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The first thing he saw as he got off the ferry was the gallows. Rath had set it up right in the center of the Abertref docks, and four men swung from it now, rain trickling down their swollen blue faces. Well, that was what happened when you tried to go over to the enemy on the eve of battle. Presumably the lesson had been learned.
Lukas and Rath walked over from the nearest tavern, and Broderick and his son dismounted to join them. Rath said he had been talking to his scouts, and the position of the enemy was almost perfect. Goss and the western column were making good time—only four miles away now on the Hamstowe road. But the Earl of Hyrne’s column, traveling on smaller, twisting roads, was hours behind schedule.
“This day gets better and better,” said Lukas, rubbing his hands together.
Right there in the rainy street, Broderick gave his last orders. “Gentlemen, our opponents have committed the grievous sin of dividing in the face of the enemy. Unfortunately, that means in order to beat them, we’re going to have to make the same mistake.”
Three quarters of their cavalry, along with half their archers, would go east with his son and Lukas. Meanwhile he and Rath would take a few knights as skirmishers, along with nearly all the pikemen, to deal with Goss.
As he told the captains, his strategy was, “The wasp and the wrestler.” In the west, he and Rath would grapple with Goss, drawing him in and keeping his attention. In the east, his son and Lukas would harry the less-disciplined troops of the earl, stinging and distracting them, pulling them farther and farther away from the assistance of Goss. How it all turned out would have a lot to do with how good a general the earl turned out to be.
As the captains left and the cavalry mounted up, Broderick’s son took him aside. “Father, Goss knows what he’s doing. What if this is a trap?”
“I doubt it,” said Broderick. He couldn’t have said why, exactly, except that they’d originally learned of the attack from Sir William, and Broderick trusted him to sense a trap. If William thought this information was reliable, then so did Broderick.
He shook hands with his son and then rode up over Gleade Hill. Rath’s archers were already dug in at the crest there, facing northwest, while the pikemen took the longer, but easier road around the base of the hill.
“Remember we’ll be falling back several times,” he told Rath. “Make sure the archers know where we’ll be.”
He took command of the small cavalry contingent personally. The captain tried to dissuade him, but Broderick had never been the kind to sit back and wait for reports to trickle in. He needed this done correctly, and so he would do it himself. One hundred and fifty strong, he and his knights rode up the river road.
Ned Slorcus and Rath’s other scouts kept up a constant stream of reports. Goss should have had his own scouts riding ahead, but perhaps he thought they were in friendly territory.
At last Broderick came around a tight corner in a wooded ravine and spotted soldiers coming toward his company, wearing the arms of the Earl of Wellenham. These men were ambling along, heavy cloaks on against the rain, weapons tied up and secure in their packs. For a few panicked moments, they tried to prepare themselves, shouting for their squires to help them, but then Broderick and his men hit them at a full gallop, smashing them apart and sending the survivors tumbling down the riverbank. Broderick rose in his stirrups, slashing right and left with his sword, hacking men to bits on either side.
Up the road, horns started blowing. Goss knew they were there now, and a counterattack was coming. Broderick called to his own trumpeter, and ordered the first of many retreats. He and his men galloped away, leaving the wreckage of Goss’s first company, and took up position behind the next bend in the road, ready to do it again.
The rain stopped around the third time they did this, and the sky grew brighter. Broderick took out his spyglass in the lull between fighting and studied the hills to his right, silhouetted now against the rising sun. Here and there he could see small bodies of horsemen dashing this way and that, but there was no knowing whose they were. No way of knowing how the battle was going over there. No way of knowing if his son was still alive, either.
The Sigor army came around the corner again. By now, they were ready for battle and had the good sense to deploy on either side of the road as they approached. So Broderick had his men go all the way down the riverbank and attack uphill—the direction no one would have expected. Once again, they blew through the enemy like wind through a high mountain pass and veered off before Goss’s men could recover.
Goss was good—one of the best from the war—but he was rusty after two years of peace. And maybe, like a lot of good men, he’d lost his taste for blood in Loshadnarod. Or perhaps he was reluctant, knowing old friends were on the other side. So much the worse for him.
Broderick felt no hesitation at all. He felt brilliant, in fact. Better than he had in years. He had honestly wanted to avoid a war, but now that it had started, he remembered why he had always liked being a soldier. There was absolutely nothing in the world, not wine, not sex with young Anne Meriwether, that made him feel as unstoppably powerful as a good, hard-fought battle.
They attacked and fell back three more times before they could see the top of Gleade Hill rising behind them. Thirty of Broderick’s hundred and fifty knights were gone now, but they had taken at least four times as many of the enemy with them.
Broderick’s senior captain rode up to him, pointing south down the road. “Go ahead, sir. Let us finish this.”
“Nonsense!” said Broderick. “I wouldn’t miss this.”
The captain grimaced. “But...my lord captain general, if you were killed....”
