Pryce barely hesitated. It was he who attacked next, slicing the remaining half of his sword at Garrett, feinting and then driving into his chest. It was a hard lunge but again, stopped at the bone-plates, the metal shard with which Pryce fought was not sharp enough to penetrate Garrett’s armour.
The battle around them was changing; the lines were peeling apart again and the warriors around Pryce and Garrett began to disengage. Garrett’s chest was heaving with effort and he stole glances to his left and right as more and more fighters pulled away. They were left as the only two warriors still fighting in the no-man’s land opening up between the two armies. One of the Hermit Crabs appeared on each side of Garrett and threatened Pryce with their spears, lunging at him and forcing him away from their champion. “No!” shouted Garrett, smashing one of them over the head with the shaft of Heofonfyr, but another two were pulling him backwards and more were pressing forward against Pryce, trying to drive him back.
“You’re going to allow this?” roared Pryce, contemptuously cutting down one of the spearmen with his broken sword. “Garrett Eoten-Draefend is a coward!”
But Garrett was being dragged backwards. He raised Heofonfyr in one last salute. “I will find you again!” he called in Saxon.
Pryce looked disgusted. Though there were spearmen within five yards of him, he showed total disdain by turning his back on the Sutherners and walking back to the Guard. Roper had been waiting, and Pryce caught sight of him. “Do not fight the Eoten-Draefend,” he said with a touch of restraint in his voice. “He would have killed you. Come, lord.”
Roper had been prepared to be furious with Pryce for preventing him fighting Garrett, but the guardsman’s uncharacteristic patience drained his fury in an instant. The two of them began to jog back to where the Guard had retreated.
The Skiritai were streaming forward again to an audible groan from the retreating Sutherners. The legionaries were exhausted. Most just crashed into the mud, numbed by cold hail and brutal combat. The stones of ice melted to trickle down forearms covered with dried blood, washing purified veins into the grime. They cleaned their hands numbly; took water-skins pressed forward from the rear ranks and sucked on them. The water tasted good, but swallowing it was almost too much. Some of the younger nemandi, lads of seventeen and eighteen who were not yet expected to stand in the battle line, hurried through the ranks with their medical rolls, attending to the most crippling wounds. The captains, lictors and other junior officers stayed on their feet, prowling through the warriors and telling them that they would break the enemy next time; that they must think of their brothers next to them and that if they did not fight as hard as they were physically able, it would be their peers who paid the price.
None of the Sacred Guard had sat down. They were fitter than any other warrior, and had their wounds staunched and their thirst quenched with an air of necessity, as though their one purpose in life was this next fight. Uvoren had gathered many of the guardsmen into a circle and was addressing them fervently. Snatches of what he was saying carried to Roper’s ears: “Leon, you’re fighting like an ancient hero. Stay at the front as long as you can; no man, no matter how well rested, will equal you when you have fallen back. Leikr, we will need your fitness now: you must fight for two men. Salbjorn, there is an aura around you this day. Use it to intimidate the bastards, and we’ll break them here.” Gray was doing the same with another group, and Pryce, furious to have missed the chance to kill Garrett, strutted in front of the rest of the Guard. He was no longer lictor; that post had been filled by a friend of Uvoren’s, but the friend now stood quiet as Pryce howled at the Guard, blood dripping from the cut in his jaw. “Their lungs are burning, their limbs are quaking and their fingers are weak about their weapons. They cannot sustain this! They live a soft, plump lifestyle in their neutered country. These bastards have invaded our home again and again and now wear our brothers’ bones as armour! Don’t just kill them: make them feel pain before they die. I want each Sutherner to know a moment of pure despair before they fall beneath your sword. Kill them! You are a tireless fist! You are a thundering heart! You are lightning! You are relentless as this bloody hail, my Sacred Guardsmen!”
Roper returned to Zephyr to find that Tekoa was still mounted next to the destrier. “The Skiritai are commanded by their junior officers. They can handle themselves,” he said in response to Roper’s questioning glance. The Black Lord hauled himself into the saddle, utterly exhausted by the unremitting hail and chilled so that his fingers had become slow. The lightning, having paused for the last half an hour or so, had begun to flash more regularly again.
“Bellamus has played a good hand,” said Roper thickly. His lips were going numb. “Pikemen on the fringes and knights in the centre means he can match us for quality throughout the line. That’s why he wanted to fight here; so that his pikemen would have secure flanks.”
“This is a bloody tough nut to crack,” confirmed Tekoa. “We’re losing a lot of men and I can’t see them breaking any time soon.”
“The knights are their weak point,” said Roper. “We won’t break apart disciplined pikemen, but we can break these knights in the
