The Spirit Stone (51 page)

‘They’ve learned somewhat, lad,’ Tieryn Cadryc told Gerran. ‘The dragons won’t be a cursed lot of help this time around.’

‘Good,’ Gerran said. ‘We can fight mounted.’

‘True spoken, and the princes have come up with a cursed clever idea.’ Cadryc’s mood brightened. ‘We’re going to cross the bridge and wait for them on the far side. This time, we’re chasing them back to Zakh Gral.’

‘What about the camp, your grace?’

‘We’ll be leaving a good many men behind to guard it. The dragon’s certain we outnumber the army coming to meet us.’

After Cadryc relayed the commanders’ orders, Gerran rounded up the Red Wolf warband and repeated them in as much detail as he could supply. In the midst of a swirling confusion of men and horses, Clae led over Gerran’s battle-trained chestnut gelding, saddled and ready. Gerran mounted, reaching down to take the falcon shield from his page.

‘My lord?’ Clae said. ‘When do you think I’ll be ready to ride to battle?’

‘Not for some years yet, lad,’ Gerran said, smiling. ‘And be glad of it. You stay back at the camp. Mount up and be ready to retreat if things go against us on the field. That’s an order, by the by.’

‘Well and good then, my lord.’ Clae pulled a long face. ‘I’ll do what you say, of course.’

‘Good.’

Gerran settled the shield on his left arm, then drew his sword to lead the Red Wolf warband out with a flourish. They clattered across the bridge, where Tieryn Cadryc waited on horseback in a little cluster of his noble-born vassals and allies.

‘Well and good then, lads!’ Cadryc called out. ‘Remember your orders! Fight hard for Deverry and the high king!’

The warband cheered him.

Once the rest of the army had assembled, it set out down the cliff-top road. The terrain here stretched reasonably level from the cliff edge to their left all the way through the husks and bones of a slain forest to their right—stretching close to a mile in all, Gerran estimated, back to a rise of hills. He no longer worried about fire. If the Horsekin set the rubble alight this close to Zakh Gral, they would pay more heavily than their enemies. The debris did provide another obstacle; poor footing at the best and downright dangerous traps for a horse’s hooves at worst should the battle spread into it. The archers, however, found it a blessing.

When the army reached a slight rise in the road, the commanders called a halt. The archers, unmounted, spread out into the debris fields. The Red Wolf and its allies took their position near them on the right flank. Gerran had noticed that each archer carried a small hatchet at his belt. He’d assumed that it was a weapon, a last defence in case of a defeat, but in fact, the archers used the blades to shape stakes from dead branches. They then flipped the hatchet over and pounded each stake into the ground in front of them. Behind this waist-high palisade, they arranged themselves three men deep in a curving formation like an arm reaching towards the enemy.

At the centre of the Deverry line a silver horn sounded. Gerran rose in his stirrups and looked south along the road. A column of dust rose in the air and moved steadily forward. He sat back down in the saddle, then drew one of his three javelins from the sheath under his right leg. He heard the rattle of metal as the rest of the warband followed his lead. The dust cloud came closer and resolved itself into a column of spearmen, marching in tight formation some ten men abreast. Gerran could just make out the sound of brass horns, squalling orders.
They’ve spotted us,
he thought.

The column halted some hundreds of yards away, just out of bow range. Units from the Gel da’ Thae rear ranks pivoted and swung to the flank, crunching into the debris field and wheeling around with a precision the more impressive for the uneven footing. Unit after unit fell into place until the line stretched from the road deep into the flat ground to the west. The spearmen stood some five ranks deep, raising their spears to form a hedge of metal points at an angle ready for a charge. With the Westfolk archers threatening on the flank, however, they held their position, just as the princes had expected they would.

For a brief while the stalemate held, giving Gerran time to look beyond the front ranks of well-armed and well-drilled Gel da’ Thae troops. Behind them stood more spearmen, mostly human, and a pack of Horsekin armed with swords. Some of their shields were round, some oval, some almost square, a variety that made the Gel da’ Thae style of shield wall impossible. These men, a good half of the army, stood in loose ranks, three or four men to a file. Gerran saw only leather armour, gleaming here and there with bronze strips and studs. Dotted among them were men in red surcoats carrying long whips—the Keepers of Discipline, the Westfolk had called them, the most important targets on the field.

