The Black Robe (The Sword and the Spell) (17 page)

Borman wished he knew the answer but none of his spies had returned from Newn’s camp to report what the Prince was planning. That wasn’t too surprising really; after Gadrin’s death he expected getting in and out of Tarbis’s camp would be almost impossible. In any case it didn’t really matter which tactic Newn took. Sometime today the Tarbisian army was going to be squeezed between the hammer and the anvil, it was just a matter of where and when and if he would still be alive to see it.

Timing was the critical thing. If he could time his attack to coincide with Rastor’s he would lose less men and that would be important for the success of his future plans. It was unfortunate that Janus had irritated him so much, otherwise he would have let him live to lead the first charge. As it was, the only thing he knew for certain was that Rastor said he would be in place by sunrise. Borman looked up at the sky and scowled. From where he was in the river valley the sun had only just cleared the hilltops. Higher up, however, the sun must have been clear for a candle length or two. If Rastor attacked the moment he was in place then he could already be engaging the enemy and even if he wasn’t Rastor wouldn’t wait long. He wasn’t the most patient of men.

The king studied the flat area across the river where the bodies of the dead spearmen and bowmen had been removed overnight just leaving the corpses of his own men to feed the carrion birds. Borman could see them now swarming around like black buzzers over rotting meat and tearing at his dead men with their ripping talons and sharp beaks. He needed to do something about that. Dying heroically on the battlefield was one thing, but seeing the bodies of your comrades being torn and eaten by hellden’s parasites was not good for morale. He took one last look at the silent hill opposite and a quick glance at the sky and made his decision.

Rastor had also made a decision. It had taken longer than he had thought to finally make the first Crosslands Gap Bridge strong enough for men to cross and then even longer to get all the men and horses across, fed and remounted. At least most of the men and all the horses had rested well and the ride to the second Crosslands Gap Bridge had been swift and uneventful. Then there had been another delay whilst the men funnelled across the narrow stone bridge before they were off again, riding as fast as if hellden’s hounds were after them.

Now they stood, resting their horses and eating cold rations and the wine berries they had stripped from the vine-covered hillsides. Rastor guessed they were half a candle length’s ride west of the Tarbisian camp and from his position he could see half a dozen columns of black smoke spiralling up into the still, early morning air. Whatever it was that they were burning, it wasn’t just wood. He took a last look at the position of the sun and gave the order to mount up.

Further north Malingar also gave the order to mount ignoring the groans of his exhausted men. They had been in the saddle almost continuously for a day and a half and the men were tired, and the horses were in an even worse condition. He hadn’t wanted to stop, but Sharman had insisted and of course he was right; the horses were blowing hard and a few had already collapsed and died. Now his men lay in the grass in small groups, munching on the fruit they had stripped from the trees in one of Vinmore’s vast orchards, whilst the horses ate the fine grass which grew in the shade of the trees.

Sharman watched the men eat the fruit they had gathered with disappointment. The order had been to only pick that which a man could eat, but most of the men had gathered sizeable piles of fruit which would be left behind to rot away on the ground instead of being pressed into Vinmore’s famous cider and perry. At least there hadn’t been time for them to light fires using the ancient fruit trees which would have taken three generations to replace.

Like his master he hadn’t wanted to stop, knowing that the desecration was likely to take place, but if he had stayed on his horse any longer, he would never be able to get off the animal again. He thought affectionately of his old horse that would stop when it had gone far enough and refuse to go on; unlike the horse Malingar had given him, which had no sense or respect for old bones. Now he stood by his master’s side watching the distant pillars of smoke rise into the dawn sky and wondered if either of them would see the sun rise tomorrow.

Tarraquin was more afraid than she had ever been in her entire life. She had been in some frightening situations before, both as a rebel leader and as a besieged queen, and more recently, as Borman’s prisoner, but they had been different. Then she had only herself to worry about, now there were others. Next to her was the man she loved and who, if things worked out, would be the man she would marry. He looked so young standing there in his slightly too large, borrowed armour holding his helmet with its commander’s plumes under his arm and with his eyes fixed firmly on the funeral pyre in front of him.

