“Good thing you had the water to jump into,” Kieri said.
“Aye, that it was. I owe Falk an offering for that, when we get to a Field. And thanks to our captain, Falk hold his soul, for making us dig that ditch.” Vardan paused; Kieri poured her a mug of water. Vardan took a gulp, then went on. “When we got out, there was just the scar, nothing but ash, and fires burning along each side of it. Nothing left of the camp or the ten who were in it. And all of us wet, cold, with no supplies. If not for the rangers, we wouldn’t be here.”
Kieri let her tell the rest of it without interruption. She had done what he would have expected from a Halveric sergeant or one of his former troops. Between the terse sentences, he easily imagined the struggle it had been—and the years of experience that had given her the skills and character to save so many and use them so effectively.
“So this morning,” Vardan said. “The ranger with us said he knew by the taig the king was coming, and I said we ought to go to meet you—you’d find a way to use us better than skulking behind trees and giving a volley now and then.”
“And how far away are the Pargunese, do you know?”
“The rangers harass them, and they have a few Royal Archers, too. They are on both sides, and it slows the Pargunese down. We made them afraid of the woods—lured them to a steading a day—a day and night ago—” Vardan shook her head; Kieri realized the sergeant was near total exhaustion. “We passed them early this morning; they did not notice, because the rangers were shooting at them. I think we must be a half-day ahead.”
“Will they march at night?”
“No. They try to barricade themselves at night. I don’t know if they found another farm, but it did not go well for them last time.”
“You have bought us time, Sergeant,” Kieri said. “If you had done nothing more than delay them, that would have been valuable. But bringing trained archers, already armed—” Twenty-eight Halverics plus the fifty Royal Archers with him … nearly a cohort, all trained to shoot in volleys. “I sent messengers to that Royal Archer camp you mentioned, ordering them to make haste to meet us, but that will take them a day at least, even mounted.”
“What about Captain Talgan?” Vardan asked. “The Halverics we found saw another fire to the west—but he was at Riverwash—”
“Riverwash burned,” Kieri said. “Scathefire.” The woman’s face paled under its southern tan. “As far as I know, no one in the fort there survived. I have heard nothing from there … Assassins preceded the attack, disrupting the courier system for several days.”
“So all we—you—have—”
“Is here or scattered through the forest, so far as I know. And though the dragon—”
“Dragon!”
“Yes, dragon. A witness, one of my Squires, saw the dragon destroy a troop of Pargunese near Riverwash, but I have no assurance that the dragon killed all the Pargunese who landed there … or that none have landed since.” Kieri nodded his thanks to a servant who brought a jug of steaming sib to the table. He gestured to Vardan’s mug. As the man poured, he said, “Aliam’s on his way with the rest of Halveric Company, but he won’t have reached Chaya yet. We need to hold the Pargunese away from Chaya and the King’s Grove until he can reinforce us. With your contingent, I now have eighty archers—”
“We’re almost out of bolts and arrows, sir,” Vardan said.
“Plenty with us,” Kieri said, grinning. “That’s one thing I managed, to boost the production of arrows this past half-year. I can supply your troops with good blackwood bows and plenty of arrows.” He asked a few more questions, learned that no more Pargunese had landed after this force, and then sent Vardan to rest.
Kieri woke in the predawn darkness, aware of a stir in the camp. Two small groups of Royal Archers—seven in one group, nine in the other—and some twenty rangers had arrived, having marched through the night. That brought the number of archers up to a full cohort, but they had not ever maneuvered together. And these last were all tired, having had no sleep. Kieri ordered the newcomers fed first, then the other troops, as he considered the best way to use this combination.
As the light grew, he began to get reports from his forward scouts—the Pargunese were still moving warily south along the scathefire track and at their present rate would reach him shortly before or after dark. They did not have scouts out at a distance—having lost many to the rangers’ superior woods skills—but were still a compact and dangerous fighting unit. They had taken another farmstead—from which the owners, warned, had fled—and obtained some food there.
