The Keltin line drew closer, and Ralf’s archers loosed a volley of bolts and arrows that sent a great many of them to reside with their grim forest gods. Fergis’s bowmen returned the fire, but their effect was slight. The short bows of the Keltins were no match for the deadly warbows of Ralf’s archers.
Then with a chorus of trumpets and battle shouts, the Keltin host closed with its foe.
The air reverberated with the screams of the dying and the rolling clatter of swords striking shields. Spears darted in and out like the tongues of deadly serpents. Axe rose and fell, rose and fell. Blood squirted, brains splattered, heavy boots stomped the faces of the fallen.
Lorenzo braced himself for the worst as the enemy’s powerful left flank grew closer and closer to his pitiful handful. Death was stalking across that field, aiming straight in their direction. They would be overrun in a moment.
But strangely, unexpectedly, the opposing unit ceased to advance. They simply halted and held their ground while the rest of their comrades moved to engage the enemy. They just stopped and stared, as if unaware that a battle was now raging along the rest of the line.
Lorenzo was puzzled. This being his first major battle, he did not really know what he should expect, but he was fairly certain that this was not a normal tactic, not at least when the enemy had such numerical superiority. Was it a trick to lure him into a misguided attack? Hardly likely—there were more than enough Keltins to fend off any assault he and his boys could offer.
What the hell was going on?
As the power of the Stone declined, the ardor of the Keltin soldiers, particularly the leaders, began to fade. The laigi, after all, were an unfailing source of wealth. The trading of uisge brought fine steel weapons to the hands of their warriors. Why would they want to end such an agreeable arrangement?
They began to recall the old grudges that had, for a while, seemed to slip from their minds. The ancient memories of murder and betrayal that had turned one tribe against the other for generations uncounted. The more they remembered, the more their anger grew.
None was angrier than Fergis’s brother, Oengus mac Brude. Anger was, in sooth, his natural state, but today he was more given to wrath than ever before. He had, through some foolish notion of kinship, pledged his loyalty to his brother. Had actually bent his knee and, with his hands upon the sacred whetstone, made his unbreakable vow. What had driven him to such a disgraceful deed?
That memory was sour enough, but what had followed was far, far the worse. He had expected that Fergis would show his appreciation with an appropriate gesture, but his request to command the army’s right wing—a prestigious position known as the king’s right hand—had been refused.
Command of the right was traditionally awarded the most venerated of the Ard Righ’s chiefs. Who was more entitled than his older brother? A brother who had been passed over for the very title Fergis now enjoyed. That great honor had gone to Coinneach mac Coinneach, while Oengus had been shunted off to the end of the left flank with scarcely a hundred spears at his command. This blistering disgrace had entirely erased the maudlin mood of family feeling that had previously plagued him.
He would have preferred to murder his brother at once, to stick a knife in his back during a council of chiefs and proclaim himself Ard Righ. He was, unfortunately, bound by the hideous oath he swore upon the whetstone. The consequences of breaking it were too terrible to consider.
He could not, therefore, directly betray his brother, but perhaps he could show his displeasure in other ways. He could refuse to attack with the paltry force allotted him. Or he could at least delay doing so—that ought to get Fergis’s attention.
With this in mind, he called for his men to halt just short of the enemy battleline.
The battle continued to rage along the rest of the line. Heads flew from necks, arms from shoulders. Sharp points were shoved into yielding bellies. Heavy blades knocked eyes from sockets and teeth from jaws. Men shrieked and dropped into pools of muddy blood.
With their superior armor and weapons, the earl’s soldiers inflicted far more casualties than they suffered. Apart from the ceremonial equipments of the leaders, few of the Keltin warriors wore armor. It was, in fact, regarded by many as unmanly to fight in protective gear. The bravest went to battle stark naked. Most Keltins carried swords and spears of bronze rather than iron or steel.
Avincraik’s archers continued to do good service, shifting their fire wherever the threat seemed the greatest, shooting down the attackers as quickly as they could. But the Keltins, undaunted by their losses, kept coming. There were so many of them.
The main thrust came from the Keltin right, from bellicose Coinneach mac Coinneach and the spearmen of Ben Wyvern. Using their superior numbers, they kept reaching beyond the earl’s left flank, forcing it to bend back in an effort to avoid being enveloped. The individual soldiers, instead of standing shoulder to shoulder, had to spread out to lengthen their line.
More Keltins kept coming, always pressing the earl’s left, forcing it back step by step, until it must give way and allow the army of Avincraik to be destroyed from behind.
