By that time, Ormerod’s soldiers were shooting at the oncoming enemy footsoldiers. “Avram!” the southrons yelled. “Avram and freedom! One Detina, now and forever!”
Some of the northerners gave their lion-roar of defiance. Others shouted Geoffrey’s name or cried, “Provincial prerogative in perpetuity!” And still others yelled things like, “We don’t want to stay in the same kingdom with you sons of bitches!”
Despite the crossbow quarrels hissing around the battlefield, Ormerod stood tall as he drew his sword. He flourished the blade, screaming, “You’ll never take my blonds away!”
A ditch and an abatis of sharpened tree trunks held the southrons at bay. Ormerod’s men shot a good many of them as they struggled through the obstacles. But the rest of the pikemen, still shouting their hateful battle cry, swarmed forward. One of them came straight at Ormerod, the point of the pike held low so it could tear out his guts.
He hated pikemen. He always had, ever since he first had to face one. Their weapons gave them more reach than his sword gave him. That anyone might kill him without his having so much of a chance to kill the other fellow instead struck him as most unfair.
He slashed at the pikestaff, just below the head. He’d hoped to cut off the head, but an iron strip armored the staff, too-a nasty, low, devious trick the southrons were using more and more these days. Still and all, he did manage to beat the point aside, which meant the fellow in gray tunic and pantaloons didn’t spit him for roasting, as he’d no doubt had in mind.
“King Geoffrey!” Ormerod yelled, and stepped in close for some cut-and-thrust work of his own.
That was what he’d intended, anyhow, but things didn’t work out the way he planned, any more than things for the Army of Franklin looked to be working out as Thraxton the Braggart had planned. Instead of either letting himself get run through or fleeing in terror, the enemy pikeman smartly reversed his weapon and slammed the pikeshaft into Ormerod’s ribs.
“King Geoffr-oof!” Ormerod’s battle cry was abruptly transformed into a grunt of pain. He sucked in a breath, wondering if he’d feel the knives that meant something in there had broken. He didn’t, but he had to lurch away from the southron to keep from getting punctured-the fellow was altogether too good with a pike. Why aren’t you somewhere far away, training other southrons to be nuisances? Ormerod thought resentfully.
Then a crossbow quarrel caught the pikeman in the face. He screamed and dropped his spear and rolled on the ground and writhed with his hands over the wound, just as Ormerod would have done had he been so unlucky. Another southron pikeman stepped on him so as to be able to get at Ormerod.
Once he got at him, he was quickly sorry. He wasn’t so good with his pike as the unlucky southron had been, and soon lurched away with a wounded shoulder.
“That’s the way to do it!” Major Thersites shouted. Thersites himself was doing his best to imitate a whirlwind full of flail blades: any southron who got near him had cause to regret it, and that in short order. “Drive those sons of bitches back where they came from!”
But the southrons kept pressing forward, no matter how many of them fell to blades and crossbow bolts. Ormerod’s comrades were falling, too, and reserves were thin on the ground in this part of the field. Here and there, men from his company began slipping off toward the west, toward Proselytizers’ Rise.
“Hold your ground!” Lieutenant Gremio shouted.
“Hold, by the gods!” Ormerod echoed. “Don’t let them through. This is for the kingdom’s sake. And besides,” he added pragmatically, “you’re easier to kill if they get you while you’re running.”
That made the men from his company hang on a little longer. Major Thersites’ profane urgings made the whole regiment hang on a little longer. But then a firepot burst at Thersites’ feet. He became a torch, burning, burning, burning. He screamed, but, mercifully, not for long. That left the seniormost captain in the regiment, an earl named Throckmorton, in command.
“Hold fast!” Captain Throckmorton cried. But he sounded as if he were pleading, not as if he would murder the next man who dared take a backward step. And pleading was not enough to hold the soldiers in their places, not in the face of the oncoming southron storm. More and more of them headed for the rear.
“What can we do?” Gremio asked, watching them go.
“Not a gods-damned thing, doesn’t look like,” Ormerod answered grimly. “We aren’t the only ones getting away from the enemy-not even close. That’s the one thing that makes me feel halfway decent. Look at some of those bastards run! You could race ’em against unicorns and clean up.” He spat in disgust.
“If we stay here-if you and I stay here, I mean-much longer, the southrons will kill us,” Lieutenant Gremio said.
He was right, too; Ormerod could see as much. For a moment, rage so choked him that he hardly cared. But, at last, he said, “Well, we’d better skedaddle, too, then. I haven’t killed as many southrons as I want to, not yet, and I won’t get the chance by staying here.”
“I feel the same way, Captain,” Gremio said. Ormerod wondered whether that was true, or whether the barrister simply sought an acceptable excuse to flee. He shrugged. It didn’t really matter. They could fall back, or they could die. Those were the only choices left. They could not hold.
Dying here wouldn’t accomplish anything, not that Ormerod could see. Along with other stubborn northerners, some from their regiment, others men he’d never seen before, they fought a rear-guard action that kept the southrons from overwhelming this wing of Count Thraxton’s army. The soldiers fell back toward the protection of the lines on the height of Proselytizers’ Rise.
“I wonder if those bastards will have cut and run, too,” Ormerod grumbled.
“Doesn’t look like it, sir,” Gremio said, and he was right. He added, “If you ask me, we can hold the crest of the rise forever.”
“Here’s hoping you’re right, because we’d better,” Ormerod answered. Some of his men went into line with the troopers already in place on Proselytizers’ Rise. Others, exhausted by a long day’s fighting and by the retreat they hadn’t wanted to make, sprawled wherever they could.
Ormerod stayed in line till darkness ended the fighting. He was up before sunrise the next day, too, up and cursing. “What’s the matter now?” Lieutenant Gremio asked sleepily.
“That’s what, by the gods.” Ormerod pointed back toward Sentry Peak. Above a thick layer of cloud, King Avram’s gold dragon banner on red-an enormous flag, to be seen at this distance-had replaced Geoffrey’s red dragon on gold. Ormerod knew he shouldn’t have been surprised, but he misliked the omen.
At the same time as Fighting Joseph attacked the forward slopes of Sentry Peak, the northern end of Count Thraxton’s line, Lieutenant General Hesmucet’s soldiers went into action against Funnel Hill, the southwestern part of the unicornshoe Thraxton had thrown partway around Rising Rock. Runners reported that Fighting Joseph was driving the traitors before him. Hesmucet wished he didn’t have to listen to any of those reports. Things were not going nearly so well for him as he would have hoped.
For one thing, Funnel Hill, like the nearby Proselytizers’ Rise, had a steep forward face and a devils of a lot of northerners at the top. For another, Hesmucet rapidly discovered that the maps they were using had led him and General Bart astray. By what the maps said, Funnel Hill wasn’t just near Proselytizers’ Rise, but was the Rise’s southernmost extension. The ground told a different story. Even if his men got to the top, they would have to fight their way down into a deep, unmarked valley and then up another slope to get where they really needed to go.