The Seventh Friend (Book 1) (43 page)

Arbak looked up at the sky and wondered if he was dead. He was surrounded by what seemed to be thousands of bodies, distorted, bloated, undignified. Crows circled against the blue, dark silhouettes waiting to ply their grisly trade on the carnage below.

Sheyani was sitting beside him, holding his hand. He could feel the pressure of her fingers digging into his palm, but when he tried to turn his head, to speak to her, he could not move, and words would not come. Perhaps I am dead, he thought. He wanted to reach out and hold her, to take her in his arms and press his lips to hers, and that surprised him. Sheyani was not his, not in that way. She was too breakable. She needed protection and stability, not the advances of an ageing mercenary.

Certainly not a dead one.

Now he was standing on the high wall, and there were fifty men with him. He looked out into Telas, and saw a lone warrior walk towards the gate. He was Seth Yarra. The warrior shimmered and became two, then four, then eight. It seemed only moments before the entire plain was covered in men, tens, hundreds of thousands; a forest of black and green banners waved in the sun.

“What shall we do?”

The man next to him was smiling confidently at him, waiting for orders. He looked at the other men, and did not see a single bow. They all bore swords.

“Where are your bows?” he asked them.

“You told us to bring swords,” the young man said.

Bows. We need bows. He looked back down the pass into Berash and was horrified to see that the pass swarmed with women and children, playing games, laughing and running about. They seemed unaware of the monstrous danger that stood a few hundred yards away, and he had no way to save them.

Despair engulfed him.

“No!”

He sat up, and immediately fell back again, clutching at his left shoulder. His right arm felt like it was on fire.

“You’re back with us then.”

He looked across and became aware that he was lying on a soft bed, that the sky above him was dark canvas, and that the whole was illuminated by lamps. His eyes focussed on the source of the voice. Passerina. It seemed that they were alone together.

He had been dreaming.

“How many men did we lose?” he asked.

“Just like Narak,” she said, smiling. “Apart from the total lack of skill with a blade. He would have asked the same question.”

“How many?”

“One hundred and twenty dead. Two hundred injured. You’ll probably have lost a hundred and fifty by the morning, but four hundred Telans died, two hundred are wounded, and another two hundred threw down their arms. Considering they had the better position it seems a remarkable victory.”

He looked around the tent again, noticed that his right arm was swathed in bandages.

“I was wounded?”

“Quite badly. You lost a lot of blood, and your shoulder is swollen to the size of a pumpkin.”

“And the wall?”

“Major Tragil has resumed his command, swearing to never again allow a single Telan through the gate unless he strips naked and burns his clothes first. All three gates are closed and the fighting platform is crowded with archers – yours, Tragil’s and Coyan’s.”

“How long have I been out?”

“Eight hours, perhaps nine. You should talk to that Durander of yours. She’s been moping about for hours, saying it was her fault that you got cut. Silly woman. If you’re not bright enough to wear the copper she gave you it’s your own fault.”

“That’s true enough. Will you ask her to come in?”

“On my way out? I’m not finished with you yet.” There was something in the tone of her voice that made him forget that he was injured. There was malice there. She moved her seat closer so that she could look down into his eyes as she spoke. “I’m not a good judge of character,” she said. “Narak is. He sees things in people that others do not see, and he chose you for this work, and for other tasks. He has not revealed his reasons to me, nor will he. Your Durander has the talent, also. I know their skill, and she is high, very high, too high for you, Cain Arbak, but it is not my place to say so.” He wondered what she was saying. It didn’t seem to make sense.

“I lived in Wolfguard for two hundred years,” she went on. “I knew all of Narak’s people, the ones he called friends and held in his favour, and I, too, counted them as friends, but there was one who I loved more than all the others. Her unaffected honesty, her exceptional beauty that she could never admit, her kindness, her sense of humour, her strength, all of these qualities marked her out even in that exalted company.” She paused, searching Arbak’s eyes for understanding. “Her name was Perlaine.”

Arbak recognised the name at once. She was the beautiful woman with the wolf, the one that his men had shot in the woods by the Bel Erinor road. Words rose in his throat. He wanted to explain to her that he was not the cause of her death, merely an agent of mercy. She had been shot through the gut and the lung and left to die in agony. Even Narak had admitted she could not have been saved.

He said nothing for a moment, forcing back words that sounded like excuses. Eventually he could no longer meet her eyes, and he looked away.

“There is nothing about that which I do not regret,” he said.

He kept his face averted, waiting for her to say something else, but when he could summon the courage to look back she was gone. She had left the room without making a sound. He stared at one of the lamps. It was not a miracle that he was alive, he reflected, it was a stack of miracles.

Wolf Narak watched the Seth Yarra army flow across the ground towards him. He checked to either side to be certain that he had fighting room. He did not like to be crowded in battle, liked to have space to move and swing his blades, and the space was there. The Avilians had given him a respectful gap to do his work.

He wondered if the trap was big enough.

They came on and on. It was a long shoreline, about half a mile from the point where they had crested the ridge and seen him to the point where he waited. He allowed himself to glance to the left, to the woods that clothed the low hills. He could see nothing there. He did not turn his head. Even so tiny a clue might forewarn them.

