Haven: A Trial of Blood and Steel Book Four (52 page)

Damon and friends yelled with triumph and charged, felling more confused and frightened cavalry, and now encountering knights whose armour remained intact, but whose horses were struggling with multiple arrow strikes and dying. Some hit the ground hard and struggled to rise once more. Lenay men generally ignored them—they would be dealt with later, and were too slow afoot to bother fast-moving cavalry.

Soon the Regent's cavalry were falling back, then retreating at full gallop. More artillery flashes erupted upon the left flank, and Jaryd spared a moment to view the bluff from which they came. No fighting was visible. Had that assault failed?

Now serrin were pursuing the retreating Bacosh men, zigzagging through the Lenay warriors with bows in hand, seeking shots at retreating backs. They looked furiously determined, striving to kill as many as possible while the chance presented. Behind them came the main Lenay army, on foot, and running. Fast.

Damon was yelling, standing in his stirrups to attract attention, pointing across the river. Already other Lenay cavalry were charging that way, and Damon followed, gathering more men as he went. Shouted orders were of no use here. The noise of hooves and massed voices was too loud for anyone save an immediate neighbour to hear. But the plan was to get across the Dhemerhill River, and up the relatively exposed left flank under the cover of Ilduuri artillery on the ridge.

Jaryd hit the water amidst several hundred other horsemen, with more hundreds following. The horses plunged and struggled for a moment, and then were clear to the far bank and running once more, skirting a large farmstead and leaping fences. To the right were masses of enemy soldiers. To this side, the way was clear, as few braved the falling artillery for the next thousand strides at least. Damon's party cleared a final fence and emerged onto rolling green fields, swords out and yelling as they charged at full speed.

Rhillian reined up further back than her comrades, holding her bow in the air as a signal for others to do the same. Bacosh cavalry were trying to escape, some fording the river to the left, others galloping off to the right, across the impenetrable line of infantry before them,
talmaad
and a few Lenay cavalry in pursuit. Those would try to run up the steep valley sides high enough to find a way around. In this valley, a cavalryman could run out of room very fast, with infantry behind plugging up his only escape.

Behind, she could hear the Army of Lenayin approaching, the deafening roar and rattle of thousands of charging men. She spaced her horse a little further from her neighbour, held him still, then placed her first arrow to her bowstring. She fired, low and flat, as other serrin did the same, stopping their horses completely. Arrows flew as the roar behind grew louder. Sporadic return fire arced high and ineffective; the Regent's forces had not yet gathered archers close enough to the front rank to make their shots count. Rhillian fired again, and thought that this form of warfare was agreeable to her. A horse could carry numerous quivers, and she had a lot of arrows. She would sit here and shoot them at her enemies until there were no arrows left, then retreat to get some more.

Suddenly the Army of Lenayin were bursting past her, and she felt as though she were mounted upon a beach, a great wave crashing across the sand. There were thousands of them, and she could feel their fury shaking her bones. The Army of Lenayin had been defeated at Shero Valley. It had lost its king, and run before an enemy. It had marched in humiliation behind the victorious Regent across Rhodaan and then into Enora, with banners flying low in shame and mourning. It had suffered the worse realisation that all along, they'd been fighting for a dishonourable cause. They'd been misled, tricked into a war that many of them might have gladly fought, but for the other side. And their so-called allies had treated them with contempt, called them barbarians, and lately tried to murder their favourite princess for daring to wed the soon-to-be King of all the Bacosh. The Army of Lenayin had borne this weight for weeks and months, living for the moment of redemption and retribution. They were not merely in the bloodlust of Lenay warriors in battle. They were genuinely, blood-curdlingly furious.

The Army of Lenayin smashed into the Bacosh first rank and killed nearly all of them within moments. Gaps opened first by serrin archers became gaping holes as flanks were exposed, and quickly exploited with superior swordwork and brute force. Lenay men dove into spaces and hacked limbs from the men
beside
them, holding off their forward opponents long enough to strike sideways and open the way for their neighbour, who returned the favour to
his
neighbour, and on across the ranks. They roared and swung and bludgeoned, with the fury of madmen and the skill of artisans, and across the valley the air was filled with flying blades and blood.

And then, when that first contact had penetrated so far that most armies would have considered it a success and paused to regroup, the later ranks of soldiers pushed past their leading comrades, fresh to the fight, and took over the charge. Beyond the packed forward ranks there was space, space enough for a Lenay warrior to move, to swing, to clever-fake and spin, and perform all the deadly tricks he'd rehearsed all his life, if only in the hope of impressing his friends and village girls at evening practice. Bacosh men-at-arms, mostly peasants and village folk with solid skills but none of the artistry, simply died, falling in horrible, screaming wrecks before a class and power of soldiery they had never before encountered. The Army of Lenayin, now five hundred paces beyond the Bacosh soldiers' front line, began to accelerate.

“Good
gods
!” Arken exclaimed in the saddle at Sasha's side, looking over the battlefield. The Army of Lenayin was flooding out from the Dhemerhill Valley, beyond its protective walls, and now churned inexorably toward the banks of the Ipshaal. The Bacosh forces looked stunned, not so much retreating as sinking like saplings in a flood, as Lenays ran through them and past them, and left the slower ones for comrades behind to deal with. “Look at them!”

Similar exclamations rose from across the Ilduuri lines. Their own attackers had faded back down the slope for the second time, and men with a vantage now gathered eagerly on this side to see the battle below.

“They're still going!”

Excited yells rose to a crescendo, and then men were hammering on their shields and roaring, chanting for Lenayin. Upon her horse, Sasha wiped tears from her eyes. Of all the moments in her life she had ever felt proud to be Lenay, all were as nothing before this. She stood in her stirrups, pointed her sword at the sky, and yelled with the rest of her Ilduuris.

