"I noticed," Haaken said.
"Come on... Why don't you get your stuff ready? We're going ashore tonight."
They had been delayed five weeks in Dunno Scuttari, first for lack of transport, then to await the proper phase of the moon. The first few hours ashore would be critical. They would need all the light they could get.
Darkness, moonrise and the hour of peril came all too quickly.
"There it is," Bragi said, indicating the mouth of a tributary of the Scarlotti. "Fifteen minutes."
They landed at a village just above the sidestream, while El Murid's men were scurrying around in search of a ford. Captain Sanguinet hoped his company could vanish into the night before its pursuers got across.
The Altean villagers greeted them as enthusiastically as had the people of Simballawein.
"Keep your hands to yourself, Kildragon," Bragi growled as he formed his squad. "We don't have time for that."
Haaken chuckled softy. In Dunno Scuttari his brother had earned the reputation of being the squad's most devoted pursuer of "split-tail."
"Professional jealousy," Reskird remarked.
"Pot calling the kettle black, for sure," Haaken agreed.
"Come on, guys," Bragi said. "We're in a tight spot." He was edgy, and becoming more so. He had a bad feeling about this Altean campaign. He smelled disaster cooking. And Trolledyngjans were wont to put a lot of stock in omens and forebodings.
"Ready here?" Sanguinet asked.
"Ready, Captain," Bragi replied.
"What's all the hollering over there?" Reskird asked as soon as Sanguinet left. He craned his neck in an effort to see.
Bragi hoisted his pack. "They probably just figured out that we're not going to hang around and protect them." He needed no familiarity with the language to interpret the outrage being vented by the village elders. "Get your packs on."
They moved out to the curses of men and wails of women. Bragi ached inside because the little ones were crying.
They did not even know why.
Sanguinet set a hard pace, heading southeastward. He did not let up often, and then only for a few minutes at a time, to confer with the guides the Altean monarchy had sent to meet them. The march to the Bergwold, the forest they were to use as a base, was almost a hundred miles, and the Captain wanted to make it without a major interruption.
Dawn came and the company marched on. Villages, farms, manors, small castles, hove up ahead, slipped by, and drifted past like slow, lonely ships. The countryside showed no evidence of the passage of raiders, though the peasants vanished from the fields whenever the weary Guildsmen trudged into view.
Here and there, Sanguinet exchanged news with the masters of the various manors and castles. It was more neighborhood gossip than concrete fact. Karim had not yet turned his attention to Altea. The only real fighting had taken place down along the border with Tamerice. Crown Prince Raithel had beaten back three modest incursions.
Bragi wondered why everything was so quiet. He had expected almost continuous fighting. What Karim was doing to the Lesser Kingdoms had been a constant source of conversation during the trip upriver. Of the little states below the Scarlotti, only Altea, and Kavelin, which Altea geographically screened, remained unsubdued. Bragi had expected to be too late for the whirlwind's passage.
Something strange was going on and the entire Altean nation felt it. Nassef's protege was not one to lightly abandon the unstoppable inertia his forces had gained.
Twenty-eight hours of grueling marching brought the company to the northern verges of the Bergwold, so-called because of its proximity to Colberg Castle, a ruined fortress which had played a critical role in Altea's early history. The Alteans considered it a national monument. The passing Guildsmen saw nothing but crumbling walls looking spectral in the moonlight.
None of them knew anything about the kingdom they were supposed to help preserve. Of all of them only Lieutenant Trubacik spoke the language.
Those facts had weighed on Bragi throughout the march. As Reskird had observed, his corporal's belt had gone to his head. He had begun to take leadership seriously.
And there was little to do but think while walking.
Even the Captain was exhausted. The company broke discipline that first night. Not one spadeful of earth got turned along the camp perimeter.
The lapse lasted only that night. Next day Sanguinet moved deeper into the wood and commenced work on a semi-permanent base camp. Scouts made contact with a band of desert Royalists using the Bergwold for the same purpose. Sanguinet concluded a loose alliance.