He studied his enemy as they approached, looking for any sign of the black clad cleansers, the like of which he had fought at Bel Arac, but what he saw were like levy soldiers. They had leather armour for the most part. Every tenth man had a breast plate or a metal helmet. Their swords were also mixed in quality, and mostly ill suited to their bearers. None of these men would have blood silver blades. Even with the amount they had taken from the mines they could not afford to be so profligate.

This was going to be a slaughter. Even the troops behind him, just the five hundred, had more armour and better weapons than all the men that he could see. Somewhere there would be cleansers, somewhere back there. He had seen them over the wall. Jiddian had shot a few. They were hanging back to allow these men, these expendable men, to take the brunt of the first clash.

Narak waited until he could see their eyes, full of fear and anger and desperation, until he could smell their sweat and their breath like a wind preceding their hasty advance. After such a rush even the best men would be tired. These men were already dead.

He dropped both his swords to his side – a prearranged signal.

The forest above the lake came to life. Men poured from the trees, and stopped no more than twenty paces in the clear. Five thousand archers, all that he had, lifted their bows and released a deadly volley into the flank of the Seth Yarra army.

Men fell in mounds all over the shoreline. The army slowed, turned, and received the second volley. How many had died, Narak wondered? Five thousand? A third volley ripped through their ranks, and now the bulk of their force turned to face the hill, and the archers withdrew to be replaced by pikes and swords.

About two hundred men completed the dash to face Narak and the Avilians, but they were winded, and poor fodder for the steel that awaited them. Narak cut five men down with five strokes, and suddenly there was nobody to kill. He turned and looked behind him.

“Havil, now!” he roared. His voice rolled like thunder down the lake shore, and he saw faces turned towards him, hundreds of faces. Behind him he heard Havil’s voice calling to his men, and from a hollow behind a nearby mound the dragon guard rode out, decked in full armour, glittering like a steel forest. Even the horses shone, their armour polished and mirror bright in the sun.

They picked up speed slowly, but by the time they passed Narak and his Avilian guard they were flying, lances level, swords drawn. It was hardly fair. The Dragon Guard were a weapon feared by anyone in Terras, but for men who had never fought against cavalry they were all but unstoppable. Their front rank ploughed into Seth Yarra soldiers who were already trying to flee, cutting them down like rotten wheat before a scythe.

They did not slow. Men fell beneath the horses hooves, but mostly the Seth Yarra host tried to part before the onslaught like a curtain, running up the hill into arrows and pikes, or down into the water. Some tried to rally, and shot their arrows into the charging men, but they seemed to have no effect.

Narak signalled his own men forwards. They were the cork in the bottle, pushing what the cavalry had left alive back towards their own rear guard. There were still thousands of soldiers in the trap, and if they rallied things could still go badly.

He saw them. About four hundred yards from where he stood there was a mass of black. Cleansers. He guessed there were five hundred of them, and they were not panicked. They had tightened into a square and begun to press upwards into the archers and pikemen, cutting their way into the forest. If they broke through and managed to take enough of their men with them the battle would become a messy hand to hand through the trees.

Narak wanted to run to be with his men where the fighting was most intense. He wanted to be there to face the cleansers, but he knew his own plan, and he knew his place in it. If he rushed to their aid the cork in the bottle would become the weak point. Its strength depended on him. It was why they had so few men here. He watched grimly as the cleansers fought their way to the edge of the trees, and there they stopped.

He could see an axe flashing in the air, a pair of axes, and he knew they had run into Beloff. That would be an education for them.

Back on the lake shore the Seth Yarra soldiers were beginning to find their feet. Thousands were already dead, but they were still a formidable force. Several hundred archers and swords had coalesced and were shooting volley after volley into the trees in support of the cleansers. They, too, saw the opportunity that they had for escape.

As Narak pushed his men forwards they passed some of the units he had stationed in the forest, and those came out and joined his advance, giving him more options. He ordered the bowmen to shoot their arrows at the most organised part of the enemy force, and it had the desired, if not altogether desirable effect of turning their arrows from the forest onto Narak’s group.

“Shields!” he called, but already the Avilians had their shields up to protect their heads and upper bodies. Only Berashi infantry carried shields big enough to protect a whole body. His own shield went into place just as the first volley fell on them. He felt the arrowheads hammering just inches from his arm, felt them strike his armoured legs.

In the distance he heard the rumble of hooves and knew that Havil had turned the dragon guard and was coming back along the shore. He raised his shield high enough to glance under it and saw that they were sweeping the edge of the forest, riding high from the lake shore. It was a clever move. The cleansers would be forced to disengage, and would suffer losses both from the Dragon Guard and the archers in the woods before they could engage again.

But the cleansers did not run. They mounted a ferocious attack on the men in the forest, pushing them back ten yards, fifteen, enough to get most of the black clad men into the tree line and out of reach of the swords and lances of the heavy cavalry. It was a bold move. If the line had held, then Havil’s Dragons would have crushed them all, but even riding so close to the trees they only took thirty or forty of them.

