completely. And the stream, though quite fast and deep, was certainly fordable and of little real defensive value.
'Hold!’ he shouted, trying to beat down his terror.
Then, to his horror, he saw the centre square waver ominously.
He had a vision of them scattering and splashing through the stream, to flee across the countryside while the great tide of riders surged through the opening they had left.
Without thinking, he forced his way through the uncertain shield wall of his own square and dashed across the gap towards the centre one.
Matching the speed of his arrival at the centre with shouts of encouragement interspersed with imprecations, curses, and blows, he stilled the mounting panic.
'Hold or die. It's that simple!'
Then, suddenly. ‘Look, they're slowing.'
Somehow he managed to make this sound like an angry reproach to his quavering men rather than the cry of surprise that it actually was. A glance around, however, showed him the cause of the riders’ loss of momentum.
They were charging into a narrowing field. Already, he noticed, some of the side riders were drawing back to avoid being edged into the stream, while the remainder were having to rearrange themselves to avoid collisions with each other.
The Rendd reservists, Larnss’ first command, had been given a little time.
Larnss seized two men. ‘You, left flank at the double. You, right. Anyone who's got a bow there is to defend the gaps. Shoot for the horses. The more we bring down, the less room they have for manoeuvre. Move!'
The two men needed no encouragement and scurried across the gaps as the few in the centre square who had bows began stringing them and preparing to implement Larnss’ shouted instruction before he ordered them to.
'Shoot when you're ready,’ he shouted. ‘Targets of discretion. Aim at the horses.'
There was a brief lull as the archers waited for the riders to come within effective range.
Larnss gripped his sword until his hand throbbed.
Then the archers began to shoot. Almost immediately, the front riders in the charge, already in some disarray, began to break up. The relentless thunder of the horses’ hooves faltered and the air began to fill with the sounds of men cursing and horses screaming in terror and pain as the iron-tipped arrows struck home.
Many stumbled, bringing down their riders, while many others reared high, forelegs flailing in an attempt to flee this cruel assault.
Larnss watched this unexpected enemy carefully. Who were they? he asked himself again. There were flags flying among the host, but still he could see nothing he recognized. And the horses were sturdier and slightly smaller than those used by either the Bethlarii or the Serens. But, most bewildering of all, was the sheer number of riders, and, he noted, watching the line disentangle itself, brilliant riders at that, for all that their formation discipline was not particularly good.
He'd heard of a land beyond the mountains in the far north which was said to be populated by wild tribes of horsemen, but surely …?
'Fast!’ he shouted to the archers as the great charge came to a shambling and chaotic halt, with the front riders turning to retreat running into those at the rear who were still advancing. ‘Fast, damn it! Save your arrows for when they're advancing, not retreating.'
At the top of the hill, Ivaroth and his senior officers watched in dismay and disbelief as the charge squeezed itself to a halt in the corner formed by the stream, and then began to retreat raggedly under the arrow-fire from the three squares.
Angrily, Ivaroth seized the reins of his horse and braced himself to charge down among his men. A hand reached out and caught his arm. He turned angrily. It was Endryn. His reaction had been automatic and he was about to express the concern that arrows were no respecters of person when wiser inner counsels prevailed. ‘They've spent too long fighting women and old men,’ he said softly so that only Ivaroth could hear. ‘It's time they were reminded how dangerous these people can be and what a journey lies ahead to the fulfilment of your vision.'
Ivaroth's jaw worked agitatedly for a moment, then he nodded grimly. ‘You're right, Endryn,’ he said. ‘A few dead will be a salutary lesson.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘And it'll save me the trouble of executing some of those blockheads myself,’ he added.
Despite this routinely cavalier attitude towards his followers however, anxious, more conservative thoughts were increasingly occupying him. Effectively empty of fighting men, Endir, like Navra, had been subdued with ease, and now stood occupied by his army. The army too patrolled the river that ran between the mountains and Endir so that, as far as he knew, no clear news of his invasion had passed westward. Thus he was now in a position to move down into the territory of Serenstad, taking first the small city of Rendd and then the much larger city of Viernce.
There was no reason why the tactics of careful scouting and surprise that had worked so well at Navra and Endir, and indeed, at all the smaller settlements they had encountered, should not work on Rendd and Viernce also.
Yet it unsettled him that his knowledge of Serenstad was only a mixture of travellers’ tales, tribal lore, and such as he had been able to learn from the Bethlarii whose dreams he had ravaged. He would have preferred to have taken emotional possession of the Serenstad leadership as he had the Bethlarii, but his few attempts had been oddly unsuccessful. Further, they had shown him, albeit briefly, a vision of a people whose society was far more complex and diverse than that of the Bethlarii, and one much harder to control through the fear and superstition of a few leaders.
Thus, with an increasing part of his army being left behind to control the conquered territory, and with a more uncertain foe and therefore the most dangerous part of the invasion before him, Ivaroth was concerned by the seeming incompetence of his men now attacking the camp below.
Rendd, small and sleepy, from what he had heard, should present little or no problem, but Viernce was different. Large, walled and almost certainly garrisoned, it had loomed large in Bethlarii minds as the source of a great defeat brought about by an unexpected resistance on the part of a few brave and ferocious soldiers. It would therefore have to be approached and taken with the utmost skill and speed. But taken it must be. Taken and crushed so that no vestige of resistance lay in its people and so that it could be maintained thus by a comparatively small force. He would need every one of his men to complete the most important stage of his conquest of these rich and lush southern lands, for only when Viernce was quelled would he be able to venture safely westwards towards Whendrak to annihilate whichever battle-weary army had survived the war that he and the blind man had so painstakingly engineered. After that, the pacification of the rest of the country could confidently be left in the hands of his officers while he turned his mind to the running of his new kingdom.
The culmination of his long-planned ambition rising before him dispelled the momentary anxiety that Ivaroth had felt at the folly of his men in attacking so incompetently this small force they had come upon. Endryn was right, they'd been too long fighting women and old men. He'd bang a few heads together later, and that, coupled with the casualties these southerners were inflicting on them, would soon give them their edge again.
Even so, came the persistent cautionary note, he must keep a careful eye on what was happening. Good horses were good horses and too valuable to be casually thrown away. The local horses were no good.
Unaware of the brooding presence of the creator of his troubles, Larnss moved restlessly about the square, doing what he could to keep up the heart of his men.
'Hold firm. No horse is going to charge a solid spear line. They're not as stupid as men. Archers, save your arrows for the leading horses. Take your time. Don't miss!'
But if every arrow killed a dozen horses and a dozen men, it would be to no avail, he realized, as the brief interlude following the first charge gave his training an opportunity to exert itself and he did a quick estimate of the massive force ranged against them. It was a chilling deduction. The attackers, whoever they were, seemed to have neither archers nor infantry with which to soften up the squares, but it was asking a lot of even the finest foot soldiers to stand firm against charge after charge.
'You can't suppress the flesh,’ someone had once told him when he argued the impossibility of cavalry breaking up disciplined infantry. ‘You wait until you've stood there holding your pike with a line of horses charging at