For weeks they did little but patrol the farmland surrounding the forest. The patrols were half-hearted. The desert horsemen covered more territory faster, and the local nobility went out of their way to keep Sanguinet posted.
Such was the Guild's reputation.
"It feels good," Bragi confided to his brother. "One lousy company and these people figure the kingdom is saved."
"What happens when we don't live up to expectation?" Haaken grumped. Then, "Maybe that's why we're here. Morale. Maybe High Crag knows what it's doing."
"Maybe." Bragi's tone carried the skepticism every line soldier feels for the intellectuals of his trade.
He and his men did a lot of fishing and poking around the Colberg. More interesting diversions were not available.
Word finally came that the enemy was moving. Prince Raithel had met them and been defeated. He was retreating northward and needed reinforcements.
"Here we go again," Haaken grumbled as he shouldered his pack. "Why don't we just wait till they come here?"
"The Master Strategist has spoken," said Reskird. "Bragi, get him an appointment with the Captain."
"I got a sock if you want it, Bragi."
Ragnarson ignored them. Haaken's and Reskird's bickering had become ritualized. There was no rancor in it. It had become a time-passing game.
They never saw Raithel's army. The company found its own enemies twelve miles south of the Colberg.
"Oh-oh," Reskird groaned in his soothsayer's voice. "Trouble."
Royalist outriders galloped past the column in a panic, coming from the crossroad the company had passed a half mile back.
"You the official doom-crier now?" Haaken demanded.
"Company conference!" Sanguinet shouted after stopping one of the horsemen. "Come on! Move it!"
The Captain put it bluntly. "We're in for it. There's a mob of El Murid's men coming down that side road back there. We can't outrun them. They've already spotted us." He flung a hand at a brushy sugarloaf hill a mile away. The road snaked around its western base. "We'll go up yon hill and dig in. If you're religious, pray your ass off. There's a thousand of the bastards." He exaggerated. There were five hundred of the enemy. But that was trouble enough.
Bragi's squad stood to their weapons while their backups dug in. "Some friends," Haaken grumbled, watching the last of the Royalists gallop away. "We might've had a chance with their help."
"We still stand a damned good chance," Bragi said. "We're Guildsmen, remember?"
Reskird glanced over his shoulder. "Look at that dirt fly."
The secundus and tercio flailed at the earth. "Nothing like an unfriendly sword to motivate a man," Bragi observed.
The enemy reached the foot of the hill and halted. His commanders conferred. They seemed reluctant to attack.
"Hey!" Bragi said. "Some of those guys are westerners. Haaken. Can you make out their colors? Aren't they the same as those guys we met in Itaskia wore? Right after we came out of the mountains?"
Haaken peered. "I think you're right. Greyfells. Maybe this is another gang of Royalists."
"How come ours ran off, then?"
Sanguinet came to stand beside Ragnarson. "Itaskians?"
"Yes sir. Those are Greyfells colors."
"Lieutenant Trubacik. Take a white flag down. Find out who they are."
The command argument below continued till Trubacik approached and said something.
>
It electrified his listeners.
A man with wild grey hair cut Trubacik down.
A deep-throated roar rose from the hillside.
"We did something wrong," Bragi said. "But what?"
"Don't worry about it now," Sanguinet told him. "Worry about staying alive. They've made up their minds. They're coming."
The wild-haired horseman whipped his followers into line for a charge.
"Behind the ditch," Sanguinet ordered. "Primus, stand to your spears and shields. Bowmen, make every arrow count while they're coming through the brush. Men, if we turn their first attack we'll have our bluff in."
The enemy commander sent most of his warriors, holding only about eighty in reserve. Their animals struggled with the brush and the steep slope. The better Guild bowmen began taking them at extreme range. At least fifty did not reach the ditch, which lay just above the worst part of the slope.
