Their eyes met again.
‘Never met a Wild creature that could fight in two directions at once,’ Tom said. ‘They don’t fight. They hunt. And when they pounce – why, that’s all they have.’
‘You mean, the Wild doesn’t keep a reserve,’ the captain said.
‘What you say,’ Tom said. He could tell the captain was of one mind with him.
‘Someday they will,’ the captain said.
‘Not today,’ Tom said.
The captain hesitated another moment. Breathed deeply, listening. Then he turned back to Tom, and his grin was wide and feral.
‘Let’s do it,’ he said. He raised his lance, and pointed with it. Carlus, his trumpeter, raised his long, bronze instrument, and the captain gave him a nod.
Tom didn’t bother to form up, because surprise was everything. He was sure he knew what was happening ahead, and he led his men forward, armoured in that assurance. And when his destrier leaped a low fallen tree and the track turned and he saw hundreds of the little fuckers plundering wagons, he just raised his sword.
‘Lachlan for Aa!’ he roared, and he began to kill.
South and East of Lissen Carrack – The Red Knight
There is a great deal of luck involved in catching an enemy, especially a victorious enemy who outnumbers you twenty to one, flat footed, glutted with spoil, unable to either fight or flee.
There’s even more luck involved when you catch your enemy glutted with spoil and pinned against a roaring torrent of a stream, with only one ford, and that ford held by a desperate madman.
Because he was in command, and because he feared a trap, the captain was among the last men onto the field, leading half a dozen archers and two men-at-arms and Jacques with all the valets as a reserve. He came forward still full of doubt at his own decision, which seemed rash, and yet full of a sort of certainty – almost like religious faith – that he could feel the enemy’s failure.
He came on the heels of the main battle’s charge to cover Bad Tom’s headlong rush, and Jacques was less than twenty horse lengths behind the last man of the main battle, and still, by the time he rode under the big oak trees, the fighting was over by the abandoned wagons. He rode by what he assumed had been the convoy’s a last stand – a dozen guildsmen face down, some of them looking half eaten or worse.
He rode past the carcasses of not one, but three, dead dhags. He had only ever seen one, before today.
He passed down a line of carts, their draught animals dead and partially butchered in their traces. Other wagons had their oxen or their horses untouched, panicked in the traces but alive. There were human bodies among the dead boglins and other things – one corpse looked like a golden bear, cleanly beheaded.
He shook his head in disbelief.
He couldn’t have planned it this way. Couldn’t have coordinated such a victory, not with a pair of magi to handle communications and twice the number of men.
Farther on, they were still fighting. He could hear Tom’s warcry.
He came up to two men holding a dozen fretting war horses and Jacques sent four valets to take their reins. The two men-at-arms grinned, loosened swords in their scabbards, and headed off down the trail toward the sound of belling. The captain took a breath, thinking of the kind of men and women he employed. The kind who smiled and hastened down the trail to battle. He led them. They made him happy.
He dismounted, handed his horse to Jacques, who gave him his spear. And dismounted himself.
‘Not without me, you loon,’ Jacques said.
‘I have to,’ the captain said. ‘You don’t.’
Jacques spat. ‘Can we get this over with?’ He gestured, and Toby appeared, somehow taller and more dangerous looking in a breast and back and a pot helm.
They ran forward. There was fighting off to their left – the humdrum sound of blade on blade. And ahead, heavy movement and grunting, like a huge boar in a deep thicket.
‘Don’t let it fucking cross the river!’ Tom roared, almost at his elbow.
The captain came around the great bole of an old elm, and there was the beast – twenty-five hands at the shoulder, with curling tusks.
A behemoth.
It turned.
Like every creature of the Wild, its eyes met the captain’s, and it roared a challenge.
‘Here we go,’ said Tom, with relish. ‘Captain’s here. Now we can dance!’
Jacques hip-checked the captain. ‘Mind?’ he said, and shot the thing, a clean shaft that leapt from his bowstring at full draw and plunged through its hide, vanishing to the fletchings. His war-bow was as long and heavy as Wilful Murder’s, and most men couldn’t draw it.
Somebody behind it plunged a sword deep into its side, and then a man-at-arms was sawing at its neck, and it was roaring in anger. But the flurry of blows let up, and suddenly it got its feet under it, tossed the man-at-arms free, and put its head down.
‘Oh fuck,’ Jacques said.
A solid lance of fire crossed the stream and struck the behemoth in the head, splintering a tusk and setting fire to the stump. Despite the fear, every man turned to look. Most of them had never seen a phantasm used in combat.
The captain charged it, because that seemed better than it charging him. His horse had done all the work until now, and his legs were fresh, despite the weight of steel greaves and sabatons.
The fire was a nice distraction and he slammed his heavy spear into its face, near an eye. It was collapsing back – Jacques, also unaffected by the pyrotechnics, was walking forward, putting arrow after arrow into its unguarded belly.
It turned away, suddenly less fearsome and sensing the defeat of near death. It tried to burst free across the stream but the rocky bottom betrayed it and it stumbled; a dozen archers, guildsmen and mercenaries alike, poured shafts into it, and its blood swirled in the fast water. It gathered itself up and leaped – awesome in its might – scattered the archers, and killed two guildsmen, massive front feet pounding their bodies to fleshy mush in the spring mud. And still it got its head up when the captain came out of the trees behind it, and it turned at bay. It’s great eyes met the captain’s.
‘Me again,’ the captain said.
It raised its head and bellowed, and the woods shook. One of Tom’s men-at-arms – Walter La Tour – landed a hard blow with a pole-axe and got swiped by the whole force of its mighty head in reply, crushing his breastplate and breaking all his ribs. He fell without a sound. Francis Atcourt, one day out of the infirmary, struck it with a pole-axe too, and danced aside as it’s splintered, burning tusk sought his life. He tripped and fell over a rotten stump, which saved his life as its tusks and fangs passed over his head.
The captain ran rock to rock across the stream, his sabatons flashing above the swollen water, charging his prey. It turned to finish Atcourt, caught sight of the captain’s rush, and hesitated a fraction of a heartbeat.
Bad Tom watched his captain rush the monster and laughed. ‘I
The monster lurched forward, and stumbled, and the captain thrust, catching it in the mouth, cutting up so that ivory sprayed. The splintered tusk caught the back of his rerebrace hard enough to slam him into the stream. He went down, his helmet filled with water, but he got a rock under his backplate and sprang to his feet, stomach muscles screaming as he levered his own weight plus sixty pounds up on his hips, and then he had his feet planted, knee deep in water, and he was cutting – down to the Boar’s Tooth guard, his heavy pole-arm cutting from the height of his shoulder all the way down to his hip – then back up the same path, ripping up through its trunk to the Guard of the Woman. He reversed the blade and thrust down into its eye as the creature fell.
Bad Tom slammed his fist into the thing before it was done moving. ‘I name you – meat!’ he shouted.
The mercenaries laughed. Some of the men-at-arms were even applauding and the guildsmen began to realise they might live. They began to cheer.
A last arrow flew into the corpse.
There was nervous laughter and then the cheers swelled.
