Necrem’s ears buzzed from the den of hundreds of roaring men all around him. The battle at Compuert Junction was a street brawl compared to what he stood in the middle of now.
He had never watched a battle before. In his union days, he would tend to his forge, keeping it lit during the Bravados and packing it up if fighting broke out. The risks had been too great, too foolish, to watch one side try to kill another, especially if he ended up on the losing side and suddenly needed to flee. A camp worker could be killed in a rout the same as a fleeing soldier. Or worse.
Now, Necrem watched a battle from the center of the battlefield. Finally witnessing a pitched battle, they were a terrible thing to see.
The Lazornians first volley cut deadly swaths through the Orsembians. The war yells began moments afterward as the pikemen charged across the field, followed swiftly by Orsembians desperately crying in agony, fear, or anxious fury.
Those men were mostly dead now, their bodies mingled together on the ground where they’d fallen, marking their old battle line. Others laid beyond, either having fallen while trying to hold their line or where they had collapsed from their wounds and unable to make it back to their camp.
The Lazornians, fighting in their dense squares, were now twenty yards ahead of him within the eastern passage. Pikes rattled and jabbed. Swords sliced. Drums and shields competed over which were beaten the hardest. The musket fire, fortunately, had slackened off. The air was thick with the acidic smoke of burnt powder that wormed through Necrem’s mask to scorch his nose and throat and made his eyes water.
Most of the firing came from the right flank, which Hezet keenly watched, standing on his tiptoes and craning his head over the helmets of the men beside him.
“Something’s happening over there,” the veteran anxiously whispered over his shoulder. He bobbed and weaved his head over the man’s head next him then fell back on his heels with a grunt. “I think they’ve turned the flank but don’t see where they’ve broken through.”
Necrem cautiously glanced at the men standing in ranks beside them. A few worriedly watched Hezet and shot looks across the field. He bent down and said softly, “I think you need to calm down.”
Hezet tilted his head back with a crooked, puzzled look.
Necrem nodded at the men beside them, which Hezet glowered upon seeing.
The veteran faced forward, clearing his throat in a low growl and rolling his shoulders, his pauldrons rising and falling. “It’s the waiting, especially when the fight is on and we’re just waiting our turn. Except”—he grunted—“do we even know when our turn is?”
Necrem exhaled deeply through his nose. After the attack had begun, both he, Hezet, and the men behind them had found themselves at a loss for what they should do. He remembered General Galvez’s order to go behind the battle line should fighting break out, but that battle line had moved twenty yards in front of them.
Unsure of what to do and certain it would look bad if he simply walked back to camp with more and more soldiers marching onto the field, Necrem took up a spot beside Hezet in the front company of former sioneroses, who likewise had been seemingly and strangely forgotten.
The last orders they had gotten was from an officer riding by on horseback, simply yelling, “Remain in your positions until ordered!”
They were an island in the middle of two colliding rivers.
Behind them, companies of men hurried under the urgent orders of calleroses, riding along to break them off to either of the field’s far sides. Other groups of calleroses trotted between the tight squares, some to waiting officers on horseback to deliver messages while the larger groups of horsemen galloped off into the southeast passage.
To their right, companies formed a long line that now stretched into that passage. Muskets went off at strange intervals, followed by battle cries as if they were suddenly fighting the sloping ridge face into the southeast passage itself.
The fighting over there couldn’t have been worse than that on his left, though. Necrem was hesitant to glance that way. The massive press made him wince. Rank upon rank of men pushed against the rank in front of it, all the way to the struggling front line. The scene was gruesome, both sides heaving their shoulders into the other to the point where several men on the front lines were no longer pushing back.
Here and there, the mass of shoving men had squeezed the bodies of men at the front of their feet and only the tightness of the press held them in the air. The squeezed men hung like dolls with dangling limbs and slumped backs over the man in front of him, whether he be friend or foe. The Savior alone knew if they were alive or too exhausted to push back and miraculously ended up there instead of trampled underfoot.
Yet still, calleroses galloped up and down the column, waving swords and shouting, “Heave!”
A sharp whistle snatched Necrem’s attention forward where a second line of infantry waited. The company directly ahead of them began to move up, pikes held high as they slipped into the ranks of the company on the front line.
“About time,” Hezet said. “Those boys up front must be ready to collapse.”