“We’ll go to meet them,” Kieri said. “I want daylight for that. Are there tracks both east and west on which we can move fast?”
“On the west, yes,” one of the rangers said. “But on the east, the only track bears away—it’s not that useful. What we did was let ’em get past and then cross behind them, work up close enough, and then snipe from there.”
“Here’s what I plan to do,” Kieri said, and motioned to the maps still spread on the table. “If they move at yesterday’s speed, we can be in place here”—he tapped the map—“well before they reach it. That will let me place archers on the east side as well. Our harassing archery will slow them enough to give the supply train time to set up the second ambush here.” He pointed again. “We want it to look as though we started to build a barricade across the scathefire track, didn’t have time for a good one, and fled. They’re more likely to go over it than over the burnt-brush tangles at the sides.” He looked up to be sure they understood. “They’ll see a climbable barricade with plunder on the other side; they’ll be exposed as they try to get over it. Then we attack through the gaps beyond the barrier, where this burnt stuff was used for the barrier itself.”
The Pargunese made enough noise to hear before they came in sight: stamping boots, jingling mail, hoofbeats, creaking leather. Kieri peered between the tree boles for the first sight of them. Banner uttered a soft fluttery sound; Kieri laid a mailed hand on his muzzle.
He had a hundred archers now, well supplied with arrows but unused to fighting together … against two hundred and more, short of bolts—they must be—but trained and experienced in formation fighting. The Pargunese knew they were in trouble, moving ever deeper into hostile territory, knew they were losing men constantly to sniping.
Why were they still coming? Why had they not retreated? What was behind them worse than what they were facing? Whatever the reason, they would be angry and ready for a battle. Would their discipline hold?
The Pargunese appeared, still marching in straight ranks, their dark blue cloaks almost black against the snow, their helmets rising to a spike. The outer rows all around the formation carried their tall, narrow Pargunese shields to the outside. Heavy shields, with a spike on the bottom to let them be braced on the ground during an engagement. On this side, the west, that meant shields hung on the sword-hand shoulder, their pikes in the left hand … unless they had that many heart-handed men, they’d find it hard to fight that way, though it gave them some protection from sniping.
Behind the main formation rode their mounted troops, now down to eleven from twenty, all in heavier armor, all with a longer spear braced upright in a socket and a shorter pair of javelins. Although they outnumbered his troops, they looked surprisingly small against the backdrop of the forest across the gap. He could see the entire formation at once.
Once again Kieri wondered why they were still advancing. They had to know they were marching away from reinforcement, away from their supplies … losing troops daily. Most armies lost heart when their numbers dropped so far. These looked almost—almost enchanted.
Kieri reached out to the taig and felt the malice of the Pargunese but no more than that. He could not tell if that meant no enchantment or if it was the taig’s own suffering that clouded its communication.
When the front line reached the mark he’d set, one of the rangers blew a horn. The Pargunese faltered a moment, but one of their officers yelled, an
d they marched on.
A second horn call. Fifty archers on the west side—Royal Archers and Halverics both—rose and sent flights of arrows into the Pargunese formation. The formation shrank visibly as men fell. The Pargunese officers bellowed: “Hold, you fishbait! They’ve clumped—we can take them if we stick together—shields—form for charge!”
Exactly what Kieri had hoped. The Pargunese were all yelling now, insults only Kieri and a few others understood. They faced right, held their shields up at an angle, and charged at the woods. Frustrated, tired, hungry men in a foreign land, after days of being picked off by ones and twos, they wanted a fight.
A third horn call now, as Kieri signaled. From the east, the far side of the scathefire track, his other fifty archers emerged and shot directly into the Pargunese rear. Kieri could not see how many fell but knew that most of the rear rank and at least some of the next would be sorely wounded if not killed. The compact Pargunese formation—originally ten files of twenty-four—had now lost almost fifty of its original strength.
“Reform! Pin-pig!” It was the only workable formation for a unit beset by archery in multiple directions. Kieri watched as the Pargunese struggled, losing more every moment, to back and turn into the circle, bristling with pikes, shields locked together for protection. The officers had all dismounted, turning their horses loose, and were in the center of the pin-pig, their long spears sticking up like flag standards. After a moment of stillness, he saw the covering shield quiver, opening small holes near the center of the formation.
