ground clutching his abdomen, and then a stuttering and scattered shout as the half-dozen men who had followed me pitched their spears and shot their bows.
The raiders were, of course, in no real danger. They were, however-perhaps for the first time in their savage career-taken completely off-guard. They weren’t ready to fight and they didn’t know whom they were fighting, where the enemy were, or how many they numbered. One horse fell, maybe more, and one of the Greycoast troops got in close enough to lunge his spear into the stomach of one of the unwary raiders. No more than shadow figures in the thick mist, the raiders stumbled about in the confusion, trying to get back into their saddles, calling out to each other and nervously watching for their equally shadowy attackers. A few more arrows fell amongst them and I heard another shout of pain. I don’t know if they lost any others, but I do know that in seconds they were gone: mounted and fled.
“Brilliant!” said one of the spearmen, wheezing heavily.
“What?” I gasped, still lying on the damp ground.
“That was a stroke of tactical genius,” he said as the others gathered about us, exhausted and beaming. “And real courage,” he went on. “It’s an honor to serve under you, sir.”
With that commendation and a grin of triumph, they hurried back to the wagons for more. I sat there in the mud for a moment and then, very slowly, followed.
By the time I found my way back to the road the survivors had gathered with the party. The raiders stood a hundred yards away, regrouped and orderly, though somehow you could tell that there was to be no final attack. I slipped in amongst the party, hoping that as Mithos’s name had saved me in the burning village, so his presence would now. We stayed where we were, conscious of the wagons smoking behind us but staring at the crimson, faceless line.
And then the raider with the horned helm and the staff finally moved, raising his arms in some grand gesture. The staff traced a slow circle in the air and, as the raiders began to walk their mounts away, I had the odd impression that the mist was getting thicker around them. Only a solitary officer, distinguishable by the lateral plume across his helm, paused and looked back at us before he too pulled his horse around and rode slowly away into the mist. He seemed to fade as the fog thickened, and then they were gone.
SCENE XXIX The Fallen
Though many have fallen,” called Orgos from atop one of the wagons, “we ride in triumph to Ironwall. We owe much, even our very lives, to each other and to those who didn’t make it through. But we owe the most to one man whose courage and ingenuity saved the lives of many, perhaps of the convoy itself. When we reach Ironwall, we will celebrate, but for now let us simply cry, ‘Three cheers for Will Hawthorne!’ Hip hip, hoorah. Hip, hip. ”
This came as something of a surprise to me, and for a split second I thought it was an unpleasant joke at my expense. But they cheered loudly and gripped my shoulder and shook my hand and said I was a good fellow and a dashed fine general. And since their saying so seemed to make everyone forget what a fiasco the whole thing had been, I took my praise modestly.
I caught Renthrette watching me thoughtfully. Our eyes locked and I couldn’t think of anything to say. She tried to smile in an encouraging sort of way, but she still looked shocked and exhausted from the battle. I nodded quickly and looked away.
This was where I got off. I had seen enough and had decided that staying to be massacred with the rest of them was not my idea of a fun day out. I hadn’t told them yet, but I was done.
Funnily enough, it was Orgos who had made me realize that this was no place for me. In his little post- slaughter speech he had said in his proud, warrior voice, “We leave the field honorably, and had they charged us at the end, they would have learnt to their cost that valor permits no surrender.” He meant it, too. What I had intended as a prompt to get them to see the futility of what they were doing, he was echoing without a trace of irony.
Well, speak for yourself, mate. The road was littered with bodies. We had been inches away from being a huddle of corpses beside a few burning wagons, another failed defense against the raiders; but we would have died honorably and that made it all right. No. Honor is just the carrot that leads donkeys like Orgos to pointless deaths, leaving the downtrodden without a champion and the tyrants secure as before. Call me pragmatic, call me cynical, but I didn’t get it and I wasn’t about to die for it.
Despite Orgos’s words of honor and triumph, I detected a glimmer of panic amongst the party as they looked over the casualties. I suppose we are brought up to believe that the good guys always win in the end, though they might take a few tear-jerking losses along the way. Sooner or later the enemies are brought low by that superior skill, or that extra spark of intelligence, or that flash of magical power too mysterious for the narrator to have to justify it. Well, we hadn’t seen any of that. They had wiped our force out and toyed with the survivors. I’d seen some more of that strange light from Orgos’s sword, and something similar from Lisha’s spear, but whatever such things were, they clearly weren’t enough. For once, Lisha’s party didn’t have the edge, and-however much they tried to keep it to themselves-it shocked them like a spear in the side.
Before we set off I saw Mithos and Lisha standing together. He loomed over her in his stained armor and she talked up to him. Though I don’t know what was said, it was a while before they parted. When he caught my gaze I thought he faltered for a moment before he spoke. “Give them a hand putting that fire out, Will. Then help Lisha collect the dead for burial.”
I did, but I’m not going to talk about that.
There was something else as well, the icing on the whole horrible cake. We hadn’t killed any of the raiders. Not one. There wasn’t a single corpse on the battlefield wearing the scarlet and bronze of the enemy. This was troubling on several levels.
I had seen several of the raiders go down. I would have sworn that we had killed maybe a dozen-not a huge dent in their force, of course, but enough to prove they were mortal. I wandered the battlefield when the fog lifted, but there were none.
“The mist was thick,” said Garnet. “They must have come back and taken away their dead while we were tending to our survivors.”
“And the tracks?” said Renthrette, gazing out over the fields. “There are hoofprints on the battlefield itself. They radiate out for a couple of hundred yards. But beyond that, nothing. How did they get here? Where did they go?”
SCENE XXX Ironwall
It was evening by the time we reached the city. A slight buzz of excitement rose up from the wagons as the citadel’s towering walls and turrets came into view. In other circumstances I might have been impressed too, since it far outshone anything I’d ever seen in the Empire lands, but I was having a bad day. It seemed like I’d had a lot of bad days lately. Since I blamed my companions for that, I ignored their vaguely awestruck whispers about the scale of the fortifications and glowered at the Greycoast capital.
Ironwall looked like it had emerged from the earth. It was completely contained by its perimeter wall-no straggling inns and houses overspilling the city proper-and only the road we were on showed signs of civilization beyond its massive battlements. It breathed unassailable authority from its granite bulk. I shifted uneasily in my saddle as the thing got closer, filling the horizon and looming over us like storm clouds.
Renthrette had raised the beaver of her helm by the time we approached the huge gatehouse, but her face gave so little away that she might as well have kept it down. She had been like that since the battle: quiet, watchful, uncertain. It was weird and a little scary. If the raiders could leave her unsure of herself, then their powers had no limits.
She had ridden ahead to announce our coming, since it took about ten minutes to get the massive porticullis
