“No,” said Roper at last. “But a white flag can’t be your defence for ever. Maybe when you’ve left here, you could escape. You and your Hermit Crabs could take your swiftest horses and go south as fast as the road permits. Perhaps you’d make it over the Abus and live to fight another day. But no other Sutherners will escape the Black Kingdom. On that, you have my word.”
Bellamus looked over the massed legions behind Roper, formed up and ready for pursuit. He let out a slow breath. “I would deeply regret that,” he said. He looked back into Roper’s eyes. “And I certainly would not forget it.”
“After the destruction you have wreaked on my lands; after—” there was a brief pause in which Helmec’s name hung in the air before Roper—“after that; this was the very least you could expect,” Roper finished coldly. It would mean nothing to Bellamus. “The whole of Albion will know what happens to armies who cross the Abus. They do not come back.” Bellamus was nodding grimly and Roper glanced at Garrett. He addressed the giant hybrid. “One day, I will have my blade back. I hope you ride fast, Eoten-Draefend. Pryce Rubenson is very quick indeed and he wants your head.”
“We have other ideas for Pryce,” intervened Bellamus. “We have not forgotten Earl William.”
“You had better start riding south, Bellamus. I will give you one Anakim hour before we pursue. After that, we will kill any Sutherner we see.”
“Then I must fly,” observed Bellamus. “We shall meet again, Lord Roper.”
“Until then.”
After Bellamus and Garrett had departed, Tekoa spoke. “You could have used that steel to help settle our debts, Lord Roper.”
“Two tons of steel is not worth this army making it back to Suthdal alive. We gain more through the fear of slaughter. I wanted them to refuse to give me Bright-Shock,” he said, watching Bellamus and Garrett retreat. Tekoa and Gray exchanged a glance.
They waited in silence for a time until Bellamus was nearly out of sight. He had done as Roper suggested and was at the far end of the field, he and his household guard mounted on well-fed coursers. They might escape. The Black Cavalry Corps rode destriers: too heavy to keep pace with the coursers that most Suthern warriors used. There were probably not enough mounted Skiritai to force Bellamus’s party to stop either. But they would stay close and hound his party on the road. One wrong turning, or a mud-slide blocking the road, or poor travelling conditions and they would be caught. Bellamus must trust to the fortune which had abandoned him in this place.
There was no hope at all for the Suthern army. They had abandoned their armour and all but the lightest weapons on the battlefield. They streamed after Bellamus and his riders, hoping to stay ahead of the Anakim who still waited in calm ranks. Bellamus would soon be out of sight and then they would be left alone and leaderless in a foreign land. The Anakim would catch them; god alone knew what would happen then.
“My lord.” A voice spoke from behind Roper. He turned to see that Pryce was approaching on the back of a Suthern horse. Roper looked him up and down, blinking.
“Where is Uvoren, Pryce?”
“Uvoren fell on the battlefield, my lord. He will not be able to answer for his actions.”
Roper just stared. Pryce’s face was expressionless, but he controlled the horse with his left hand; his right held tight into his chest and his right shoulder considerably lower than the left. His face was caked with blood and mud. “A late casualty, eh?” said Roper at last.
“That’s right, my lord.”
Roper nodded brusquely. “Then Gray is Captain of the Guard. And you’re a lictor again.”
“Thank you, lord.”
“I wish he had made it back here, Pryce,” said Roper, after a pause.
“He was never going to make it back here, lord,” said Pryce in barely more than a hiss.
The hail had stopped. Roper had promised an hour and by his reckoning that meant that the Sutherners still had two-twelfths to get off the Altar. Behind them was left a vast sprawl of corpses and a felled forest of pikes. Crows and gulls were beginning to arrive already and pick over the remains, eliciting cries of pain from those who were still alive. Heavy clouds still hung overhead, but the air felt fresher and clearer and the light was fading from the field. The Sutherners would be hunted through the night. By the time the sun next rose, most of them would be cold and still.
Bellamus made it across the Abus. It took him three days to ride clear of the Black Kingdom, and following him the whole way were the Skiritai. They did not harass or try to engage their more numerous opposition. They just watched and informed, and at night did their best to keep Bellamus’s party awake with incessant horn-blowing and riding through the dark. His last view of the Black Kingdom came after he was across the broad river. Shivering and wet, he turned back to the barren hills beyond to see the Skiritai still watching him from the far bank. The Anakim side of the Abus was their beloved wilderness; more rugged by far than that tilled by the Sutherners. The gloomy forests that had once covered the whole of Albion spread over the hills like bristles atop a mighty slumbering boar.
They were not forests like those in Suthdal. Ivy, honeysuckle, roses and the plant known as “moonlight” wound their way up the trunks of oak, ash, beech, hornbeam and elm; all enormous and ancient. It was more closed; the dense canopy creating shadows in which wolves, bears and lynx roamed. The timber grew straighter and truer towards the light above, a dense phalanx of pikes raised to the heavens. The