They had brought Gadrin’s body back from the command position the previous evening and she had done her best to console the Prince, but hadn’t been very successful. It wasn’t helped by the mounds of dead whose bodies had been retrieved from the battlefield during the night before the carrion birds did their grisly work. There were over a thousand dead and half that number too badly wounded to fight again. Newn blamed himself for Gadrin’s death and the death of all those he had sent into battle. If it hadn’t been for him and his need for revenge they would all be alive and he wouldn’t have to tell Jeswin that her beloved husband had died at an assassin’s hand due to his stupidity.

She had tried to convince him that he wasn’t responsible for all of their deaths; it was part of being a king, and all those who had died had known that, but her words didn’t seem to help much. So she had poured him some grain spirit and then they had argued. She knew that married people argued all the time, but it was a new experience for her, and one that she didn’t like. For most of her life she had been the one to give the commands; even as the High Lord’s adopted daughter she had commanded the servants, but Newn too expected his commands to be obeyed without question. He had commanded her to stay in the central camp with the guards Gadrin had appointed to protect her whilst he led the army into battle, but she had refused.

Tarraquin had argued against both actions and would have continued to argue until she had her own way except for one thing; she was afraid for the baby she carried inside her. She had thought she must be pregnant when the morning sickness started, but now she was absolutely certain. It was too early to feel the child moving or see any swelling, but it was definitely there. She hadn’t told him about the child. He had too many other things on his mind and, apart from that, she wasn’t sure whose child it was. Only time would answer that question.

Newn gave a final salute and stepped back from the funeral pyre. It was the smallest of the six pyres; as a commander Gadrin warranted a pyre of his own whilst the thousand common men who had given their lives would greet their Goddess together. Tarraquin had been right, it wasn’t his fault that all these men had died, but he was determined that they would not have died for nothing. Borman with his endless ambitions was a danger to the six kingdoms and he was going to do the six kingdoms a service by removing him forever. This was something he couldn’t leave others to do. For the sake of his murdered parents and Gadrin, his friend, he had to personally lead his troops against Borman.

He had studied the enemy’s camp at first light and even in the morning shadows he could tell that what Gadrin had taken to be well disciplined heavy foot soldiers were in fact nothing more than stuffed uniforms. That meant that Borman had at least a thousand men less than they had estimated. That and the five hundred or so men he had lost yesterday meant that he had less than two and a half thousand men left. His troop captains had warned him that Borman’s missing men might try and come around behind them. That was a possibility, but as the scouts he’d sent out a day ago hadn’t yet returned he had concluded that they hadn’t been able to find the missing army. If he could attack now and win conclusively they would be too late to save their treacherous king, that’s if they even existed.

King Newn gave his troop leaders the command to prepare to march on the enemy, and whilst they were hurrying about their duties, he took Tarraquin’s hands and led her to one side. There was so much he wanted to say to her about their future, but their argument of the previous night had made him cautious about assuming she would be the dutiful wife he had expected. In fact it made him wonder if marrying the Queen of Leersland was a good idea at all. Yet he loved her, he was sure of that, and she loved him, he was sure of that too. He pulled the ring with the royal seal off his finger and pressed it into her hand.

“Keep this for me just in case things don’t go as well as they should do.” He gave her a kiss and then stepped back. “Stay with my men and they will protect you, and when I return and Borman is dead we will marry. Then we will never need to be parted again.”

Tarraquin squeezed his hands and gave him the best smile she could manage and tried to keep the worry out of her voice. “I will guard this with my life and I will do everything your guards say and will be here waiting for you when you return.”  She gave him a gentle kiss and then turned away so that he wouldn’t see the tears in her eyes.

