Toc smiled to himself. He’d thrown that pejorative out in a fit of self-mockery a few days past, and now it had become an honorific. Which, he admitted, appealed to his sense of irony. He edged his horse closer and in a low tone asked: ‘Do you have any idea what Redmask is doing, Masarch?’
A hooded glance, then another shrug.
‘Well,’ Toc persisted, ‘is this the main concentration of forces? No? Then where?’
‘To the northwest, I think.’
‘Is yours to be a feint attack?’
‘Should the horn sound, Mezla, we ride to blood.’
Toe twisted on the horse and looked back at the ridge. The Letherii would feel the drumming of hoofs, and then see the silhouettes as the Awl crested the line. And those soldiers had dug pits-he could already hear the snapping of leg bones and the animal screaming. ‘Masarch,’ he said, ‘you can’t charge those pickets.’
‘We can see them well enough to ride around them-’
‘Until the animal beside you jostles yours into one.’
At first Toc thought he was hearing wolves howling, but the sudden cry levelled out-Redmask’s rodara horn.
Masarch raised his lance. ‘Do you ride with us, Mezla?’
Bareback? ‘No.’
‘Then ride fast to one side!’
Toc kicked his horse into motion, and as he rode down the line he saw the Awl warriors ready their weapons above suddenly restless mounts. Breaths gusted like smoke into the air. From somewhere on the far side of the Letherii encampment there was the sudden reverberation of clashing arms.
He judged that Masarch led six or seven hundred Awl riders. Urging his horse into a gallop, Toc drew clear just as the mass of warriors surged forward. ‘This is madness!’ He spun the mount round, tugging his bow loose from his shoulder even as he looped the reins over his left wrist. Jamming one end of the bow onto his moccasined foot-between the big toe and the rest-he leaned down his weight to string it. Weapon readied and in his right hand, he deftly adjusted his hold on the reins and knotted them to ensure that they did not fall and foul the horse’s front legs.
As the beast cantered into the dusty wake of the cavalry charge, Toe Anaster drew out from the quiver at his hip the first stone-tipped arrow. What in Hood’s name am 1 doing?
Getting ready to cover the retreat 1 know is coming? Aye, a one-eyed archer…
With the pressure of his thighs and a slight shifting of weight, he guided his horse in the direction of the rise-where the Awl warriors had arrived in a dark mass, only now voicing their war-cries. Somewhere in the distance rose the sound of dogs, joining that ever-growing cacophony of iron on iron and screaming voices.
Redmask had finally struck, and now there was chaos in the night.
The cavalry, reaching the rise, swept down the other side and moments later were lost from sight.
Toc urged his horse forward, nocking the arrow. He had no stirrups to stand in while shooting, making this whole exercise seem ridiculous, yet he quickly approached the crest. Moments before arriving, he heard the clash ahead-the shouts, the piercing shrieks of injured horses, and beneath it all the thunder of hoofs.
Although difficult to discern amidst the darkness and dust, Toc could see that most of the lancers had swept round the outlying pickets, continuing on to crash into the camp itself. He saw soldiers emerging from those entrench-
ments, many wounded, some simply dazed. Younger Awl warriors rode among them, slashing down with scimitars in a grotesque slaughter.
Coruscating light burgeoned off to the right-the foaming rise of sorcery-and Toc saw the Awl cavalry begin to withdraw, pulling away like fangs from flesh.
‘No!’ he shouted, riding hard now towards them. ‘Stay among the enemy! Go back! Attack, you damned fools! Attack!’
But, even could they hear him, they had seen the magic, the tumult building into a writhing wave of blistering power. And fear took their hearts. Fear took them and they fled-
Still Toc rode forward, now among the berms. Bodies sprawled, horses lying on their sides, kicking, ears flat and teeth bared; others broken heaps filling pits.
The first of the retreating Awl raced past, unseeing, their faces masks of terror.
A second wave of sorcery had appeared, this one from the left, and he watched it roll into the first of the horse-warriors on that side. Flesh burst, fluids sprayed. The magic climbed, slowed as it seemed to struggle against all the flesh it contacted. Screams, the sound reaching Toc on its own wave, chilling his very bones. Hundreds died before the magic spent itself, and into the dust now swirled white ash-all that was left of human and horse along the entire west flank.
Riders swarming past Toc, along with riderless horses surging ahead in the grip of panic. Dust biting his lone eye, dust seeking to claw down his throat, and all around him shadows writhing in their own war of light and dark as sorceries lifted, rolled then fell in gusting clouds of ash.
And then Toc Anaster was alone, arrow still nocked, in the wasteland just inside the berms. Watching another wave of sorcery sweep past his position, pursuing the fleeing Awl.
Before he could think either way, Toc found himself riding hard, in behind that dread wave, into the scalding, brittle air of the magic’s wake-and there, sixty paces away, within a mass of advancing soldiers, he saw the mage. The latter clenched his hands and power tumbled from him, forming yet another excoriating conjuration of raw destruction that rose up to greet Toc, then heaved for him.
One eye or not, he could see that damned wizard.
An impossible shot, jostled as he was on the horse’s back as the beast weaved between pits and suspect tufts of grass, as its head lifted in sudden recognition of terrible danger.
Silver-veined power surging towards him.
Galloping now, mad as any other fool this night, and he saw, off to his left, a deep, elongated trench-drainage for the camp’s latrines-and he forced his mount towards it, even as the sorcery raced for him on a convergent path from his right.
The horse saw the trench, gauged its width, then stretched out a moment before gathering to make the leap.
He felt the beast lift beneath him, sail through the air-and for that one moment all was still, all was smooth, and in that one moment Toc twisted at the hips, knees hard against the animal’s shoulders, drew the bow back, aimed-damning this flat, one-eyed world that was all he had left
– then loosed the stone-tipped arrow.
The horse landed, throwing Toc forward onto its neck. Bow in his right hand, legs stretching out now along the length of the beast’s back, and his left arm wrapping, desperately tight, about the animal’s muscle-sheathed neck
– behind them and to the right, the heat of that wave, reaching out, closer, closer-
The horse screamed, bolting forward. He held on.
And felt a gust of cool air behind him. Risked a glance.
The magic had died. Beyond it, at the front line of the advancing-now halted and milling-Letherii troops, a body settling onto its knees. A body without a head; a neck from which rose, not blood, but something like smoke-
A detonation? Had there been a detonation-a thumping crack, bludgeoning the air-yes, maybe he had heard-
He regained control of his horse, took the knotted reins in his left hand and guided the frightened creature round, back towards the crest.
The air reeked of cooked meat. Other flashes lit the night. Dogs snarled. Soldiers and warriors died. And among Masarch’s cavalry, Toc would later learn, half were not there to see the dawn.
High overhead, night and its audience of unblinking stars had seen enough, and the sky paled, as if washed of all blood, as if drained of the last life.
The sun was unkind in lighting the morning sky, revealing the thick, biting ash of incinerated humans, horses and dogs. Revealing, as well, the strewn carnage of the battle just done. Brohl Handar walked, half numbed, along the east edge of the now-dishevelled encampment, and approached the Atri-Preda and her retinue.