a simple white field with a blue blazon on it. “The harmach.”
“I see it,” Kara replied. She rode up to the simple banner, and there she found half a dozen Spearmeet captains gathered around Harmach Grigor, along with Master Assayer Dunstormad Goldhead, the Master Mage Ebain Ravenscar, her cousin Geran, and-surprisingly-the tiefling sorcerer Sarth she’d seen by the barrow on the Highfells. The world seems to have gone mad tonight, she thought. She leaped down from Dancer’s saddle and strode over to the harmach. She couldn’t remember the last time he’d left the city; he stood leaning on his cane, a thin cloak whipping around him in the bitter night.
“My lord Harmach,” she said formally. “I am here.”
Grigor Hulmaster looked around and found a crooked smile of relief. “Kara, I’m glad to see that you’re well,” he said. “I was afraid for you, my dear.”
“Brun Osting said I’m to bring my army here. We’re on our way. You should see my leading companies any time now, and my rear guard’s less than an hour off. But, Uncle Grigor-the Bloody Skulls won’t be far behind us. Are you sure this is where you want to stand?”
“It’s here or nowhere, Kara,” the harmach said. “Griffonwatch is taken. We have no castle to fall back to.”
Kara glanced at the other Hulburgans nearby and lowered her voice. “I heard that ghosts invaded Griffonwatch? Is that true?”
Harmach Grigor nodded. “I’m afraid that it is, and I’m sorry to say that it seems to be your stepbrother’s doing. He and his Veruna allies tried to kill us all tonight. If not for the fact that Geran and his friends took it upon themselves to arrange his escape from my prison and rescue me, I think Sergen would have succeeded.”
“That was the price the King in Copper paid for the Infiernadex after House Veruna got it for him,” Geran explained. “He agreed to send his specters to serve when called. It seems Sergen decided to call them tonight.”
“Given the circumstances, I’ve pardoned Geran of any wrongdoing in his duel with the Veruna captain and in his escape,” the harmach added. “And should we run across Sergen again, we must treat him and his Veruna allies as enemies of Hulburg.”
Kara lowered her voice. “The Verunas with my army have done their part so far tonight. They’ve fought as well as any of us. This makes no sense. Are you saying that they’ll turn on us at some point?”
“It’d be wise to expect them to,” Geran said. “They might be waiting for the right opportunity to show their true colors.”
The ranger laughed bitterly. “Geran, they’ve had many opportunities for treachery tonight. All they had to do was abandon the field, and we probably would’ve been destroyed three times over.”
Sarth cleared his throat. “Forgive me for saying so, but the explanation may be quite simple: Perhaps things have not gone as House Veruna planned tonight. After your initial defeat they may have decided that it would be folly to carry through with their plan in the face of an orc invasion.”
Kara frowned. She didn’t know how the horned man had come to be standing at Geran’s side, but she simply did not have time to satisfy her curiosity. With effort she set aside the questions still dancing in her mind and focused on the immediate crisis. “I’ll ask for a complete explanation later,” she said. “Uncle Grigor, I expect the Bloody Skulls to reach this spot in an hour, perhaps two. I would guess that I’m down to six hundred tired men-less if you tell me that the Verunas can’t be counted on. How many Spearmeet do you have with you?”
“Around eight hundred, I think,” Geran answered. “About half are here already, and the rest are marching up from Hulburg as quickly as they can.” She frowned dubiously. Geran saw her skepticism and added, “They’re not as good as your Shieldsworn or your mercenaries, but they’re fighting with their homes and families at their backs. They’ll do better than you might think, Kara.”
“I don’t think it will be enough,” Kara said. “The Bloody Skulls outnumber us by a margin of at least two to one, maybe closer to three to one.”
“We didn’t choose this fight, but it’s ours nonetheless,” Harmach Grigor told her. “Somehow, we have to find a way to win it. We simply have no alternative. Now, Kara, given what you’ve seen so far, what can we do to give ourselves the best chance for success?”
