“Tell him… Tell him he made a cavalryman out of me at last. Goodbye, Ranafast.”
Andruw spun his horse around and galloped off to join the Cathedrallers. Ranafast watched him go, one lone figure in the middle of that murderous turmoil. Then he collected himself and started bellowing orders at his own officers.
T HE Fimbrians withdrew, crouching like men bent against a rainstorm, their pikes bristling impotently. As they did, the Hraibadar arquebusiers confronting them gave a great shout, elated at having made a Fimbrian phalanx retreat. They began to edge forward, first in ones and twos, then by companies and tercios, gathering courage as they became convinced that the enemy retreat was not a feint. Their carefully dressed lines became mixed up, and they began firing at will instead of in organised volleys.
An awesome thunder of hooves, and then the Cathedrallers appeared on one flank: a great mass of them at full, reckless gallop, the tribesmen singing their shrill battle-paean. Andruw was at their head, yelling with the best of them. The Hraibadar ranks seemed to give a visible shiver, like the twitch of a horse under a fly, just at the moment of impact.
And the heavy cavalry plunged straight into them. Fifteen hundred horsemen at top speed. Ranafast watched them strike from his position in the middle of the dyke veterans. The Hraibadar line buckled and broke. He saw one massive warhorse turn end over end through the air. Its fellows trampled the enemy infantry as though they were corn. He felt a surge of hope. By God, Andruw was going to do it. He was going to make it.
But there were ten thousand of the Hraibadar, and while the tribesmen had sent reeling fully one third of the Merduk regiments, the remainder were pulling back in good order, redeploying for a counter-attack. The success of the charge was temporary only, as Andruw had known it would be. But it had opened a gap in the encirclement, a gap that Ranafast’s own men were widening, blasting well-aimed volleys into the harassing horse-archers. The Fimbrians had completely disengaged now, and were surrounded by Torunnan arquebusiers. The formation resembled nothing so much as a great densely packed square. Lucky the enemy had no artillery—the massed ranks would have made a perfect target. Ranafast bellowed the order, and the square began to move southwards, towards Armagedir, sweeping the Nalbenic light cavalry out of its way as a rhino might toss aside a troublesome terrier. Behind it, the Cathedrallers fought on in a mire of slaughter, surrounded now, but battling on without hope or quarter.
A knot of Fimbrians were carrying something towards Ranafast. A body. The Torunnan dismounted as they approached. It was Formio. He had been shot in the shoulder and stomach and his lips were blue, but his eyes were unclouded.
“We’ve broken free,” he said. There was blood on his teeth. “I suggest we counter-attack, Ranafast. Andruw—”
“Andruw’s orders were to keep going and to join Corfe,” Ranafast said, his voice harsh as that of an old raven. Not Formio too.
“I intend to obey him. There is nothing we can do for the tribesmen now. We must make the most of the time they’ve bought us.”
Formio stared at him, then bent forward and coughed up a gout of dark gore which splashed his punctured breastplate. Some inhuman reserve of strength enabled him to straighten again in the arms of his men and look the Torunnan in the eye.
“We can’t—”
“We must, Formio,” Ranafast said gently. “Corfe is fighting the main battle; this is only a sideshow. We must.”
Formio closed his eyes, nodded silently. One of his men wiped the blood from his mouth, then looked up.
“He’s almost gone, Colonel.” The Fimbrian’s visage was a set mask.
“Bring him with us. I won’t leave him here to become carrion.” Then Ranafast turned away, his own face a bitter gnarl of grief.
T HE Torunnan infantry had lunged forward once more, clawing for the ground under them yard by bloody yard. Rusio’s troops now occupied the line of trees which had been the rallying point for the enemy. Out on the left, Aras had his standard planted in the hamlet of Armagedir itself, and fifteen tercios had grouped themselves around it and were holding against twenty times their number. The thatch on the roofs of the houses there was burning, so that all Corfe could glimpse were minute red flashes of gunfire crackling in clusters and lines, sometimes the glint of armour through the dense smoke.
Nonius was moving his guns forward with the infantry, but it was slow work. Many of the horses had been killed, and the gunners were manhandling the heavy pieces over broken ground that was strewn with corpses. The Merduk artillery was still embroiled in the hopeless tangle of men and equipment which backed up on the Western Road for fully five miles to their rear.
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.
H UNDREDS 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.