“Dropping volley,” he said to the nearest Royal Archer. “Cover.” They knelt and put up their shields.
Kieri looked past the clumped Pargunese and saw that his unit on the far side was still standing in the open, bows bent. “Back!” he yelled. “ ’Ware volley.” But the bolts were already in the air, including those rattling on branches overhead. Kieri looked down, trusting his helm and shield to protect him. Only one of his people was hit, the bolt piercing his helmet and killing him instantly. The Pargunese shields overlapped again, clattering like shutters.
“They’re short of bolts,” Kieri said.
“Or they want us to think so,” one of his Squires said.
“Can they use stray arrows in those crossbows?” asked one of the rangers.
“Yes, but not very accurately,” Kieri said. “Some of the units in Aarenis use a compound bow—not as long as the blackwood bows—and shorter arrows as well, but even those don’t fly well from crossbows except in a dropping volley. I think if they had plenty of bolts, they’d have fired another volley. Look—they’re moving.”
The Pargunese, closely hidden under their overlapping shields, were creeping slowly along the scathefire track, still heading south.
“How do they do that?” one of the Squires, Panin, asked.
“Training,” Kieri said. “But it’s hard, exhausting work to keep those shields tight and carry their weapons. Those in the rear are having to walk backward.” He looked around. “We’ll keep pace with them; it won’t be hard.”
“And when they reach the barricade?”
“They can’t get past it in that formation. They may even break open before then. And then—we hit them again.”
“It seems … unfair,” Cern said. Kieri recalled that he was only five years out of Falk’s Hall.
“War’s not fair,” Kieri said. “We want to hinder them—kill them in the end—losing as few of our own people as possible.” He had said this before, but these Squires had not seen even one pitched battle. “Their invasion wasn’t fair; the scathefire wasn’t fair.”
The Pargunese would expect a hostile force to be pacing them … they would be, even in the cold, sweating and miserable under their shields. Someone’s arm would get tired; someone walking backward would stumble. Fury and panic both would be stalking their minds even as the Lyonyans stalked their flanks. After a while, the Pargunese began to relax their formation, as he’d expected. They did so cautiously. Blinded on the flanks by the protective shields, with no more mounted fighters to keep a lookout, they could not see Kieri’s forces. First their ankles, then their shins … a gradual lowering of the interior shields … those in the rear swung around to change places with the next forward rank … and then the leaders saw the barricade. They halted.
Kieri hoped they would see it as he intended: a crude, hasty barrier of logs and tangled brush bracing some sharpened stakes reaching across the scathefire track. Beyond it, a wagon on its side, barrels and bales spilled out onto the snow, traces cut where the team had been freed, signs of panicked flight. Would they take the bait or suspect the trap?
Suddenly, the tight cluster opened out; from his height, Kieri could see a man in armor in the middle of the cluster, space opening around him … and then the transformation he had never expected to see again, as the man’s armor seemed first to melt into his body and then split apart … his shape changing from human to the spider-like form of one of Achrya’s servants. Kieri felt the taig’s revulsion at the touch of the thing’s claws. The Pargunese soldiers kept a careful distance. The thing chittered, audible even at this distance. Another Pargunese yelled; the soldiers opened a lane to the front.
“You have to hit the eyes,” Kieri murmured to the ranger at his side. “Or underneath …”
The thing paused at the barricade, head lifted, turning from side to side. Kieri felt a chill run down his backbone. It was Achrya’s, and Achrya could see what mortals could not. The dragon had said Achrya would soon have no power, but this was Achrya’s servant. “Now!” he said. Bowstrings twanged; arrows split the air, some sent high and some lower … but the thing was over the barricade in a blur of speed before the first arrow arrived. Pargunese men fell instead; those unwounded did not re-form or return fire—as he’d expected—but rushed forward to the barricade as if compelled to follow the spider-thing.