Necrem watched with curious fascination as men in one company slipped between the men in the other, staying in ranks the best they could. The men in the other company slowly moved back through the other company’s ranks, again doing their best to stay in line with their fellows. It didn’t feel like it should be possible, and yet, one company was taking the place of another by them simply walking through each other.
It’s a wonder they don’t trip each other up.
Sharp bugle calls trumpeted distantly from the back of the field, adding more noise to an already confusing mess.
Or shove each other out of the way.
It was another thing they’d never been taught when conscripted. Another example that Gonzel and Raul had merely cared about them looking like soldiers, to just run around in ranks and thrust spears instead of treating them as soldiers. Or worse, they’d just been there in case they needed men to sell off.
“Stop!” A calleros thundered down the line, waving his arm in the air and bouncing in his saddle. “Stop!”
Men in the rotating company stopped and threw their hands in the air as the calleros came barreling toward them.
Necrem held his breath, expecting the officer to ride into the dense pack of shifting men, only for him to wheel his horse around at the last moment. The man trotted around the companies, standing in his saddles.
“Stop the rotation!” the calleros roared. “Company capitáns, dislodge your companies and keep the frontline firm until ordered!”
Whatever retort or complaint the tired men gave was lost in the sea of war cries.
The calleros thrust a pointing finger toward the Orsembians over and over, yelling at someone below him.
The men around him looked up with weary, sweat-soaked, and some blood sprinkled faces.
A blaring trumpet from the Orsembian side of the field cut the argument short.
“Savior, help us,” Hezet hissed under his breath.
Necrem jerked his head up and squeezed his hands together until his gauntlet plates bit through the gloves.
Rank upon ranks of Orsembians marched in a long column, out of the lingering haze of musket smoke, straight at the two companies trying to trade places.
“Reform the ranks!” the calleros cried. “All companies, hold the line!”
A mad scramble ensued. The companies’ capitáns took up the order, shouting and waving their men together. Men in the mangled companies had to reform ranks together, standing shoulder to shoulder until the companies were indistinguishable from each other, save for their banners.
The Orsembians on the frontline suddenly broke away, giving a few parting thrusts before they scattered back, some with their backs turned. Necrem was sure, after being around soldiers long enough, the Lazornians would have been eager to chase after them. However, that long Orsembian column was coming on, and through the haze, Necrem finally got a good look at them.
The front three ranks were heavily armored with pauldrons, forearm greaves, and shin plates over their boots, along with their breastplates and helmets. They carried halberds instead of spears, and the mellcresa of Marqués Borbin waved above them in a fiery orange and gold banner.
A hedge of pikes lowered to meet them, many with bloodstained heads. The Lazornians jabbed and waved their long poles, claiming the twenty feet in front of them.
The Orsembians came on. Once in range, they lowered their halberds and went to swinging. Not at the Lazornians, but at their pike shafts. They swung their halberds like oversized axes, and cracks of wood followed wherever their axeblades fell.
The Lazornians speared and jabbed back, striking under armpits and grazing necks, dropping a man into the arms of their comrade behind. Still, once a pole was snapped or knocked out of the way, an Orsembian would rush in. They roared as they came on, hefting their halberds again to hack into the Lazornians’ frontline. The Orsembians behind pushed their mates in front forward, some into pikes, in the mad dash to get inside the pikes’ reach.
Another hard press formed in seconds, like on the left. Only here, there weren’t enough men to hold the Orsembians back. They pushed and they pushed as if they were a nail driven by whatever hammering force kept their drums beating.
“Hold the line!” the calleros ordered. He leaped from his horse, drawing his sword, and shoved into the fray. “Hold the line!”
“Brave officer,” Hezet mumbled.
Desperate.
That was what Necrem saw. Desperate men thrusting, punching, stabbing, and clawing to keep a few inches of ground. Men staggered out of the fray, using bent or splintered pikes as canes. Some limped, and some held their hands fast to wounds on their sides, their faces, their legs, a couple to their groins. Many couldn’t get out of the way fast enough from the frontline bowing back.
It was bending like a persistent hammer blow dented a plate of steel. The companies to either side of the onslaught were giving way, too, curving backward as the companies in front of Necrem gave way step by step. Something became apparent with each of those steps.
