“The right battalion is retreating, Your Highness!”
“So I see. Gallop to the reserve, let them close the gap. I wonder how our magicians managed to let the shamans get so close?”
Before Jig could understand what was happening, the front ranks had been killed. But it had all been going so well! The battalion had successfully rammed the second line detachment of infantry. Following orders, Jig was back in the third rank when the right royal scrimmage broke out. The heavy halberds were ready and waiting for anyone who managed to get close to the pikemen. Then suddenly dark purple smoke had started rising from the armor of the front ranks, and the suits of armor had fallen to the ground, empty—their owners had disappeared into thin air.
The pikeman Bans was one of the first to be killed. And then it was the turn of Jig’s own line. The weapons and armor of the soldiers beside him clanked as they fell to the ground. A second later Jig was the only one left alive out of the entire line. The battalion was still pressing forward, unaware of what had happened to the front ranks.
Jig saw three men wearing black cloaks straight in front of him. No armor, no weapons. One man threw his hands up, and a silver arrow went flying into a guardsman’s chest. And then it disappeared, without doing him any harm.
“Shamans!” The cry of fright from the rear ranks could be heard even above the roar of the battle.
“A-a-a-a-a,” Jig yelled with his eyes closed, realizing that this was the end.
The guardsman raised his halberd and struck out at the nearest sorcerer with all his might. For a brief moment he glimpsed a pale and utterly astonished face, and then the shaman fell at the raging guardsman’s feet with his head split open.
“You can kill them!” Jig barked. “You can kill the sorcerers! Kill them, lads!”
He swung his halberd again, and the men, suddenly intoxicated with their own courage, broke formation and dashed forward, each trying to get to the accursed shamans first. Jig hooked his halberd onto the leg of a shaman who had already started to work a spell and pulled, felling the man to the ground, then stabbed him in the stomach. His comrades finished off the final shaman and roared as they went dashing at the enemy infantry, which had faltered at the sight of such powerful sorcerers being dispatched so cruelly.
“The spells have stopped, Your Majesty! The sorcerers must have been killed!”
“What does it matter now?” the king asked bitterly.
The right battalion no longer existed. The enemy had struck the running men in the rear, and a few minutes later there were no more than nine hundred of them left. Fortunately the reserve of two thousand and the two hundred Beaver Caps he had given to young Markauz had got there in time.
That lad would make something of himself. His father would be proud of him. He could only hope that the guardsmen could help to save the elves. But that was unlikely. They wouldn’t be in time.
Epilorssa of the House of the Black Moon cursed and reached for another arrow from his quiver. The men had got carried away in the heat of the battle and completely forgotten about the second detachment of the second line. About two thousand men were deploying at the Wine Brook with the clear intention of wiping out the small group of elves by the Luza Forest.
“Duple! Duple!”
They couldn’t expect any help from anywhere. The neighboring battalion was finishing off its surviving opponents, the central battalion was still fighting on, despite the Nameless One’s shamans (Epilorssa had felt the magic), and the right battalion had been completely annihilated by sorcery and panic. The elves could have taken cover in the forest, but it wasn’t all that close, and it was not their way to show their backs to the enemy when they could still fight.
And they fought, firing arrow after arrow at the enemy. The enemy ranks broke into a run, shouting to urge themselves on. Many of them fell with an arrow in the face or a joint of their armor, but there were too few elves, and the distance between them and their enemies was too short. They wouldn’t have time to kill them all in any case.
The elves were standing in four lines. The first line fired from one knee, while the elves standing ten paces behind them fired from a standing position. Ten paces farther back there were more elves firing from one knee, but the archers had been shifted two body-widths to the right, so that they would not accidentally fire into the backs of the comrades standing in front of them. Behind this line was the final one, in which the warriors were standing once again.
Epilorssa gave another order and the front line jumped up, dashed back, positioned itself behind the back line, and started firing again.
Then it was the second rank’s turn to withdraw. Then the third rank, then the fourth. And then the first rank ran back behind its comrades again.
The elves withdrew, firing at the enemy continually. Almost every shot found its target. But the line of shields was very close now.
The crossbows clicked. The dark elves in the first and second lines fell, struck down by the metal bolts. Something hit Epilorssa in the chest and he fell, too. The elf couldn’t understand why he was in so much pain, why he wasn’t fighting and the snow was burning his face so fiercely.
The red snow.
“At those bastards as they run! Straight at their backsides! Fire at will!”
The bowmen standing behind the infantry of the center, which had beaten back the enemy, once again started showering arrows down on their retreating foe.
“Grapeshot, fire!” Pepper barked, and stuck his fingers in his ears.
There was a roar of cannons, the wall at Slim Bows was wreathed in blue-gray smoke once again, and a moment later the sound of the three weapons was echoed by the Crater on the hill dispatching its generous gift of fire.
A wedge formation of Jolly Gallows-Birds suddenly separated off from the left battalion, which had now disposed of its opponents completely. The men dressed in black set the entire Field of the Fairies ringing to their roar of “Wa-a-a-a-a-a-tch your back” and struck at the right flank of the detachment of the Nameless One’s army that was preparing to crush the surviving elves.
“There they are! There they are! Oh, damnation!” shouted one of the swordsmen, pointing toward the Kizevka. “Look how many of them there are!”
“Fire!” the officer ordered, and the crossbow bolts set the river water dancing.
“One finger of arc! All together! Fire!”
The wedge of “marines” sliced into the unprotected side of the enemy detachment without encountering any resistance and plowed on toward the center, sowing terror and death as it went. Their Jolly Gallows-Birds battalion was hurrying across to support them, and the central battalion, which had already polished off the first detachment of the second line, hit the enemy from the rear. The enemy forgot all about the elves and started defending themselves.
“Hey, Honeycomb! You were right! Those lads really did decide to take a dip!”
“Just keep firing!” the Wild Heart growled. “Pepper! What are you doing?”
“Give me a hand!” the gnome panted. He was holding a massive cannonball in his hands. “When will those lads ever reload my cannon? How far can you throw this?”
