‘Nai, do they have mages?’
He nodded, his fingers closing around a silver charm hanging from his neck that shone brightly in the dull light. ‘Two, but neither surpass me, I’m certain. You’ve no need to worry about them.’
‘Will they discover our plan, though?’
Nai’s eyes flicked towards the Legion of the Damned, tramping in silence behind the left flank. ‘Only if they investigate closely, and there’s nothing to attract their attention. They’re not strong enough to bother wasting their energy.’
‘Good.’ The black birds swooped and danced over the ground between the armies and for a moment he imagined they were tracing letters in the sky: a distant, desperate attempt to restore the name that had been stolen from him.
‘Cavalry pushing ahead,’ the scryer reported, eyes her closed once more. ‘Four legions-worth on the slopes of the high ground, more getting into position behind.’
‘Sound the drums, close for charge,’ he ordered, and the deep, heavy boom of Menin wardrums rolled like thunder over the plain. The drums confirmed the orders every officer had been given. In normal circumstances they might be alarmed at being told to present a flank to cavalry, but they all knew the plan of attack.
Amber gestured for his guards to start towards the left, heading for the gap between the undead mercenaries and the rear of his infantry lines.
‘I need to be closer,’ he said aloud, though not even Nai had questioned his movement. ‘We cannot rely on the Legion alone.’
The sound of hooves grew louder, then there were shouts of panic from the flank they were heading for. The Menin cavalry were scouts and skirmishers, not troops of the line. Amber knew he could rely on them to follow their orders: to visibly and noisily panic when the enemy closed on them.
He’d wondered if Colonel Dassai would argue, but he had accepted his orders and Amber knew he’d follow them to the letter. Not even the famous fighting spirit of the Green Scarves would stop him letting Menin and undead mercenaries take the brunt of the enemy attack.
‘Dassai’s men are running from the field,’ Nai commented, ‘and the flank’s crumbling, just as you commanded. So this is what battle looks like, eh?’
Sergeant Menax hawked and spat noisily. ‘Battle’s worse,’ he said with contempt. ‘Whole fucking lot worse. This is just folks running away.’
‘But still, for my first battle — even knowing the plan, it’s a little alarming to watch our flank crumble like that.’
Menax grinned. ‘They raise conscripts to fight us and you’ll see what fucking crumbling looks like! I saw the Cheme Third face down fifteen thousand savages from the waste once. All fighters, true enough, but no order: field looked like a slaughterhouse once the Third had finished chopping their way across half a mile o’ ground.’
Amber loosened the ties on his scimitars. ‘Lost both my swords that day,’ he commented. ‘The earth was stained red by the end, blood soaked everything.’ He voice hardened. ‘But the Third’s gone now. I’m the last of them, because they never learned how to retreat.’
‘Buggered if you’re learnin’ today, sir,’ Menax said with feeling.
‘No, there’s no retreat for us,’ Amber agreed, his eyes on the stirring crowd of undead right in front of them. The Legion of the Damned had seen their enemy. ‘Nai, they ready?’
‘They know.’
‘Good. This is the first step home. Every one’s going to be stained with blood.’
A torrent of cavalry swept away from in front of the Legion — his Menin cavalry, eagerly following orders. Amber would have used this same tactic against the Farlan too, so proud were they of their elite — that battle would never be fought now, but before they reached the Waste and started the long, dangerous journey home, Amber was determined Menin prowess would be remembered across the West.
He drew his scimitars as the Legion of the Damned advanced into the attack. This close he could smell them. Nothing living smelled that way, mouldering and ancient. The thunder of hooves intensified Then it faltered, and Amber felt his hands tighten around the grips of his swords as the scream of horses rang out and rooks cawed derisively overhead.
Dust and movement obscured his view, but Amber knew the horses had caught the scent of the Legion and started panicking. He started to run forward, suddenly desperate to be in the midst of the fighting himself, and from the maelstrom emerged a rider in the blue and red of the Knights of the Temples, at full pelt. Amber stepped away from his men to meet him before any of them could stop him, but the rider was clinging frantically to his steed and barely aware of anything else. Amber swung a scimitar as the Devoted soldier passed, cleaving up into his ribs and tipping the man from his saddle.
Before Amber could finish the man off, one of the Legion had spotted the enemy on the ground. The injured soldier shrieked in terror at the sight of the undead mercenary, but his cries were short-lived. Wielding a spiked axe with little effort, the mercenary grabbed his prey with one emaciated hand and drove the spike into his gut.
Discarding the corpse, the mercenary took a step towards Amber, a look of dark malevolence on its desiccated face. It wore a skullcap helm, one large steel pauldron on its left shoulder and a leather cuirass that sat at an uncomfortable angle on its hips. The big Menin faced it down, scimitars at the ready, but in the next moment the mercenary refocused its attention and it stalked jerkily back to the fighting.
Amber looked back at Nai. The King’s Man was far smaller than the Menin around him, but a black flame flickered lazily on the edge of his mace. For all his apprehension, Nai’s magery made him more deadly than the rest.
Amber led the way. They ploughed into the flank of the cavalry, where one regiment had broken off to protect their rear. A javelin glanced off his helm and fell between him and Nai, but the Menin didn’t even flinch as he slashed up at his attacker’s legs. The Devoted soldier caught the blow on his red-painted shield, but before the man had a chance to draw his own sword he was thrown unceremoniously to the ground. As Amber watched, a dark figure dropped down onto the soldier and pinned him down with one knee on his chest as it pounded at his head.
Amber looked around; he could sense the tide of movement falling away from the assault. At the back the Devoted were still pressing forward, unaware of what awaited them, but the Damned were surging through the kicking mess of cavalry with unnatural purpose, chopping through limbs and dragging men from their horses. Someone shrieked for the retreat, rendered incoherent by terror and drowned out by the clamour and screaming, before he too was savagely cut down.
The undead were killing whatever they could; even the horses were not immune, and Amber was powerless to stop them. He saw one axe-wielding warrior near-decapitate three in as many swift strokes. Distantly he heard more hooves, and he realised the slaughter would not end there: either Colonel Dassai was coming to cut off the Devoted’s retreat, or the Devoted reinforcements were arriving — only to find themselves collapsing into confusion when their horses shied away from the unnatural assault.
However, the Damned were not immune from harm. Amber watched one Devoted soldier stab his spear into the face of a mercenary, the weight of the blow snapping its withered neck. The mercenary dropped like a stone — but the victory was short-lived as another came from behind a horse to open the soldier’s ribs and behead him in the blink of an eye.
Amber let his scimitars sink to the ground. The cavalry were in total disarray. Some would probably escape, but the Damned were swarming through them so quickly that many could not even see the danger as they died.
‘Sound the drums,’ he croaked, ‘ready the charge.’
Somewhere nearby the alarm was being sounded. General Afasin wanted to turn and curse at whoever it was — their efforts were only increasing panic in the camp — but he found himself transfixed by the sight before him. The bulk of his army, more than twenty thousand men, were spread out across the floodplain — and they were crumbling. The battle had been raging for an hour, and the infantry were now heavily engaged, but barely any of his cavalry were still fighting — somehow their first assault had been routed entirely, even the reserve driven back.
‘Captain Kosotern,’ he said quietly, ‘where is that mage?’
The captain appeared, dragging a bearded figure after him.
‘Mage Bissen, sir.’
