| |
As soon as they left the southern gate, they saw the ranks and ranks of Gramiren men on Morwyn Hill around Osricksburg. “I had planned to loop around a bit to throw off any pursuers,” Lily said, “but it looks like we’ll have to head straight east for a while.”
After they made the turn, though, Elwyn heard voices crying for them to halt, and the carriage rumbled to a stop. Elwyn, Rohesia, and the two children sank down in their seats, deeper into the shadows. The air in the carriage was stifling now that they weren’t moving, and dust floated thick in the narrow shafts of light coming through the blinds.
“Where are you going?” a man’s voice said.
Their driver, a big Immani soldier from the embassy, said he was carrying diplomatic passengers.
“You’d better turn your asses around. There’s going to be a battle here any minute.”
Lily waved for them all to crouch down even lower, and then opened the window. “Young man,” she said, “If you don’t let us through, the legate will hold you personally responsible. I don’t suppose you’d like to explain to Baron Broderick why you’ve made the legate mad, would you?”
Footsteps approached the door. “What do you have in there, ma’am?”
“Diplomats and sealed messages from the legate,” snapped Lily. “If you open that door, it’s an act of war!”
That seemed to do the trick. Elwyn could hear the soldier talking to several others, and after a minute or two, the Gramiren men decided to let the carriage go. Everyone sat up and breathed easier once they were moving again.
After a minute, they risked raising the blinds a little on the left side of the carriage. They could see down the whole length of the city’s eastern wall, all the way to the distant line of trees and hedges that marked the road along the Upper Trahern. The Summer Palace was off there, hidden in the trees. As they watched, a line of horsemen came into view, headed toward the city, while pikemen tramped into the fields. And it wasn’t just a company or two. They kept coming and coming, whole regiments of them.
“Are those the men of the Dukes of Leornian and Keelshire?” asked Rohesia. “The ones who were up by the Summer Palace?”
It seemed likely, but they didn’t know for sure until Elwyn, who had the keenest eyes, saw the Dryhten family banner. “It’s the Duke of Leornian, alright,” she said.
That was encouraging, but then there was a tremendous, echoing roar, like all the thunder of a summer storm at once. It made the carriage floorboards vibrate and set the shades rattling against the windows. They pulled up the shades on both sides now, searching for the source of the sound. It kept rolling and building, over and over.
Alice put her hands over her ears and bit her lip. “Make it stop,” she begged her mother. But it didn’t stop.
The farm lane they were following turned slightly to the right, toward the southeast, and now, through the windows on the right of the carriage, they could see back to the west, toward Morwyn Hill and Osricksburg. A giant cloud of dust hung in the air there, and at the base of it, Elwyn could make out masses of men and horses, tiny black figures moving together, surging this way and that like waves on a pond.
“Who’s winning?” demanded Edwin. But no one could tell him, because it was impossible to see anything through all that dust.
***
MOST OF THE NEWSHIRE men had stopped at the base of the hill. But several companies, either more eager or worse led than the others, tried to follow the retreating Gramiren troops into Osricksburg, and were virtually wiped out by a quick counterattack and a dozen volleys of arrows. Their bodies littered the slopes now.
William watched as one fellow, clutching his gut like he’d taken an arrow there, made his way painfully back down, half dragging, half rolling. Eventually the man lay still, and William turned his attention back to the officers’ meeting.
They were in a farmyard on the edge of Osricksburg village. Broderick sat by a basin of water, stripped to the waist, talking to the captains with perfect calmness while the surgeon took the arrow out of his shoulder.
“We’re going down the hill again,” he said, “but this time in two divisions. The right one, over by the river, will only go halfway. It’s a feint. Then you’ll stop and you’ll wheel around—like this,” he made a movement like a swinging gate with his free hand, “and then you’ll fall in behind me and the left division. We’ll hit them all on one side.”
“What about our flanks?” asked Colonel Rath.
“Let our archers worry about the flanks,” said Broderick. “If we move fast enough, flanks don’t matter.” He looked over at the surgeon, who was holding out the arrowhead for his inspection. “I’ve seen plenty of those before,” he said. “Now stitch it up, man, and someone get me my armor.”
Squire Kevin and Squire Stanley rushed over with the armor, from which they had removed most of the blood and dust. They got their master suited up again, and then they all rode out to rejoin the lines of cavalry. The trumpeters let loose a blast, and everyone started down the hill again, riding over the bodies of the unfortunate Newshire men.
Near the base of the hill, William saw that the right division, under Rath, obediently drew to a halt, but then the charge was sounded, and he forgot everything else but the tiny part of the battle right in front of him. He couldn’t have seen much farther than that, anyway, in all the dust. He had no idea if the strategy as a whole was working or not. All he cared about was staying alive and protecting the captain general. That was his job, and if Broderick were killed here, William would have to live with the shame of it for the rest of his life.