On the Deverry side of the line, horses stamped and shook their heads. Men shifted in the saddle, muttering now and then. The Gel da’ Thae spearmen held their position with scarcely a quiver or curse, but Gerran could see the Horsekin at the rear of the enemy formation growing restless, impatient even, as they moved back and forth. Some took a few steps forward only to jump back as the Keepers cracked their whips.

Prince Voran’s silver horn rang out for the first feint. Screaming warcries, the front rank of horsemen spurred their mounts forward. They thundered down the rise towards the Gel da’ Thae, who set their spears to greet them. As he galloped towards the glittering spear heads, Gerran saw just how right the commanders had been—they would never have broken through the Gel da’ Thae lines. He yelled once and threw his javelin as hard as he could, aiming over the regular ranks into the mob behind. The other riders threw theirs as well, then followed Gerran’s lead as, some twenty yards from the Gel da’ Thae line, he wheeled his horse around and rode back. They passed through the Deverry lines and took up a position at the rear of their fellows. The next rank of riders moved forward—and waited again, letting the Horsekin wait as well.

Twice more the Deverry and Westfolk riders made their feints, swinging close to the Gel da’ Thae line, but hurling javelins into the Horsekin at the rear. After the third feint, which brought Gerran and his men back to the front rank of the riders, Gerran saw the Horsekin surging forward into the rear rank of the Gel da’ Thae, only to be beaten back with whips and curses by the Keepers of Discipline. The Deverry horns rang out again. Gerran joined the rest of the front rank as they galloped forward and threw their second javelins. He caught a glimpse of one of the Keepers staggering with a javelin in his chest.

Behind him he heard yells and screams of rage following the fleeing riders. He spurred his horse on to rejoin the army, then turned and saw chaos breaking out in the enemy formation. The Horsekin had lost what discipline they had and were charging forward, disrupting the rear ranks of spearmen, pushing them into their fellows. The Gel da’ Thae had no choice but to charge in order to stay clear of the mob behind them. Spears at the ready, they came running up the road into the range of the archers.

With a hiss and whistle the first flight of Westfolk arrows arced up and plunged down. The Gel da’ Thae spearmen flung up their shields to protect themselves just as the second flight arrived, this lot aimed low to strike the men under their roof of leather and wood. The spearmen in the front rank began to crumple and die, disrupting their formation even more as the arrows flew again and again. Horsekin and Gel da’ Thae both milled in the road, trying to get free of each other and charge the enemy.

Brass horns blared like frantic screams. All up and down the lines the Keepers, so obvious in their red surcoats, fell pierced as the archers picked them out. The men they could no longer control trampled them as the spearmen surged forward. Without them the Horsekin turned into an angry mob. The Gel da’ Thae fell back and let their allies rush forward to meet the flights of arrows.

More Deverry horns, and the signal Gerran had been waiting for. He drew his sword, saw his men do the same, and paused until Calonderiel blew the final signal on an elven horn. The archers stopped loosing arrows, and like arrows themselves the riders charged. A Horsekin swordsman stood in Gerran’s path. As his mount swerved to the Horsekin’s left, Gerran leaned low over the horse’s neck and swung his broadsword like a sabre. He caught the man hard across the neck, saw him go down, and swung his weight in the saddle to his left to catch a spear thrust on his shield. His horse followed the shift and turned, allowing him to attack the wielder of that spear from the side. He made a hard swing at the spear itself and snapped it in half. Its owner dropped the pieces and ran.

Gerran pulled up at the side of the road to let his horse rest. Among the dead and dying men, Gel da’ Thae shields littered the road, only to be smashed under the hooves of the pursuing riders. Yelling and swinging, Deverry and Westfolk riders streamed past, cutting down Horsekin and Gel da’ Thae both. The enemy were running full-tilt, gasping for breath in the hot sun, as the horsemen caught up with them. The riders swung and struck; blades flashed up bloody, then swept down again. The unequal slaughter turned Gerran’s stomach, until he remembered the dead farmers of Neb’s village, laid out in a line for the ravens. He spurred his horse forward and joined the rout.

