Stonewielder (81 page)

Gods. What will happen? Will they rush out in a maddened fury? Isn’t that what these Imperials want? Disorder, blind rage?

Yet he sensed no rage around him. Only a quiet watchfulness; a collective breath held.

The detachment gathered to one side of the pyre. The woman – the Priestess, Ivanr could only assume from this distance – was dragged out. A priest of the Lady read charges, all in silence through the blowing snow. A tall figure in banded armour that glittered as if
chased in gold led the detachment – the Emperor’s eldest son, Ranur the Third? He sat slumped forward, helm under an arm, apparently bored.

The woman was pulled up the tall heap and tied to a pole. Brands were thrust into the piled bracken, but due to the snow and sleet the pyre was reluctant to start. The Imperial soldiers tried to coax the fire to life, but it only smouldered. The woman stood straight throughout it all, unmoving, not even attempting to speak. Often, Ivanr knew, such victims had their tongues cut out prior to their execution.

The crowds of the Army of Reform massed on the walls and carriages and had to be pushed back as the plank-and-pillar construction could not support such a weight. The soldiers were sullen, but cooperative. The anger was now palpable to Ivanr – a simmering dark rage born of offence at the indignity being played out before them.

The gold-armoured figure dismounted, waving and giving orders. The woman was dragged from the smoking pyre and forced down to her knees. The man drew his sword. First, he pointed the blade in their direction in a gesture that needed no words, then he raised it over his head in both hands and brought it down in a clean sweeping cut. The Priestess’s head fell away and the troopers released her body, letting it slump into the mud and melting snow.

The wall Ivanr stood upon seemed to shake as hundreds flinched as one with that stroke.

Through the blustering snow the Imperials unlimbered a pike, set the head upon it, and left it standing on the field. They then mounted up and rode off, the ox cart bringing up the rear.

So ended the Priestess who brought the message of tolerance and worship of all deities to the subcontinent. What legends would arise, he wondered, from this day? That the fire refused to harm her holy flesh? That she went bravely to her end, scorning her tormentors? That the very sky wept to see it? For his part, Ivanr saw a sad and tragic end to a young life. A corpse in the mud and a head on a pike. He saw waste and a useless unnecessary gesture that solved nothing. Why did she comply? What lesson was there here for anyone?

Horns blaring within the compound brought Ivanr out of his reflections.
The call for forming up? What was Martal thinking?
He went to track her down. Pushing his way through the milling infantry, he came to the side of her big black stallion, took hold of her stirrup. ‘What are you
doing?
’

She peered down at him, steadied her mount. ‘What I must, Ivanr. And I’m sorry … she meant something to you, I know that.’

‘You build walls then you charge out on to the field? You’re doing what they want!’

‘Let’s hope they think so.’ She kneed her mount forward.

Yet perhaps you are, Martal
. He climbed the nearest wall offering a view over the western fields. Crowds pushed a number of carriages aside and like an unruly mob the horde of pike-wielding infantry was disgorged from the fortress. They washed down the gentle slope, pikes upright, a rustling forest on the move. From the distant Imperial encampment horns answered the challenge. The heavy cavalry cantered forward.

Form up, damn you! What are you waiting for?
More horns sounded, an urgent clarion call. The armoured mounts picked up their pace. Seven distinct waves sorted themselves out among the hundreds of cavalry. For now the lances remained upright, couched at hips – he knew they would not be lowered until the last possible moment.

Panic appeared to grip the pike men and women. They milled in a shapeless mass, flinching back towards the fortress walls.
Form up! Have you forgotten everything?
Then a final brilliant blast upon the Imperial horns and the pace surged into a charge. Lances edged forward at an angle. Ivanr felt the reverberation of tons of flesh and iron pounding the ground.

The infantry flinched back in a near-retreat to the walls, only to hold fast at the last possible moment, presenting a layered serried fence of iron blades. And in their midst Martal, mounted, bellowing orders.

