Regiment, with the major in command accompanied by Shaelyt, Lhandor, and Khalis.
Quaeryt would have liked to have had imagers with each attack formation, but he didn’t have enough for that, and he was asking a great deal of them. At the same time, they needed to see what it was like when their lives and those of others depended on themselves, and not on Quaeryt. Some of them, he suspected, hadn’t even realized how much he had shielded them.
Even when the Telaryn formations had reached a point two hundred yards from the walls, the defenders had made no moves and launched neither arrows nor Antiagon Fire.
Then … dark shafts rose from behind the walls and angled down toward the attackers. There weren’t that many shafts targeted at each regiment and battalion, one of the reasons why Skarpa and Quaeryt had decided on the spread approach that they had adopted.
Quaeryt only had to raise and expand his shields for an instant so that the shafts dropped into the grass and road ahead of Fifth Battalion. From what he could tell, the other imagers had shielded most of the troops, with Lhandor, Khalis, and Shaelyt providing some coverage for Fifth Regiment as well as for the battalion they accompanied.
As the arrows were shunted away, a horn signal sounded from Third Regiment, and all the riders urged their mounts forward at a quick trot-because Skarpa had determined that the archers were behind the walls and not firing from the scattered slits and embrasures. That meant that the closer the attacking troopers were to the walls, the harder it would be for the archers to target the Telaryn forces, all the better for the attacker since the imagers couldn’t provide shielding and do what else they needed to accomplish next.
Because Quaeryt had studied the gates, he
As he rode forward on the ancient road, Quaeryt contracted his shields, to cover just the front of the column, then concentrated on removing a line of wood and metal from the outer edge of the gates. A flash of fire-pain lanced through his eyes, then dissipated so quickly that his eyes watered but for a moment. When he blinked again, he saw that the gates had dropped perhaps a third of a yard. There was the thinnest sliver of light on the left side, between what remained of the edge of the gate and the recessed stone that had held the ironbound wood in place. He concentrated once more, this time across the bottom, trying to angle what he imaged away.
The fire-pain lasted longer, and for another moment or two he could not see, but he did hear a muffled crash, and when his eyes cleared, the gates lay almost flat on the gray stone. As Skarpa’s scouts had reported, though, behind the gate was an iron portcullis, already lowered into place.
Quaeryt grabbed for his water bottle, then took a long swallow of the lager before recorking the bottle and slipping it back into the leather holder. Another attempt at image-cutting the iron of the portcullis followed, based on what he’d studied of such construction.
The third flash of fire-pain was no greater than the second, suggesting that the gates themselves had contained far more iron that he’d thought, and the portcullis crashed forward.
Quaeryt’s eyes flicked from the seemingly open southeast gate toward Eleventh Regiment and then toward the walls before them, drawn by a flash of light.
A narrow stone ramp, barely wide enough for two mounts stirrup-to-stirrup, stretched some fifteen yards from the ground to the top of the wall, and the troopers of Eleventh Regiment were riding straight toward it. Quaeryt could only hope that Voltyr and Smaethyl had been as successful at creating a ramp on the far side.
An even brighter flash of light flared from the south, but Quaeryt could only see the base of the ramp imaged by Threkhyl and Horan, and it appeared far wider and lower than the one imaged by Voltyr and Smaethyl. Quaeryt could not see anything near the southwest gate, and could only hope that the Pharsi imagers were able to create another entry to Nordeau. What he also did not see were defenders near the fallen gate or on or near the ramp up to the walls that was closest to Fifth Battalion.
One or even two ramps wouldn’t be enough to force an entry, especially once the defenders regrouped. Quaeryt looked at the fallen gate and took a deep breath.
“Fifth Battalion! On me! To the gate!”
As he neared the gate, and could feel the dull impact of arrow shafts on his shields coming through the opening where the gate had been, the thought crossed his mind, not that he could remember where he had heard the words, that even the best battle plan didn’t survive after the first moments. Abruptly the impacts of the arrow shafts stopped just before the mare’s hooves clattered on the wood and metal of the fallen gate.
Because Quaeryt had to slow the mare slightly in order to allow her to pick her way over the flat iron of the fallen portcullis, at any moment he expected either Antiagon Fire or burning or boiling oil. There was neither, but once he passed through the gate towers, the morning warmth of harvest was replaced with the chill of winter, and his breath and that of the mare steamed in the frigid air.
Quaeryt glanced around, seeing frost-shrouded figures sprawled everywhere within some fifty yards of the gates. His eyes went to his left, down the wide paved courtyard or street behind the foot of the walls to the south, where he saw horsemen pouring off a ramp.
“There!”
At that command from somewhere ahead, Quaeryt’s eyes flicked back forward along the street that connected to the gate, but which curved gradually past stone buildings until it headed northward to the bridge.
Archers scattered and ran down a side street as a company of pikemen marched toward Fifth Battalion, pikes angled toward first company. Quaeryt calculated. There might be seven or eight abreast. “First company! On me! Charge!”
Even as he issued the command, the pikemen stopped, and the first rank knelt, likely bracing their pikes against joins in the stone paving of the street.
Quaeryt extended his shields to a point, almost like the prow of a vessel where the stem rose just above the water, then linked them to the mounts that followed him. Even so, the impact when his extended shields struck the pikes jolted through him, pummeling him on his chest, forearms, and thighs. Pikes and pikemen and their armor clattered as they were hurled against the stone walls of the dwellings lining the narrow street. Beyond the pikemen, the company of lightly armored foot scattered, fleeing into alleyways and side streets. Quaeryt kept the mare and the company moving, following the street as it turned toward the bridge, joining another stone-paved street that most likely curved northward from the southwestern gate.
Quaeryt glanced back down the other street, but could make out neither Bovarian nor Telaryn troopers for the hundred yards he could take in before he turned his eyes forward toward the bridge. A few people actually stood on the narrow raised sidewalks, staring at the oncoming troopers, before fleeing into shops and dwellings, or other buildings.
From somewhere to the north came the clangor of bells and then a mournful sounding series of horn blasts. Ahead of him, a line of armored footmen sprinted up the gently angled stone approach to the bridge itself.
Where the approach to the bridge ended, so did the stone railings, replaced by comparatively narrow wooden handrails. Quaeryt blinked-the trailing armored footmen were jumping, as if over something, and the handrails were moving and flattening, leaving a gap between the stone walls and those very same rails.
Quaeryt reined up, barely coming to a halt before reaching the open space. A handful of armored footmen jumped, missing the retracting bridge and tumbling into the river below. The timbered section of the bridge continued to recede toward the small fortified garrison whose walls seemingly rose from the River Aluse itself. Given the efforts he’d already made, Quaeryt wasn’t about to try to image the bridge into place or create another span. He was surprised to see that the handrails on each side of the timbered section had dropped so that they lay flat against the roadbed, as if each railing support had been mounted on something like an axle.
Quaeryt slowly turned the mare and looked down the bridge approach into the southern part of Nordeau. While first company held the top of the approach, the remaining three companies were involved in dealing with the surviving Bovarian footmen and pikemen. Given the narrowness of the streets, there was little first company could do without getting in the way of the rest of Fifth Battalion.
Quaeryt’s eyes were watering, his head aching, and he didn’t want to do any more imaging unless it was absolutely necessary. He looked to Baelthm. “Are you all right?”
The older undercaptain looked back at Quaeryt. “Better question might be, sir, whether you are.”