Necrem and the men beside him were the only ones standing in front of Borbin’s soldiers if they broke through.
“Capitán!” a man yelled from the company beside him. “What do we do if they get through?”
“That’s the marqués’s flag!” another cried. “We can’t hold against his personal soldiers!”
“Capitán!” more cried. “Capitán!”
“Quiet in the ranks!” the young capitán yelled. “We hold until ordered! We will not run! We will not break! We will not disgrace ourselves again!” As commanding as he tried to be, the young capitán’s voice cracked.
Many a pale face lingered, and knuckles remained white-gripping their pikes. Some trembled in their armor while other silently prayed.
“This is bad,” Hezet whispered up at him. “That line’s going to break, and the first thing that column is going to do is come at us.” He cast a wary eye at the men beside them. “These men won’t hold.”
“Then”—Necrem paused, yet the answer was still the same—“someone should order them back.”
Hezet looked up at him in horror. “If they pulled back . . . three whole companies in a column . . . that could start a rout!”
Necrem hung his head. “Guess that would happen if we went back, too, huh?”
“Well . . . I don’t know.” Hezet shook his head. “Never had the choice to just leave a battlefield.” He swallowed and brought his shield around. “Doesn’t really sit right to just . . . leave.”
The Lazornians were losing ground. The remaining companies tried to stretch themselves out, desperately thrusting pikes and swords into the mass of Orsembians. They fired muskets into their bellies, yet still the Orsembians came on, fighting all the harder. The stretched lined reminded Necrem of that white ring steel got after being dented in a certain spot over and over, just before it gave way.
“If we leave,” he said, “everything falls apart. Borbin wins.”
Hezet nodded, drawing his sword. “Pretty much.”
Borbin wins. He would likely be killed, or worse. And Eulalia and Bayona . . . their lives would remain in the same, disheveled state. Alone and hopeless.
Victory.
Or death.
Necrem’s legs moved on their own, carrying him forward, toward that driving nail of men.
“Oso!” Hezet shouted after him. “Where are you going?”
Necrem looked over his shoulder, stopping in the middle of the field. Hezet stood a few feet in front of the square of curious men, as if he had begun to chase after him but stopped short. They were all watching him.
“We can’t go back,” Necrem replied. “And you said it wouldn’t be good if we just stayed here and let them fight through.” He pointed at the Orsembians, sucking in as much air as he could to bellow through his mask, “So, I guess I’ll lend them hand. And hammer back a nail!” He didn’t know what compelled him to do it. His arm rose on its own and held his gauntleted fist up in the air.
Hezet stared blankly at him. The men behind him, their capitán especially, stood speechless.
Hezet broke the awkwardness by bursting out with a laugh, throwing his head back with all the carnage and pain around them. “I guess I’ll come along with you then,” he said, shaking his head and trotting toward him.
Necrem wasn’t sure why, but he felt a bit of comfort in the veteran’s response, uplifted.
“Stop!” the young capitán yelled at them. “Your orders are to stay behind the lines!”
“Pardon, sir,” Hezet yelled back from over his shoulder, “but at times like these, a soldier has to fight the battle in front of him, and damn the orders!”
“You men were sold out once, right?” Necrem yelled back at the former sioneroses. “This could be your best chance to get back at the men responsible for that.”
Hezet waved his shield back at the men and bellowed, “Come on! Come and get the fight you were all denied!”
When Hezet joined him, Necrem took off toward the fight. The front was bulging to the brink. More and more men were scrambling away with bleeding wounds and exhausted faces. Those who were left jabbed their pikes over their compatriots’ heads to strike at the Orsembians, unable to lend any support to their backs to keep from losing ground.
“You know this is stupid, right?” Hezet asked, fixing his shield strap tight to his forearm. “Even for a smith.”
“I figured,” Necrem grunted, swinging his arms to keep his stride long and heavy. “Just couldn’t keep standing there. Waiting.”
Hezet snickered. “Congratulations! You’re now a soldier.”
Necrem snorted but couldn’t slap the comment down this time. In his armor, in the middle of a battlefield, and after the things he’d just said, no one would believe him. “What a terrible thing to be.”
“Still, you better pick up a pike.” Hezet gestured at a man lying slumped on the ground, his pike the only thing keeping his body propped up. “Better than going into that with just your fists.”
