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‘Eyes ahead!’ Havaral snapped. ‘Gauge every step!’
Drawn by sweat and harsh breaths, the mosquitoes massed ever thicker as the Wardens made their way towards the valley floor. The captain heard comrades cough as they inhaled bugs. Curses sounded, but mostly the sound was of creaking armour, the thump of horse hoofs, and the gusting wind that slid beneath iron helms and moaned as if trapped.
Havaral left the slope and rode out on to the basin, at last giving the horse freedom to quicken its trot. His troop drew up behind him, keeping pace.
He had loved a man once, long ago now, and the memory of that face had been years buried. It appeared suddenly in his mind’s eye, as if emerging from shadows, as lively and enticing as it had ever been. Others crowded behind it, all the confused desires that had marked his adolescence, and with them came a dull pain, an ache of the spirit.
It was no crime to turn from the common path, yet it came at a cost nonetheless. No matter. The young man had gone away, unwilling to stay with any one lover, and his name had vanished from the living world after the burning of his village by Forulkan raiders. Whether he died or took for himself another life, Havaral knew not.
But now your knowing smile is before me. I only regret the end, my love, only the end.
Confusion filled his head, and sent down into his soul a sorrowful song that brought the blur of tears to his eyes. An old man’s song, this one. A song of all the deaths in a normal life, how they come up and then go past like verses, and this chorus that bridges each one, oh, it voices nothing but questions none can answer.
Beside him, Sergeant Kullis leaned over and, with a hard smile, said, ‘How clear the mind is at this moment, sir! The world is almost too sharp to behold!’
Havaral nodded. ‘Damn this wind,’ he then growled, blinking.
The first shade of blue appearing among the flag-stations lifted them into a canter, and they swung out, away from the skirmishers. As the horseshoe formation took shape, the foot soldiers suddenly recoiled in comprehension. The flags spun to show the deeper blue side, announcing the inward wheel and the charge.
The skirmishers had drawn out too far – Havaral could see that plain – and the pike line was still trudging at its turgid pace, only halfway down the far slope.
Havaral brought his lance down and slid its butt into the arm’s length leather sheath affixed to the saddle. He heard and felt the solid impact the end made with the bronze socket.
‘They’re all caught!’ Kullis shouted. ‘We’re too fast!’
The captain said nothing. He saw javelins launched from arms, saw lances dip to knock most of them away before they could strike the chests of horses. A few animals screamed, but now the voices of the Wardens filled the air, rising above the thunder of horse hoofs.
Borrowed anger this might be, but it will do.
Skirmishers scattered like jackrabbits.
A few hundred Legion soldiers were about to die, and the tears streamed from Havaral’s eyes, making cold tracks down his cheeks.
It begins.
Oh, blessed Mother Dark, it begins.
* * *
Sevegg cursed and then turned to Hunn Raal. ‘They went too far, the fools. Who commands them?’
‘Lieutenant Altras.’
‘Altras! Cousin, he’s a quartermaster’s aide!’
‘And so very eager, like a pup off its leash.’
She looked at the captain at her side. His profile was sharp, almost majestic if one did not look too closely. If witnessing the imminent slaughter of three hundred Legion soldiers affected him, there was no discernible sign. A different flavour of command, then. Lord Urusander would never have done it this way. And yet, there is no value in questioning this. She studied her cousin’s face, remembering how that expression crumpled in lovemaking, achieving nothing so much childlike as dissolute.
On the field below, the wings of the Warden cavalry tightened their deadly noose about the skirmishers. Lances dipped, caught hold of bodies and lifted them into the air, or drove them into the ground. Most weapons took soldiers from behind.
From the corner of her eye she caught Hunn Raal’s gesture, an almost lazy wave of one gauntleted hand.
Behind them, the outer units of Legion cavalry on the back-slope lurched into motion, quickly surging into a canter. Then, pivoting as if one end was fixed to the ground, the troops wheeled to face the slope. The riders leaned forward as their mounts climbed.
He should have ordered this earlier. A hundred heartbeats. Five hundred. Not a single skirmisher will be left.
As if reading her mind, Hunn Raal said, ‘I had a list of malcontents. Soldiers too inclined to question what is necessary to bring peace to the realm. They argued at the campfires. They muttered about desertion.’