Ivanr clenched the wood in a spasm as the iron wave of armoured men and horse came on, charging into the wall of set pikes. The crash sent rippling shockwaves through the massed infantry. Wood shattered, horses screamed, wounded coursers tumbled through two, three ranks. The charge penetrated much farther than any Ivanr had yet witnessed. Men and women scrambled over the fallen cavalrymen and pulled down those caught in the press, knives thrusting through gaps and visors.

Yet Ivanr watched with dread as behind, down the slope, the second wave now surged forward to charge, lances descending. Martal was waving, sending orders. Horns sounded the re-form. The mass of infantry retreated yet again to set their lines just behind the carnage of the first wave. Ivanr watched in amazement as the second
came on regardless, unflinching, as if their own impetus would carry them through the mass of flesh and out the other side. Many leapt the fallen horses and men; some failed, clipping the corpses or wounded to tumble through the lines like thrown boulders. And into these gaps further cavalry pressed, lances shattered, drawing swords.

The impact penetrated even through to the wall, causing it to shudder as horseflesh and impetus struck unyielding iron. A new horn sounded among the Reform ranks: withdrawal.

Withdraw! Why even sortie in the first place? For this? Martal! What were you thinking?

And the third wave came thundering on. Pikes steady, the Reform infantry withdrew step by step, rear ranks filing back into the fortress. And beyond, far across the field, the Imperial archers were left far behind.
They’d outstripped their support! Was this
— A noise as of a forest of wood bending brought Ivanr’s attention around.

The enclosed ground within the fortress was one solid mass of archers. Bows raised almost vertical, they strained, arrows nocked.

The third wave of cavalry smashed into the triple-layered wall of razor iron. The impact drove through to shock the wall as infantry hammered back into it. A nearby carriage rocked as Imperial cavalry pressed upon it. A barked order brought the archers on the wall rearing up, firing at will. No need for great range now, he saw: all that was required was a quick rate of fire. Secondary banging and clattering shook the carriage and he peered down to see the shutters swinging open. With a shuddering recoil the ballistae let loose, clearing the field before it in a blast of four-foot iron bolts.

Behind him a great thrumming shook the air and a sleet-like hissing rose overhead. The archers on the walls and carriages loosed as well and Ivanr flinched, ducking. The salvo came sheeting down for the most part just beyond the wall of pikes, though some did strike their own. The fusillade raked the field, leaving carnage behind. Complete slaughter. Horses fell kicking, crippled. Men tumbled, tufted like targets. The ground itself was stubbled like a field after harvest. The following cavalry waves heaved to right and left, sloughing aside, curving back upon themselves. A further salvo chased them off. The chevrons turned, coursing in a broad circle, unwilling to close.

The remaining pike infantry slowly withdrew by brigade, all in order, and the carriages were pushed back into place.

Ivanr looked out upon the field. Already snow drifted wind-tossed
over bodies. Wounded called. Parties slipped out through narrow doors to retrieve Reform wounded, at the same time finishing off any Imperials. The Imperial cavalry cantered back to their encampment, pennants flying and plumes still high. He went to find Martal.

Aides surrounded her: she sat on a field stool while a bonecutter removed her armour. Blood splashed her left side. Her cuirass lay beside her and her mail-and-leather hauberk underpadding came off over her head revealing a deep gash high under her left arm. Whatever Ivanr might have wanted to say he set aside. When she saw him, a weary smile came to her glistening sweat-sheathed face. ‘Not how you would have done it, eh, Ivanr?’ she said while the bonecutter wrapped her torso.

‘No,’ he allowed. ‘But maybe that’s how it had to be done.’

‘Not going easy on me, are you?’ She winced as the cutter had her raised up.

‘She has to rest,’ the man said to Ivanr, who nodded. Two aides helped her walk off.

Drawing Ivanr aside, the grey-haired medic asked, ‘Was that her?’

‘Who?’

‘This morning. Was that the Priestess?’

Ivanr paused, thinking.
How to answer that? Gods, what an awful choice to have to make!
Finally, he nodded. ‘Yes. I think it was.’