“I’m not going to be killed today,” said Broderick. “Trust me. I won’t be.” He could have told the captain why he was so confident of that fact, but the captain wouldn’t have believed him.
They made two more charges on the road, and then one as they started up the slope and joined the pikemen, but the farms on Gleade Hill were wide open, with fewer hedgerows and woodlots, and here Goss’s greater numbers would inevitably give him an advantage. Even though they were fighting uphill now, the Sigor men could spread out in a long, curving line that stretched beyond Broderick’s little company by hundreds of feet on either side.
If Goss had been reluctant before, he wasn’t now. His pikemen and cavalry—even his archers—came sprinting up the hill through the mud, as Broderick’s company feinted twice more. And finally, with the last retreat, they came within sight of the top, and a massed volley from Rath’s archers went whistling overhead. The enemy were halted, but they quickly regrouped and began slipping around either side of the hill, no doubt looking to flank the archers and come at them from behind.
Rath jogged up to Broderick. “I think we’d better retreat, my lord.”
“Not quite yet.” Broderick waved him off and took out his spyglass again.
To the northeast, over fields bright green and gold in the dawn, he saw churning masses of men and horses—no clear lines or formations. But he was not worried. His son had learned how to fight that way from the wild barbarians of the Loshadnarodski steppes; all of them had. But Young Broderick was better at it than almost anyone.
Goss’s men tried attacking the hilltop position several times, from the east and from the west and from the north. The last time they nearly got around to the southern side of the hill, and Broderick could see the enemy on all sides. But then he had the trumpeter sound the charge, and they sent Goss’s soldiers reeling down the hill.
In this brief lull in the fighting, Sir William came galloping up. “My lord, your son’s compliments. He says the earl’s men are routed, and his grace, the Duke of Severn is chasing down their remnants.”
Broderick turned to Rath, wet and panting and covered in mud. “Now, colonel. Now is when we retreat.”
So his men got out of their trenches and fell back down the southern slope of the hill. Before them was the town of Abertref, and then the confluence of the River Colwinn and the River Trahern, both shimmering blue on this fine spring day. And over the rivers, the massive castle hill and all of Formacaster. That was the prize, and everyone on the field knew it. They were in full view of the capital now, and every nobleman who had stayed back on that side of the river would be able to see exactly what happened.
Goss’s men attacked again, heedless of the danger, paying no attention at all to their flanks. They had Broderick the Black on the run, and they could taste the victory already. It seemed so close, like that glistening castle across the water, that they must have felt they could almost touch it. Their lines fell apart, the pikemen got jumbled with their archers, who got in the way of their cavalry. Broderick’s men, in their neat, orderly formation, walked calmly down the hill, until the trumpeter gave the signal, and they turned to meet the hundreds and hundreds of men streaming toward them from all sides.
Then a low rumble came echoing down the hill, like thunder from the clear sky, and Broderick’s son and all his horsemen came racing over the crest, their black eagle banners streaming behind them. Goss’s men barely had time to turn around and see the new threat before they were being cut down and trampled into the mud.
Some of the enemy tried manfully to fight, but they were hacked to bits, or shot by Rath’s gleeful archers. And the ones who ran simply died quicker. Some of them turned to the east, sprinting for the perceived safety of Abertref, but among its quaint little lanes and cottages, they ran straight into the returning pikemen of Duke Lukas. Others of the enemy ran to the west, where they were hounded right up to the water’s edge. Many tried to swim for it, but the current was strong where the two rivers met, and few of the men ever made it to the other side.
Broderick met his son in a little farmyard at the western end of Abertref. “Holy Finster, Father,” the boy cried. “Are you hurt?”
For the first time, Broderick realized his face was covered with blood. Fortunately, it turned out to be someone else’s, though he had no idea whose it had been.
“Damn and blast it to the Void,” he said, slapping his son proudly on the back. “Your timing is as good as it ever was, boy.”
Young Broderick blushed and bowed. “Thank you, Father.”
Men were gathering now, cheering their names and calling for a speech. Broderick had several memorized; he wondered which would be appropriate. Maybe the one about the glories of brotherhood.
Lukas arrived, and Broderick went over to help his old friend dismount. But to his surprise, Lukas seized his hand, hoisted it in the air and shouted, “Here is your leader, men. Whatever the Gemot may say, we know who we want. Hail, Broderick! Hail Broderick the First, King of Myrcia!”
All around them, men took up the cry, and soon hundreds of them were kneeling to him, rank on rank of men, all blood-splattered and grimy. Their banners, torn and muddy, dipped in his honor. He took it all in, too shocked to remember any part of his old war speeches. All his life, he had wondered what this would feel like, what would go through his mind at this moment, when all his most cherished dreams began to come true. And now, all he could think was that if Lukas weren’t his best friend, he would strangle him on the spot.
His son walked over and in a low voice asked, “Father, is this part of the plan?”
Broderick grinned, and then raised his son’s hand, to renewed cheers from the crowd. “It is now,” he whispered back.