Rise of a Hero (The Farsala Trilogy) (22 page)

No one had even so much as nicked himself with his new, metal sword. It was all going perfectly, and Jiaan was half insane with the tension of wondering what was going to go wrong.

Jiaan sensed, more than heard it, when Fasal stiffened in the bushes beside him. He looked at the gates.

In the moonlight the high stone walls appeared to be a single piece of stone, unbreakable as the mountains. The great wooden gates were of a piece with them, unyielding as stone. But they moved now, swinging wide, as the portcullis lifted and men raced out running to where their units would form, all in a silence so eerie that Jiaan blinked, doubting his eyes.

Then the Hrum sentries shouted, and a drum rattled a frenzied tattoo. The camp erupted into activity as men hurtled from their tents, clothed only in their tunics, carrying breastplates, shields, helmets, some with boots in their hands, buckling on their swords as they ran.

They were still assembling their armor and pulling on their boots as they formed up into ten-man squads, and then, as the drumbeat changed, into a line three men thick. Even Jiaan, who had seen it before, shook his head in disbelief at how fast they could find formation.

But the town guardsmen had emerged from the gates and formed their own units, blocks of about twenty men each. They looked sloppier than the Hrum, but they had almost as many men, Jiaan noted with a leap of hope, and they’d had plenty of time to arm and prepare. When Jiaan’s army joined them they would outnumber the Hrum by almost three to one—and if that was dishonorable, Jiaan didn’t care. It was Farsala’s turn!

When the clarion sounded, the thunder of the Farsalan battle cry almost drowned the higher notes of the horn as Siddas’ guardsmen charged.

The drumbeat altered again, and the Hrum marched out to meet them. Some of them were still trying to fasten the buckles on their breastplates. And they had no long lances this time, no knowledge of the enemy’s plans—this time the Hrum would be surprised!

There were about two thousand yards between the Hrum camp and the city walls, and months of siege had removed all the brush and rubble, so Jiaan had a clear view of the meeting of the two armies. Mazad’s guardsmen were running, shouting, and they crashed into the Hrum’s line like a storm wave hitting a wall.

The Hrum line swayed and bent under the impact. Metal clanged on metal, thudded on wooden shields, and screams and shrieks added themselves to the din. Jiaan’s mind had expected those sounds, but his body remembered the last time he’d heard them and his blood ran cold and thin, too thin to sustain his racing heart. He shuddered, trying to control his breathing. He had to watch, to be aware, to get his men ready . . .

Jiaan never knew quite what it was—the battle looked the same, as swords rose and fell, and men struggled to break the Hrum’s tight formation.
Perhaps something in the sound changed, though men still shouted and cried out in pain. The sound was . . . different.

Jiaan had already stood, breaking cover, and lifted his hand to signal his men when the clarion sounded. His hand swept down.

The men charged without shouting, as Jiaan and his squad commanders had drilled into them over and over on the week of the march—
No reason to warn them we’re coming, lads.
But they couldn’t cross the Hrum camp in total silence.

Jiaan, trotting Rakesh behind the running mob and trying to watch over everything at once, saw a woman in a servant’s drab gown emerge from a tent with an armload of cloth, probably intended for bandages. She screamed when she saw the men racing toward her, then threw her bundle in their direction and leaped back into the tent again. One of his men tripped on the cloth, Jiaan noted with resignation, but he staggered back to his feet and ran on.

Crashing between the tents Jiaan couldn’t see everything, but he heard a man shouting warning, and what sounded like someone running into a stack of cooking pots. Still, among the shouts,
screams, and clangor of the battle, any noise from the camp would be lost.

They got past the tents and Jiaan saw that the Hrum had pushed the town guard back several yards, and they were about to gain more ground . . . except for Jiaan’s army.

The muscles of his cheeks ached, and Jiaan realized he was grinning, a frozen, teeth-gritting grin. His own men were only a few dozen yards from the Hrum’s backs, and would reach them in seconds. Jiaan raised his arm again, and waved to signal the archers.

The Hrum’s first warning of the Farsalan army’s presence was the arrival of their arrows. Given the fact that their allies stood just beyond their intended targets, Jiaan had refused to allow any but the best and steadiest of his archers to use their bows—and that at a range where a skilled archer couldn’t possibly miss.

