen-she ducked, far too late.
Her horse died. She fell-one long fall and two bounces…
She rolled to her feet and drew her dagger, the only weapon to survive the fall, and turned to face the three men who came at her, all with swords.
“C’est une pucelle!” shouted one. He laughed.
They all laughed. And in that laughter, they became all the men she’d ever hated. Two moved to flank her, and her hip hurt, and the earth was rumbling and the rain suddenly felt so hard-
Sauce moved. She got her back against a downed tree and rolled over it, kicking high, and then she was between the two who’d tried to go around her. She rammed her dagger into the side of one’s head-in, and out-and her knee crushed the second man’s testicles as her gauntleted hand broke his nose and one finger penetrated his left eye. She let gravity take him, but kept his sword, and turned.
The crossbowmen were winding. The third man was two paces away-at a dead run, buckler raised.
Sauce rolled her right wrist and her borrowed sword’s point came on line. It went between the man’s buckler and his sword-he’d had poor teachers-and went into his neck almost to the hilt. Sauce used the dagger as a crowbar to scrape him off her blade, dumped his screaming near-corpse to the ground, and ducked behind the log as the crossbows came up.
She had the satisfaction of seeing Ser Gavin’s knights sweep across the back of the line of crossbowmen, uncontested. The ambush had caught only her.
She heard Gareth Montjoy’s war cry, and saw the border knights charge.
The crossbowmen were steady. They loosed, and immediately spanned, and a dozen knights’ saddles were empty.
Sauce crawled under the log as the crossbowmen began to span again, and ran, bent double, in plate armour-no mean feat.
There were thirty-no, more than fifty of them.
Sauce ran, light-footed, through the hobblebush and gorse, and they finally noticed her.
Ten paces out, and one had his weapon reloaded.
He aimed it. It was enormous, and she had no tree to save her, so she rolled forward like the acrobat she had once been. The ground was soft-too soft-and she scissored her armoured legs to get over the roll-she was not dead, but up again.
She got in among them as they began to draw their swords. The more experienced of them simply ran-they could not face Sauce and a charge from a line of knights. But the sword killed one, and the dagger another, and then the ground rumbled, the earth shook, and suddenly, Sauce thought to fall flat.
A horse kicked her in the back plate.
And then the charge was past her.
She got up.
She looked slowly around, and then popped her visor.
And stood, and shook.
“That was stupid,” she said to no one.
Then she started walking to where she could see Saint Catherine gleaming red in the rain. To her left, a beautiful horn played three ringing notes. Almost in front of her, a company of Gallish knights met the Occitans head-on.
A beautiful horn sounded three long, clear notes.
The brigans-big, well-drilled men in heavy armour-were giving ground one grudging step at a time. The company now had the hill behind them, and they scented victory. Neither force wanted to lose any more men. There was an endless, nightmare intensity-a spurt of violence, a single killing like a murder, and then sullen heavy breathing. Perhaps they all feared the dragons had taken the issue out of their hands. Perhaps they merely wished to live. But they-the island of professional soldiers of both sides in a vast battle of beasts and amateurs-had slowed to a desultory slaughter.
Toby became aware, at some point in the fighting, that his knight had just one hand, and was fighting with, of all things, a curved falchion. He had a moment to breathe-one of the captain’s little workings had just killed a dozen men, and Toby-like every man-at-arms around him-chose to grab two breaths instead of pushing forward into the gap.
He burrowed to the left, to get back into the spot behind the captain. His spot had been taken by-of all people-Diccon, a virtually unarmoured boy who now wielded the captain’s heavy spear.
“I’ll kill ’em all,” Diccon gasped.
He had two wounds, both bad, both showing white bone.
The brigans gave a few more steps.
Off to the right, there were war cries, and shouts-even through the rain. A red banner showed for a moment.
The captain turned back and flipped his visor open. “Ser Bescanon, bless his black heart,” he said. He stared into the rain as if by will alone he could see through it.
“You should step out of the line,” Toby heard himself say.
The captain smiled. “I should,” he agreed. “But I won’t.” He flipped his visor down and crouched slightly, as he always did when he fought. “Come on, you bastards,” he shouted through his visor.
Twenty lances heard him, and moved forward.
The Fairy Knight ordered Bescanon’s charge, and it had the smallest effect. At first.
Bescanon trotted his thirty lances over the crest and looked down on the maelstrom. He looked left, where the Faery Knight, outlined in lurid green sorcery, sat a rearing stag like a horned centaur. His knights-the survivors of the dragon’s breath-and all his people were locked in death grips with the very centre of the enemy line-a huge behemoth, tentacled hastenoch, too many imps and wolves and a wing storm of barghasts.
Bescanon pointed his wedge at the side of a swamp creature, couched his lance as if in the lists, and slapped down his visor.
“Charge,” he called.
Sauce saw the company banner and the charge. Bescanon-she knew his coat armour-vanished into the titanic melee to the west of the armoured brigans. She kept moving, trying to reach the banner-the Saint Catherine-and she prayed as she walked. She had the oddest position-a spectator in the midst of an enormous battle. Both sides seemed to have spent their reserves. Even Morgon Mortirmir merely glowed with protective energy. No more missiles rained from his fingertips.
In the time it took to power a tired, armoured leg over a log, it began to change.
Bescanon’s small force killed two hastenoch, gored by lances in their unarmoured flanks until they fell-and the war horses pounded the imps to red meat, although a few fell in turn.
Then, suddenly, something gave-and the Faery Knight shot out of the melee and into the churned and boggy grounds behind it. He turned his great stag, red to the fetlocks, and began to harry the behemoth. And then the edges of the melee began to collapse, and men-who had been fighting savagely, hand to hand-came out of the trees to the left, with painted Outwallers amongst them, shrieking war cries.