Forge of Darkness (116 page)

The sun stood high above them. Below, on the killing field beyond the plots of farmland, the heavily armoured Houseblades sat motionless on their caparisoned mounts. Some bore lances; others held long-handled axes or strangely curved swords. The round shields slung on their left arms were black and showed no crest. There were, Rint judged, more than five hundred of them.

There are too many. All this time, while we were away, that damned captain was building his forces, preparing for war. We sat and watched them, and pretended to be unimpressed, and not once did we take heed of the portents
.

‘Refuse their charge,’ Traj now growled. ‘We part before them. Nothing changes.’

But everything has. We saw these warhorses. We even remarked on their impressive size. But not once did we see them arrayed in full complement. Now, even at this distance, to look upon them is to feel
…
diminished
.

‘We will dance around them,’ Traj continued, as if seeking to convince himself, ‘striking and then withdrawing. Again and again. Those mounts are burdened. They will tire fast, as will their riders. See the grilled visors on their helms? Their vision is restricted. They’ll not hear commands – the battle will roar through their skulls. They’ll flounder in confusion.’ He rose on his stirrups. ‘Skirmishers, stay well guarded
behind
our advance – close only when and where we lock blades with them! Close in and kill the ones we unseat. Gut or hamstring the horses if you can. Scatter if they seek to charge or surround you.’

An odd way to use the skirmishers, but then I see your point, Traj. They don’t wield pikes, and there’s not enough dismounted besides, not for a square, not even a hollow one. Their only hope is if we can make this messy
.

‘It’s time,’ said Traj.

Rint glanced over to see his sister staring at him. Her eyes glistened and he saw once more in her face the little girl she had once been. Before things broke, before the hands trembled before all that was suddenly out of reach.
Climb a tree, sister. High above all of this. You had it right back then. I know now why you fought me so, every time I dragged you back down, every time I carried you up the street and people smiled at your temper or laughed at your wretched moans
.

Not all of us wanted to grow up. I should have followed your lead. I should have stayed a child with you, clinging to a high branch while everyone else aged below, aged and fell so helplessly into their futures
.

Every child born sent mother and father back to their own childhoods. Like symbols of nostalgia, they were set down and watched as they made their journey away from simplicity, from the bliss of unknowing. And if, in the witnessing of this, tears came, then those tears were warm, and the sadness that joined them somehow comforted the soul, even as it reawakened old pains and old losses. To lose a child was to feel unbearable grief, as if some vital thread had been severed. Nostalgia was a bitter curse, with every memory of that journey ending in sudden loss, yielding emptiness beyond all solace.

Rint understood her now. And wished with all his heart that he didn’t.

She turned away then, gathering her reins in her left hand and drawing her sword with her right. She shifted in her saddle, firming the grip of her feet in the stirrups.

When Feren looked for that witch, her eyes lifted to the trees. And hidden up there, as my sister had known, Olar Ethil looked down with unreadable eyes. A child eager to watch
.

Until I gave her fire
.

Women are right to fear us. Oh, Feren
…

Traj gave the command, and then they were riding down the slope.

* * *

Ivis watched the Borderswords begin moving down the slope. ‘Yalad! Signal wedge formation!’

He remained in front of his troops, listening to them assume the new presentation. Horse hoofs thumped to make a rumble of thunder
through
the hard-packed ground of the killing field. Dust roiled past Ivis in thin clouds, a fortunate direction for the wind, at least to begin with. ‘Centre line count right left!’

He heard voices barking the word ‘right’ and then ‘left’ in an alternating pattern down the heartline of the wedge formation. This command alone gave the Houseblades all that they needed to know for this initial engagement.

The Borderswords poured over the first stone wall, slowing up to give time to their skirmishers to do the same. Ivis saw how the foot-soldiers lagged and nodded slightly to himself. They would serve little function until all momentum was lost. Unfortunately for them, he intended no loss of momentum from battle’s beginning to battle’s end.

Under his breath, he cursed Lord Draconus. The man should be here, commanding this first bloodletting for his Houseblades. Instead, every order – upon which so many lives depended – would be coming from a lowly captain who had grown sick of war decades ago.
The only thing going for me is that I’ve seen all this before, dozens of times. And the only thing going against me is the same fucking thing
. He tightened the strap of his helm and then wheeled his mount.

The wedge was arrayed before him: a point of three elite soldiers directly opposite, the leading line swept back sharply, twenty to each side, to form the chevron.

‘Houseblades! We didn’t ask for this argument. We have no cause to hate our enemy. Do not fight your grief in what’s to come, but set it aside with an honest vow to return to it in the days, months and years ahead. This is the soldier’s burden. Now, I trust you’ve all pissed before mounting up – if I see a single soldier slick in the saddle it’ll be the public lash!’ Hearing a few laughs, he scowled. ‘You think I am jesting? I have told you before but it seems you need to hear it again. In the Houseblades of Dracons, you will be told when to eat, when to drink, when to sleep, when to rise, when to shit, when to piss, when to fuck and when to kill. Now, you’ve done them all by our orders, except for the last, and that last has now arrived. It is time to kill.’

He rode closer a step, then two. ‘I’d like to be with you for this. If our lord was here I would be, at the point of this wedge, and you all know that. But he’s not, so command falls to me. Left flank, strip your shields!’

The soldiers on the left flank of the wedge rested their weapons and tore at the thin layer of dyed felt covering their shields, revealing lacquered white beneath.