In the distance Narak could see the final element of his strategy. The light cavalry rode over the ridge, thousands of them, shutting the door on those who had hoped to flee back to their coastal fastness. There were more than fifteen thousand Seth Yarra left in the box, and now they had the choice of fighting, drowning, or throwing themselves on the mercy of Narak’s army.

They fought. They fought well. There was still no doubt in Narak’s mind as to who would win the battle; the surprise of the archers in the forest and the heavy cavalry charge had given him that; but it was now a question of numbers.

He made slow progress towards the cleansers, and the Seth Yarra troops were pressed on all sides. Hundreds were being pushed into the lake and slaughtered there as they floundered in the weed snared, shallow water. But every time he saw one of his own men fall he grew more concerned. This was supposed to have been a quick victory. He had hoped for that. The more time he spent subduing this force, the more men he lost, and each hour made the other Seth Yarra army, the one beyond the gate, seem more formidable.

He gave orders that more men should move into the forest to stop the Seth Yarra from breaking out, and redoubled his own efforts, cutting through the soldiers before him with ruthless efficiency. Oddly he felt no anger. The last time he had fought like this, at Afael, he had been filled with rage, white hot with an anger fanned by grief. Now he felt little more than anxiety that all was not going as planned, or not quickly enough.

He stepped back from the front line for a moment and called as many wolves as he could reach. There were not so many here on the plains. What forest cover there was seemed thin, like this oversized copse that grew close to the lake that he had used for cover, and the wolves of the open plain were thinly spread compared to their forest cousins. He bid them come, come with all haste to the woods above the lake.

He stepped back through the line and pressed forwards again. He was fighting in the true style of the Ohas, pure attack with no defence, allowing his armour to take most of his opponents’ blows and using his feet and elbows as additional weapons, moving easily and fluently through the mass of the enemy. He did not see them as men. They were living obstacles between him and his goal. It did not worry him that he thought this way. It never had. If they threw their weapons aside and stepped out of his path he would have gone past them without a second thought. Today was a day for victory, not for killing.

He heard a shout go up somewhere ahead of him, and he felt the movement of the battlefield change. They had broken through, like a sudden hole in a bowl of water the Seth Yarra troops were draining towards the breach. They were escaping.

Even now there was nothing he could do. He was a hundred and fifty paces and a thousand enemies from the place where he needed to be. Frustration leant a sharp edge to his blade and a wild recklessness to his style. He used every trick he had, even throwing men to clear his path, but he was not alone. Every commander on the field had seen the breach open, and they rushed to close it. Despite desperate work by the Seth Yarra closest the hole it was sealed again within two minutes.

The trap never opened again.

For another hour the ring around the Seth Yarra army tightened, and the lines thickened. The flights of arrows coming from them diminished and then stopped, the lake shore was choked with bodies, but still they fought, tired and desperate, with no apparent thought of surrender.

They were doing exactly what they had been told to do – exact as high a price as they could from Narak’s army – and it was a price that he grudgingly paid. He saw his own men tire. Experience and training helped. Exhausted men drifted to the back of the lines while fresher troops pressed forwards, but there was not a man who had not spend an hour or more swinging a blade.

It was finished two hours before sunset. Those who still lived looked at each other and grinned, surprised at their good fortune. The last of the Seth Yarra threw down their arms and stood waiting for whatever sentence was to be passed on them. By their faces Narak could tell that they expected death.

Narak dipped his blades in the water of the lake and wiped them dry on the grass, slid them back into their sheaths. He looked across the field. It looked surprisingly peaceful in the yellowing sunlight. The lake was full of bodies, bobbing up and down on the chop like grisly wildfowl. The water was pink where it caught the light.

“A victory, Deus.”

It was Havil, and even Havil was a little subdued.

“You did well,” he said to the prince. “The Dragon Guard has distinguished itself once more.” He looked back towards the hills that hid their camp, and since Havil did not ride away he gave him more orders. “Bring me the numbers,” he said. “And the commanders – an hour if you can manage it.” He turned his back on the battle, on the bloody field, and walked away.

*              *              *              *

Narak did not bathe. He did nothing but strip off his armour, stack it in haphazard fashion outside his tent and collapse into a chair. It was true that he did not tire. He could have fought another seven hours, another seventeen, but he no longer saw any glory in it. No man could stand against him, and those few that had scored lucky hits had found his armour unnaturally strong, his flesh impervious to steel. He was tired in a different way.

He filled a cup with wine and drained it. He filled another.

He hated war. It did not matter that he was spectacularly good at it, that his cause was just, that he was needed. He’d had four hundred years to brood since the last time Seth Yarra had come, and he knew his own mind. Yet for all that he had no choice. If he did not stand before the enemy then another would take his place, and perhaps that other would be less skilled; perhaps they would lose where he might have won. He liked this land. He liked the people, the wine, the forests, even the cities. He did not want to see it all pass away and become whatever Seth Yarra deemed acceptable. He liked the fact that everything was different between Afael and Durandar, that nobody really understood the Green Isles.