Beneath him, the first wave of grey bodies roars forwards. Each group peels off into defiles between the barrows, shields up and clubs loose. The army of Thell is silent. The sky is clear. It won’t last.
Slickwalker tears his sights from the charge and tilts them towards the mountain. Watching won’t keep them alive. It’s time to inflict some death of his own.
Slickwalker is just a man with a gun.
Sandsinger is in the lead on the rolling ground below, and fuck, but she does not want to be. Her knees hammering as they charge forwards. A hard spike of adrenaline in her heart, the breath rasping in her lungs like a swilled-out pail. One of the boys behind her screaming already, something high and thin. He doesn’t even realise he’s doing it. It’s just leaking out of him like a pig before slaughter.
A pain in her chest like the one that felled her own beloved boy six year ago, and she’s got to get these babes into that bloody mountain alive. She turns her head, bellows, ‘Shields up, sprats!’ And bless them, if they don’t listen to her. Hefting something roughly in the shape of a shield-wall, studded with driftwood and leather. It’s a little ragged, their line wavering, but they only need to be strong enough to ward off whatever those stone-dwelling fuckers throw from above. There’s not a movement on the Barrowland yet, and gods, she’s glad of that. Half of her head’s on her own pounding feet, half wandering back to the sight of him keeling over in the kitchen, fingers grasping.
Minds are bastards in the middle of battle. Always wanting to get away. She grits her teeth, lets out a roar. ‘Faster, grey darlin’s. For Crowkisser.’
‘For Crowkisser!’
The shout lifts her back like a following wind.
Crowkisser herself is out in front of them, moving light over the tops of the barrows, nothing around her save a grey kirtle, but even Sandsinger can feel the power gathering on her skin, her limbs writhing with the black edges of feathers. Each leap leaves her longer in the air, drawing her closer to the mountain. The long men at her sides scrambling to keep up.
No leaping for Sandsinger. Just the gentle burn of arthritic bones, and a whispered prayer to keep these sprats at her back alive. Fifty lives under her command, and thousands more spreadout across this plain of graves. She can glimpse them drawing level with the first outbuildings, scrambling to keep their heads low and their shields up.
It’s as she runs that prayer through her lips again, that Sandsinger remembers she’s far from the sea, and the gods are all dead.
So, here’s a truth to that old salt’s statement. An armydoescharge like a sickness. And it’s greeted like a disease.
As they pass the first outbuildings, there’s still nothing but long firepits smouldering under copper cauldrons and the knock of loose shutters against stone. The back of Sandsinger’s neck itches like it does before a storm. She’s halfway through reaching out a hand to bring her boys to a stop, when the ground erupts. Those low firepits covered with old ash rise up in the shape of men, as the doors of the outbuildings are kicked down by bright-eyed warriors who charge, long shields held high, leaf-bladed spears darting out like snakes.
She has a moment to take in tattoos, burning eyes, war cries like an eagle’s shriek. Then Thell’s soldiers fall on her lads and lasses. One particularly burly bastard sets his lights on her, darting forwards. Some old instinct makes her dip below his spear thrust, but the shield bash that follows takes her full in the chest. The air gushes out of her lungs and she staggers backwards.
To her left, the wailing boy takes a spear through the guts. Sandsinger curses, rolling to the side as a barbed point hammers the mud next to her head. She sweeps out with her club and hooks in at the ankle, is rewarded with a crunch of bone. She throws herself onto her attacker as he hits the ground, putting her whole weight on his spear arm. Down in the mud, she’s got the advantage. That bastard blade of his is too long to get to her. She lets out another gust of air as his knee comes for her stomach and just about chokes down the urge to vomit.
Sandsinger swings the club at the side of his head. One, two, three times. Apologising each time. ‘Sorry, sorry, sorry,’ until she’s singing it to a wet mess of metal and bone. She’s sick at how much he looks just like one of her boys. Or did, until she’d had her way with him.