*

Borman watched as his men stood at the edge of the shallows waiting for the order to cross. They were all heavy foot soldiers protected with metal studded, leather armour and armed with shields and pikes. There were less of them than there had been yesterday, but not that many less. They looked formidable, a lot more menacing than the conscripts who had led yesterday’s charge. Those conscripts who had survived the day had been sent across the river to gather the dead and remove them from the pathway of the advancing troops. When that was done, they would become his reserve for when he needed to throw numbers into the melee. If he was victorious, the survivors would cremate the dead tomorrow, and if not it wouldn’t matter to him anyway.

He had split his royal guards into two groups; one to ride with the infantry in case Newn used his own mounted troops to stop his advance, and the other group, led by himself, to come from behind to drive his reserves forward if they suddenly decided that the soldiering life wasn’t for them. After the previous day’s experience he had thought carefully about riding into battle. It wasn’t something he wanted to do, but had come to the inevitable and unpleasant conclusion that if he was taking the fight to the enemy, then he needed to be on the other side of the river. That, of course, didn’t mean that he had to be at the front or use his sword, but he had it at his side just in case.

Looking more confident than he felt he raised his hand and dropped it again and his men started to move forward. Wading through the shallows was easier this time with no spears or arrows to face and he was amazed how quickly the front ranks reached the other side. If the Tarbisians were going to attack this would be a good time with his front ranks separated from the rear and half his army up to their knees in water. Surprisingly the attack didn’t come so his army were able to marshal in long lines on the other side of the river in preparation for their march up the rise.

Once again he raised and dropped his arm in command and the army started forward, over two thousand men marching up the hill in an impressive display of force. At least it was an impressive display of force until the Tarbisian army poured over the top of the rise outnumbering them two to one. Against everything he had ever read on battle tactics the mounted troops came first, charging down the hill at a breakneck, all out gallop. Each man carried a curved sword designed for slashing downwards from the saddle, slicing through a man and freeing quickly to be used on the next man in line. They were vicious and deadly but ineffectual against closely packed ranks with grounded shields and long pikes.

He watched in fascination as his men closed ranks and presented pikes and then grimaced as the charging horses, unable to stop, impaled themselves on the long pikes screaming as they died. They went down crushing men beneath them or threw their heavily armoured riders over their heads and into the massed ranks. The lucky ones died instantly whilst those who were still alive when they landed were hacked to pieces by the men in the third or fourth row back.

The weight of horseflesh was huge and even dead a horse can crush a man so his front rank went down in a welter of blood, flying hooves and screaming men. His army staggered backwards down the blood-slicked slope as the second wave of horse guards hit them. They leaped over their dead comrades as if they too were bent on death and landed amongst the packed ranks still intent on mutilating the enemy. Now the war horses came into their own, enraged beyond reason by the stink of blood and the screams of their stable mates. They bit and tore and trampled until Borman’s heavy foot soldiers could take no more, broke ranks and ran.

Once they ran and lost their cohesion the remnants of Tarbis’s mounted guard went amongst them cutting down into exposed necks and slicing through arms and hands like a butcher through offal. Blood turned the grass slick with its wetness whilst cut limbs and headless corpses tripped men and horses alike. Men screamed in their death throes and horses screamed in pain and terror as they drove through swords and spears, pierced or cut or maimed by the bodies rolling beneath them. The whole hillside was a roiling mass of the dead and the dying and Borman was swept away by his retreating troops who cared nothing for rank or royalty in their headlong charge to escape from their pursuers and reach the relative safety of the other side of the Blue River which now ran red.

At some time at the height of the melee when death was everywhere, someone had grabbed his horse’s reins and had dragged him out of the path of the descending horsemen and halfway across the shallows. The rancid water, kicked up by the fleeing men, splashed his face and brought him out of his horrified stupor. He snatched his reins back from some idiot who had dared to touch them, kicked him in the head hard enough to send him sprawling and ignored his screams as the horse behind trampled him into the stones of the riverbed.