‘Troop sergeants and corporals, keep an eye out for flags on the keep slope! And if you can’t see those, look higher, to the gate towers. At all times, you will see two flags upon each pole. Two flags on the white pole, two flags on the black pole—’

Someone’s shout cut him off. ‘Begging pardon, captain! But if we don’t know all that already we deserve to be cut down!’

Ivis subsided, feeling foolish. ‘Fine. I’m an old man and I want to dither, Abyss help us all.’

Laughter answered that comment.

‘Sir! Kindly get out of the way!’

Grimacing, Ivis collected up his reins and kicked his horse into motion, swinging left and riding down that wing, his gaze fixed forward.

Voices reached out for him as he passed.

‘Sir, I missed that order to fuck!’

‘You lie, Shanter! You never miss an order to fuck!’

‘I’ll see you after, Shanter!’

‘That’ll take an order, Brusk, at sword’s point.’

‘Wait! Did I hear Shanter’s taking orders?’

And then he was past, nodding to himself. He had heard it all before, a thousand flavours but ever the same taste. It broke his heart to hear such life pushing through the gathering, suffocating fugue that came in the moments before battle. Each jest, each voice raised in rough banter, shone like a gold flag in a black forest, making all that was to come that much harder to bear.

Reaching the slope, and the flag station, he reined in and swung round to face the field once more.

The Borderswords were assembling at the far side of the field. They formed up in a rough, uneven line, some readying lances and others drawing their long stabbing swords. The dust that had travelled across the field was now mostly gone, and the clear air between the two armies wavered like water in the day’s heat.

This latter detail was unpleasant, as it invited dehydration and heat prostration from his heavily armoured men and women. Then again, if the battle went on too long, all was lost anyway.

‘Signaller!’

‘Sir!’

‘Commit the advance.’

‘Yes sir!’

Moments later, the wedge lurched into motion, a walk rising to a trot.

The enemy was now as committed as were his own Houseblades. With the field walls behind them, retreat was impossible. He saw them move forward.

Off to the left of both forces stood the two standards. One had loosened its grip on the soil and tilted to rest against the shaft of the other. He could not tell which was which, as dust now covered both banners. And, as the ground began to shake, when the Houseblades
rose
into a canter, both standards fell to the ground. Ivis frowned at that, but distant shouts from the Borderswords drew him round.

* * *

Sandalath watched, wide-eyed, as the two armies surged in a final rush to close. Venth was swearing under his breath at her side. He had said earlier that the enemy was an army of Borderswords, and the reason for battle was unknown.

The cantering Houseblades lifted into a charge, but as they did so the wedge formation unravelled, the centre slowing as the wings swept out, spreading wide. Opposite them, half obscured through the ever-thickening dust, the enemy line seemed to waver.

When the Houseblades reached them, the line of heavy cavalry was virtually level, the riders only three deep in ranks, and they smashed against a broad swath of the enemy forces. Sandalath gasped to see horses flung into the air, legs kicking, while in places the Bordersword riders seemed to vanish beneath the hoofs of the warhorses. The roiling dust turned pink above the line of impact. Moments later, the entire engagement disappeared into the dust, until only the clanging cacophony of fighting reached them.

She caught the flash of white shields on the left, black shields on the right, but then even those were gone. On the slope below and to her right, she could see Captain Ivis, still mounted and flanked by poles bearing signal flags – but those flags had not changed since the charge first began. She saw the same flags on angled spires set above the gate towers. There was no evidence of panic, and the signallers stood motionless at their stations.

Is this really how it is?

* * *

The wedge formation of the heavy cavalry, so inviting to the lighter mounted Borderswords, had suddenly ceased to exist, and before they could react to the lightning transformation before them, the two lines of horse-soldiers collided.

Directly in front of Rint was a Houseblade sheathed in leather plates covering chain, his visor lowered and so made into something faceless. He saw the man’s lance slide up to plunge through the neck of Rint’s horse, and as the Houseblade released his grip on the weapon he flung up his shield to take Rint’s stabbing sword. The weapon clanged against copper riveted to wood beneath the black felt, rebounded high. His horse staggered beneath him and then pitched on to one shoulder.

Rint sought to pull free, but the animal rolled on to his right leg. Wrenching agony announced the tearing loose of his thigh bone from his hip socket. The scream that broke from him tore his throat.

The Houseblade had ridden past, but another came up behind him, a woman from the long hair spilling out from under the rim of her helm. Her lance drove down, punched into Rint just under his left collar bone. The heavy iron blade snapped the bone, its point pushing through to crunch into and then scrape along the underside of his shoulder blade. She tore it free as she rode past.

Rint sought to lift his sword to swing at the horse’s legs.

Instead, a hoof lashed down, landing on his throat. There was an instant of impossible weight, and then it lifted clear, snapping against his jaw as it went.

He stared into the dust-filled sky overhead. Somehow, air slipped through the wreckage of his throat and filled his lungs. The pulse in the side of his neck throbbed like a fist under the skin.

That was quick
.

Dying was within reach, but something held him back. He struggled to order his thoughts, struggled to understand what was keeping him here, lying on the ground in his own blood. He had never felt so cold, so heavy and so weak.

He tried to turn his head, to look for his sister, but nothing worked. He realized then that he could not feel his body, beyond that immense weight pressing down upon him. The sounds of fighting were falling away, or perhaps his hearing was failing.

We are defeated. As easily as that, the Borderswords are no more. I want to die now. I want to go away
.

He squinted into the sky, and now at last saw the tree – where it had come from, how he could have missed it here on this field, were questions he could not answer, but he saw the summer wind in the branches, rushing through the dusty green leaves. And high on one branch sat his sister, young and fierce, not wanting to come down.