“Crossbowmen make ready! First rank! Fire! Second rank! Fire! Third rank! Fire!”
When they’d done their job, the crossbowmen moved back. They were replaced by another nine ranks taken from the rear and the sides of the battalion.
“Fire! Fire! Fire! Fire!”
The confused enemy infantry were caught in a deadly steel shower.
“Agh! The magicians have gone into action!”
Izmi wasn’t listening. Like everyone else, he was following the action in the left army. Some unknown magician had shattered the central detachment of attackers with ease, but the right and left detachments were still moving forward, and had already crossed the Wine Brook. And the other two detachments of the Nameless One’s troops were not far behind.
“Milord!”
Izmi Markauz turned away from the battle scene and looked at the soldier with a huge two-handed sword who had approached him.
“Milord, His Majesty has put my unit at your disposal.”
“How many men do you have?”
“Two hundred.”
Not bad. Two hundred Beaver Caps was more than he had counted on.
“Good. Move across to that copse behind the left army. But don’t get involved in the action just yet.”
“Yes, milord.”
Something told Izmi that help would be needed over there very soon now.
“They have crossbowmen, commander.”
“Ah, the lousy bastards!” roared the commander of the six thousand Wind Jugglers, who were now standing behind the infantry and the dismounted cavalry. He raised his fist to the heavens. “How many of them?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then find out! And be quick about it! Or they’ll pick off all our infantry! Nark!”
“Yes, commander?”
“Take your thousand men and get forward! Put the lads in with the swordsmen. Let them fire point-blank from there! If anyone in the infantry doesn’t like it, tell them I ordered it! Get going!”
“About three thousand!” panted the soldier, running back. “The scouts say three thousand! Marching ahead of the infantry.”
“I can see where they’re marching, I’m not blind.”
The cannons roared behind them and the soldiers ducked, but the commander of the Wind Jugglers took no notice.
“So there are twice as many of us as there are of them,” the old warrior muttered through his teeth, watching as the balls fired from the cannons landed in the farthest ranks of the enemy infantry. “So much the better. They won’t be able to touch us. Bows have a much longer range, and we know how to use them. Listen to my orders! Two fingers of arc! Correction for wind, a quarter-finger to the right! We’ll keep hitting those bird-brains until they start firing! Fire!”
The northern warrior leapt the wall easily, and Honeycomb only just managed to jump aside in time. His short, black-haired enemy handled the spear with a broad notched tip masterfully. The weapon danced in circles and zigzags, and the Wild Heart had to be quick on his feet. Although the crossbowmen were firing continually, on this section of the wall the enemy had managed to break through into Slim Bows, and now the battle was raging along the wall. They had to try to hold out until reinforcements arrived.
The warrior with the narrow eyes suddenly shot up into the air, obviously intending to strike down at Honeycomb with his spear. The Wild Heart dodged to one side and swung his ogre-hammer, and the spiked ball struck the life out of his unarmored enemy.
A barbarian popped up from behind the wall, wearing a polar bear’s skull on his head, and his terrible ax struck the back of the red-headed gnome, who was fighting a soldier dressed in the colors of the Crayfish Dukedom.
The ogre-hammer descended on the bear skull, shattering it into splinters and crushing the barbarian’s head.
“Damnation!” yelled Pepper, thrusting a lighted torch in the face of another soldier and swinging his mattock into the man’s crotch.
“Centurion! Cover my lads!” Rott called as he and twenty of the crossbowmen brought over the reloaded hailstorms.
Seven of the men started methodically picking off the enemy warriors who had climbed over the wall; the others opened fire on those who were crossing the shallow moat. Reinforcements arrived in the form of fifty swordsmen, and together they managed to throw the enemy back off the wall. The magician, who had miraculously survived the slaughter, flung a few final gouts of fire after the routed enemy.
“Stop throwing that fire!” Pepper yelled. “Stop throwing that fire! There’s powder here!”
“Rott! Fire as they retreat! Pepper, get to the cannon! Your Magicship, get off the wall, or you’ll catch a stray arrow!”
The first and second ranks of the left battalion parted for a few seconds to let the Beaver Caps through. Armed with double-handed swords, the warriors maintained wide spaces between them as they dashed straight at the waiting pikes of their enemies. The others followed the Beavers slowly.
Striking with wide, sweeping movements, the Beavers chopped off the pikes and sliced into the ranks of the enemy, breaking up the formation. Of course, not all of them avoided a fatal encounter with an enemy pike, but most of them managed the job well. Swinging the large swords like scythes, they cut deep into the ranks of the attackers, inflicting appalling casualties on the shocked and terrified infantry, and their comrades came crowding on behind them, crashing into the enemy, striking with their pikes and barging on like a mammoth in a china shop, slowly and inexorably following the wedge formation of the Beavers.
The right battalion had also clashed with the Crayfish infantry, but Jig couldn’t see how things were going there. The order ran along the lines:
“Crossbowmen into the sixth rank!”
The battalion was preparing to deliver a thrust like a battering ram, and no crossbows were required for that, so the crossbowmen were moved back and replaced by pikemen.
“Ranks one to six! Pikes at the ready!”
“To the drums! At the double, forward!”
The drums started rumbling in the center, the battalion thrust out its spikes and swayed.
The drums speeded up and the battalion rushed forward, moving faster and faster toward the two- thousand-strong detachment of the second line that was advancing to take the place of infantry burnt by the magician and shot down by the crossbowmen. Jig diligently pressed against the back of the pikeman in front of him and yelled, bracing himself for the impact.
With their line broken by the bombardment from the bowmen on the hill, the enemy’s surviving crossbowmen went rushing back without having fired a single shot, and most of them were trampled by their own infantry. The men of the line were not so easily dealt with; they kept on pushing forward up the slope, trying to get past the area under bombardment as quickly as possible. Many of them raised shields to protect themselves against the arrows. One enemy detachment even managed to create a perfectly good “tortoise,” but it ran into the icy patch on the hill and fell apart, and the bowmen immediately picked off the unfortunate warriors.
“Shields together! Lances! Crossbowmen fire at will!” young Stalkon ordered.
The prince realized that, despite the casualties inflicted by the bowmen, this time the enemy would reach them. The rear ranks of bowmen halted the bombardment that had ceased to be effective, took up their swords,