Kara looked at the old dike extending off into the darkness to either side. She noticed that a pale gray streak had appeared above the jagged shadows of the hills and peaks of the Highfells to the east. Dawn was not far off… if they lasted that long. She thought furiously, considering the problem from every angle while the others waited for her to organize her thoughts. “We’ll need to intersperse the Spearmeet and the professional soldiers,” she finally said. “Alternate a company of militia and a company of Shieldsworn or mercenaries to man the top of the dike. And then we’ll need to keep most of our cavalry together in reserve behind the dike, so that we can try to seal breaches in our line as they happen.”
“Good,” said Harmach Grigor. “What else, Kara?”
She studied the men and women swarming over the dike, and sighed. “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to pray,” she said.
TWENTY-EIGHT
11 Tarsakh, the Year of the Ageless One
If Geran was any judge of the weather, the approaching day promised to be bright and cold. The skies were cloudless, but a cold wind gusted and moaned over the vale, making the meager handful of banners and pennants over Hulburg’s defenders ruffle and snap. He wished the wind would have chosen a different quarter for the battle to come. It was blowing in the faces of the hundreds of men and women waiting along the top of the dike, and it would hinder what little archery they’d scraped together for the fight. On the other hand, orcs don’t care for bright sunlight, Geran reminded himself. The disadvantages of weather seemed equal to both sides.
“When d’you think they’ll come at us, Geran?” Durnan Osting said quietly. The brewer and his company of Spearmeet volunteers lined the top of the dike to each side of Geran. Kara and Harmach Grigor had entrusted Geran with command of the right wing of their small army-two Spearmeet companies, a battered band of Shieldsworn, and a motley collection of mercenaries from Marstel, Sokol, and the Double Moon. He needed about three times as many men to properly defend the length of wall he had, but there simply weren’t any more to spare.
“Soon, Durnan,” Geran answered. “Before the sun comes up, I think, and that’s not far off now.”
The valley floor was a patchwork of gray shadows, growing brighter by the minute. On Geran’s end of the line, Lendon’s Dike climbed to meet the steep wall on the east side of the Winterspear vale. From Geran’s elevated vantage, he could see the torch-dotted line of the earthworks stretching across the valley floor to the inky shadow of Lake Hul, a mile and a half away under the western margin of the vale. The old dwarf Dunstormad Goldhead and Burkel Tresterfin’s Spearmeet company held the spot where the dike met the lake, strengthened by the Veruna mercenaries. In the center of the line, where the Vale Road pierced the old dike, the harmach’s banner fluttered. Kara and most of the Shieldsworn were there, along with the Icehammer mercenaries and the weaker Spearmeet companies. The heaviest blow would fall right in the middle of the line; Geran could see the dark, seething mass of the orc horde gathering only a few hundred yards from the dike.
The valley shook with orc shouts and chants. Dozens of massive drums thumped and battled with each other, and the clamor of spears striking shields was overwhelming. Geran looked at the militiamen around him; he saw faces gray with anxiety, knuckles white as they clenched their weapons close.
“Come on, lads!” he shouted to the men nearby. “Let’s make a little noise of our own. Show them that we’re still here!” He raised a piercing war cry, and the men nearby joined in. Within a few moments the cry spread up and down along the dike until hundreds of men were shouting together against the orc horde. The orcs were far louder, but Geran kept at it, and he heard the small echo of his warriors’ voices rolling back from the hills amid the orc clamor.
“A vain gesture,” Sarth muttered from close by, but a moment later the tiefling joined his voice to Geran’s and shouted defiance as well. Vain or not, Geran thought that the men around him looked a little less frightened. Perhaps they felt that way, too. He wished Hamil were at his back, but the halfling hadn’t been able to march; Geran had left him at the Troll and Tankard.
The orc chant reached a crescendo then broke apart into countless individual roars and cries. The front line of