Still, the horses could only run so far, and the mob of riders began to spread out into a line, dangerously thin along the road. Here and there clusters of spearmen turned and gathered, back to back, to make a desperate stand. Silver horns shrieked, calling the Deverry and Westfolk men back to gather around their commanders. The remaining spearmen headed south again, running, walking, staggering towards the temporary safety of their stronghold. Gerran rode back to the army, spotted Calonderiel, and trotted his horse up to the banadar’s mount.

‘Can you see the fortress?’ Calonderiel pointed south with a blood-streaked sword. ‘Right down there.’

‘I don’t have Westfolk eyes,’ Gerran said.

‘Of course, my apologies.’ He paused to catch his breath. ‘The dragons are lurking down there somewhere. If the Horsekin cavalry rides out, they’ll send them back in again.’

‘Good. What do we do now?’

‘Move the camp down. It’s time to invest Zakh Gral.’

The archers changed their weapons to the curved hunting bows they could use from the saddle, then mounted up. Something occurred to Gerran as he watched them.

‘The cursed Horsekin have got to have some kind of bow,’ Gerran said. ‘Why aren’t they using them?’

‘Good question,’ Calonderiel said. ‘My guess would be that they don’t have a lot of arrows. You can always cut more shafts, but if you lose a fight, your points belong to the enemy. I’m willing to wager high that the Horsekin are hoarding theirs.’

Once the army had formed itself up into a decent marching order, it set out south along the river road. They passed the corpses of men who’d died in the retreat and saw wounded men who’d managed to crawl to one side to wait for death or capture.No one challenged them until they reached Zakh Gral. Even then, the challenges came from the top of the walls. The great iron-bound gates, wide enough for four horsemen to ride out abreast, stood shut against them.

Zakh Gral spread along the cliff edge, just as Salamander had described, but an outer stone wall, no more than five feet high, now circled the inner, wooden walls, made of whole tree trunks bound together and standing about twenty feet high. Next to the main gate stood another door, a mere sliver of a door compared to the massive construction next to it, though the builders had armoured it with metal strips to fend off an attacker’s axemen. In an attack the defenders would doubtless block it with stone. Above the walls, Gerran saw three towers looming, one of wood, two faced in stone.

‘We got here just in time,’ Calonderiel said. ‘Another eightnight, and those stone walls would have been finished.’

The wooden walls must have been fitted with inner catwalks, because Horsekin warriors stood along them at intervals. Gerran could just make out their heads and helmets over the barricade. Now and again he saw something that looked like the tip of a longbow as well. He pointed them out to Calonderiel.

‘That’s what they are, sure enough,’ the banadar said. ‘Well, we’re going to find out how good they are. And soon.’

Just before sunset the baggage train, the servants, the wounded, and the chirurgeons caught up with the army, but they set up the encampment a safe distance from the fortress walls. While mounted riders guarded against a Gel da’ Thae sally, in the last of the light exhausted men dug ditches and arranged wagons to protect the camp and the supplies. The sky hung so clear and warm above them that no one bothered to set up tents except for those that would shelter the worst wounded.

Salamander helped carry Tieryn Gwivyr into one of the elven round tents. Dallandra’s assistants had bound the tieryn, lying on his stomach, to a platform made of two planks tied together with rope, then turned his head to the side so he could breathe. Gwivyr lay as limply a set of empty clothes, and he stank of blood and urine both. The spear thrust had broken his spine just above his kidneys, Dallandra remarked.

‘He can’t control his water,’ she said, ‘or anything else, either. If he lives, he’ll never walk again.’

One of Gwivyr’s eyes opened to reveal a bloodshot white around a clouded blue; then the lid drooped shut again. Had he heard? Salamander hoped not.

That night sentries ringed the fortress on both sides of its walls. The men slept with weapons and armour close at hand, but no sally came.

The morning brought with it mounted patrols, trotting back and forth in front of Zakh Gral. The rest of the men began to set up tents and dig more ditches at a further distance back from the fortress. Salamander crouched behind the chirurgeons’ tents and hoped no one noticed that he was scrying. He could see inside the fort easily enough, at least when it came to the places that had existed during his brief visit there. Everywhere armed men stood in groups or paced back and forth, talking together or merely staring at the walls around them as if wondering how long they’d hold.