Eight a.m. and a cold mist lay over the plain, reducing visibility to a couple of hundred yards. Grandys could be anywhere. His army could be creeping up on them right now.
“What are the scouts telling us?” Rix said to Jackery, whom he had brought in as his adjutant. Being only a sergeant, Jackery did not have the rank for it, but he was a far better soldier than any of Rix’s officers.
“They haven’t come back… yet,” said Jackery.
The infinitesimal pause was telling. “What, none of them? They went out hours ago, for a quick recon.”
“Eight went out. Two to each point of the compass. None have come back.”
Rix looked all around but the mist defeated him; he could barely see past the edge of the ranks. A cold breeze stirred his cropped hair, sending shivers down the back of his collar.
“Signallers!” he rapped. “Signal full alert.”
The chief signaller waved to his trumpeter, who blew the warning signals. The signaller waved his flags. The troops moved into formation and the archers strung their bows.
“I’ll bet he’s killed my scouts,” said Rix, pressing his knuckles into his throbbing belly. “He must be preparing to attack.”
In this weather, the first sign of an attack would be when the enemy charged into view. And they would have only twenty seconds to prepare for it.
The mist was thickening; visibility was now down to a hundred yards.
“If he’s going to attack, now’s the time,” said Rix.
Holm grunted. Visibility dropped to fifty yards, twenty, ten, then the mist began to thin again and, within minutes, it was gone. Rix and Jackery rode towards the highest point, a gentle mound only fifteen feet higher than the surrounding plain. A watery sun attempted to penetrate the rushing clouds, but failed. A flurry of rain struck his face. At the top of the mound Rix stared all around him.
The Pale army was still camped where it had been for the past three days. The Cythonians, six formations of some eight thousand each, were also in their original position. They had been in practising drills and manoeuvres for days. He scanned the land all around. The plain was empty. A thin plume rose from the top of Red Mesa.
“What the hell is that?” said Jackery, who was standing on his saddle to gain a few extra inches.
“Where?” said Rix.
Jackery pointed. “The ground south-east of Lake Bunt is all blotchy, yet I’d have sworn it was pancake-smooth yesterday.”
“You’ve got good eyes, Sergeant.” Rix focused his field glasses on the patch of land half a mile south of the Cythonian army, between it and the Pale force. “Looks like someone has spread thousands of brown blankets across the land. I don’t—”
“It’s a bloody army!” cried Jackery. “Grandys’ army.”
“Signaller, sound the battle horns,” rapped Rix.
As the horns were sounded, Grandys’ ten thousand men tossed their cloaks over their shoulders and rose into battle formation in one coordinated movement. They were only half a mile from Lyf’s army.
“Surely Grandys wouldn’t be so stupid as to attack Lyf,” said Rix.
Holm came running up onto the mound, with Glynnie close behind. “What is it?” she panted. “Are they attacking?”
“Yes, but not us.”
“They’re charging the Cythonians,” said Jackery in an awed voice. “From behind that small rise, and the Cythonians can’t see them from where they’re camped. Grandys must have killed their scouts as well.”
Rix peered through his binoculars. “Grandys is out in front, on foot. He’s running straight towards the enemy. Rufuss and Syrten are there too, out very wide on either side.”
“Any sign of Lirriam and Yulia?” said Glynnie.
No one answered. Then two riders came galloping out of nowhere, one from the west and another from the east, careering down the narrowing gap between Grandys’ concealed, charging force and the oblivious Cythonians. The rider from the west was a woman, standing up in her stirrups with a metal rod or staff raised above her in both hands. Her shining hair streamed out behind her and her heavy bosom bounced with every stride.
“That’s Lirriam,” said Glynnie. “No one else has hair like that.”
“Or a bosom like that,” Rix said absently.
Glynnie glared at him.
“It just makes her easy to identify at a distance,” he said hastily, but compounded his error by glancing sideways at Glynnie’s modest chest.
She made a noise like a kettle boiling over.
“The other rider’s too far away to identify,” said Holm, “but you’d have to assume it’s Yulia. She’s also holding up a staff—or maybe a sceptre.”
“Grandys’ men are coming over the rise. The Cythonians have seen them now,” said Rix. “They’re swinging round their bombast catapults—they’ve got at least thirty on this flank.”
“One bombast can take out a hundred men,” said Holm. “Thirty bombasts would kill half his army and maim the rest.”
“Lyf’s front lines must be armed with grenadoes too,” said Jackery. “They’re loading slings and hand catapults.”
Grandys raced ahead. Syrten and Rufuss slowed until they were a hundred yards behind. Lirriam and Yulia rocketed towards one another, then propped and skidded their horses to a stop, the Five Heroes now forming the five points of a pentagon. They thrust their staffs, sceptres and swords high. Grandys shook Maloch in the air, roared a word in an alien tongue and a ray of black light impaled the apex of the sky, drawing slender black rays to the same point from each of the other four Heroes.
The Cythonians froze, then frantically loaded their slings and bombast catapults. The archers on either side drew back their bowstrings.
The black rays separated from their sources and formed a steep five-sided pyramid which Grandys directed, with waving motions, over the centre of his army. He whipped Maloch out sideways. The black pyramid settled in silence.
Then the Cythonians fired every alchymical projectile weapon at once: thirty barrel-sized bombasts, hundreds of grenadoes and massed volleys of shriek-arrows, fire-flitters and other missiles that Rix had not seen before.
Months ago he had been at the head of an attacking force when a bombast had gone off in the ranks behind him, blowing at least a hundred soldiers to bits. Thirty bombasts bursting at once, in the middle of an army, was too awful to think about.
“It’s going to be a massacre.”