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The arrow that buried its obsidian point into the side of Arkandas’s neck was burning along the last third of its tar-smeared shaft. Impacts thudded against Telra’s wicker shield and she shrank down behind it, even as the lieutenant made a faint gurgling sound, before sinking on to her side, lying almost within reach, her boots kicking at the snow as if trying to run.
Flames now sent smoke up from the facing of Telra’s shield as still more burning arrows hammered into it. Fuck.
Looking down, she met Arkandas’s eyes and was startled by the strangely languid blink the lieutenant gave her, before the life behind those eyes flickered, and then went out.
Soldiers were screaming and shouting around her. Flaming arrows flitted like sparks through the gloom. Bearers with their shields aflame flung them away, scrabbling for their swords and the smaller bucklers they carried, and the arrows kept coming, finding flesh.
Backing up, hunched down, she looked to find Hallyd Bahann and saw, amidst the chaos, the captain’s shield man, Sartoril, his cloak burning, the shafts of three arrows jutting from his back as he stumbled towards cover.
‘Sound the retreat!’ Telra shouted. ‘Withdraw!’
Someone stumbled against her and she turned to find Corporal Paralandas. ‘Telra! Where’s the lieutenant?’
‘Dead,’ Telra replied, pointing six or so paces ahead. ‘Where’s Farab and Pryll? We’ve got to get the squad together and pull the fuck out of this mess!’
‘Hallyd?’
‘Sartoril’s done and the captain’s nowhere in sight. Probably face-down in the bloody snow.’
Paralandas wiped at the snot glistening on his upper lip. ‘Saw thirty or so rushing the enemy. None of them made it twenty paces. Telra, there’s easily a thousand of them in front of us!’
‘We’re cooked,’ Telra agreed. ‘Follow me – we’ll round ’em up as we can.’
‘Retreat?’
‘Damn right we’re retreating!’
Arrows hissed past as the two soldiers, scrabbling and sliding in the snow, began pulling back.
* * *
Lahanis crouched down over the dying soldier, stabbing one slick blade into the snow to one side and using the freed hand to reach into the wide gash in the man’s throat. Cupping the hot blood, she brought it up to smear it across her face. Licking her lips, she smiled down at the soldier. The wound frothed as he struggled to breathe, but she could see he was drowning. Slowly, yes? Good. Know your end is coming. Know it in your soul. Look well on your slayer.
Sometimes when you chase the girl, she turns on you.
There had been a rush of retreating soldiers, only a few of them wounded. Someone had finally ordered a withdrawal. Some had pushed through their ambush, but Glyph and his archers had been close on the Legion’s heels. Arrows thudded into exposed backs, the sound of their impacts all around her like a sudden hailstorm. She found herself running after soldiers who had flung away their swords and bucklers, pulling off their helms to see better, and she cut down one after another from behind, whilst her fellow Butchers did much the same, many using hatchets and axes, crushing skulls and shattering knees.
On all sides, carnage, as the retreat became a rout, and the rout a slaughter.
Laughing, Lahanis moved away from the drowning man, seeking another victim.
* * *
Glyph reached for another arrow but found the hide quiver empty. Letting the bow drop, he drew his hunting knife as he began moving from one Legion body to the next, checking for signs of life. Where he found them, his blade extinguished them.
He had never seen so many bodies, had never imagined what it would be like to move thro
ugh a battlefield, seeing the blood, the excrement, the food-flecked fluids that had spilled out from gutted men and women. He could not have imagined mortal faces capable of finding so many different expressions for death, as if an artist had gone mad in this forest, carving one white visage after another, chiselled from the frozen snow itself, splashed with crimson as if from bleeding hands.
Glyph found himself staggering among the corpses, no longer examining bodies, no longer caring if he saw the faint stream of breath.
The day was getting colder. Shivering, he paused to lean against the bole of a blackened tree. A hunter stood before him, speaking, but Glyph could find no meaning in the words he heard, as if some other language was spoken in this terrible place.
Slowly, however, as if from a vast distance, comprehension returned to him.
‘… breathes still, war-master. He begs for his life.’
‘Who?’
