Vaelin looked at the oncoming Alpiran army, the myriad flags of their cohorts rising from the throng like a forest of silk, their trumpets and battle chants a rising cacophony. “There will be no safe place on this field,” he said, nodding at the short sword on Alucius’s belt. “Still know how to use that?”
“I practice every day.”
“Good, stay close to your father.”
“I will.” Alucius offered his hand. “An honour to serve with you once again, brother.”
Vaelin took the hand, more firmly than he intended, meeting the poet’s eyes. “Stay close to your father.”
Alucius nodded, gave a final sheepish smile and walked back to the Battle Lord’s party.
Design within design, Vaelin concluded, pondering the Battle Lord’s words. Janus promises him my death in return for victory. I get to save my sister, the Battle Lord gets vengeance for his son. He calculated the many bargains and deceits the king must have spun to bring them to these shores. The entreaties made to Fief Lord Theros to bring so many of his finest knights. The unnamed price agreed with the Meldeneans to carry the army across the sea. He wondered if Janus ever lost track of the web he wove, if the spider ever mislaid one of his threads, but the notion was absurd. Janus couldn’t forget his designs any more than Princess Lyrna could forget the words she read. He thought about the Aspect again, about the orders he had been given and how, for all its complexity, the old man’s web amounted to nothing.
“ERUHIN MAKHTAR!”
The shout went up from every man in the regiment, loud enough to carry to the oncoming Alpirans, loud enough to be heard above their own chants and exhortations.
“ERUHIN MAKHTAR!” The men brandished their pole-axes, steel catching the sun, shouting as one the words they had been taught. “ERUHIN MAKHTAR!” On the summit of the rise Janril was waving the standard on a pole twenty feet high, the running wolf rippling in the wind for the whole plain to see. “ERUHIN MAKHTAR!”
Already the Alpiran cohorts nearest the hill were beginning to react, the ranks wavering as soldiers increased their pace, their drummers’ steady beat unheeded as the Wolfrunners’ taunt drew them on. “ERUHIN MAKHTAR!”
The Battle Lord was right, Vaelin decided seeing the discipline of the leading Alpiran cohort give way completely, ranks dissolving as the men broke into a run, charging the hill, their own shouts a burgeoning growl of rage. The guardsman gave us a weapon. The words and the banner. Eruhin Makhtar. The Hope Killer is here, come and get him.
And they came. The cohorts on either side of the charging men broke ranks and followed suit, the madness spreading rearwards as more and more formations forgot their discipline and charged headlong for the hill.
“Little point waiting,” Vaelin told Dentos. He had stationed himself with the archers, his own bow ready, arrow notched. “Loose as soon as they’re in range. Might make them run faster.”
Dentos lifted his bow, sighted carefully, his men following his lead, then drew and let fly, the shaft arching down on the charging Alpirans, a cloud of two hundred arrows close behind. Men fell, some rose and charged on, others lay still. Vaelin fancied he saw a few still trying to crawl forward despite shafts buried deep in chest or neck. He loosed off four arrows in quick succession as the archers’ arrow storm began in earnest, all the time the regiment maintaining its taunt. “ERUHIN MAKHTAR!”
At least a hundred Alpirans must have fallen by the time they were halfway up the hill but they showed no sign of faltering, if anything their charge had gathered pace, the base of the hill now thick with men struggling to climb the rise and slay the Hope Killer. Vaelin saw how the whole Alpiran line had been disrupted by the charge, how the flanking cohorts were wavering, undecided as to whether to assault the Realm Guard before them or turn and try for the hill. This battle is already won, he realised. The Alpiran army was like an ox tempted into the killing pen with a bale of fresh hay. All that remains is the slaughter. Whatever his faults it was plain the Battle Lord had a gift for tactics.
When the tide of onrushing Alpirans had come to within two hundred paces the Battle Lord had his own flag-men give the signal for the Cumbraelin archers to move to the summit. They came at a run, longbows ready, reaching into the thicket of arrows already thrust into the sandy soil on the summit, notching and loosing without preamble as they had been ordered.
Vaelin had fought Cumbraelins on many occasions, acquiring an intimate knowledge of their deadly skills with the longbow, but he had never seen their massed arrow storm before. Air hissed like the breath of a great serpent as five thousand shafts arched into the charging mass, producing a huge groan of shock and pain as they struck home. It seemed as if all the Alpirans in the lead companies fell at once, five hundred men or more, driven to the sand by the mass of arrows. The air above Vaelin’s head became thick with arrows as the Cumbraelins continued to loose, glancing back he marvelled at the speed with which they plucked shafts from the soil, notched and loosed, seeing one man put five arrows in the air before the first fell to earth.
In the face of the storm the Alpiran rush slowed as men fought to climb over the bodies of dead and wounded comrades, arms and shields raised to ward off the rain of deadly shafts, although these seemed to offer scant protection. But still they came on, fuelled by rage, some still stumbling forward over the thickening carpet of dead with multiple arrows protruding from their mail. When they had struggled to within fifty paces of the summit the Battle Lord signalled the command for the Realm Guard regiments flanking the hill to advance. They moved forward at the double, spears levelled, pushing the disrupted Alpiran line back. The Alpiran cohorts wavered but soon rallied, their line holding as horse borne archers to their rear responded, galloping along the line of battle to loose their shafts at the Realm Guard over the heads of their embattled comrades.
On the right a cloud of dust rose as Alpiran horse massed for a counter charge at the Realm Guard’s flank. The Battle Lord saw the danger, his flag-men signalling frantically to set their own cavalry in motion. The neatly arranged ranks of the Realm Guard horsemen stirred, more dust rising as they manoeuvred to face the mass of Alpiran cavalry. The discordant peel of a hundred trumpets signalled the charge, ten thousand horse hurtling towards the oncoming Alpiran lancers, meeting head-on in a thunderous collision. Through the dust it was just possible to glimpse the whirling spectacle of the melee, men and horses falling and rearing amidst the din of clashing weapons, before the cloud became so thick it was impossible to gauge the course of the struggle, although it was clear the Alpiran charge had been checked. The Realm Guard infantry continued their assault without interference, the Alpiran line on the right beginning to buckle under the pressure.
Whoever commanded the Alpiran host belatedly started to exert control over his forces, sending what infantry reserves remained to bolster the disintegrating line, five cohorts running forward to contend the momentum of the Realm Guard advance. But it was too late, the Alpiran line bowed, wavered and broke, Realm Guard streaming through the gap to assault the neighbouring Alpirans from the rear, the whole line breaking apart under the strain in the space of a few minutes. Not a man to miss an opportunity, the Battle Lord unleashed Fief Lord Theros’s knights, the mass of armour and horseflesh thundering through the remnants of the Alpiran right then wheeling around, wreaking slaughter on the Alpirans still thronging at the base of the hill despite the Cumbraelin arrow storm.