And it was about damned time, too.
Yet Beneth was dying. He’d directly resisted the Lady for decades. She had no idea how he’d done it. Sister Nebras was a witch, a manipulator of chthonic spirits and the lingering wells of power at ancient shrines, cairns and ritual sites. And she had no illusions regarding her strength. In her youth she’d travelled abroad, sensed the aura of true magi — in Malaz she knew she’d be regarded as no more than a hedge-witch. Yet Beneth delved into none of these sources. He merely set his will against the Lady, whom Sister Nebras regarded not as the goddess she claimed to be, but rather as a sort of force of nature, if not a natural one. How did he do it? His very success unfortunately undermined her own personal thesis that one need not resort to the divine to explain any of this. She knitted with greater fury, the wooden needles a blur.
It was most irksome.
A presence nearby, and she tilted her head to peer aside through her thick pewter-grey hair. ‘I see you there, Totsin. No sneaking up on ol’ Nebras.’
Totsin bowed, a hand at his ragged beard. ‘Sister Nebras.’ He stepped up out of the woods.
‘What are you doing here? The Lady’s gaze is near.’
Totsin nodded gravely. ‘Yes. That’s why I’ve come.’ He sighed, rueful. ‘I’ve come to lend a hand.’
‘Ha! There’s a turn to startle everyone! Well, though damned late, you’re welcome. I would be lying if I said I did not need the help. The burden is-’
Sister Nebras froze, needles poised. Glaring off to the woods she leapt to her feet. ‘By all the- She’s here! She slipped in behind you!’
Totsin spun, mouth open. ‘I sensed nothing…’
‘Idiot! Well, too late now.’ She dropped her knitting to raise her hands. ‘Ready yourself — we must fight.’
‘Yes, Sister Nebras. We must fight,’ he answered, his voice pained.
She glanced aside, unsure at his tone. ‘What…?’
Totsin unleashed a blast of force that threw Sister Nebras from her feet to fly crashing into a thick birch trunk that quivered from the blow. She fell in a heap, back broken, staring up at the sky. He stood over her, peering down.
‘Any last insults?’ he asked.
‘You will die…’ she breathed.
He shrugged. ‘Undoubtedly — but long after you.’
She mouthed: ‘… why…?’
A shining light was approaching, casting stark shadows of light and dark among the trees. Totsin bowed to the source somewhere out of her vision then returned to her. ‘Why, you ask? Surely that ought to be clear. You and the others pay me no deference. You mock me. Defy my wishes. I have seniority. I am a founding member. I am in charge! I will recruit a new Synod. One where it will be absolutely clear that I am the ranking member and no one will dare challenge me!’
‘Totsin…’
‘Yes?’
‘You couldn’t be in charge of a privy.’ And Sister Nebras laughed, coughing, to heave up a mouthful of blood that drenched her chin and shirt-front.
Totsin frowned his disgust and turned away. He bowed down on one knee before a floating brightness that held the wavering outline of a robed woman.
‘Well done, Totsin Jurth the Third,’ came a woman’s soft voice, filling the clearing. ‘The Synod is yours to mould as you wish. For is that not your right? Your obligation? As founding member and most senior practitioner?’
‘I am yours, Most Blessed Lady.’
‘And now I must go,’ said the vision, regret tingeing its voice. ‘I am so very late for a much overdue visit. Until later, most loyal servant.’
Totsin bowed his head to the ground. When he raised it she was gone and the clearing was dark once more. He straightened his vest, brushed his sleeves, then walked off into the woods already thinking ahead, wondering which minor — very minor — talents he might approach once all this unpleasantness was behind him.
*
Ivanr held the broken haft of his pike in one hand while waving back the line. ‘One step back!’ Twice already he’d nearly tripped over the fallen — theirs and the enemy’s. He also limped where a wounded Imperial had stabbed him in the foot. That was the problem with twelve-foot pikes… useless for infighting. Panting, he regripped the broken haft, squinted into the thinning mist. Was it another rush? Disembodied horns sounded a recall across the slope. Somewhere to the east a cohort had shattered and the Imperials had descended like kites on meat to run down the fleeing refugees. Now the cavalry were reforming higher on the hillside, readying for another rush and choosing their targets at will. Damn Martal! Had she placed all the skirmishers with the train? Where were they? He was of half a mind to find her. But of course he wouldn’t: not because of the likelihood of being trampled, but because of what the men and women would think seeing him run off.
A great mass of lancers, the largest remaining body of them, came thundering down to the west, thinning across their front as they went. Ivanr watched them pass — damn them! Bored with taking runs at us they’re off for the train!
Troops of about fifty lancers coursed among the cohorts to keep them pinned. They swung about, charging, but mostly sawing off at the last instant to avoid the pikes. At least they too had no archers, Ivanr thought ruefully. The men and women of the cohort peered about, blinking. ‘Keep formation!’ Ivanr bellowed. ‘They’ll be back!’
He swallowed, parched, glancing down to the south, waiting for the telltale plume of smoke, the screams, the refugees fleeing the wreckage of the train.
But nothing appeared. Silence. Occasionally the smaller troops thundered past, threatening them, but by now the cohorts mostly ignored them — they hadn’t the mass to press any attack. Then, from the west, one by one, and in larger squads, bowmen and women appeared — theirs. They halted to pull back their child-like short-bows to loose in unison then retreated back to the distant woods.
The lancers curved in upon them, charging across the field, only to suddenly rein up as a great dark cloud came arcing overhead, descending in a hissing swath, smacking into chests, limbs, shoulders. Horses screamed, rearing. Men fell unhorsed or dead already. The nearest cohort roared and charged. Pikes took mounts and men in ghastly impaling slashing wounds to heave them over. Ivanr felt his own cohort quivering to join the melee and he raised an arm: ‘Steady! Keep formation!’
To the west a deep roar sounded from the misted lowlands and out charged muddy waves of archers numbering in the thousands. Ivanr felt the knotted tension of battle uncoil in his stomach. He straightened, resting his weight on the shattered pike haft, letting out a long low breath.
‘At ease!’ came Lieutenant Carr’s command from the rear. The waves of archers overran them, searching for more cavalry. Men and women among the cohort cheered them as they dashed past, some grinning. Ivanr noted muddy Imperial cavalry helmets bouncing from the belts of some of those who ran by. He turned to congratulate the men and women around him, squeezing shoulders and murmuring a few compliments. Then he limped off to find Carr.
The lieutenant was still at the rear, and he saluted. Responding, Ivanr saw a sabre cut across the man’s shoulder. He knew the rear had been charged a number of times; he’d felt it in the animal-like flinching of the cohort as the impact reverberated through the tightly packed ranks. It seemed the lieutenant had been fighting outside the lines the entire time. ‘Permission to leave formation.’
Grinning, Carr nodded, wiped his face. ‘Of course. And thank you. You steadied the front enormously… no one wanted to be seen giving way.’
Ivanr waved that aside. ‘Congratulations, Lieutenant. Well done.’
He limped off across the churned slope, heading west. His bodyguard, the remaining two men and two women, followed closely.
As he walked the gentle slope the dark bodies of fallen horses and riders emerged from the mist. The grisly humps gathered in numbers until a swath of butchered cavalry choked the landscape. Ivanr flinched back as one sandal sank into oozing yielding mush. A marsh? There had been no such feature here yesterday. Horses thrashed weakly, exhausted and mud-smeared, disturbing the ghostly scene. Every lancer had been cut down by bow-fire
