She knew him better than he realised. Tarja had never fought in a battle on this scale; nobody had in living memory. He would far rather be in the thick of the fighting than standing back, issuing orders while his troops died at his command. Even harder, it was Jenga directing the battle. Tarja respected the Lord Defender, but he had grown used to being the one in command. In this battle he had his orders and no leave to do anything more.
With R’shiel’s warning ringing in his ears, Tarja walked out to his horse. He could feel the ground trembling faintly as the Kariens advanced. Calm settled over him like a warm cloak. It always did before a fight. Before the bloodlust stirred in him. He glanced over his shoulder and saw her watching him, her expression grim and her arms crossed, and wondered if he would ever see her again.
Inexplicably, the Kariens sent their infantry to lead the attack. Rank on rank of motley peasants marched across the border, armed with short swords and rough wooden shields, which were painted a riot of colours to declare the province of each man. They moved erratically, not disciplined enough to march in unison. Tarja grimaced as he watched them, wondering if they had been given even basic training. He glanced down the line at the wall of Defender infantry – men who held their shields steady with their pikes upright, like a forest of thin bare trees. The cavalry reserves waited behind, near two thousand men, ready to move forward at the first sign of a breach.
But it was the longbowmen who would fight this battle. Each one was surrounded by a wall of steel that would protect him until the last man had fallen. Buckets of arrows sat behind each man, and beside him, a young man, drawn from the ranks of the rebels, whose job it was to ensure the buckets never emptied.
Tarja could feel the tension building around him as the Kariens approached, but Jenga held off giving the order to attack. Markers had been set up on the killing field, and the Defenders waited, discipline overriding their apprehension as the attackers neared. The Lord Defender did not intend to waste a single arrow. Every man knew and understood that. The war cries of the Kariens reached them long before they passed the markers, and still they did not move.
Jenga waited until nearly half of the Kariens were past the markers before he finally gave the signal. The air hissed as five hundred bowmen let their arrows fly. The raw troops advancing on them were either too inexperienced or too blinded by the coercion laid on them by their priests to react. More than half of them made no attempt to raise their shields against the deadly rain. Another hiss and the sky blackened as the next volley was loosed. More Kariens fell. More arrows found their target. The archers kept loosing their arrows, almost at a leisurely pace. There was no need to aim. In the confined area of the killing field, every arrow hit something. Tarja wanted to scream at the hapless Karien horde to do something,
“Founders!” Nheal swore as he rode up beside Tarja. “Are they brave – or just plain stupid?”
“You heard what Brak said about them being coerced.”
“I’m almost at the point of believing him,” Nheal admitted with a frown. Like Jenga, he had trouble dealing with the concept of magic. “Jenga wants you to move your men to the eastern flank. He fears the Kariens will try to break through there.”
Tarja nodded and turned his attention back to the battlefield as the sound of drums reached them. The infantry were almost completely decimated, but on their heels Karien pikemen marched – five thousand or more men, pikes held before them, moving forward like an implacable spiny hedge. Tarja swore softly. These men were even less well armoured than the first wave had been. Where were the knights? And the Fardohnyans?
“This is going to be ugly,” Nheal remarked as he watched them.
“I can’t understand what they hope to achieve,” Tarja agreed. “We’ve not lost a man, yet still they come. This is insane. Who in the Founders’ name is in charge of the Kariens?”
“Whoever he is, he appears to be on our side.”
It was a poor joke, but Nheal was called away before Tarja could tell him so. He turned back to watching the Karien pikemen as they passed the markers and met the shower of death sent by his archers. They kept moving forward. Nothing could stop them, short of death.
He glanced up at the sky and realised with a start that the battle had been going on for less than an hour, if one could call it a battle. It was more like systematic extermination. He watched as wounded Kariens fell atop the dead and was sickened by the sight. No bloodlust surged through him to take the edge off his sensibilities. No battle frenzy stole away his conscience. As he turned his horse toward his troops to move them into position he was left with nothing but a hollow feeling of disgust.
And still they kept coming.
Tarja was waiting on the eastern flank with his cavalry when the Fardohnyans finally joined the battle. Although Damin had spoken of their prowess, he saw little sign of it as they charged forward, no more careful of the hail of arrows they rode into than the foot soldiers had been.
The sun had climbed high in the sky but shed little warmth over the battlefield. The Fardohnyans neared the treacherous, pot-holed field almost at the same time as the arrows hit them. Tarja had never seen their soldiers in battle and their speed and discipline impressed him, although their tactical stupidity left him speechless. There were half a thousand of them perhaps, keeping to a tight formation as they rode toward the killing ground. Tarja watched them advancing with a frown. They wore boiled leather breastplates and metal helms, but other than that, were unarmoured. Their raised swords caught the rising sun like flashes of starlight in the dim morning. Their captain rode in the van, although Tarja could make nothing of his features, except that he had fair hair and rode well enough to be a Hythrun. They thundered forward past the markers, but Tarja held off a moment longer, watching their advance closely. He did not wish to risk his own mounts on that dangerous terrain. The fair-haired Fardohnyan captain rode through the hail as if protected by an invisible shield, and his men, those that were still ahorse, followed him blindly. The air was filled with the sickening squeals of wounded horses and the cries of dying men. Damin’s Raiders were picking off their flanks with the same careless ease they demonstrated on the practice field shooting at melons.
“Enough of this! Charge!”
Tarja spurred Shadow forward at a gallop and cleared the trench with ease, coming up behind the Fardohnyans. His men followed and ploughed into their rear with swords flashing. The Fardohnyans realised too late that they were being taken from behind. With thrust and parry, Tarja sliced his way though the Fardohnyans, their glazed eyes registering little more that vague surprise as he cut them down.
It took only minutes to slash his way through to their captain. The man turned at Tarja’s cry, his expression confused. He looked as if he wasn’t certain how he came to find himself in the middle of this battle. But he was better trained than most, and instinct took over. He parried Tarja’s attack with unconscious ease, although he seemed not to have the wits about him to press home his advantage.
Tarja found himself fighting a real opponent for the first time since entering the fray. He countered the Fardohnyan’s strike and let the man counter-attack, turning the blow with a flick of his wrist so that his adversary was forced to over-correct to maintain his balance. Tarja rammed his blade into the man’s side, through the gap in his leather armour as soon as he saw the opening, jerking the sword free as the Fardohnyan cried out in agony.
The young captain let his sword slip from his hand, clutching his side, blood spilling over his fingers as he toppled from his saddle. Glancing around, Tarja was surprised to discover that most of the Fardohnyans were down. Then the sound of a horn reached him: three long, mournful notes calling the Karien retreat. They had given up, he realised, although the decision puzzled him. They had won nothing, lost thousands of men, and had not even tried to throw their knights into the battle.
“Sir!”
Tarja turned at the voice and discovered it was the Fardohnyan captain calling to him. He dismounted and knelt down beside the man. His wound was fatal, as Tarja knew it would be, but there was a light of intelligence in his eyes that had been missing before. Perhaps the shock of impending death had broken through whatever spell the priests had laid on him.
“Captain.”
“A... message,” he panted through the pain, speaking in heavily accented Medalonian. He was already pale from loss of blood. He would not last much longer. “To... my sister...”
“Of course,” Tarja agreed, although he had no way of knowing who this man was, let alone how to get a message to his sister in Fardohnya. But the man was dying. It would not hurt to let him die thinking his last words