Seeing the danger, Earl Ralf dispatched Sir Marmaduke Twaddle and the reserve to bolster his wavering flank. Twaddle was heralded as one of the bravest and most chivalrous knights in all the land. He had always served his lord with acumen and aplomb. If anyone could secure the left, it would be him.
Unfortunately, Lady Fortune did not smile on Twaddle that day. As he was marshalling his troopers into position, he noticed a Keltin arrow arcing across the sky in his direction. There was little to fear—he carried a shield and was clad in the best of plate armor. The lightweight Keltin shafts could not penetrate such defenses. Many arrows came in his direction—there was nothing special about this one.
Here was Twaddle’s mistake—in his arrogance, he forgot that even a lowly Keltin archer can sometimes bring down the most accomplished knight. That in spite of his proud warhorse, his fine armor, and his illustrious lineage, he could still be killed. Had he raised his shield just a little or perhaps turned his head the slightest bit, he might well have survived the day.
But he did not do these things, so the arrow slid cleanly through the narrow vision slot of his helm and entered his brain. The renowned Sir Marmaduke slumped in the saddle, all his nobility reduced to lifeless clay.
His men, luckily, did not witness the death of their leader, or they might have routed right then and there. They were at that moment far too occupied with the on-coming Keltins to pay attention to anything else. They did their level best to bolster the collapsing left flank, but the accursed Keltins kept surging against them like the waves of a raging sea.
Lorenzo knew he must act, that failing to decide was worse than a bad choice. On his immediate left, the men of Groyne were engaged in a continuous if somewhat desultory poking match with some Keltin spearmen. The unit to his front, however, remained stationary. So what should he be doing?
He studied their leader, the one in the high, feathered helmet who he had pegged as a great champion. Perhaps he was a champion, but there was something in the man’s bearing that argued otherwise. He was too puffed up, too blustering. He seemed more like a man making a poor performance of being a champion rather than one truly possessing heroic qualities. A man greatly needing to prove himself yet lacking the courage to do so.
Such a man could be brought to ruin. Fearing his own weakness, he would search for a similar weakness in others. What Lorenzo needed to do, therefore, was create an irresistible perception of weakness.
Lorenzo’s Etrusian forebears had been masters of strategy and tactics. They had refined military organization and maneuver to a fine science that allowed them to dominate the known world of their day. They had time and again defeated Keltin hosts every bit as huge and fearsome as this one, driven them from their ancestral lands, and enslaved their women and children. There must be a way.
A reckless scheme began to take shape. His idea could easily lead to his death—to the death of them all—but if that pompous buffoon across the way was stupid enough, arrogant enough, it could perhaps deliver them.
He signaled his men to draw further to the right, to put a twenty-foot gap between themselves and the men from Groyne. He pulled them backward another twenty feet, further widening the gap. Then he ordered the horses to be brought forward.
His scheme was about to be put to the test, for at that moment, the blustering fellow waved his sword and his warriors resumed their advance.
Fergis sat his horse on a small rise that afforded him a good view of his army’s center and—much more importantly—its right wing. Most of the left was obscured by a small stand of trees, but it was the unimportant flank. The left, like the center, had only to pin the enemy line in place so that mac Coinneach on the right could do the main work.
All, as far as he could see, was working to perfection. Left and center were engaged but not pressing the attack in costly, sometimes suicidal charges, the right was progressing rapidly, pushing forward as the laigi flank curled in on itself. He saw the commitment of the enemy reserve and the early demise of its leader.
Fergis had received no recent news from the city, but the last messages had all been good. The Painted Men had sustained heavy causalities but had secured much of south wall and its massive gatehouse, so the way was open. From the Small Folk, he had heard nothing, but that was not unexpected—they were a strange, secretive people after all.
His brother Oengus had been given a very simple task. He had only to keep the enemy from circling around the left flank. Given the comparative sizes of the two armies, there was very little chance this would occur, but it gave the bumbling Oengus something to do. Fergis would never trust him with a more demanding task.
No word had come from that flank, so he assumed all must be going well.
Now he saw the enemy earl leading his small personal retinue in a vain attempt to strengthen his doomed flank. It was the time for the final stroke. Fergis burned to meet the opposing leader, this Earl Ralf, face to face and slay him with his own hand. He motioned to his own guard of picked warriors and rode to join the fight on the right.
