The insane roar of the battle went on without pause, a barrage of the very senses. Along a three-mile stretch of upland moor the two opposing lines of close-packed men strove to annihilate one another. They fought for possession of a line of trees, a burnt-out cluster of houses, a muddy stretch of road. Every little feature in the terrain took on a great significance when men struggled to kill each other upon it. Untold thousands littered the field of battle already, and thousands more had become pitiful maimed wrecks of humanity that swore and screamed and tried to drag themselves out of the holocaust.
Over on the right, Passifal had fully committed his men to the line. That was it-the bottom of the barrel. Corfe had nothing left to throw into the contest. And on the Merduk right, opposite Aras’s hard-pressed tercios, the enemy was massing for a counter-attack. When the Merduk general was ready he would launch some thirty thousand fresh men into the battle there, and it would all be over.
Strangely, Corfe found the knowledge almost liberating. It was finished at last. He had done his best, and it had not been good enough, but at least now there was nothing more to worry about. Something had happened to Andruw, that was clear. The last two couriers that Corfe had sent out seemed to have been swallowed up by the very hills. It was as though all those men had simply disappeared.
There. Large formations moving through the smoke, pointed towards Armagedir. The Merduk general had finally launched the counter-attack. Aras was about to be crushed. Corfe looked about himself. He had with him his eight Cathedraller bodyguards, and another ten youthful ensigns who acted as aides and couriers. Not much of a reinforcement, but better than nothing.
He turned to one of the young officers.
“Arian, go to General Rusio. Tell him he is to hold the line at all hazards, and if he deems it practicable he is to advance. Tell him I am joining Colonel Aras’s men. They are about to be hit by the enemy counter-attack. Go now.”
The young officer saluted smartly and galloped off. Corfe watched him go, wondering if he had ever been that earnest. He missed his friends. He missed Andruw and Formio. Marsch and the Cathedrallers. It was not the same, fighting without them. And he realised with a flash of insight or intuition that it would never be the same again. That time was over.
Corfe kicked his horse savagely in the belly and it half reared. He did not fear death, he feared failure. And he had failed. There was nothing more to be afraid of.
He drew Mogen’s sword for the first time that day and turned to Cerne, his trumpeter. “Follow me.”
Then the group of riders took off after him as he rode full tilt up the hillside, into the smoking hell of Armagedir.
Hundreds of men lay wounded to the rear of the line here, making it hard for the horses to pick their way over them. The fuming roar of the battle was unbelievable, astonishing. Corfe had never before known its like, not even in the more furious assaults upon Ormann Dyke. It was as though both armies knew that this was the deciding contest of the century-old war. For one side complete victory beckoned, for the other annihilation. The Torunnans would not retreat because, like Corfe, they had ceased to be afraid of anything except the consequences of failure. So they died where they stood, fighting it out with gunstocks and sabres when their ammunition ran out, struggling like savages with anything that came to hand, even the very stones at their feet. They were dying hard, and for the first time in a long while Corfe felt proud to be one of them.
His party dismounted as they approached the ruins of the hamlet around which Aras’s men had made their stand. The ground was too choked with bodies for the horses to be ridden further, and even the war-hardened destriers were becoming terrified by the din.
Aras’s command stood at bay like an island in a sea of Merduks. The enemy had poured around its left flank and was pushing into the right, where it connected with the main body of the Torunnan army. They were trying to pinch off the beleaguered tercios from Rusio’s forces, isolate and destroy them. But their assaults on the hamlet itself broke like waves on a sea cliff. Aras’s troops stood and fought in the ruins of Armagedir as though it were the last fortress of the western world. And in a way it was.
The Torunnans looked up as Corfe and his entourage pushed their way through the choked ranks, and he heard his name called out again and again. There was even a momentary cheer. At last he found his way to the sable standard under which Aras and his staff officers clustered. The young colonel brightened at the sight of his commander-in-chief, and saluted with alacrity. “Good to see you, sir. We were beginning to wonder if the rest of the army had forgotten about us.”
Corfe shook his hand. “Consider yourself a general now, Aras. You’ve earned it.”
Even under grime and powder-smoke he could see the younger man flush with pleasure. He felt something of a fraud, knowing Aras would not live long enough to enjoy his promotion.
“Your orders, General?” Aras asked, still beaming. “I daresay our flank march will be arriving any time now.”
Corfe did not have to lower his voice to avoid being overheard; the rageing chaos of the battle was like a great curtain.
“I believe our flank march may have run into trouble, Aras. It’s possible you will not be reinforced. We must hold on here to the end. To the end, do you understand me?”
Aras stared at him, the dismay naked across his face for a second. Then he collected himself, and managed a strangled laugh. “At least I’ll die a general. Don’t worry, sir, these men aren’t going anywhere. They know their duty, as do I.”
Corfe gripped his shoulder. “I know,” he said in almost a whisper.
“Sir!” one of the staff officers shouted. “They’re coming in-a whole wave of them.”
The Merduk counter-attack rolled into Armagedir like some unstoppable juggernaut. It was met with a furious crescendo of arquebus fire which obliterated the leading rank, and then it was hand to hand all down the line. The Torunnan perimetre shrank under that savage assault, the men crowded back on to the blazing buildings of the hamlet they defended. And there they halted. Corfe shoved his way to the forefront of the line and was able to forget strategy, politics, the worries of a high-ranking officer. He found himself battling for his life like the lowliest ranker, his Cathedraller bodyguards ranged about him and singing as they slew. The little knot of scarlet-armoured men seemed to draw the enemy as a candle will moths at twilight. They were more heavily armoured than their Torunnan comrades, and stood like a wedge of red-hot iron while the lightly armed warriors of the Minhraib crashed in on them to be hewn down one after another. Armagedir became cut off from the rest of the army as the Merduks swamped the Torunnan left wing. It became a murderous cauldron of insane violence within which men fought and killed without thought of self-preservation or hope of rescue. It was the end, the apocalypse. Corfe saw men dying with their teeth locked in an enemy’s throat, others strangling each other, snarling like animals, eyes empty of reason. The Minhraib threw themselves on the Cathedrallers like dogs mobbing a bear, three and four at a time sacrificing themselves to bring down one steel-clad tribesman and cut his throat on the blood-sodden ground. Corfe swung and hacked in a berserk rage, sword blows clanging off his armour, one ringing hollow on his helm, exploding his bruised face with stars of agony. Something stabbed him through the thigh and he fell to his knees, bellowing, Mogen’s sword dealing slaughter left and right. He was on the ground, buffeted by a massive scrum of bodies, trampled by booted feet. He fought himself upright, the sword blows raining down on him. Aras and Cerne were at his shoulders, helping him up. Then a blade burst out of Cerne’s eye, and he toppled without a sound. The detonation of an arquebus scorched Corfe’s hand. He stabbed out blindly, felt flesh and bone give way under the Answerer’s wicked edge. Someone hacked at his neck, and his sight erupted with stars and spangled darkness. He went down again.