Not that Broderick needed his help, most of the time. Yes, he’d been unhorsed, but that could happen to any knight. William had simply had the good fortune to be in the right place to help him. Now, however, the baron was in his element, slashing and smashing men to bits on either side of him as he rammed through one Newshire line and then another.
Some of the enemy broke entirely, racing for the river, but others rallied to stand their ground. And Baron Broderick headed straight for the largest of these islands of resistance. The banner of the Earl of Stansted was flying there, and in the last seconds, as they closed the distance, William could see the earl himself, standing in his stirrups and shouting orders.
Then William was in the middle of the melee again, with arrows slashing past his face and pikemen rushing up at him out of the choking, dusty gloom. He cut down two men, and then a third, and then a fourth, before he suddenly found himself beyond the fight, at the edge of the dust cloud, looking out into bright sunlight and smooth, untrampled fields of grain.
He sensed movement to his right and turned, sword in hand, to see Squire Kevin there, on his horse. The boy was doing very well so far—there was blood on his sword at least. And Squire Stanley, too, was holding his own. The baron had trained them both very well.
“Hello, Sir William,” said the boy brightly, as if they were meeting in the common room of a tavern.
“Keep moving, boy,” said William. “A knight who stays still is a dead knight.” Then he wheeled his horse around and headed back into the battle.
***
THE NEWSHIRE MEN WERE fighting bravely, but they were not fighting as an army. Broderick noticed how, when they were attacked, every squad and every regiment drew in on itself, losing contact with its neighbors. Most of the men had probably fought in the Loshadnarodski War, but there had been few large battles back then. A lot of the fighting had been done by companies or battalions. The men literally didn’t know how to move as units larger than two or three hundred. And none of their officers or nobles knew how to do that, either. Broderick was the only man here who had ever commanded an entire army in the field.
The Earl of Stansted’s men fell apart into companies—the way they had fought and trained—and then Broderick took those companies to pieces one by one. It simply required the right pressure in the right spot, and Broderick had always had an unerring knack for finding that spot. Soon only a small group of knights remained, surrounding the earl himself, retreating in good order toward the boats. The other men were dead or running away.
Broderick reined in and called his squires over. “Kevin, Stanley. I want you to take fifty mounted archers and go down the riverbank. Get them to use flaming arrows and burn every boat you can find.” He didn’t want these men sneaking off to return some other day.
But first there were the regiments under the Duke of Newshire to finish. They had been pushed back in the second cavalry charge, but they had regrouped on a little orchard hill nearby, and they were spreading out in lines again, as if they were preparing to fight. Broderick ordered his men to charge before the enemy could recover, but even as he started forward, he saw the enemy lines buckle and sway. There was dust in the distance, past the orchard, rising in a steady, billowing cloud. Then he heard the roar of a cavalry charge, though he’d never given an order for one, and he saw the Newshire men in the orchard break and run. But they were running toward him now.
“What in the Void, sir?” asked Colonel Rath, riding up alongside him.
It took Broderick only a moment to realize what had happened. “Bring up our archers and pikemen, colonel. Duke Lukas is here.”
Minutes later, Broderick met his old friend in the middle of a field strewn with the bodies of dying men and horses. “Lovely day,” said Lukas, taking off his helmet and wiping a thick film of sweat from his brow.
“Couldn’t be better,” laughed Broderick. “You got here in time for the feasting.”
Unfortunately, this turned out to be a bit premature. As Lukas explained, he’d been obliged to leave all his baggage and his pikemen and archers behind, while he’d rushed ahead with his cavalry. So rather than showing up with five thousand men, he was here with only eight hundred. The rest wouldn’t be there until the next day, at the earliest.
That was a bit of a blow, though not as bad as the one delivered by Ned Slorcus, Colonel Rath’s scout, a few minutes later, when he rode up to announce that the northern enemy army under the Duke of Leornian had finished crossing the Upper Trahern and was now marching south to join the fight. Sure enough, in the distance, to the right of the city walls, Broderick could see the telltale dust cloud. Even worse, his squires returned a minute after that to tell him that the Duke of Newshire was rallying his troops farther south on the riverbank, and they might attack at any time.
“So, there will be a slight delay in the feasting,” said Lukas.
Then William tapped Broderick on the arm and pointed to the right. “My lord, look.”
Broderick turned, but it took him a second to see through the dust. There were riders over there now. At least a full regiment of cavalry. No, maybe more. And pikemen, too. They were tramping up the road from the southeast, and they looked fresh and ready in a way no one in Broderick’s army looked anymore.
“Who in the blasted Void are they?” wondered Colonel Rath.
Squire Stanley, it turned out, had borrowed a spyglass from Lady Jorunn. He eagerly handed it to Broderick, who scanned up and down the lines of marching troops until he spotted a man carrying a green banner with a white tower on it.
“Holy fucking Finster,” he whispered. “They’re from Keneburg. Those are Duchess Flora’s men.”
“So...whose side is she on, exactly?” asked Lukas.
Broderick shook his head. “I have no idea.”