The third flight of elementals unleashed nature’s ire upon the city. Happily, this was the smallest of the three flights, composed of smaller, younger entities that lacked the awesome power of those that came before. Nonetheless, their destructive abilities were magnificent.
The stately Mad River, living up to its name, leapt from its banks, smashed down the workshops and warehouses that lined the quay, cascaded through the slaughterhouses and knackeries of New Shambles, and burst over the city’s western wall. Dockside houses were battered to flinders, thick wooden pilings were sent spinning through the air like cornstalks in a tempest. A riverboat was torn from its mooring and flung into the city center, crashing down atop a pawnshop near Market Square.
Fearsome winds ripped through the streets, tearing the thatch from roofs, pulling the shutters from windows, bursting doors, and filling the squares with the scattered remains of household goods—blankets and clothing, torn bedding and splintered furniture. Defenders and attackers alike were swept from the city walls. The cathedral’s great bronze bells were knocked from their tower and thrown to the ground with a hideous clang.
Fires erupted spontaneously in a score of places, consuming shops, homes, and churches. Survivors would later claim that their domestic hearths, normally so convivial and comforting, suddenly turned fierce, with red hot coals and blazing kindling inexplicably jumping from the grate to set the room ablaze. Fed by the high winds, the fires soon spread to adjacent structures.
Then the ground began to shake like a wet dog. Plates and goblets were sent plummeting from the sideboards of the wealthy. City Keep swayed and a long crack appeared in its east wall. The abbey of the Black Friars crumbled into a heap of beams, bricks, and roof tiles. Worst of all, the huge South Gate—already the scene of so much carnage—gave way without warning. Those inside were crushed in an avalanche of massive stones.
Their work done, the elementals then flew on to wherever they called home. As they did, the fury they had brought immediately began to slacken. The shaking stopped, and the wind eased its pitiless assault. The river calmed and returned to its bed.
But the Keltin shamans were not quite done. With the last of their power, they sent forth their spirit animals to drive the city’s rat population into a frenzied attack. From cubbyhole and rafter room, cellar and garret, the rats gushed forth in a loathsome brown flood.
More and more joined in from sewer and storehouse, granary and stable. Beady eyes gleaming, incisors bared, they surged up from the tenements of Old Shambles and down from the opulent mansions of Hilltop, from the vaults beneath the Cathedral and the dungeons below City Keep. The streets and alleys became seething rivers of brown furry bodies.
The rats did not pause in this mad dash, did not turn aside for the tender meat of a homeless urchin cringing in a doorway nor for the stringy flesh of a blind vagabond cowering beside a public fountain. They bore straight on, ceaseless in their advance, until they reached, at the far end of Spellcaster’s Wynd, the great meeting hall of Gorgonholm’s magicians’ guild.
The city’s magicians, however, were prepared for this very circumstance. Before the battle, they had sniffed the livers of birds, cast the bones of unborn goats, chewed vision-inducing berries, and licked the backs of brown toads, all well-known and approved methods of reading the future. They knew the rats would be coming.
The magicians took their places in the guildhall’s most sacred chamber, the Hall of Conjuration. Cat-mint and valerian were burned in the immense bronze brazier standing in its center. Then they began to chant.
From back alleys and firesides, haylofts and kitchens, the cats of Gorgonholm rose up, stretched, and came running, eager to confront their natural prey. Toms and tabbies, brindles and blues, calicoes and kittens swarmed into Spellcaster’s Wynd, snarling, spitting, hissing, backs arched, ears laid back.
They pounced on the foremost rodents, slashing with claws, sinking fangs into stubby necks, splattering the cobblestones with blood and fur and meat. Undeterred by their losses, the rats struck back, tearing at feline faces with their long teeth, scratching at soft bellies with short, burrowing claws.
Soon the street was filled with small furry bodies, rolling, jumping, yowling, squealing, biting, dying. Size and strength favored the cats as they ripped heads, legs, and tails from their smaller foes. Numbers favored the rats. Though ten of them died for every cat pulled down and eviscerated, the rodent horde continued to surge forward.
Striped tabbies were overborne and savaged. Kittens consumed. The gnawed remains of calicoes were stretched beside those of lop-eared, one-eyed toms. Torn and defeated, the surviving felines turned and fled. They leapt over fences, climbed trees, and jumped into the open windows of nearby houses. Anything to escape the terrible yellow teeth of the rats.
The magicians’ guildhall lay undefended, the last guardians driven away. The rats paused only long enough to give an insidious squeal of victory. Then, through hidden cracks and secret holes, they poured inside.