Necrem grimaced, earning him a sting from cracking the dried blood on his scars, as he plucked the pike up. The slumped man fell forward and remained motionless as they passed by.
“Any more suggestions?” he asked, hefting the long pole. He recalled a little of his training and grasped it with both hands. However, the pike wobbled in the air with each step.
“Well—”
Men rushed up beside them. In moments, they were enveloped in the front ranks of the former sioneroses’ company. Necrem peeked behind him and let out a relieved breath at the other ranks following, more than one company worth. He didn’t know why, but striding in with a group of other men was comforting.
“Glad you boys could join us!” Hezet laughed to the nervous chuckles around him.
The laughter died instantly from the cries of the frightened men ahead of them.
The Orsembians broke through the line.
Those wielding halberds swung the long axe heads from side to side to open more gaps or to rain down blows on those who refused to budge. Swords flashed and hissed against blades from small duels breaking out. Spearmen and pikemen batted each other, the Lazornians desperate to hold any Orsembian back while the Orsembians clambered to make the breach wider.
“As I was saying,” Hezet called out, “we better—”
“Company!” the capitán yelled, cracking his young voice, holding his sword in the air. “Charge!”
Necrem sprinted, swept up by the ocean around him. His long pike wobbled violently in his hands, threatening to slip from his grip with every step. He held it out level with the ground, along with the men around him. They shouted liked crazed men, eyes wild, faces flushed, barely breaking to breathe and just yelling.
It was infectious.
As they closed the space, an Orsembian knocked down a Lazornian with the butt of his halberd. He spun around in time for Necrem to see his blood-splattered snarl shrink in shock, his halberd held aloft as if momentarily forgotten.
The furious shouts around him raced up Necrem’s spine and seized his throat. Without any concerns for his scarred face, he roared with every ounce of strength his lungs could give him and rammed into the Orsembian. The impact on the pike was jarring, but the force of his sprint and everyone coming in behind propelled him forward.
The man’s eyes bulged, and his head dropped. The wobbling pike had made aiming the massive weapon impossible. The pike head grated against the abdomen of his breastplate, slid down under the metal, and through the man’s thigh. A second later, Necrem slammed his shoulder into him, knocking him back into his comrades and driving his pike into the mass of bodies.
The man whose thigh was impaled hobbled backward, dropping his halberd and crying in pain, snarling and drooling. More Orsembians joined him in agonizing screams as the former sioneroses smashed into them like men possessed, shoving pikes into the mass, driving the pointed heads into any flesh or soft armor they could reach.
Necrem was driven farther into the fray. His pike shoved deeper and hit against more resistance, making the shaft jerk and stop before eventually shoving through. So close were they packed together that he couldn’t tell whether he was stabbing someone else or sliding against armor. He grunted and snorted in his mask, struggling to pull the pike back. Every sound reverberated and echoed under his helmet. Everything was so close.
Including the enemy!
The impaled soldier finally got to his senses and snarled at him, mere inches from his face. He reached for his belt, grappling for his dagger.
I can’t pull the pike free!
So, he let go.
The impaled soldier wobbled on his feet without any support. His hands fumbled to get his dagger out.
Necrem acted without thinking. He drew back, and the last thing he saw on the impaled man’s face was wide-eyed shock before Necrem’s gauntlet crushed the man’s nose in. The soldier’s head snapped to the side, but the pike held his body in place. His head wobbled back and forth, blood pouring from his crushed nose, the splintered bone visible, and then he collapsed, falling underneath everyone’s feet.
Necrem didn’t have time to see what happened to him. The shoving propelled him over the man’s body and farther into the fray. Now without any weapon.
Save his fists.
The next soldier in line ran into him, slamming his pauldron into his chest. Necrem’s breastplate absorbed the blow. He dug in his heels and, with the added support of the men behind him, barely gave an inch. The soldier held his spear high, unable to thrust. He batted the shaft into Necrem’s belly, but the blows were cushioned by the breastplate.
Necrem raised his fist and dropped it like a hammer blow, crashing his gauntlet onto the man’s shoulder. Pauldron and gauntlet clapped together. The soldier let out a strangled yowl and crumbled to the side.
The struggling press was too tight for the next soldier in line to step over his fellow, nursing his shoulder, on his knees. The next soldier wasn’t in any hurry. He stared up at Necrem, pushing back against the ranks behind him, as if holding a tide threatening to topple him over.
