With their battle cries in his ears, he rode to where Gile and his men waited. The mercenary band was expressionless, but Gile grinned wolfishly.
"Looks like you're ready."
Marcellus pointed. "There's a path that leads down to the battlefield from here. It isn't wide, so we'll be riding in lines of two until we can open up in wedge formation once we get on the field. I'm putting my trust in you and yours to follow, Gile."
Gile pulled his horse closer. Shadowdancer bared his teeth, but Marcellus held the stallion at bay.
"You can count on us, Sir Knight. We may not have titles, but we're king's men the same as you."
Marcellus nodded. "Then you have my thanks." He placed his black-crested helmet on his head. His men arranged themselves in perfect formation. The dim sunlight glinted off their polished armor, the banners rippled in the wind as he passed them.
He turned and faced the long rocky path downhill where the soldiers below scrabbled like fighting insects. Jaslin joined him on the left as the Companions and the token soldiers formed ranks behind them. With his sword raised, Marcellus brought his focus on the moment. Death was certain. Evelina and Alexia are my glory.
He dropped his arm with a roar. "Kaerleon!"
The men took up the cry as Shadowdancer shot forward, needing no nudge to spur him. Marcellus leaned back in the saddle to keep from falling over the stallion's neck. A cloud of dust rose as they half galloped, half slid down the gravelly slope.
Some of the combatants below noticed their approach, the line of dust and glinting armor racing down the hillside. But there was no way to arrange a proper formation in the midst of a scene that tumultuous. The archers had been recalled, so the Bruallians would get no assistance to stop the Companion's approach.
The wind carried the scent of sweat, blood, and fear. Fear was good. With luck, he and his men could seize the momentary confusion and break through the front lines like a battering ram through a gate of straw. After that, nothing was certain. War never was, and this was certainly not his war.
The black-garbed Bruallians desperately tried to form ranks to meet the charge. Marcellus pointed his sword toward them and roared his battle cry; the only one he could manage, the one word that meant more than anything to him.
"Evelina!"
The wind swept the words away, carried them to the enemy as the Companions closed the distance. Shadowdancer glided the rest of the way; time slowed. Marcellus saw the individual faces of the men before him; mouths open in wild roars, eyes wild with fear and madness.
The battle swallowed him.
The first thing he felt was the heat. War simmered, no matter what the season. In an instant, he was as lathered as Shadowdancer. His eyes caught only blurs of movement as the first ranks either sprang out of the way or were trampled. He held his sword low, turning aside wild stabs and thrusts. His arm throbbed from the impact of his blade glancing off of armor and weapons.
Shadowdancer's strides slowed as they entered the press; he churned his way forward in a sea of blades and rippling steel. Bellowing voices smothered the air as spearheads surrounded Marcellus, steel teeth that thirsted for his blood.
Shadowdancer reared, flailing iron-shod hooves. Spear shafts and human bones shattered as armored men sailed in the air. Marcellus gripped with his knees and laid about, stroke after stroke. The one-handed Dorician blade sung its savage song as it rang against blade, shield, armor, and flesh.
Droplets of blood misted in the air like evening dew.
As one man fell clutching his innards, another roared and took his place. Marcellus' swing split the man's monstrous helm. Crimson gore painted Marcellus' forearm, but he took no note as he twisted to strike the next. No warrior could afford to witness the horror of battle. Those flashbacks would come later, in hellish dreams.
A spontoon glanced off of Marcellus' breastplate. Madness simmered in his attacker's eyes as he hefted the heavy-tipped spear, readying another thrust. Marcellus seized the spear's shaft and leaned from the saddle to stab the man in the neck. Blood jetted as the warrior fell into the roaring sea, leaving his spontoon in Marcellus' hand. He hurled it through the chest of another soldier, who cried out a woman's name before falling.
Marcellus could not tell if minutes or hours passed.
The roar of boulders colliding caused him to wheel Shadowdancer around. A wave of black-armored men rode toward Marcellus, a horde of gleaming beetles swarming forward. The Komurans were broken; the sheer force of the larger Bruallian army ran down their red-cloaked warriors. The forces Marcellus and his men fought were puddles of water about to be battered by a tidal wave.
Jaslin galloped up with his helmet missing and hair wildly askew. Blood fanned across his face from a scalp wound, but he gestured with a blade painted the same color. "There, Marcellus!"
The blue canvases of the Kaerleon wagons were a mere hundred yards away, though the distance was thick with fighting men. Komurans struggled to flee, while the Bruallians strove to hold them until the death stroke arrived. Marcellus clenched his teeth.
"Forward!"
Shadowdancer sprang, eagerly running down men in his path as mounted Bruallian knights sought to intercept them. The stallion reared and struck the first soldier off his steed. Marcellus clashed with the next; their swords rang like iron bells.
The knight was good but too eager. The thrust that should have killed Marcellus glanced off his mail instead. He ignored the pain and hacked into the man's shoulder where the pauldrons joined, then struck the knight across the helm with his buckler, unhorsing him. He felt Shadowdancer trample the man as he wheeled the horse to his left, blocking another knight's blow with his buckler. The impact from the heavy battle-ax rocked him backward, leaving him exposed to the next swing.
But in a spatter of blood, the knight was suddenly armless. Jolgeirr caught the man's spinning ax from the air with his free hand while he finished off the screaming soldier with another fierce blow. Marcellus regained his balance as Jolgeirr expertly hefted the soldier's ax. The Norlander's face was spattered in gore, his eyes nearly mad with battle rage.
"As I did think. This be Norland steel!" With a fierce grin, he roared and charged into the nearest knights, wielding two axes. Marcellus looked toward the wagons. They were halfway there. He heard the roars of the approaching army from behind, a pack of dragons bellowing in a cave.
Forward.
Shadowdancer soared. Marcellus no longer strove to battle individuals, but turned aside blades, pushing foes back long enough to gallop past them.
Thirty yards. Jaslin was at his side, roaring wordlessly. His crimson-stained sword parried and struck as if wielded by a war god.
Forward.
Behind Marcellus, his men razed the soldiers they passed, and suddenly the stories were true. He and his men were unstoppable. The legendary Companions who could not be defeated. All who stood before them fell as if standing still; as if their weapons were the driest, most fragile twigs. The thunder of their charge rumbled the ground; their defiant shouts were music to Marcellus' ears. The banners rippled behind him, stirring him and his men forward.
Ten yards. The army was almost upon them, but it mattered not. The legends were true. He was the Champion of Kaerleon, and his Companions rode with him. Nothing was impossible for them.
Nothing.
Forward.
His sword shattered the shield of the last soldier, and the wagons were before him. The Lion of Kaerleon emblem stitched on the canvas beckoned, welcoming him. Marcellus leaped off Shadowdancer, strode to the nearest wagon, and snatched back the covering.