The first riders up tried to jump the ditch but their animals had been ridden hard before being compelled to scale the hillside. Only a handful made the leap successfully. The others found their hindquarters dropping into the trench. They floundered around, blocking the progress of those behind them. Guild spearmen filled the trench with dead and dying animals.
The slower attackers walked their mounts into the ditch and up its farther side-into the thrusting spears. More animals went down. Only a handful maintained the momentum to crash the Guild battle line.
Guild arrows kept pounding into those farther down the slope.
Horsemen began leaping from their saddles and throwing themselves at the shield wall.
That was what Sanguinet wanted.
Bragi dropped his bloody spear and started plying his sword. The enemy kept coming. His dead and wounded carpeted the slope and filled the ditch.
Ragnarson pushed an attacker away with his shield. Three more leapt to take the man's place. He took one, but their combined weight forced him back a step. Perforce, Haaken and Reskird adjusted their positions so they could keep their shields locked with his.
A few riders answered the Guild arrows with shafts of their own. They did no damage because the secundus and tercio turtled with their shields.
Though the assault lasted only minutes, Bragi thought it an eternity before El Murid's warriors began to waver. At least a hundred of their number, and as many horses, had fallen.
The man with the wild hair rallied them. They began pressing again.
It was a slaughter without respite. Six, seven, eight of the desert horsemen went down for every Guildsman. But their captain kept driving them forward.
If that fool keeps on, he'll lose his whole command,Bragi thought.Why's he so desperate to wipe us out?
Then he heard Sanguinet shouting behind the line.
He dared not turn, but knew what had happened. The warriors who had not joined the initial assault had raced around the hill to attack from the rear. Sanguinet was trying to stop them.
The Captain succeeded, but only at the cost of taking his archers away from their bows.
The pressure on the main line redoubled. The shield wall began cracking. Desert warriors pushed into the gaps.
Bragi, Haaken, and Reskird soon found themselves isolated. They backed into a triangle and kept fighting as weary horses pushed past. "Andy! Raul!" Bragi shouted. "Push over here and link back up. Haaken, step backward when I say. Reskird, be ready to fit them in." He kept stabbing and cutting while he shouted.
The cohesiveness of the Guild line continued to dissolve.
A strange, fearless calm came over Ragnarson as death approached. His mind became detached from the body involved in the fighting. He saw what needed doing and tried to get it done.
He managed to reform his squad, having lost only two men.
His calm communicated itself to the others. Their panic declined. They settled down to the grim business of fighting the way they had been taught, maximizing their chances of surviving.
Bragi kept his men in a hard little square, moving when he could to incorporate other members of the company. He kept yelling, "Get their horses! We can murder them on the ground."
The man with the wild hair concurred. Too many of his men were being forced to their feet, where their sabers and small round shields were of little value against heavy infantry. He saw his battalion being destroyed by an inferior force. The gradual regathering of the Guild platoons promised to worsen the casualty ratio.
He was upslope of the Company now. He started gathering riders for another charge, one that would shatter the Guild formation more thoroughly and leave the individual infantrymen vulnerable to his horsemen.
Bragi took advantage of the lessening pressure to include more Guildsmen in his little phalanx and move them to a rock outcrop they could use as a core for their formation.
"Get the wounded back in the rocks," he ordered. "Haaken? See those guys over there? Take a couple men and see if you can help them get over here. You. With the bow. Cover them."
He stamped around the rock as if this were his company, gathering more men, recovering weapons and shields, and keeping one eye on the charge the horsemen were about to throw down the hill.
He gathered some forty able men, and a dozen wounded, before the charge. Despite constant harassment, the rest of the company had managed to coalesce into strong knots. Most had moved to the downhill side of the trench.
"Here they come," said Kildragon.
"All right. Reskird, take over on the left side. Haaken, you take care of the right. I'll stay here. You men, don't let them bluff you. They don't have the balls to ride through us into the rocks."
The charge did what the enemy commander wanted, though again he paid a terrible price. It shattered every Guild grouping but Bragi's. The hillside swirled with furious individual combats.