Jaryd thrust and crashed his way through infantry ranks, men giving way in panic, others falling flat to escape the reach of his sword, only to be trampled underfoot. On this left side of the Dhemerhill Valley, only cavalry had attacked. Now they pierced the thin and wavering lines of Bacosh soldiers toward the Ipshaal like a dagger through the heart.

He yelled in fury as some soldiers ahead were slow to run clear and barrelled into them, his horse bounding for footing, knocking through several, trampling another. Arrows zipped past,
talmaad
mixed with the Lenay ranks behind, shooting fleeing soldiers in the back. Ahead, now visible across a final stretch of grass, was the Ipshaal. Enemies parted before it, and he nearly laughed at the ease of it, this astonishing victory, against such overwhelming odds.

The Lenay cavalry reached the bank in their tens and then hundreds, and wheeled. More hundreds poured in as Bacosh soldiers parted on either side. Damon's noble friends were whooping and yelling as though the war was over. Damon, Jaryd saw, merely stood his horse upon the bank, and looked along the river in either direction.

Along each bank was an endless sea of men. Further up-and downriver, entire armies were barely even aware they had been attacked. Jaryd's joy died upon his lips, and the look that Damon gave him was wary.

“We can't hold here,” he said. “We can't push in either direction along the river. The forces in the other direction will move in and cut us off from the valley. We'll be trapped. We must withdraw.”

“Withdraw?” Jaryd didn't like the sound of that. Damon was often grim and worried—this seemed like capitulation. More arrows zipped through the air, only these ones were incoming. Archers in the surrounding ranks were organising. “Look, let's at least clear the hill in front of Sasha's bluff….”

“There's no room. They were thin before the valley mouth but if we press them tighter along the riverbank they'll have nowhere to retreat to and we'll get stuck….”

“Their disadvantage, surely!” Jaryd protested.

“And ours when we can't make it back to the valley! We had a good run, we killed a lot of them and made them wary, let's get back before our triumph turns and bites us.”

“Surely we can…”

A whistling buzz interrupted them, like a swarm of wasps, followed by rapid thudding, and further across the grass a horse was smashed into the ground like a bug. Then another two, and a rider clubbed from the saddle by something big and fast.

“Ballistas!” shouted Damon. “Their artillery is trained on us!”

“Dammit,” Jaryd muttered, spinning his horse to stare up the riverside once more, searching for the source of it. “It'll be a few hundred paces up that way, if we can just…”

A flaming ball came through the air directly before him—they were out of range from Ilduuri artillery on the bluff, so it could only be enemy fire.

“Hellfire!” someone yelled. It hit the fields further from the river, riders scattering, not so concentrated there to be affected. Two more shots came, one hitting a tree and engulfing it, the other erupting near the bank of the Dhemerhill.

Upon the opposite side of the Dhemerhill, more flaming balls were arcing through the air. These were coming from further up the Ipshaal bank to the north. And these were heading straight for the Lenay infantry.

“That's it,” said Damon. “We're getting out before we get slaughtered.” He turned and galloped back the way they'd come, waving his sword and yelling for men to form up on him. “Get me a trumpeter and get our infantry back! Full retreat!”

Sasha swore, watching the artillery land. Great plumes of fire rose from amidst the Army of Lenayin's ranks. Likely it was killing surviving Bacosh soldiers in there as well, but the thought did not comfort.

“Get them out of there, Damon,” she muttered. “It was a great victory, now fall back and live to fight another one.”

Here on the near side of the Dhemerhill, Lenay cavalry were indeed falling back. That would be Damon himself, though she could not make him out. Artillery fire was landing amidst the horses here as well, though less effective on the open ground. It was coming from just before her left flank.

She wheeled and rode fast along her lines, where Ilduuri men who had been cheering now stood and watched with grim concern. They knew how fast hellfire artillery could turn any exposed and tightly clustered army to cinders. Soon she reached a spot on the harshly contested left flank where black grass still burned from llduuri artillery and piles of charred corpses smouldered, while others lay strewn underfoot, having fought right up and even past the Ilduuri shieldline. To her left, amidst the trees, wounded Ilduuris were treated by comrades, and a small number of dead lay silent.

At the bottom of the slope, and perhaps fifty paces beyond, she could see the Regent's captured artillery. Great arms swung from the backs of huge wheeled wagons, pulled by large teams of bullocks. With each crank and crash, they hurled another flaming projectile downriver. Her position was safe from them up here; neither catapults nor even ballistas could reach this altitude from that position. But the Army of Lenayin was another matter.

“Give me a thousand,” said Arken at her side, “and I can get them.”

Sasha stared at him. His return stare was deadly serious. “There's still a lot of men halfway down this slope,” she pointed out. “You'll have to fight through them.”

“With downhill momentum it's no problem,” said the confident Ilduuri.

“Then after you hit them, and destroy the artillery, you have to run back up here under fire, in full armour, with half the Regent's army on your heels.”

“We are the Ilduuri Steel,” said Arken, blue eyes blazing. “You see how we fight, we run up mountains in full armour every day before breakfast.” It was true, they did. “In Ilduur, and here today, you have shown me the greatness of a Lenay warrior. Today we shall show you the greatness of the Ilduuri warrior.”

Men nearby who overheard him gave a bloodthirsty yell of agreement.

Sasha thought about it, for the short moment that was all she had. She could not afford to lose a thousand Ilduuri here, and it was certainly possible that if a thousand ran down this hill, barely a handful would return. But she and Kessligh had both agreed that if the Regent's artillery remained intact for the entire fight, their chances of final victory were slim. Even now the artillery threatened to turn Lenayin's great triumph into carnage. This was the chance she had to take.