Tenth moon, first year of the reign of King Corvus
The hill, edge of Deep Forest, Wheat Lands
The two East Rank Thousands opposing the South Rank were faltering, skidding yard by bloody yard back down the incline. Where their line joined Corvus’s, gaps were beginning to open.
‘Mother-bastard-shit!’ Corvus roared. He’d been at the front three times but was now in the rear, a dozen strides downhill of the writhing mass, trying to evaluate what was happening. If the Rank faltered now it was over. He needed to steady them, bring them back in step with the Mireces.
‘Dark Lady, Holy Gosfath, come to us,’ he prayed. ‘Guide our hands, our hearts strong in your glory.’ Tett was at his side while Fost had the other end of their formation, against the Krikites and the Wolves on the wooded slope. They were making progress there and the Mireces line was curving across the hill – they must’ve taken the woods.
‘Tett, get me a hundred men. We’re going to reinforce the Rank seeing as the cunts can’t even do what they’re paid for without cocking it up.’ He didn’t wait for a response, just began to traverse the slope, boots squelching with each step and threatening to send him flying. The temperature dropped even more and the rain solidified into hail, bouncing from his helmet and chainmail, hitting his face hard enough to sting. ‘The Lady’s will,’ he panted.
It reduced visibility even further, until it was as if Corvus were cut off from the killing and dying all around him, adrift in an ocean attempting to devour itself. There was movement in the flurry of hail and rain as the wind gusted and twisted the weather into shapes that almost seemed to make sense before collapsing in on themselves.
Ahead of him the East Rankers resting at the back stood in grim, silent lines, shivering in the freezing wind, linen flapping as they bandaged minor wounds. He barged through the first of the recovering men and turned up the incline. ‘On me,’ he roared. ‘On me.’ He felt rather than saw them come with him. Whether it was because he was their king or because the gods urged them on, they shouldered their shields and began to pound up the muddy, treacherous hill behind him without question.
Ahead, a Ranker came flying down the slope, mouth and eyes wild, preparing to cast aside his weapons and flee. He came to a confused, guilty halt as Corvus thundered past and Tett flicked out his sword as he passed, half-decapitating him. Let those following and those ahead, turning to see who was running, understand what happened to deserters.
‘Stand,’ Corvus bellowed to the dark mass of struggling men ahead of him. He ploughed into their backs, sword sheathed and shield held crossways in front of him. His boots dug in, slipped, dug in again, and Corvus got his shoulder in and just pushed. The two men above him felt his resistance, realised that someone – reinforcements – were there, and shoved back with renewed hope at the enemy pressing down on them.
To left and right, the East Rank crashed into the rear of their own troops and forced them forwards. Forced them on to enemy spears and swords in places, but up and down the line he could hear shouted encouragement, warnings, anything to help the two rows ahead.
The line stiffened. The line halted. The line began to push.
‘Let me in,’ Corvus roared at the soldiers ahead of him. He released the pressure on his shield and slid his sword free, leapt into the gap they made for him before the Southerner facing them could seize the advantage, planted his feet, locked his shield with theirs, and braced. He wasn’t a Ranker, didn’t have their training, but he understood the need to stand firm and stay in the line.
Opposite in the driving hail was the South Rank, only two rows deep. ‘Hold the line,’ he shouted as they shoved and slipped forward. ‘Brace!’ The shields to either side locked more firmly against his. They couldn’t wait; it’d take only one man to slip on the treacherous slope and they’d all be down it. ‘Advance!’
The soldier behind him slammed his shield into Corvus’s back, forcing him forward a single, lurching step and tearing a screech of pain from him. He didn’t have a Ranker’s plate armour and the shield boss ground into his spine, but there was nowhere to go, no way out from under the pressure. He gritted his teeth, offered the pain to the gods, and pushed forward.
The spear of the man behind found its way past Corvus’s ear and up into a face, tearing skin. Corvus’s own sword followed it, lower, deeper, punching the man off his feet into the soldier behind, who staggered under the weight hitting his shield and then tipped the body off and tried to scramble over it. Corvus took him through the side of the neck. He fell, choking, and the third didn’t step into the breach.
Corvus did, and then realised his mistake. He was surrounded on three sides by the enemy, pressed closer than lovers. His shield covered his front, but his flanks were open. A hand gripped his chainmail and hauled him back so fast he nearly fell, but it saved his life. It was Tett, of course. His bodyguard didn’t do more than check he wasn’t dying before he jabbed his sword at the next man along, distracting him enough that the Ranker to his right could kill him.
Together they picked at the hole in the front line, widening it man by man, the Southerners in the next rows back trying to climb over the bodies and dying. Corvus took a step forward only as the men to either side did, stamping down on the corpse, feeling around it for a solid footing, fencing away with the spear tip jabbing for him, knocking it up hard enough his man behind lunged in and stabbed into the exposed armpit with his own spear. Another one down.
But the end of Corvus’s line was still twisting despite all his efforts, pushed slowly back downhill, breaking the line of shields, the strength of numbers and formation.
‘Hold the line,’ he screamed towards the left, but it continued its slow warp. Much more and the enemy would be able to flood past it and roll up the flank like a fucking carpet. And the baggage train and hospital tents were burning – he could taste the smoke on the wind – so where the fuck were the Easterners he’d sent to fire it? They were supposed to be advancing up the southern slope to take these bastards up the arse.
‘On me!’ screamed a major next to him without waiting for orders. ‘Three steps back, on my command. Step!’
The South Rank roared its victory as the line shuffled down the hill, straining to pull the left flank back into contact with the rest. They pushed forward, clambering over their dead, harrying the line before it was settled on its new footing, and another bulge appeared as half a dozen of Corvus’s soldiers went down on a patch of ice or mud, were slaughtered where they lay, the South shoving into the breach, barging forward behind their shields. They had the momentum now, were threatening to cut Corvus’s line in two.
The rest of the Easterners weren’t coming. When Corvus himself reached the Afterworld to take his place in glory at the gods’ side, years and conquests and the making of legend from now, he would ensure those who had failed him were daily torn apart for their incompetence.
Corvus’s mouth stretched in a wide smile as he killed the next Ranker to dare face him. Tett fought on his left, still alive though missing an ear and part of his cheek, blood misting into the air with every rasping breath, but killing and dodging and saving Corvus’s life again and again.
Part of him knew they were losing, but it was a distant knowledge, subsumed beneath something else, something greater and immediate and right there, filling him to the brim with bloodlust and fury and righteous, revelling madness – the gods had come.
The gods had come and nothing the fighters did now would alter that momentous arrival. Corvus screamed his raging euphoria as all around him, as all over the hill, every faithful son of the Red Gods was lifted up and filled with reckless purpose.
Kill. Kill them all.
Kill everything.