The chances of the Company surviving did not look good.
The horsemen sheered round Bragi's group, trying to cut at its flanks. "Get their horses!" he kept shouting. "Somebody with a bow, get that sonofabitch with the grey hair." Nobody did so, so he snatched up a fallen bow and tried himself. He had no luck either.
But a minute later, when the man, cursing, rode closer while trying to force his riders to push straight in, Bragi got his horse by throwing a spear. The animal dropped to its haunches, dumping its rider over its rump.
"Haaken! Grab that bastard!"
Despite furiously raining blows and pounding hooves, Haaken snaked out, grabbed a handful of grey hair, and hurled himself back. He threw the groggy enemy captain at Bragi.
Ragnarson was not gentle with him either. He hoisted the captive overhead so his followers could see that he had been taken.
The Guildsmen cheered.
Bragi did not get the results he wanted. The enemy did not give up. But many of them did back off to talk it over, giving the Guildsmen a chance to reform.
Reskird said, "Those guys aren't going to turn tail just because you got their Number One."
"It was worth a shot. Maybe I shouldn't have. They might take time to think out how to get rid of us easier." Bragi glanced down at the grey-haired man. He had become docile. His lips moved, but no sound came forth. "Hey. He's praying."
"Wouldn't you? Hell, I'd be praying now if I knew a god I could trust."
"Thought you was high on the Grey Walker because he saved your ass when your ship got rammed."
"Yeah? Look what he got me into."
"Bragi," Haaken called. "Come here."
Ragnarson pushed to his brother's side. "What?"
"Out there. More of them." Haaken pointed with his chin.
The horsemen were barely discernable. They were not on the road, where dust would have given them away earlier.
There were two columns, splitting from one. They seemed intent on surrounding the hill.
"Damn! And we could've been out of this now if those chicken-shit Royalists had helped. They could've kept that bunch from getting behind us."
"Here they come again!" Kildr
agon yelled.
Bragi sighed and forced his weary muscles to lift sword and shield once more. This was it. The end. And he didn't even know what he was dying for, unless it were simply brotherhood and the honor of the Guild.
Well, Ragnar had always said you should make your death a moment to remember. And if you couldn't be remembered by your friends, you should leave your enemies with tales they could tell their grandchildren during the long, cold winter nights.
The charge came hard. It should have spelled the end of Sanguinet's Company. But it began weakening almost immediately. Even as he shouted about getting the horses, Bragi sensed the uncertainty of the foe. In minutes their attack became half-hearted. Soon afterward they began showing their backs.
"What the hell?" Bragi asked the air. "Haaken. They're running. Running like hell. What happened?"
Reskird suggested, "Those guys down there must be on our side."
At that most of the Guildsmen surrendered to exhaustion and collapsed on their shields. They did not wait for confirmation. But Bragi dragged himself to the top of the rock outcrop. "Hey, Reskird! For once in your miserable life you guessed right. Whoo-ee! Look at them bastards ride!"
The rumbling of hooves and wailing, hair-raising Royalist warcries swept around both sides of the hill.
"What god did you pick this time, Reskird?" Bragi demanded headily. "We owe him a whole flock of sheep. Wow! I don't think any of them will get away." He eased back down and stretched himself on his shield. "Ah. This sure is nice."
And Haaken, dropping beside him, gripping his upper arm, said, "We made it. I don't believe it. We made it." He was snaking so much he could do nothing but hang on.
"Just lay back and look at that sky," Bragi told him. "Look at those clouds. Aren't they the most beautiful things you ever saw?"
Haaken did as he was told. "Yeah. Yeah."
Bragi let everybody enjoy a few minutes of unexpected life. Then he forced himself to his feet and said, "All right, if you're not wounded, let's start picking up the pieces. We've got a lot of brothers hurt and scattered all over hell. Try to get everybody to gather around here. I'm going to find the Captain and see what he wants we should do. Haaken, pick a couple guys with strong stomachs and finish off their wounded."