Merduk skirmishers took one look at that looming juggernaut, and began to run.
The first rank of the Cathedrallers rode them down, spearing them through their spines and galloping on. Half a dozen of the horsemen went down, their mounts tripping on the broken ground, but they closed the gaps and kept coming. The main Merduk formations below frantically tried to change their facings to meet this new, unlooked-for enemy clad in their own armour but glowing red as fresh blood and singing in some barbaric tongue. A regiment of
The big horses rode down the Merduks as though they were a line of rabbits, and the terrible lances of the riders speared scores in the first clash. Horses went down, cart-wheeling, screaming, crushing friend and foe alike, but the charge’s momentum was too powerful to stop. They rode on, and behind them came the second rank, and the third, and the fourth. More horses falling, brought down by the corpses underfoot, their riders flung through the air to be trampled by the ranks behind them. Corfe lost sixty men in the first thirty seconds, but the Merduks died by the shrieking hundred.
The entire Merduk right wing recoiled, the Cathedrallers ploughing through it in a cataclysm of slaughter. The Merduks were crushed together so tightly that men in the centre of the press could not even raise their arms, and scores were trampled to death in Torunnan mud. The entire enemy battle-line shuddered backwards as officers tried to pull their men out of the disaster and reorganize them. But the Cathedrallers kept coming. Most of their lances were lost or broken now, and the tribesmen had swept out their swords and were cutting down the enemy like scythemen harvesting corn. Nothing could withstand the sheer impact of those hundreds of tons of flesh and muscle and steel, but they were slowing down. The sheer numbers of the enemy were bringing the charge to a halt, and while the horsemen had speared and hacked and crushed a path into the very heart of the Merduk right wing, they were now becoming surrounded as reserve regiments were rushed up around them.
Corfe could feel blood stiffening on his face. His horse’s neck was black with it, and the Answerer was shining vermilion to the hilt. This was the first time since Ormann Dyke that he had met Merduks on the battlefield, and for a few minutes he had forgotten he was an officer, the commander of an army. He had ridden into the enemy with the fury of an avenging angel, screaming wordlessly, his battle-cry the silent reiteration of his dead wife’s name ringing through his mind like an agonizing accusation. Men had quailed before the naked murder on his face, and always in the charge he had been the foremost, desiring only to kill, forgetting strategy and tactics and the responsibilities of command. But now the battle-lust was fading, and he was seeing clearly again.
He pulled his mount out of the front line and looked around, panting, gauging the situation. He glimpsed the fresh enemy forces manoeuvring off to his left, and knew that his men had shot their bolt.
Cerne was still beside him, a bloody apparition of war, his eyes a maniacal glitter under his helm. “Stay by me,” Corfe told him, and forged through the murderous press of men and horses off to the right.
Black-clad infantry here, pikes outlined against the sky. His men had broken through to the Fimbrian line. Something tugged at Corfe’s shoulder, and he instantly raised his sword to strike but found Joshelin at his side. The veteran Fimbrian had a look in his eyes not unlike that in Cerne’s, and a wild gaiety about him.
“I’ll get them to pull back,” he shouted over the road. “I’ll talk to them. They’ll take it from me. But you have to get your men up the hill, or they’ll be overwhelmed!”
Corfe nodded. Joshelin gave him a crisp Fimbrian salute, and then rode off into the heart of his countrymen’s lines.
This was the hardest part, the worst manoeuvre to undertake in war—a fighting withdrawal. Did the Fimbrians have enough left in them to cover it? And where was Martellus?
“Colonel!” a voice shouted, and Corfe wheeled round. Joshelin was there, leading his horse, and with him a red-sashed moustached Fimbrian.
“I am Marshall Barbius,” the man said. “How many are you?”
“Thirteen hundreds.”
“That’s all? You’ve made quite a dent.”
Corfe leaned over in the saddle. He had received a heavy slash from a Merduk tulwar which had not penetrated his armour but which nonetheless was stiffening his entire torso. He hissed with pain as he shook the marshal’s hand.
“You must get your men out,” he told him. “Where is Martellus? I will save as many of you as I can.”
“Martellus is dead,” Barbius told him without emotion. “My right is encircled and the centre too closely engaged to break away. But I have given orders for the left wing to follow you out. We will cover your retreat.”
“How?”
“Why, by attacking, of course.”
The man was serious. Corfe did not know whether to admire or despise him.
“You must escape with me,” he told Barbius, but the marshal shook his head.
“My place is here. What is your name?”
“Corfe Cear-Inaf.”
“Then look after my men, Corfe. Joshelin, you go with him.”
“Sir—”
“Obey orders, soldier. You must go now, Colonel. I will not be able to hold them for long.”
Corfe nodded. “God go with you,” he said, knowing Barbius would not survive. The marshal turned without another word and strode back to his embattled line. Joshelin passed a hand over his face, eyes closed.
“Sound me the retreat,” Corfe ordered his trumpeter.
Cerne gaped at him a moment, and then put the horn to his lips and blew. High and clear over the clamour of war came the hunting call of the Cimbrics, this time announcing the kill. Corfe wondered how many of his men could hear it.
T HE battle opened out. The Merduk right wing, badly mauled by Corfe’s charge, was reorganizing. Freed from its clutches for the moment was a motley formation of some six or seven thousand men, Torunnans and Fimbrians, who began to withdraw up the hill behind them, whilst what was left of the Cathedrallers formed a line to cover their retreat. Corfe kicked his exhausted horse into a canter and regained the hilltop, watching the battle unfold below.
A thousand surrounded Fimbrians out on the right were tying up ten times their number of the enemy and building a wall of dead around their pike square. Here on the left the western forces were in full retreat, the Torunnans running in a formless mob, the Fimbrians withdrawing in orderly fashion, by tercio. Their arquebusiers continued to fire aimed volleys at any of the enemy who ventured too close. But Corfe was concentrating on the centre, that howling, murderous chaos into which Barbius had disappeared. The Fimbrians there—hardly two thousand of them—dressed their lines, and began to advance.
Andruw joined him on the hilltop, reeking with blood, his horse earless where he had made too low a sword- swing. He did not speak, but sat and watched with Corfe as around the two of them the remnants of the Ormann Dyke garrison and Barbius’s left wing streamed past.
“In the name of God,” Andruw said in a shocked gasp as he saw the Fimbrians in the centre deliberately assault the main body of the Merduk host, thirty, forty thousand strong.
Their lines of pikes seemed inhuman, unstoppable. They actually pushed the enemy back, and began carving a swathe of slaughter deep in the Merduk centre. The enemy formations there recoiled from the machine-like efficiency of the Fimbrians. But it could not last. Already, the Merduks were flooding round the flanks and rear of the pikemen.
“Let’s get out of here,” Corfe said, his voice heavy and thick. “We can’t waste the time they’re buying us.”
He kicked his horse into motion again. The animal could barely manage a trot. Around him his command was reforming. He saw Marsch there, and Morin haranguing the excited tribesmen, in some cases physically pulling at them to get them to retreat. They wanted to stay and fight, and Corfe could readily understand why. For a moment he wished that he, too, were down there in the valley with Barbius, making a glorious end. Easier to fight than to think. Better to fight than remember. But he had his job to do, and he had men depending