The arrows’ hiss-and-thud was so soft compared to the clamor around them that only the Hrum whose neighbors fell, with feathered shafts protruding from their backs, were warned at all. A handful of Hrum were starting to turn when Jiaan’s men reached them.

The cavalry consisted of Jiaan, Fasal, and five other men from the advanced class who Fasal thought might be more useful on horseback than on foot. Like the archers, they were supposed to keep to the rear and only go in if the foot soldiers found themselves in trouble.

But as the third rank of the Hrum line spun, raised their shields, and began to fight, Jiaan realized that his whole army was in trouble.

He saw one man go down, not wounded, merely knocked aside by a blow from a Hrum’s shield, while his partner engaged the Hrum desperately with his sword. Jiaan pulled out a javelin and clapped his heels to Rakesh’s flanks.

A roar rose from the front line, as the second line of Hrum turned to face the threat at their backs, and the town guard fell on the first line with renewed ferocity.

The Hrum Jiaan was watching smashed the sword from the peasant soldier’s hand, and lifted his own blade to cut the man down. Jiaan’s javelin, cast overhand in the clean, swift sweep his father had taught him, caught the man in the side of his neck, not the center as Jiaan had intended, but at least it had missed his armor and hit flesh.
Blood poured blackly over the Hrum’s shoulder and breastplate as he fell to his knees, dropping his sword.

Jiaan’s peasant soldier darted to pick it up, and Rakesh wheeled away before Jiaan’s heels even touched his sides.

Jiaan drew his sword. He watched another of his soldiers cut into the back of a Hrum soldier’s knee, and as the man fell, half turning, helpless, the soldier lifted his sword and froze, staring at the man he could kill.

The Hrum soldiers in front of the fallen man were engaged with the guardsmen, but the Hrum soldier beside the fallen man had no such difficulties. Jiaan swung at the arm he raised, and the Hrum’s sword fell as the man’s wrist spurted blood, broken and half severed. Jiaan struck at the next man’s throat, but hit his face instead. The Hrum’s helmet deflected part of the blow, but Jiaan felt his sword grate over bone. The man cried out, swinging his own sword, and only Rakesh’s nimble leap kept the blade from severing Jiaan’s thigh.

Jiaan swung again. The Hrum’s shield blocked the blow, the force of it numbing his
wrist. Then the counterblow came and Jiaan parried desperately, and parried again.

In the shadow of the helmet, the Hrum’s blood-covered face showed no expression, but Jiaan sensed his grim satisfaction as Jiaan backed up a few feet, then a few more . . .

The Hrum’s mouth opened in a soundless scream as the peasant Jiaan had rescued hacked into his neck like a butcher felling an ox. The peasant nodded at Jiaan and turned back to the line, seeking more targets.

But the Hrum were moving again. Somehow, even in the press of battle, they were reforming their lines. Where there had been three ranks now there were four, two facing in each direction, and their formation was growing more solid before Jiaan’s eyes. It was time—

Siddas’ clarioneer blew the retreat, the signal for Jiaan and his men to disengage, turn and run, after which the guardsmen themselves would turn and flee. But disengaging wasn’t as easy as it had sounded when they planned this. Several men could and did run, but men who were exchanging frantic blows and parries couldn’t simply turn their backs and walk away.

Jiaan cantered down the line, disrupting fights, using Rakesh’s big body more than his sword. He saw a Farsalan sword shatter under a Hrum blade, and hurtled Rakesh forward to slice his own sword into the Hrum’s exposed neck. It cut half through and wedged, wedged in the man’s spine, Jiaan realized. The Hrum dropped his sword, looking up at Jiaan even as life drained from his eyes. His body began to fall, pulling the sword with it, and Jiaan gritted his teeth and shoved his boot against the man’s face, pulling his sword free in a splatter of blood. His stomach heaved, but he fought it down.

“Run, you bastards!” It was his own voice, screaming, and he realized he’d been screaming similar words for some time, hardly aware of it.

He charged Rakesh at another skirmish, riding between two peasants and a Hrum soldier who appeared to be pressing both of them, striking at the Hrum almost blindly, counting on Rakesh to save him. When the town guard fled, any of his men who were left here would die. “Run!”

