Now there was a continuous rattle as the raised Skandian shields caught the majority of the arrows that the Temujai were pouring in. But not all. Men were falling along the Skandian lines, and being dragged back out of the battle line by those behind them, who then stepped in to replace them. Now the second and third ranks of Skandians held their shields high, to protect them against plunging fire, while the front rank presented their shields to the more direct frontal fire.
It was an effective ploy. But it left the men blinded to the approach of the Temujai. Now, as Will watched, one group of sixty quickly slung their bows, drew sabres and darted into the Skandian line in a slashing attack, killing a dozen men before the Skandians even realised they were there. As the Skandians re-formed and moved to counterattack, the Temujai withdrew rapidly, and another Ulan, waiting for this exact opportunity, poured a deadly hail of arrows into the disrupted shield wall.
‘We’d better do something,’ Horace muttered. Will held his hand up for silence. The seemingly random movements of the Temujai Ulans actually had a complex pattern to them and, now he had seen it, he could predict their movements.
The horsemen were wheeling again, galloping away from the Skandian line and back to re-form. Behind them, more than fifty Skandians lay dead, victims of either the arrows or the slashing Temujai sabres. Half a dozen Temujai bodies lay around the breastworks where the Ulans had made their lightning attack.
The Temujai riders were back in their own lines now. They would rest their horses, letting them recover their wind, while another ten Ulans took up the attack. It would be the same pattern, forcing the Skandians to cover up behind their shields, then attacking with sabres when they were blinded and, finally, pouring in volley after volley of arrows as their own men withdrew, leaving a gap in the shield wall. It was simple. It was effective. And there was a deadly inevitability about it.
Now the Ulans began their wheeling, galloping dance once again. Will fixed his attention on a troop at the middle of the line, knowing that it would curve and turn and eventually come at them on a diagonal. He muttered to Horace.
‘Get those breastworks down.’
He heard the muscular apprentice bellow: ‘Shields! Uncover!’ The shield bearers rushed to shove the wicker walls down, leaving the archers behind a waist-high earth berm and with a clear field.
‘Ready,’ called Evanlyn, indicating that each man in the line of archers had an arrow nocked to the string. Then it was up to Will.
‘Half left!’ he called, and the archers all turned to the same direction.
‘Position two!’
A hundred arms raised to the same angle, as Will watched the approaching group of riders, seeing in his mind’s eye the galloping Temujai and the flight of arrows converging to meet at the same point in time and space.
‘Down a half … draw!’
The elevation corrected and one hundred arrows came back to full draw. He paused, counted to three to make sure he wasn’t too soon, then yelled:
‘Shoot!’
The slithering, hissing sound told him that the arrows were on their way. Already, the archers were reaching for their next shafts.
Horace, about to call for the shield bearers, waited. They were under no direct attack at the moment and there was no need to disrupt the sequence of shooting and reloading at this stage.
Then the first volley struck home.
Maybe it was luck. Maybe it was the result of the weeks of practice, hour after hour, but Will had directed that first volley almost perfectly. One hundred shafts arced down to meet the galloping Ulan and at least twenty of them found targets.
Men and horses screamed in pain as they crashed to the ground. And instantly, the disciplined, structured formation of the Ulan was shattered. Those who were unhurt by the arrows were confronted by their comrades and their horses tumbling and rolling headlong. And as each stricken man fell, he took another with him, or caused his neighbour to swerve violently, reining his horse in, sawing on the reins until the tight formation was a milling mass of plunging horses and men.
‘Ready!’ called Evanlyn. From her position, she couldn’t see the result. Quickly, Will realised he had the chance now to deal a devastating blow to the enemy.
‘Same target. Position two. Draw …’ He heard the scrape of arrows against bows as the men drew back their right hands until the feathered ends of the shafts were just touching their cheeks.
‘Shoot!’
Another volley hissed away at the tangle of men and horses. Already, Will was yelling for his men to reload. In their haste, some of them fumbled, dropping the arrows as they tried to nock them. Wisely, Evanlyn decided not to wait until they had recovered.
‘Ready!’ she called.
‘Same target. Position two. Draw …’
They had the range and the direction now and the Temujai troop was stalled, caught in the one spot, losing their most valuable protection, their mobility.
‘Shoot!’ yelled Will, not caring that his voice cracked with excitement, and a third volley was on its way.
‘Shields!’ bellowed Horace, shoving his own shield forward to cover himself and his friend. He had seen that some of the other Ulans had finally noticed what was happening and were riding to return fire. A few seconds later, he felt the drumming of arrows against the shield, heard the rattle as they struck other shields along the line of archers.
There was no way that the Temujai could send a squad with sabres in towards the archers. Halt had placed Will and his men to one side and behind the Skandian main line of defence. To reach them, the Temujai would have to fight their way through the Skandian axemen.
The troop that Will had engaged had taken three carefully aimed volleys – nearly three hundred arrows – in quick succession. Barely ten men of the original Ulan remained alive. The bodies of the others littered the ground. Their riderless horses were galloping away, neighing in panic.
Now, as the other riders wheeled away towards their own lines, Will saw a further opportunity. Another two Ulans were riding in close proximity and still well within range.