Necrem kept his hands up. That tide would win sooner or later, and that soldier would have to fight.
His every breath was a struggle to suck more and more air through the holes in his mask. His legs burned from running, and his chest swelled and pounded against the bounds of his breastplate. He took a glimpse around him during the breather, taking advantage of standing head and shoulders over everyone.
The Orsembian nail had been blunted, but not fully stopped. There were still more pressing in behind and attacking the other Lazornian companies to either side. The fight around Necrem was quickly becoming like the grueling fight over on the left end of the field—men tightly packed, pushing and shoving, both sides desperate to be the one that pushed the other back.
That’s the job, I guess, Necrem reasoned with himself. They’re yelling to push them back. They must mean it literally.
That tide broke at the next soldier’s reluctance. He stumbled over the crumbled man in front of him, spear in the air and unprepared.
Necrem swung an uppercut into the man’s gut. His breastplate took the blow. However, he still folded over, and Necrem’s follow-through lifted him off his feet. As the soldier reeled, doubled over, he grabbed the nape of the man’s neck and flung him.
He didn’t see where he ended up as another soldier came charging in, screaming.
Necrem threw his hands up to punch, but the soldier rushed in and rammed his shoulder into his gut. Again, he dug in his heels and held, grabbing the man’s pauldrons as the man kicked and squirmed furiously to push Necrem back.
You’re too small—
Clink!
Necrem grunted. Something was pressing against his side, squirming and wiggling between his chest and back plates. He raised his arm, and his eyes widened at the soldier’s dagger. The soldier’s wrist worked back and forth. The dagger’s blade wiggled like a silver snake trying to burrow and squeeze through, between the plates.
There was a sharp sting. The point had found flesh.
Necrem raised his left hand high and backhanded the soldier across the side of his head. The soldier whipped and rolled from the blow. Teeth flung up in the air and were lost in the crush. The soldier went down in a heap under the feet of his fellow soldiers, leaving his dagger lodged between Necrem’s plates.
Something warm, something wet, trickled down his skin. A trickle he knew well.
He was bleeding.
Dammit!
He wrenched the dagger free. Only the tip, barely a few centimeters, had made it through, and fresh blood stained it.
“Oso!”
He spun. A couple men behind and to his right, Hezet cracked the pommel of his sword into an Orsembian’s face.
“The banner, Oso!” Hezet yelled then delivered a few more smacks. “Borbin’s banner! It’s right there!”
Necrem looked. A soldier was waving Borbin’s banner furiously as the man beside him, the company’s capitán, yelled and waved his sword, ordering his men forward.
“Get it, Oso!” Hezet roared. “Take Borbin’s banner! They will break!”
Break?
Another hollering Orsembian rushed to fill in the gap. Necrem barely had time to raise his hands to catch the man’s spear thrusting toward his face. The sharp head slid into his gauntlet fingers, the thick gloves protecting them as he struggled with the waving shaft in his grip.
The Orsembian yelled in frustration, yanking his weapon back—
The man grunted. His mouth dropped open, and his head drooped.
Necrem followed his gaze to the pike shaft lodged in his gut, punching through the plate. He hadn’t seen him do it, yet the soldier behind him must have slid his pike around him and now skewered Necrem’s latest attacker.
“Drive through, Steel Fist!” Hezet urged on. “Break them!”
Necrem flung the spear out of the way. Borbin’s banner was a few ranks away, but of those in front of him, there were only two.
Break them, and we hold them, he worked out. Break them . . . and we win.
He cast a look over his shoulder. The soldier behind him determinedly held the Orsembian on his pike while the others behind him bobbed their heads to get a look at what was going on.
“Follow me!” Necrem yelled, waving behind him.
He shoved the skewered Orsembian off the pike and roared as he bulled forward. He kept one hand on the pike, guiding it along, and stuck his right shoulder out as he drove through the press.
He plowed into the first soldier he met, breaking his spear shaft on impact with his shoulder. The man tumbled head over heels, and Necrem ran over him.
The next soldier he hit stayed on his feet, and the pike skewered him. He clung to Necrem’s pauldrons to keep his feet, but Necrem kept moving. The soldier gasped and sucked air as the sickening squish and scraping of metal on wood came from his gut. Necrem was forced to fling the man off, losing the pike in the process.
