“Your Highness, we must advance and close the distance so that our archers can return fire, or withdraw to higher ground!” Ladisla only stared at him, giving no sign that he had heard, let alone understood. A second volley arced down into the infantry in front of them. This time it fell among the levies, a unit without shields or armour. Holes opened up all across the ragged formation, holes filled by the rising mist, and the whole battalion seemed to groan and waver. Some wounded man began to make a thin, animal screeching, and would not stop. “Your Highness, do we advance, or withdraw?”

“I… we…” Ladisla gaped over at Lord Smund, but for once the young nobleman was at a loss for words. He looked even more stupefied than the Prince, if that was possible. Ladisla’s lower lip trembled. “How… I… Colonel West, what is your opinion?”

The temptation to remind the Crown Prince that his was the burden of command, and his alone, was almost overpowering, but West bit his tongue. Without some sense of purpose, this rag-tag army might swiftly dissolve. Better to do the wrong thing, than nothing at all. He turned to the nearest bugler. “Sound the retreat!” he roared.

The bugles called the withdrawal: blaring, discordant. Hard to believe they were the same instruments that had so brazenly called the charge just a few short minutes before. The battalions began to edge slowly backwards. Another volley fell among the levies, and another. Their formations were beginning to come apart, men hurrying backwards to escape the murderous fire, stumbling over each other, ranks dissolving into mobs, the air full of shrieks and confusion. West could scarcely tell where the next set of flatbow bolts fell, the mist had risen so high. The Union battalions had become nothing more than wobbling spears and the odd insubstantial helmet above a grey cloud. Even here, high up among the baggage, the mist was curling round West’s ankles.

Up on the hill the Carls began to move. They thrust their weapons in the air and clashed them against their painted shields. They gave a great shout, but not the deep roar that West might have expected. Instead, a weird and chilling howl floated over the valley, a keening wail that cut through the rattling and scraping of metal and into the ears of those watching, down below. A mindless, a furious, a primitive sound. A sound made by monsters, not by men.

Prince Ladisla and his staff gawped at one another, and stuttered, and stared, as the Carls began to tramp down the hill, rank upon rank of them, towards the thickening mist in the valley’s bottom where the Union troops were still blindly trying to pull back. West shouldered his way through the frozen officers to the bugler.

“Battle lines!”

The lad turned from staring at the advancing Northmen to staring at West, his bugle hanging from his nerveless ringers.

“Lines!” roared a voice from behind. “Form lines!” It was Pike, bellowing loud enough to match any drill sergeant. The bugler snapped his instrument to his lips and blew lines for all he was worth. Answering calls echoed through the mist, risen up all around them, now. Muffled bugles, muffled shouts.

“Halt and form up!”

“Form lines now, lads!”

“Prepare!”

“Steady!”

A chorus of rattles and clanks came through the murk. Men moving in armour, spears being set, swords drawn, calls from man to man and from unit to unit. Above all, growing steadily louder, the unearthly howling of the Northmen as they began their charge, surging down from the high ground and into the valley. West felt a chill in his own blood, even with a hundred strides of earth and a few thousand armed men between him and the enemy. He could well imagine the fear those in the front lines were feeling now, as the shapes of the Carls began to rise out of the mist before them, screaming their war cries with their weapons held high.

There was no sound that signified the moment of contact. The clattering grew louder and louder, the shouts and the howls were joined by high-pitched cries, low-pitched growls, shrieks of pain or rage mixed into the terrifying din with ever greater frequency.

Nobody in the headquarters spoke. Every man, West among them, was peering into the murk, straining with every sense to get some hint of what might be happening just before them in the valley.

“There!” someone shouted. A faint figure was moving through the gloom ahead. All eyes were fixed on it as it took shape before them. A young, breathless, mud-splattered and highly confused lieutenant. “Where the hell is the headquarters?” he shouted as he stumbled up the slope towards them.

“This is it.”

The man gave West a flamboyant salute. “Your Highness—”

“I am Ladisla,” snapped the real Prince. The man turned, bewildered, began to salute once more. “Speak your message, man!”

“Of course, sir, your Highness, Major Bodzin has sent me to tell you that his battalion is heavily engaged, and…” he was still gasping for breath, “he needs reinforcement.”

Ladisla stared at the young man as though he had been speaking in a foreign language. He looked at West. “Who is Major Bodzin?”

“Commander of the first battalion of the Stariksa levies, your Highness, on our left wing.”

“Left wing, I see… er…”

A semi-circle of brightly dressed staff officers had congealed around the breathless lieutenant. “Tell the Major to hold!” shouted one of them.

“Yes!” said Ladisla, “tell your Major to hold, and to, er, to drive back the enemy. Yes indeed!” He was warming to his role now. “To drive them back, and to fight to the last man! Tell Major Clodzin that help is on the way. Most definitely… on the way!” And the Prince strode off manfully.

The young Lieutenant turned, peered into the murk. “Which way is my unit?” he muttered.

More figures were already beginning to take form. Running figures, scrambling through the mud, panting for breath. Levies, West saw straight away, broken from the backs of crumbling units as soon as they had made contact with the enemy. As though there had ever been any chance that they would stand for long.

“Cowardly dogs!” cursed Smund at their receding backs. “Get back here!” He might as well have given orders to the mist. Everyone was running: deserters, adjutants, messengers seeking for help, for direction, for reinforcement. The first wounded too. Some were limping under their own power, or using broken spears for crutches, some were half-carried by comrades. Pike started forward to help a pale fellow with a flatbow bolt sticking from his shoulder. Another casualty was dragged past on a stretcher, muttering to himself. His left arm was off just below the elbow, oozing blood through a tightly bound stretch of dirty cloth.

Ladisla looked greasy pale. “I have a headache. I must sit down. What has become of my field chair?”

West chewed at his lip. He had no inkling of what to do. Burr had sent him with Ladisla for his experience, but he was every bit as clueless as the Prince. Every plan relied on being able actually to see the enemy, or at any rate one’s own positions. He stood there, frozen, as useless and frustrated as a blind man in a fist fight.

“What is happening, damn it!” The Prince’s voice cut across the din, shrill and petulant. “Where did this damn mist come from? I demand to know what is happening! Colonel West! Where is the Colonel? What is going on out there?”

If only he had been able to provide an answer. Men stumbled and darted and charged through the muddy headquarters, apparently at random. Faces loomed up from the mist and were gone, faces full of fear, confusion, determination. Runners with garbled messages or garbled orders, soldiers with bloody wounds or no weapons. Disembodied voices floated on the cold air, speaking over one another, anxious, hurried, panicked, agonised.

“…Our regiment has made contact with the enemy, and are falling back, or were falling back, I think…”