‘But nothing happened,’ the man said as he wiped the blood from his hands.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘When she died – nothing happened.’

Ivanr took a deep breath. ‘No. Nothing. She was just a woman who carried a message. And that message hasn’t died, has it?’

The old man nodded, taking his meaning. ‘Perhaps that is part of her message.’

‘I believe so.’

He bent closer, lowered his voice. ‘And this morning …’ He inclined his head to the fields beyond. ‘What is your estimation?’

Once more Ivanr considered his answer. Personally, he thought it a draw but he knew he mustn’t say that. He said, loudly, so that all could overhear, ‘Every day they haven’t broken us is a victory for us.’

The old man’s answer was a knowing smile. He wrapped his bloody knives in a length of stained leather. ‘Now you’re talking like a leader.’

He was left thinking about that. Depending upon how badly Martal was wounded the lead may indeed fall to him. His vow said nothing against giving orders. It was long past the time he ought to talk to Captain Carr regarding what further surprises Martal might have set aside.

*

If Prince Ranur the Third was in charge of the assembled Jourilan Imperial forces, he gave them no time to recover from the blunting of their first cavalry charges. Ivanr failed to track down Captain Carr before alarm horns blared from the walls of the fortress. The splendidly armoured counts and barons of the lands were driving their massed crossbowmen and archers out on to the field. Ivanr recognized the coats of Dourkan mercenaries and Jasstonese free companies among the ranks of the local peasants and burghers.

Normally, a cavalry sortie would scatter such forces, but the Army of Reform’s cavalry, so greatly outnumbered for so long, had been reduced to almost nothing. Its commander, Hegil Lesour ’an ’al, now fought on foot in charge of a brigade. Before the heaving lines of the Imperial archers could be cajoled into range for a volley on the fort, horns blazed again, summoning the Reform pike units to debouch. Ivanr ran to a wall to watch as carriages were pushed aside and the infantry jogged out. A forest of the tall pikes rustled and clattered, held upright. More horns called and broad lines formed then advanced upon the Imperial skirmishing crossbow and archer forces.

Ivanr thought this lunacy. The skirmishers could dance round the pike formations; were these Martal’s orders? And who was in charge? Martal’s wound was too severe, surely. These pike men and women were exposed to counter-charges from the cavalry. It was worse than foolish to sortie.
Yet she could not relinquish the field to these archers, could she? They would ring the fort and grind us down
.

Sure enough: movement among the flags and pennants of the Imperial cavalry. They would answer this challenge. Far across the field, ranks of the heavy cavalry assembled before tents and wagons of spectators. Spectators! They’d brought courtiers from Jour. Perhaps members of the Imperial family as well. Gods. So sure were they of crushing these insolent peasants.

And before today Ivanr would have half agreed with such an estimation. But the dawn execution of the Priestess before the eyes of all these men and women who had set everything aside, risked
everything they knew in their life, to answer her call, seemed to have changed that. He sensed in them a grim, annealed resolve that perhaps had been within them all along, which before today he had failed to notice – or, he could admit, had discounted.

Yet on the field the harassing crossbow mercenaries and archers had brought the pike units into disarray. Seeing their chance, the Imperial cavalry sounded a call and the distant reverberation of hooves reached Ivanr once more.

Form up!
Ivanr urged from the wall; he cut his palms, so tightly did he clench the timbers. But the mercenaries and undisciplined Imperial archers – perhaps completely oblivious of the threat now plunging down upon them from behind – stubbornly kept the units engaged.

Horns blared and the knot of mounted guards and messengers of command parted, revealing the black-armoured figure beneath the Reform pennant. Martal! What was she doing? This would kill her! She was not gesturing: she seemed to have a death’s grip on the pommel of her saddle. Upon the field the pike units milled, hafts clattering. Out of this malformed ungainly mass ranks formed as if by magic and once again the layered serried points faced the cavalry. Ivanr raised a fist, recognizing movements he and they had worked upon for months, now perfected out upon the field.