As she struggles to rise, another soldier towers over her, spear upraised. Stupidly, she throws up her arms, as if they’ll suddenly stop metal. She feels the blood go cold in her veins, as a shot like a scalded cat burns the air above her. A stink of rotten lemon and suddenly the man above her has no head. His fingers lurch up to clutch at the burning stump of his neck for a moment, before his body reels backwards and down into the mud. Sandsinger touches her hands to her heart, and wonders if she’s been praying to the wrong gods.
As she stands and looks around, she sees the rest of her silver darlin’s haven’t been so lucky. Maybe half her boys and girls are still standing. The air is thick with the stink of piss and sweat. One of them is just sat in the mud, crying over the ruined body of his friend. Young men and women stabbed clean through, six or seven times, so she can’t even tell where their blood ends and the mud begins.
They’ve won though. If you can call it that. All the soldiers that ambushed them are down, except those that have fled back towards the mountain. One of them’s still half alive, but there’s a bunch of lads kicking him with the energy of jackals. There’s not much left for him.
She tries to count around her aching head. She figures they’ve killed maybe thirty, and lost twenty of their own. Those numbers don’t work out well. She bends at the knees, takes deep breaths in, lets them slide out. It’s war. She’s got to be tough as old sail. Even if she can barely breath.
‘Form up lads.’ Her voice is stronger than she feels. And bless them, but they do, even more ragged than before. Those walls still seem awful far away. There’s only one way for them to get closer. She grits her teeth, ignores her aching knees, and picks up the pace.
Down the line, Slickwalker pulls the trigger again, and again, and again. Heads explode, bodies are torn in half. The gun eats through metal and bone alike. He has to keep moving though. He can see faces turning on the battlements, trying to scout his position. Spears fly through the air, peppering his vantage pointslike rain, and he’s forced back into shadow. And every time he’s forced back more people die.
All along the Astic line, the story is the same, the first push meeting more resistance than he could have imagined. Thell’s warriors emerging from ashpits and outbuildings, the shock and surprise of the assault withering those neat little groups down into ragged bands. They’ve lost maybe a third of their force in the span of minutes. The ground between the barrows is thick with bodies and blood, the remaining soldiers tripping over their downed comrades. Most are lifting them bodily, dragging them along, or into shelter behind the barrows, reluctant to leave them behind.
They push forwards. They’ve dented Thell’s advance force, but at what cost? Of those ash-covered ambushers, less than a tenth make it back alive. That’s not the end of it though. As they run back under the shadow of the mountain, Thell’s battered troops reform their lines. The great gates open, and fresh bodies come forth, two hundred more, at least. And as their shields lock, the battlements above let loose in earnest.
Slickwalker’s seen spears fall before, but never in these numbers or with this precision. The sky hisses with the speed of their descent.
He watches his army cower in response, throwing themselves into the outbuildings, or behind the humps of barrows. For those not quick enough, death is sudden, at least as spears punch through shields, skewering the men behind, one or two deep. Others are caught by the thigh or arm, nailed screaming to the earth as their comrades scramble to pull them free.
An army is greeted like a disease, the old salt’s voice hisses in his head. Sharp metal pierces the most threatening points. Blood flows forth.
Slickwalker spits reflexively in disgust. Fully three hundred dead in a minute or less. There’s something dishonourable about it, something deeply unfair. So much lost.
The blue sky holds metal like rain. The people of Astic are a harrowed earth below. It doesn’t stop them, somehow. Thesurvivors harden, scab over with shields and leather. He can see commanders reforming their ragged lines, driving them forwards, shields upraised. Some marked with the split tree of Vantage, others slashed with white paint in the shape of a crow’s wings. In response, Thell’s vanguard closes ranks as they push through the cairns, a solid block of warriors moving out now from the main gate. Maybe three hundred strong, in a wedge at first, then folding into smaller phalanxes to intercept each approaching group.
The gates seem impossibly far. But Slickwalker’s counted the breaths to the mountain. They can make it. He knows they can make it. And when they get there, the shivers will let them in.
