“Go on!” Rosarn shoved Temar towards the main deck. He didn’t need her urging, aware of every man’s eyes on him.
It was he and no other should lead the men of Vithrancel and Edisgesset into this battle. The loyal tenants of D’Alsennin’s vast holdings had once trusted him to lead them within the cohorts of the Emperor fighting for Tormalin glory. Now his duty was to lead these men to victory such that as many as possible would live to enjoy it.
By now he was over the side and knee deep in the water. Ahead, Halice led her troop up the sloping shingle. Swirling waves dragging at their boots, the snarling mercenaries fought as one, each man arm’s length from the next, ready to defend each other, all the while attacking with all the savagery they could muster. The pirates went down like wheat before a scythe, bodies falling to taint the foam with a rush of scarlet.
Temar and his troop followed hard on their heels. “To me!” he yelled as they gained the solid ground. Halice and her mercenaries met the pirates’ main force in the centre of the landing. Immediately in front of Temar, Minare sent his men to either side, long practice spreading claws to crush the enemy. Some of the pirates broke, fleeing to the scatter of huts and tents on the rise beyond. Minare’s men fell on the rest like starving dogs on meat.
Blood flung from a sweeping sword spattered Temar’s face but he paid it no heed. He saw his moment and ran, blade questing before him. “Now! For Kellarin!”
Some men echoed his cry. Others settled for wordless screams of hatred as they pursued the fleeing enemy. Temar hacked at a leather-clad back scrambling up the slope. Honed by Halice, his blade slashed a deep gash through jerkin and shirt, skin and flesh. The pirate wheeled round, back arching with the pain and throwing his stroke off so Temar could parry with ease and an upward sweep of his blade. He rolled his wrist round to hack at the man’s neck, feeling bone splintering through sliced flesh. Temar pulled the blow short lest his sword bite into the clinging spine as the pirate fell. He ran on, eyes on the enemy, heedless of a body trampled beneath his boots. A man who’d overtaken him felled a pirate in one ferocious sweep of a broadsword. The corpse rolled away and Temar leapt it as he ran, drawing his poniard. His grandsire always said two blades were better than one.
Now they were at the huts and tents, Kellarin’s men slashing and cutting with indiscriminate fury at pirates and screaming women.
“Clear every rat hole,” yelled Temar.
A man erupted from a crude shelter walled with the deck grates of a merchant ship. He swung a billhook once destined for peaceful duty in Vithrancel’s thickets. Temar swept his sword up to guard his head, thrown on to his back foot as the double-edged and lethally heavy head swung towards him. The man with the bill came on, jabbing forward. Temar feinted to the open side, careful to judge the polearm’s reach. The pirate thrust again and Temar darted forward to catch the shaft with his dagger, angling the blade to lock just below the vicious lower spike of the bill’s hacking side. In the same movement, he sliced down the shaft with his sword, all but severing the man’s foremost hand. The pirate screamed but even as blood gushed from his shattered wrist, he wrenched the gleaming metal head free of Temar’s dagger, stumbling backwards. He whirled the bill around his head one-handed, hazel shaft whistling through the air with murderous intent towards Temar’s head. Temar jumped back and the bill swept past his face with scant fingers to spare. The heavy head sank toward the ground, the man unable to recover it one-handed. Temar stamped down hard on the flat of the metal. The spike of the bill’s crescent face dug deep into the soiled earth pulling the pirate forward, fatally unbalanced. Temar thrust his sword full into the man’s belly, ripping it out in a sideways slash.
As he recoiled from the stench of blood and entrails, Temar realised Glane was at his shoulder, an unknown miner from Edisgesset on his other side. “Bring these down!” he shouted, kicking at the flimsy wall of the billman’s shelter. Glane darted forward as a muffled scream came from beneath the tumbled wood. He pulled a young woman out of the wreckage, dark hair tangled over her face, an overlarge bodice laced crooked over a filthy shift. She cowered away from them all, grizzling like a child.
“We’re not going to hurt you,” protested Glane, distressed.
“Tie her up,” Temar ordered harshly. “Trust no one till we have cause.”
Glane hesitated but the miner didn’t. He flung the girl face down on the ground, one knee dug into her back as he cut strips of canvas to bind her wrists and ankles, heedless of her sobs.
Temar caught his breath and assessed their situation. Elated, he saw the ramshackle camp falling to Kellarin boots and blades, pirate men and women sprawled in the untidiness of death. Vengeful colonists, eager swords joining them with every passing moment, surrounded the few pirates still fighting.
“Take her yonder, boy.” The miner rolled the tightly trussed girl over with a brutal boot. He jerked his head towards the gravel of the foreshore where Vaspret barked instructions to men standing guard over bound and gagged captives. Glane looked uneasy but hefted the girl on one shoulder, carrying her down the slope like a sack of grain. The miner hastened to join a gang of his fellows who were grappling with some fools who’d thought they could hide in a tent.
Staying alert for any threat, Temar looked along the shore to see Halice’s forces fighting the most brutal pirates, men whose only hope was to kill or be killed. They grudged every step of ground, boots digging into bloodstained turf, spitting and cursing at the implacable mercenaries just as determined to force them back. Blades scraped and rasped, scant room to swing freely. Swordplay gave way to punches, fists wrapped around daggers that twisted to gouge at faces and scalps. He looked at the line and lessons from his days in the cohorts rang in his memory.
“They’re wheeling, curse it! To me!” Temar bellowed, waving his sword to summon his troop. “Don’t let them reach the shore!” If the circling fight curled round much more, the pirates would have a chance to dash for some weed-covered boats lurking in the rocks beyond the stockade. Sailors from the Dulse and the Fire Minnow were wrecking everything that could float on the main strand but without the benefit of Temar’s higher ground, they hadn’t seen those few longboats. Wrathful, he ran, boots thudding on the turf. He’d be cursed if he’d let any of these murderous scum slip away.
Then, as he ran, he saw movement at the stockade. The gates of the rough fortification flung open and Muredarch led a howling mob of his most loyal marauders down on the mercenaries. Those pirates tired by fighting scattered, many paying a heavy price in blood, as the unwearied newcomers hit the mercenary line. The forces met with a crash like the roar of a breaking storm. Muredarch was at the centre of his men, unmistakable with his great height, his immense reach soon leaving dead and wounded littered around him as he swung a two-handed sword in a deathly arc.
Temar wished fruitlessly for a bow, a crossbow and the skills to use either, even as he plunged on with his men. They had to cut the pirates off from the shore. They weren’t going to make it. Anguish wracked him. He wasn’t going to make it. Another failure would curse him.
Then a shudder ran through the fighting men. The pirates’ malice yielded to astonishment that turned visibly to horror. Halice’s mercenaries seized the first hint of weakness and smashed into their foes with redoubled violence. Temar and his men forced their way past the end of the battle line, sliding on the shingle but determined to deny the pirates passage.
Temar struggled to see what had rolled the runes of the battle anew. It was Darni and his fugitive troop, crashing out of the trees beyond the encampment. Some carried clubs of green wood instead of swords but the raking stubs of branches scored viciously into exposed arms and faces. There were as few of them as Temar had feared but determination to purge the shame of being put to flight made every man fight with the strength of two.