‘Shields down,’ he said to Horace and the warrior passed the message along.
‘Target: right front. And a half … Position three … draw …’ Again, he made himself wait, to be sure. ‘Shoot!’
The arrows, dark against the clean blue of the sky, arced after the withdrawing cavalry.
‘Shields!’ Horace called, as the arrows struck home and another dozen or so Temujai tumbled from their saddles. Behind the shelter of the big, rectangular shield, he and Will exchanged grins.
‘I think that went rather well,’ said the apprentice Ranger.
‘I think it went rather well indeed!’ the apprentice warrior agreed with him.
‘Ready!’ called Evanlyn once more, her gaze fixed on the archers as they fitted arrows to their bowstrings. The call reminded Will, a little belatedly, that she had no way of knowing how successful their first action had been.
‘Stand down!’ Will called. There was no point keeping the men tensed up while the Temujai were re-forming. He gestured to Evanlyn.
‘Come on up and see the results,’ he told her.
It took several minutes for the Temujai commander to realise that something had gone badly wrong – for the second time. There was a gap in his line as the riders returned, he realised. Then, as he cast his glance over the battlefield, he saw the tangled bodies of men and horses and frowned. He had been watching the overall action and had missed the four rapid volleys that had destroyed the Ulan.
He pointed with his lance at them. ‘What’s happened there?’ he demanded of his aides. But none of them had seen the destruction as it took place. His question was greeted with blank stares.
A single horseman was pounding towards them, calling his name.
‘General Haz’kam! General!’
The man was swaying in the saddle and the front of his leather vest was slick with blood from several wounds. Blood stained the flanks of hi
s horse as well, and the Temujai command staff were startled to see that the horse had been hit by at least three arrows.
Horse and rider skidded to a stop in front of the command position. For the horse, it was the final effort. Weakened by loss of blood, it sank slowly to its knees, then rolled over on its side, its injured rider only managing to escape being pinned at the last moment. Haz’kam frowned as he peered at the wounded man, then recognised Bin’zak, his former chief of intelligence. True to his word, the colonel had taken his place in the front line of one of the Ulans. It had been his incredible misfortune that he’d chosen the one destroyed by Will’s archers.
‘General,’ croaked the dying man. ‘They have archers …’
He staggered a few paces towards them and now they could see the broken-off stubs of arrows in two of his wounds. On the ground beside him, the horse heaved a gigantic, shuddering sigh and died.
‘Archers …’ he repeated, his voice barely audible, and he sank to his knees.
Haz’kam tore his gaze away from the stricken colonel and scanned the enemy ranks. There was no sign of archers there. The Skandians stretched in three ranks across the narrowest part of the valley, behind their earthworks. On the seaward side, and a little behind the main force, another group stood – also behind earthworks and holding large rectangular shields. But he could see no sign of archers.
There was one sure way to find them, he thought. He gestured towards his next ten Ulans.
‘Attack,’ he said briefly and the bugler sounded the call. Once more, the valley filled with the jingle of harness and the thunder of hooves as they drove forward.
In front of him, the colonel slumped forward, face down in the sodden grass. Haz’kam made the Temujai gesture of salute, raising his left hand to his lips, then extending it out to the side in an elaborate, flowing movement. His staff did likewise. Bin’zak had redeemed himself, he thought. In the end, he had brought his general a vital piece of intelligence, even if it had cost his own life.
Will watched the approaching cavalry as, once again, they began their wheeling, circling dance. Horace stirred beside him but some sense warned the young Ranger not to expose his men yet.
‘Wait,’ he said quietly. He had half expected that a concerted attack would be launched towards their position, in an attempt to wipe them out. But this attack was like the previous one, launched along the entire front. That could mean only one thing: the Temujai leaders hadn’t pinpointed the archers’ position.
Arrows began falling on the Skandian lines and once more, the three ranks covered up with their shields. As before, a troop of Temujai broke off their manoeuvring and drew sabres to launch a lightning attack on the unsighted Skandians. This time, however, Will was looking beyond them, to identify the support group who would open fire on the Skandians as their comrades withdrew. He saw them: a Ulan which had drawn to a halt some fifty metres from the Skandian front rank.
‘Load!’ Will yelled down his line. Then, in an aside to Horace: ‘Keep the shields up.’ He had felt the larger youth draw breath to call his next order. But Will wanted to keep his men hidden as long as possible.
‘Ready!’ Evanlyn called, as the last arrow nocked onto the string.
‘Face left half left again!’ he called and the archers, luckily, understood his meaning. As one, they all turned to face the direction he had picked. He had varied their drill by calling direction first but they seemed to understand what he wanted.
‘Position three!’ he yelled and the arms came up to maximum elevation, the hundred of them moving as one.
‘Shields down,’ he muttered to Horace and heard him repeat the order.
‘Draw!’
Beneath his breath, he told himself, ‘Count to three as each arm brings back its arrow to the full draw.’
Then, aloud: ‘Shoot!’ and instantly, he screamed: ‘Shields! Up shields!’ As Horace took up the cry, the shields swung back into position to conceal the archers from return fire – and, hopefully, from observation.