Then he realized that the town guard was retreating, not running, but backing off, and the Hrum followed them. Several of them looked as if
they wanted to stay and fight Jiaan’s force, but they were too well disciplined to break their formation. All down the line Jiaan’s men were withdrawing, turning, running back through the Hrum camp.

A quick glance up and down the line showed Jiaan no more he could do. But he noticed—for the first time, he had a chance to notice—the bodies lying on the trampled earth. Some wore Hrum armor, but more, far more wore the thick leather that was all Farsalan peasants-turned-soldier could afford.

“Get out of here, you idiot!” It was Fasal’s voice, screaming almost in Jiaan’s ear, and it was Fasal’s heel thudding into Rakesh’s hindquarters that sent Jiaan galloping away, through the Hrum tents and into the quiet darkness of the trees.

T
HE SMALL RAVINE WHERE
they had planned to gather after the battle was about a quarter league from the Hrum camp—far enough to remain unheard if they were quiet, and invisible from the road.

The Hrum had pursued the town guard all the way back to their gates, capturing almost a dozen
men who couldn’t make it in before the gates closed. Now they would be binding their wounds, restoring order, but soon they would come looking for Jiaan’s people—which meant they had to get moving. Though Siddas had had a plan to help them escape, as well.

It had seemed to Jiaan that the entire population of Herat had met them where they crossed the road. As soon as his troops passed, Herat’s citizens had emerged from the brush, hurrying down the road to their village, leaving a mass of fresh tracks for the Hrum to follow. Jiaan had his doubts as to whether the Hrum would mistake the tracks of this mob of peasants, fully half of them women, for his army. But if they did, when the Hrum arrived at Herat, the army would appear to have vanished into thin air. When they searched the houses of the local peasants they would find nothing but farmers and their families, none with so much as a scratch on them, and not half enough men in the whole village to make up the force that had attacked them. Siddas said the villagers would be safe, even if the diversion worked. Jiaan prayed it would, for it would be hard for his army to move fast . . . what was left of it.

A third of the remaining men had minor wounds, and a handful were seriously injured, though the healer said he thought they’d live. Jiaan himself had a cut just below his knee, still seeping blood—but he knew it wasn’t serious, and there wasn’t time to attend to minor cuts now. It stung and throbbed, but it could have been much worse. His father used to swear that he’d never have survived a battle without Rakesh. Jiaan was beginning to understand why.

The ones who hadn’t been wounded weren’t much better off—what seemed like another third of his men were hiding in the bushes, vomiting. Jiaan would have joined them, except that a commander shouldn’t show that kind of weakness. Especially a young commander who had just led men in battle for the first time . . . who was too green to even be certain if they had won or lost.

Jiaan shook himself and urged Rakesh over to where Aram, who had stayed behind with the healer, was organizing the retreat. He waited until the older man finished instructing a handful of soldiers on how to make a litter for carrying the worst wounded. Aram had to repeat himself, for
even these men seemed a bit dazed, but at least they weren’t vomiting, and they nodded when he finished and moved off with a purposeful air.

Aram looked up and met Jiaan’s eyes—his face was calm, but Jiaan could see the tension in it.

“I know you ordered the count,” Jiaan said. He dreaded the answer, but he couldn’t put off asking any longer. “How many did we lose?”

“There are a hundred and seventy-four men currently missing,” said Aram. “But a few more may be trickling in. Things happen in a battle, in the dark. You get separated.”

“A hundred and seventy-four?” Jiaan closed his eyes, as if he could block out the knowledge along with the moonlight. He’d known it was bad, but . . . “A fifth,” he whispered. “A full fifth of my men dead.”

“Or enslaved,” said Aram calmly. “Not all of them will be dead, and the Hrum take prisoners. They’ll be coming home again if you succeed. And you struck a blow for that tonight, young sir, no doubt about it. It was mostly the town guard did the killing, but I’m guessing we left almost three hundred Hrum dead or severely wounded. That’s
a third of their forces. The guardsmen couldn’t have done it without us. And they only lost a score or so, most of them captured at the gate.”

“So we won.” It was Fasal’s voice, rough, because he’d just returned from vomiting in the bushes. He evaded Jiaan’s gaze. Heaving up your guts after a battle was a very undeghan-like thing to do. It made Jiaan think better of him. But still . . .

“You think that’s winning? That we killed more of them than they did of us?”