Two soldiers away from banner, and the Orsembian company capitán finally noticed him.
“Kill that huge bastard!” the capitán ordered, pointing his sword at him.
Necrem didn’t wait. He plowed forward. Fists raised.
One soldier leapt out from the side, and he backhanded him. The next received an uppercut to the jaw that snapped his head back under his helmet, teeth and blood flying in every direction.
A rhythm settled over him. Everywhere he turned, he threw a punch. He struck flesh or plate, it didn’t matter. His fists were hammers, and their bodies were mailable metal. They couldn’t use their spears in such a close space, and the few with daggers found his plate stronger than they could stab through. At least in one try, because that was all Necrem gave them before his fists came down on their heads.
He roared, and his face burned. His mind, though, was clear. The fury was there, but it didn’t consume him. The nightmarish visions were quiet. He fought with the same clarity as if he were in his forge. He wasn’t destroying anything. He was creating.
He drove his gauntlet into a soldier’s gut, plate squealing under the blow. He grabbed the man’s shoulder and hit him again, and again, and again! Plate groaned and cracked. The soldier gargled a gasp, and his eyes rolled back.
Necrem let him fall, and another solder tackled him, wrapping his arms around his waist.
“Capitán!” the soldier cried.
Necrem raised his fists together to come down on the man’s back, certain that would make him let go.
The glint of steel flashed before his eyes!
Cling!
Necrem’s eyes went wide at the point of the sword embedded in one of the breathing holes of his mask. The Orsembian capitán glared up at him, arm stretched as far his could over his man holding Necrem’s waist, sweat streaking down his brow.
He tipped forward. The sword pushed Necrem’s head back, but by the Savior’s miracle, the mask held.
Necrem seized the sword in one hand, pushing back to get the point dislodged from his mask but also keeping a hold of it so the capitán wouldn’t be able to stab him with it.
More men yelled from behind him. The former sioneroses came in through the opening he had made and started fighting all around him, likely saving him from being jumped or daggered by the rest of the waiting Orsembians.
“Capitán!”
The standard-bearer rushed in, dagger raised in the air, underhanded.
Necrem hissed, finally pulling the sword free, and raised his forearm. The dagger sliced across his brace. The plate turned the blade’s edge away. The standard-bearer lacked the strength to knock his arm down, and Necrem backhanded his hand away. The dagger clanged against gauntlet, tumbling through the air. Seeing a chance, Necrem seized the banner’s pole wavering in the standard-bearer’s hand.
“The colors!” the capitán cried. “He’s trying to steal Si Don’s colors!” He lunged forward, scrambling to climb over the man holding on to Necrem’s waist to shove his sword into his face.
Necrem squeeze harder on the blade and flagstaff. He could make out the impression of sword’s edge pressing through the gauntlet’s palm.
A mad tug-of-war broke out. The capitán struggled to pull his sword back. The standard-bearer jerked and whined, trying to seize the flag away. Necrem squeezed his grip as tight as he could and held on to both.
They heaved and shoved while the battle around them raged. Necrem caught glimpses of Lazornians pushing forward around him one moment, and in the next, the Orsembians pushed back. He twisted and turned. His biceps and forearms began to burn.
“He’s stealing Si Don’s colors!” the capitán yelled again. “Stop him! Stop him!”
Necrem flung the standard-bearer back, but the man kept his grip.
Suddenly, Orsembians from both sides jumped on him, wrapping their arms around his and punching at his gauntlets and braces. The added weight made Necrem snarl, and it didn’t help with the man holding his waist punching his ribs. Necrem’s armor held off the worst blows, but no armor held out forever, and his strength was seeping from his arms fast.
His muscles burned and trembled. His fingers grew numb in his gauntlets. He snarled and hissed through his mask. Drool pooled in his cheeks. The edges of his scars pulled taut, stinging his face.
Don’t let go, he told himself. Don’t let go!
“Put steel in that big bastard’s face!” the capitán ordered. “Kill him!”
Necrem snapped around, locking eyes with the officer. He wasn’t sure how he appeared, but the capitán’s face went white, and he froze. His trembling arm ran shivers up his sword blade.
