his archers positioned. They seemed to be in some confusion. Trolls had emerged from several still-undiscovered exits and were busy parting the lightly-armoured bowmen from their heads again.
I ducked down. I’d had my head up for two heartbeats. It took an arrow three beats to fly from the ridge to the keep. And sure enough, several shafts hissed overhead. They all missed Rodrick, who hadn’t had the wit to get behind cover. I knocked him flat. “Stay there.”
I took the Builders’ view-ring from inside my breastplate and held it to one eye. Making the image zoom in to one area still made me feel as if I were falling, plunging from unimaginable heights. I knew it must be a matter of moving lenses, as Lundist had shown me in my father’s observatory, but it felt as if I rode the back of an angel falling from heaven.
“Jorg! Jorg!” Makin’s voice from down below. He sounded worried.
“We’re up here,” I called.
A moment later Makin’s head poked into view. At least I assumed it was him in the helmet.
“You didn’t burn up then,” I said.
“Damn near! I couldn’t find Kent. I think he’s gone.”
“Watch this.” I waved him over to my side. “It should be good. But don’t stick your head up too high.”
I took Makin’s shield from him and held it over my head for extra cover. We peered over the battlements. The battlefield had fallen almost silent after the explosion, still with the screaming of course, but without the crash of weapons, the war-cries, the twangs and thuds of siege machinery. The drums were voiceless too-Uncle’s six great battle-drums, brass and ebony, wider than barrels, ox-skinned, now burned-out and smouldering among the corpses in the yard. Beneath it all though I could hear a new drumming, a faint thunder. Makin cocked his head. He could hear it too. It sounded almost like another avalanche.
“That’s cavalry! Arrow’s brung up his cavalry, Jorg.” Makin started to crawl for the wall overlooking the Haunt’s ruined front.
I pulled him back. “There’s only one place for miles a horse can charge, Sir Makin.”
And they came, in a rushing stream of blue and violet cloaks, silver mail, thundering past Marten’s hidden troops, the foremost with their lances lowered for the kill.
“What?” Makin almost stood up.
“I once told Sim about Hannibal taking elephants across the Aups. Well, my uncle has brought heavy horses across the Matteracks in the jaws of winter.”
“How?”
I made quick circles with my hand, as if trying to spin the cogs of Makin’s mind a little faster.
“The Blue Moon Pass!” Makin grinned, showing more teeth than a man should have.
“Even so,” I said. “I emptied it out for him. And Lord Jost must have signalled that the marriage was sealed…and here they are.”
The cavalry of the House Morrow sliced through the ranks of foot-soldiers sent up to hunt out Gorgoth’s trolls. It helped that most of Arrow’s troops had their backs to the Runyard, since they’d found rather more trolls than they had wanted to. In fact the trolls were making an impressive hole in Arrow’s ranks all by themselves. They moved like wild dogs on the attack, hurling themselves into knots of men and leaving scattered limbs in their wake. Whoever bred them for war had surpassed themselves.
Riding onto the archers’ ridge required that the cavalry slow, but they could traverse the whole length five and eight abreast at the canter, killing as they went. The archers were no match for armoured knights. Most broke and ran, tumbling back down the mountainside.
There were perhaps five hundred of my grandfather’s cavalry. Gorgoth withdrew his trolls as agreed and left the men to fight each other. I couldn’t tell what losses the trolls had suffered but they were not insignificant and I knew that Gorgoth would not permit them to rejoin the battle. He had wanted a homeland for his new-found subjects and they had paid the price I asked of them.
“Incredible!” Makin shouted. He kept shaking his head.
“It’s not enough,” I said.
The charge left bloody slaughter trampled into the grit, hundreds upon hundreds died before the momentum broke. And even without the cohesion of the charge, the knights wrought havoc, striking down with axe and sword at the heads of running bowmen. But you can’t run five hundred men into four thousand and not expect to pay. The knights were wheeling now, finding their way down the back slope of the ridge and turning toward the Runyard again. Perhaps half of them survived.
“They were magnificent!” Makin surged to his feet. “Weren’t you looking?”
“They were magnificent. And when they join us, we will have a little over seven hundred men in this broken castle. Depending on how many of the troops routed in that charge can be rallied and reformed, the Prince of Arrow will have somewhere between five and seven thousand men.”
I went to look out over the Prince’s main army. On the battlefield losses of the sort I’d inflicted would have set any army running long ago. But I’d been cutting away whole chunks of Arrow’s force, one at a time, separating them, drawing them away, destroying them. I had whittled at his numbers, carved them to the bone, but I hadn’t thinned his ranks in the way that erodes an army’s morale. Not until Miana’s explosion had the main bulk of Arrow’s troops even felt the battle.
Now the explosion; that could have set them running, but it didn’t, and that just told me the Prince’s men were every bit as loyal and well trained as reported.
A glance toward the Runyard told me the Horse Coast knights were beginning to enter the sally port. A small number of men remained to lead the horses back up into the mountain passes. Marten and his troops would bring up the rear.
“Let’s go meet them,” I said. “By the way, this is Guardsman Rodrick. Guardsman Rodrick, Lord Makin of Ken.”
“Lord now is it?” Makin grinned. “And what would I be wanting with the Ken Marshes, not that they’re yours to give?”
I led the way down. “Well, if we don’t win, it won’t matter that your elevation is a hollow gesture. And if we do win-well the Prince of Arrow has taken a lot of land recently so I’ll have plenty to hand out.”
“And I get the squishy bit?” Makin said behind me.
“Come meet my uncle,” I said. “He’s got lots of good recipes for frog.”
I looked into my chamber as we passed. Miana sat on my bed, rubbing her head slowly with both hands as if she were afraid it might fall off.
“Lord Robert has arrived,” I said. “Stay here. Guardsman Rodrick will protect you. He’s one of my best.” I turned to the guard. “Keep her here, Rodrick. Unless she comes up with a plan to destroy the remainder of the enemy. In which case you’re to let her do it.”
Makin and I carried on down. I caught hold of one of my knights, nursing a wounded shoulder and burned whiskers. “You! Hekom is it? Go to the cellar beneath the armoury. The one with the fecking big barrels. You’ll find our southern allies coming out of one of them. Send Lord Robert, and any captains he wants to bring, up to the throne-room.”
Hekom-if it was Hekom-looked confused, but nodded and absented himself, so we headed for the throne- room. I caught hold of another man as we pushed past the wounded in the corridors. “Have my armour brought up to the throne-room. The good stuff. Quick about it.”
Uncle Robert arrived with two of his captains as three pageboys set about strapping me into my armour. Several of my own captains preceded him, Watch-master Hobbs among them.
“There are rather more of the enemy than I was led to believe, Nephew!” Uncle Robert didn’t wait on formality. In fact he only just waited to get through the doors.
“There are many thousands fewer than there were this morning,” I said.
“And your castle appears to be broken,” Uncle Robert said.
“You can blame your god-daughter for that. But it was a dowry well spent,” I said.
“Good Lord!” Robert took off his helm. “The ruby did that?” He shook his head. “They told us to be careful with it. I didn’t realize the danger though!”
“Rubies are hard to break,” I said. “It’s not the sort of thing that you’re likely to do by accident.”
He pursed his lips at that. “So, Nephew, I’ve come for you. Where do we stand?”
I still liked him. It had been four years since I saw him last but it felt like little more than a lull in the
