Roper wanted to see Pryce fight but he was nowhere to be seen. He briefly spotted Leon trying to tug his sword free from the helmet of a knight at the same time as ducking beneath a war hammer being aimed at his head, but then he lost sight of him in a crush of bodies. The entire line was writhing with violence, the battering hail seeming to make the warriors more aggressive than ever. Sparks and sometimes chips of steel flew off the weapons as they clashed. Everything was grey on the Altar, and the din of battle assaulted Roper’s ears. He saw one guardsman break through the guard of a knight and thrust his sword through the gleaming breastplate and into the stomach behind. His blade got stuck and the knight, pierced through by the guardsman’s sword, raised his own and swung it heavily at his enemy’s head. The guardsman was knocked flat, his helmet splitting open like an eggshell and blood blossoming from the fissure. The knight collapsed to his knees, helmeted head turned down to the sword in his belly. A guardsman decapitated him, pushed over his kneeling corpse and stepped forward to engage another knight.
This fight was so much that Roper could hardly watch. The noise felt as if it was forcing him backwards, and his eyes shrank away from the mighty collision of weapons as they smashed together. The ground was being churned to mud and several of the warriors had simply fought themselves to exhaustion. They no longer swung their weapons; just pushed against each other, trying to drive the other backwards through the mud. Roper saw one guardsman without a sword fall upon a similarly exhausted Sutherner. He held his hand so that the Suthern knight could not swing his mace at him and used his other hand to wrench back the knight’s helmet. He bent forward and Roper realised that the guardsman had sunk his teeth into the knight’s freshly exposed neck. The knight flailed weakly but was pushed to the floor and did not rise.
Through the haze, Roper could see some change occurring in the mass of knights. Some were falling back and a relief unit appeared to be forcing their way through to the front line. As they drew closer, Roper spotted a single figure that towered above those around him: Garrett. He held Heofonfyr, his bastardised spear, and was leading Bellamus’s household warriors into direct combat with the Sacred Guard.
Roper unclasped his cloak, threw himself out of Zephyr’s saddle and advanced without a backwards glance. He forced his way through the exhausted and bloodied guardsmen who had already taken their turn in the front rank and were now recovering at the back. They stared at him as he passed, observing his clenched jaw and Cold-Edge held by his side as he used his size to bully his way to the front. There were bodies in his path. He stepped over eleven knights, their bright armour wrecked and smeared with blood and mud, and two Sacred Guardsmen. He did not look at these. He did not hear the guardsmen at the back begin to call his name in a chant that was slowly taken up by the rest of the Guard until they were all roaring: “Rop-er! Rop-er!” He did not even notice Helmec barging another path behind him, staying with his lord. He reached the front just as the first of Bellamus’s household warriors did, clad in their stolen bone-armour and all armed with the two-handed spear.
To fight well, you must first forget.
A single mistake, a single lapse in concentration, and you could end the day as a cooling corpse. You could bleed inexorably into the dirt. Your windpipe could be severed and wheeze and hiss as life escaped you. Your tangled guts exposed to the air. You could lose a limb, an eye, your hand; the feeble flesh carved open by steel. Fearful, mortal wounds; but what happens then? Pain engulfs you; death comes for you. You know you must hold your nerve, and meet it with honour and courage. But in spite of yourself, you wonder if this final, terrible ordeal is the one that you cannot sustain. Perhaps, as you have seen some among your comrades do, you will weep openly for your mother’s face, or because your day was about to go so dark, so soon. The façade would crack and all would know that in your heart, at your core, you were never so sure as you looked; that you were fearful all along and never truly the man you tried so hard to be.
All this, you must forget. You cannot defeat a man hand to hand if terror has made your limbs weak and slow. You must forget what you have to lose: your wife, your children, your mother, your father, your peers. You must forget the pleasure of frondescent sunlight bathing your face; or sitting by a hearth with hot food after a hard day; or the dark, warm embrace of your beloved. You must forget those noises around you: the pain, the retching cries, the clanging, the coughing. Forget the smells ramming the top of your nose, all of them metallic. Forget the frenetic movement to either