Again the wait, then the volley of arrows slammed down into the Temujai Ulan, just as they were on the point of firing into the gap their comrades had forced in the shield wall. Once more, men and horses went down in screaming, tangled heaps. Grouped together as they were, and not moving, the Ulan made a perfect target for the massed arrows.
At least twenty of them were down, including their commander. Now their sergeants were yelling at the survivors to get moving. To get out of this killing ground.
Haz’kam never saw the volley that struck his men. But he did see, in his peripheral vision, the concerted movement of the hundred shields as they swung back and forth like so many gates opening and closing. A few seconds later, he saw one of his foremost Ulans collapse and disintegrate.
And then the shields moved again and he saw the archers. At least a hundred of them, he estimated, working smoothly and in unison as they launched another volley at the retreating Ulan which had attacked the Skandian line. The shields swung up to cover the archers as more Temujai riders went down.
Again, the shields swung down in unison, and this time he saw the solid flight of arrows, black against the sky, as they arced up and struck into another of his galloping Ulans. He turned and caught the eye of his third son, a captain on his staff. He pointed with his lance to the line of shields on the slight rise behind the Skandian ranks.
‘There are their archers!’ he said. ‘Take a Ulan and investigate. I want information.’
The captain nodded, saluted and clapped spurs to the barrel-shaped body of his horse.
He was shouting commands to the leader of the nearest troop of sixty as he galloped down the front line of the Temujai army.
In their raised position behind the Skandian lines, Will and Horace were working smoothly together, pouring volley after volley into the wheeling riders. Inevitably now, they were beginning to take casualties as individual Temujai saw them and returned fire. But the shield drill worked smoothly and their improvised method of exposing the men to return fire for only a few seconds at a time was paying dividends.
What was more, the Skandians were beginning to see the effect of the disciplined, concentrated fire on their enemies. As each volley hissed down, as arrows found their marks and Temujai saddles emptied, the waiting axemen roared their approval.
For the first time, Will had seen the Kaijin sharpshooters attached to each Ulan, as they attempted to take him and Horace under fire. He had just duelled with two of them and watched in satisfaction as the second slumped sideways out of his saddle. Horace nudged his arm and pointed.
‘Look,’ he said and Will, following the line he indicated, saw a Ulan galloping from the Temujai lines and heading straight for them. There was no wheeling and turning for these riders. They were coming straight on at a dead run. And it was obvious where they were heading.
‘We’ve been spotted,’ he said. Then, calling to his men: ‘Face front half right. Load!’
Hands reached for arrows, nocked them firmly to strings.
‘Ready!’ That was Evanlyn once more. He grinned as he thought of how Halt had questioned the need for her to be here. Suddenly, he was glad the grizzled Ranger had lost that argument. He shook the thought aside, estimating the speed of the oncoming riders. Already, they were shooting, and arrows were rattling on the shields along the line. But all the advantages lay with Will and his men. Shooting from a stable, unmoving, elevated position, and from behind cover, they held the upper hand in any exchange.
‘Position two!’ he called. ‘Draw!’
‘Shields down!’ Horace yelled, giving Will just the right pause.
‘Shoot!’ shouted Will.
‘Shields up!’ roared Horace, covering his friend as he did so.
The archers were exposed to return fire for no more than a few seconds. Even so, under the constant barrage of arrows from the Temujai, they took a few casualties. Then their volley hit the onrushing Ulan and wiped out the front rank of twelve, sending men and horses
tumbling yet again. The riders in the following ranks tried to avoid their fallen comrades, but in vain. More horses came down, more riders tumbled out of their saddles. Some managed to leap their horses over the tangle of bodies and they were the ones who rode clear. As the others tried to reorganise, another volley, ten seconds behind the first, fell on them.
Haz’kam’s son, with one arrow through his right thigh and another in the soft flesh between neck and shoulder, lay across the body of his horse. He watched as the shields opened and shut, and the arrows poured out in a constant, disciplined stream. He saw the two heads moving in the fortified position at the end of the archer’s line.
That was what his father needed to know. He watched as another two volleys hissed into the sky. Thankfully, these were directed at another Ulan as it galloped past. He could actually hear the commands as the two men in the command position called them. One of the voices sounded absurdly young.
It was growing dark early, he reflected, and promptly realised that it could be no later than mid-morning. He craned painfully to look at the sky. But it was a brilliant blue and, with a sudden thrill of fear, he realised he was dying. He was dying, with urgent information that he must pass on to his father. Groaning in pain, he dragged himself to his feet and began to stumble back towards the Temujai lines, picking his way through the tangle of fallen bodies.
A riderless horse cantered past him and he tried to catch it but was too weak. Then he heard a thunder of hooves behind him and a strong hand gripped the back of his sheepskin jacket and hauled him up and over a saddlebow, where he gasped and moaned with the pain in his neck and leg.
He angled round to see his saviour. It was a sergeant from one of the other Ulans.
‘Take me … to General Haz’kam … urgent message,’ he managed to croak and the sergeant, recognising the staff insignia on his shoulders, nodded and wheeled his horse towards the command post.