“What is that?” Vardan asked; Kieri heard others asking as well.
“Achrya’s creature,” Kieri said. “And we must kill it—if we kill all the men and leave it running loose, we have lost.” Kieri mounted Banner and lowered his visor. “Come on,” he said. “And you,” he said to the Halveric sergeant. “I need a tensquad.”
The Squires scrambled to mount and catch up as Kieri urged Banner past the end of the barrier in the trees and turned toward the scathefire track, where the creature had clambered onto the overturned wagon and now waved its front legs at its followers. A dozen Pargunese had made it over the barrier; the rest of the Lyonyans were picking off the others as they tried to climb the brush, their shields askew. Kieri glanced back, calculating angles and odds—his remaining Squires, a squad of Halverics commanded by that sergeant. Plenty, if they were fast.
Banner charged; behind him, Kieri heard other hoofbeats and the Halverics’ running feet. He knew the others were coming, outflanking the barrier. Then two more of the Pargunese soldiers shifted into the great spider shapes. Kieri felt a familiar wave of chill calm sweep over him. Holy Falk, Lady of Peace … He’d known there could be more than one—was that all? No, for another two Pargunese stopped short and seemed to shiver.
Kieri shifted his weight; Banner responded instantly, shortening stride and bringing Kieri directly to one of them in midchange. Kieri’s sword-stroke took the creature across the middle, splitting a still-soft carapace. On the backswing he took the second. Even as he looked back, Banner snorted and changed leads, swinging his hindquarters around.
Where were the Squires? Cern’s mount was just leaping one of the things Kieri had killed, ears pinned, eyes wild. Cern grabbed for mane as the horse bucked on landing, but he managed to come up on Kieri’s shield-side. “Sir—”
“Quiet,” Kieri said. The two lesser creatures faced them, forelegs raised and the vicious spinnerets he remembered pointing at them. How far could the venom go? Did they have other weapons? The first to change, the largest, was still crouched atop the wagon, facing the other Squires and Halverics, who seemed to be unable to move
. It must be the commander.
“I can shoot one,” Linne said. She had caught up with them and nocked an arrow.
“The eye, the underside of the abdomen,” Kieri said. “The rest is armored.” He glanced back at the other soldiers who’d made it over the barrier and were advancing again in a straight rank. Another three had made it; none seemed to be changing, and none had crossbows. It should be easy to avoid them … pikes were too heavy to throw far. He distrusted “easy” when his own supporters were on the other side of the enemy and immobile.
Linne and Cern both drew and released; the arrows sang through the air but stopped short of the creatures as if they had hit an invisible wall.
So much for easy.
Then he heard Sergeant Vardan. “Get moving!” she yelled at her squad. She took a step forward, slow, as if she were pulling herself free of deep mud, but she moved. “What are you, raw recruits in your first skirmish? Halverics! Pick up your feet, you lumps! Falk’s Oath in gold! That’s our king over there. Move!”
Behind her, the others began moving—older veterans first and then even the newest. The spider-demon he thought of as the commander leapt at the Halverics; Kieri spurred Banner even as Linne’s next shot hit one of the others—once, twice, and then it was down. The third wavered, spurting something from its spinnerets but missing both him and Cern as Kieri, on his way past, swung and cut a deep gash in the carapace. He was just aware that Linne had paused to engage it.
Banner swerved to miss the wagon, then lunged ahead; Kieri had nothing but his sword, and the thing had reached the Halveric sergeant, seized her in its clawed forelimbs. She hacked at it with her sword, but it would not bite on the thing’s carapace. Kieri saw other Halverics coming to her aid—and then Banner reared, striking the thing’s abdomen from behind with iron-shod forehooves. Kieri leaned down, stabbing, but Banner’s hooves skidded off that hard carapace, and his stroke missed. The thing whirled, dropping Vardan’s body; Kieri had his sword up again and swept it side to side across the array of eyes. Banner jumped sideways as a gout of venom spurted at them, then in again, and this time Kieri managed to lop off its head.