“You want steel?” Necrem growled. His breathing rose to panted hisses. His pauldrons rose and fell with every gasp through his gnashed teeth. He worked his lungs like bellows to draw every ounce of strength he had left.
He had to get that flag!
He had to break them!
He had to stop them!
He had to win!
A roar broke loose from deep in his gut, and he thrashed. He pulled and jerked with all his might, swinging his fists to either throw the men holding his arms off or punch them with his full fists.
“Hold him!” one of the soldiers cried then desperately again. “Hold him!”
His left wrist twisted. His right hand squeezed. Metal squeaked. Wood groaned. He squeezed as tight as he could, losing all feeling in his fingers.
Squeak.
Groan.
Cling!
Snap!
Shards of metal and splinters of wood rained in the air. The tussle around him paused. Men held their breaths. Eyes widened in shock.
Necrem stood in the middle of the chaos with the broken blade of the capitán’s sword in one hand and the broken-off shaft of the flag pole in the other . . . with Borbin’s flag.
I . . . got it!
“Get the colors!” the capitán screamed.
No longer in a tug-of-war, Necrem’s fists were free to use. He hoisted them in the air, flinging off the men latched to his arm from their grips loosening upon seeing him with their marqués’s flag. He brought them high then slammed them into the back of the soldier holding his waist. He put his full force of his back into the swing, bending his legs to make the drive as hard as possible.
The soldier crumbled to the ground, finally releasing him.
A crazed yell made Necrem shoot his head up to see the capitán charging in with his broken sword, raised to thrust. Necrem swung a left uppercut . . . and buried the broken tip of the capitán’s sword under the man’s jaw and into his head. The officer gaped. His jaw worked, yet no sound came out. Only blood oozed from below his jaw.
Necrem pushed the man, stumbling back into the men behind him, and began to swing again. He backhanded the soldier to his left then swung around to slam his fist into the blocking forearms to his right.
When he got some space, he raised the stolen banner in the air and yelled behind him, “I got it!”
Amazed shouts went up, demanding those around them to look.
“He’s got it!”
“He took their colors!”
“We’ve taken their colors!”
“Charge into them!”
Necrem got caught up in that ocean again. A surge of war cries, maddening roars, and triumphant laughter the likes of which he had never heard. The Lazornians pushed, and this time the Orsembians gave. Necrem prepared for another fight, but the Orsembians around him were pulling back wounded comrades, and the standard-bearer tossed away his useless pole to drag his capitán’s body away.
They’re . . . breaking?
Musket fire belched from around the edges of the retreating Orsembians. Sulfuric clouds filled the air and men collapsed to the ground. The former sioneroses flooded around him, lowering their pikes now that they had room and began their deadly screwing.
They’re breaking.
Necrem’s arms burned. His fingers pulsed. He tasted copper on his tongue. The telltale warm lines streaked down his face, sticking the cloth mask to his cheeks. His face was bleeding. Again.
Yet all he could do was . . . laugh.
“Oso!” Hezet came running up behind him, slapping him on the arm. His sword was gone, and in its place was a halberd he must have picked up along the way. The veteran beamed like a man seeing the birth of his first child. “Oso, you magnificent bastard! You did it!”
Necrem looked down at the banner in his hand. It felt so light, almost as if it weren’t there. He lifted it up just be sure, and the long, orange fabric ruffled as he did.
He chuckled. “I guess I did.”
Hezet chuckled with him.
More laughs broke out around them. The former sioneroses formed around them. Their faces were bloodied and bruised. They held their pikes sticking out in every direction. While officers down the line shouted orders to reform ranks, they all laughed.
An exhausted laugh. A shared laughed that no order could stop.
It felt good to laugh. To be alive. To have won—
The ground shook.
A thunderous pounding came from beyond the haze of musket smoke.
Horses screamed.
“Pikes down!” a distant officer cried.
Men around Necrem scrambled. Those in front knelt, buried the butts of the pikes into the dirt, and held their long poles at an angle. Those behind stuck theirs out as far as they could, and those farther back held theirs above the other’s heads. They fell like waves, wavering in pockets. Hezet joined those kneeling with his halberd.
Necrem had nothing but the flag.
“I need a pike!” he yelled behind him. “A spear or—”
“Oso!” Hezet cried.
Necrem turned around—
And a horse ran into him.