“They’re coming again,” someone said, and Taim turned back to the still-living enemy closer at hand.
A dark line, tight-packed, was forming across the front rank of the Black Road at the foot of the hill. It came fragment by fragment, out from amongst the mass, flecks of charcoal drifting to the fore and thickening into a wall. It was a soundless thing, and its silence spread, quieting the field, quieting even, it seemed to Taim, the Haig warriors arrayed before him. They were bloodied but undefeated, these spearmen from Nar Vay and the woods of Dramain, yet they grew soft and still. Like a black fog clinging to the ground that line was coming on, far away and thus slow, across the trampled grass; hundreds of warriors, moving at a steady trot. The sound of their feet on the slope swelled, it rumbled. But still no cry came from a single throat. There was only the building, deep, rhythmic roar of their footfalls.
“Send to get your horsemen back,” Taim hissed at the nearest of his guards.
The man turned reluctantly, his eyes lingering upon the scene unfolding before him.
“Don’t try to give any orders here,” he snapped.
Taim too found himself unable to look away from the approaching storm. They were close enough now that he could make out individual figures, all of them smooth and flowing in their movements, not one of them breaking rank, falling behind. He was filled with a kind of awe, and a numb surprise that he should be here, on this day, to see this.
“If you can’t put horses on their flank, you’re done.” he persisted. “Your line’s too thin.”
The guard snorted in disgust. “Maybe if it was Lannis men in it. Three’s deep enough when it’s Haig.”
Three ranks: shield-bearers with short stabbing spears kneeling, and behind them a second row brandishing longer pole-spears; then fierce moorsmen from the high ground between Dramain and Dun Aygll, with axes and hammers and short swords. It was a spiny nut for any attacker to seek to grasp. But not enough, Taim knew in the pit of his stomach. He knew it with the certainty of every year he had spent in the warrior’s craft, and every winter he had spent upon his Blood’s northern border, staring out across the Vale of Stones and knowing what kind of enemy might one day come across it.
“They’re Inkallim, you fool,” he said, wearily, knowing it was too late. “All of them. Six might not be deep enough, let alone three.”
The guard glared at him, then snapped his gaze back to the mass of warriors now pounding up the slope, only a few shallow breaths from impact. They wore dark leather breastplates, or studded jerkins, leggings with black greaves, shields with carved ravens, and black hair streaming out. Taim heard the guard’s sudden intake of breath.
“So many?” the man murmured.
The moment elongated itself, as if the whole world shared in that sucking-in of breath, holding it, poised, as the rolling thunder of the charge resounded through the earth and shook the roots of the hill and built and built until the Inkallim plunged in amongst the spears and there was nothing save the vast crashing clamour of slaughter. The air above the two meeting lines was suddenly full: blood and fragments of broken spears, mud and grass and splinters from shields. Taim wanted to look away, but could not. The front rank of defenders was already gone, consumed in that first fierce impact, nothing more than a long heap of the dead, wounded and fallen. The ravens came over it, trampling their own as willingly as they trampled their foes, unpausing, and danced their way on into the second and the third.
Out to the west, down the long sweep of ground to the road and across it, the rest of the Haig line was shifting, drawn as if by invisible cords towards the murderous chaos enveloping the hillock. Already, though, the whole host of the Black Road was surging into motion, pressing forwards. Taim experienced a twist of horrified disgust at what he was witnessing: thousands upon thousands of men and women, flinging themselves into full, unrestrained battle. More would surely die this day than had fallen on any since that of Kan Avor Field, when the Gyre Blood was driven into exile, over two centuries ago. A terrible decision would be made, through carnage.
He looked for any sign of the men he had led to An Caman and back, to Kolglas and Glasbridge, but the armies had become great beasts in which all the warriors were only sinews and scales, no longer recognisable. The two hosts seethed across the plain, flung limbs made of horsemen against one another, tore at each other with claws built from swordsmen. A soft, misty cloud rose from the heaving masses: the steam of breath and sweat rising as from the back of a huge, labouring monster.
The smell reached Taim then, of blood and opened guts and broken earth. He knew it too well. He saw a man staggering back from the slaughter, unarmed, with one cheek and ear cut away and his left shoulder and chest drenched in blood, a great thick coating of it. The man reached out as he stumbled, straining with his hands to grasp something only he could see, or imagine. Taim lost track of him as a wedge of spearmen came running up and swept past to throw themselves into the riot of death.
“Cut my bonds,” he shouted at his guard. “I can fight.”
The man did not reply. Taim could see in his wide eyes and open mouth that he was lost in shock.
As anyone might be, on seeing for the first time Inkallim go about their bloody business. The ravens carved holes in the Haig lines with obscene ease. It was more massacre than battle. There was no order in this, no rock for anyone caught in this flood to cling to. There was only the deafening single noise of battle, a constantly changing, constantly identical surging bellow. Men killed and were killed, and it was brutal and brief and mind-numbing.
Taim’s horse stirred beneath him, disturbed by the screams of other animals dying somewhere out in the carnage. He looked around. His guards had gathered themselves, and were muttering together. Men were running now, braving the abuse and even the blades of their own captains; preferring flight to another moment facing the Inkallim. Down where the road ran between the two hillocks, the Haig lines were buckling too. Taim looked the other way, out across the undulating fields to the east. He could see a body of riders, cutting across the face of a long green slope. They were coming from the north, and therefore had to be of the Black Road.
He had guessed that the battle was lost as soon as he saw the Inkallim massing. Now he knew it beyond doubting. As if summoned by that certainty, a black hand of fear descended upon his heart. It was unlike anything he had felt before. The Inkallim came flowing over the hilltop, and he saw in their approach his own doom, the snuffing-out of all hope. It was a potent, almost overwhelming, despair, like a smothering, ill-fitting cloak thrown over him, closing out the light.
Taim looked at his guards and saw in them the perfect reflection of the terror running unchecked through him. They led him away, heading down the reverse slope of the hill at a steady trot. The roar of the battle filled the air behind and above them. Taim could see figures streaming away from the field, down the road back towards Kolkyre: scores, hundreds, of fragments blown free of the army and sent tumbling southwards. And why not? What other response could there be, save flight?
Even as he thought it, Taim felt his own fear receding. As a cloud might uncover the sun, so the veil of horror parted and he glimpsed his true feelings. Whatever the source of that all-embracing fear, it had not been his own heart. It had been a foreign thing, imposed from outwith his mind, and at the slackening of its grip upon him his anger rose up.
“Turn us back,” he cried at his guards. “Rally the lines.”
But they were still beneath the shadow, bereft of all courage. They rode on and took him with them. The horses broke into a canter, bounding on over grassy fields. Everywhere, men were running. Glancing back over his shoulder, Taim could see the hill, dark against the grey sky. The Black Road held the summit now, but they were not content with that. They were coming on, in amongst the fleeing Haig men.