Chapter 28
The forced march continued the next day. And now, at last, the country changed. This was much further west than Yaret had ever travelled, and when they emerged from a strip of woodland on top of a high knoll she was unprepared for the sight that lay before her. Ahead of them, the army marched on down the hill, for the Baron was relentless: but the Gostard troop all paused, like her, to gaze.
She saw a wide, bleak plain of dreary yellowed grass, flattened by the bitter wind that whipped at cloaks and drove long swirls of mist across the land. There were few trees, yet indications that many had stood here until lately; where they had been felled, the grouped trunks had the appearance of black mushrooms.
The plain was backed by foothills, patched with snow and heavy with a haze of untouched trees; and in the distance, like tall sentries, she glimpsed a range of mountains – snow-shrouded, yet not white but blue-grey, the unearthly hue of shadow. The hue of steel. Above them in the cold sky stood the pale disc of the moon.
A guard of snow, she thought. What were those lines in the Ulthared?
To fear the claws of snow. To seek the footprints of the moon. To meet the gaze of ice. Whatever that meant. Those mountains looked as remote and unattainable as the moon above them. Even as she watched, a veil of rain or snow was drawn across them like a curtain, shutting them from her sight.
She wondered how far the Baron intended to go across this vast waiting wilderness. But it was not empty of mankind. Someone had felled those trees, for a start; and several miles away, indistinct and misty, stood a dark rectangle.
“What’s that building?” whispered Bred.
Jerred shook his head. Nobody knew.
They rode on, following the army down to the plain below. Before they reached the hill’s foot, without warning the column ahead came to a sudden stop, horses stamping as they were abruptly halted.
“It’s those Iobens.” declared Inthed with exasperation. “Holding us all up.”
Indeed, there seemed to be much vehement discussion and gesticulating at the front of the line. A group of Iobens started to dismount from their horses.
“They don’t like where we’re going,” said Morad heavily.
“I don’t like where we’re going,” said Bred. “What are we doing here? There’s no cover or anything.”
“No cover for the enemy either,” pointed out Jerred sombrely.
With a jolt of realisation Yaret thought, So this is the battlefield – this empty, waiting plain. All the other fights were just preliminaries. The proper battle is to come; that’s why the Baron’s brought us here. But there are too few of us. Where are the Kelvhans? And where is the enemy?
Almost before she had framed that second question, she knew the answer to it. The stink, the fear... When she spun round in alarm she saw the steam rising from the trees behind them.
“They must have been following us all the time,” she said, dismayed.
“Tracking us,” said Jerred, “when we thought we were pursuing them. Dismount, everyone. Prepare your arms. Then let the horses go.”
The Melmet troops were already drawing up their ranks in response to the Baron’s harsh commands. The horses were allowed to canter off, to be regathered later. Jerred and his men swiftly took up their battle formation; even Inthed, left arm bound in its sling, hefted his sword in the other hand and assumed his place.
The enemy were on them within another minute. Yaret shot two arrows only – no time for more, for as the darkburns veered away the stonemen charged. That yelling. She wished they wouldn’t. Then they were on her, so close that she could smell their sweat and dirt, could see their eyes wide-pupilled, full of hate between the daubs of grey, could hear the snarls and shouts, could feel the terrifying breeze of axes flying: and once again she was slashing desperately with her sword, her right shoulder painful before she even started.
Somewhat to her surprise she felled three men with ease in swift succession: and could not stop herself from noting the number of stones on each head. The last had only two. How old was he?
Another stoneman at once threw himself at her, burying his axe in her newly acquired shield. She staggered backwards. No matter how old these stonemen were, all had the size and strength of full-grown adults, and were recklessly vicious in battle, not even noticing their own wounds. They were oblivious to pain. She took a second blow on her shield before stabbing her attacker in the stomach. Then she had to finish him off with a sword-blow to the neck, gritting her teeth at the feel of metal slicing through the bone.
Screams from the Iobens. A darkburn must have caught them. Dear stars, had no-one told them to harvest their own stones? The rising smoke, that smell of burning…
“Never again,” she cried aloud, “never again, I will never let you have them!” She was thinking not of the Iobens but of the children of Obandiro. So many dead. Obandiro was gone. Yet it would be avenged: and Yaret fought on furiously, forgetting the counting of the stones. They all deserved death. Every one of them. She did not care how old they were – she would kill them all.
She killed a number; yet still more stonemen charged on past her to redouble the attack further up the line. Each wave of the enemy as it broke and foundered on the Melmet swords was followed by another. Around her, her own troop were fighting valiantly although this onslaught was more prolonged than any yet. Poor Claben fell, a sword protruding from his neck.
Jerred slew the man who killed him. But there was no lessening of the attack. By now both Yaret’s arms were burning with fatigue. Her blood-lust had been replaced by grim resolution. She longed for some respite from the effort and necessity of killing; but there was never more than a few seconds’ pause. As she helped Bred to dispatch a yelling stonemen, she heard another yell behind her, and spun round.
It was Inthed. He was shouting, “Get off! What are you doing?”
But he wasn’t shouting at a stoneman. He was fending off a blow from the spear of a burly Ioben. Thrusting the man away, Inthed slashed out with his sword, and missed.
“What are you doing?” he yelled again.
The Ioben man began to shout in his turn. “I’ve had enough. You’re all liars and traitors and your Baron–” Inthed kicked him in the stomach, so that he fell over backwards.
“Dear stars,” said Jerred, as shocked as she had ever seen him. “They’re turning on us!”
It was so. Yaret realised that, all along the line, Iobens had begun to fight against the Baron’s men. She felt at first bewilderment, and then a surge of shame on their behalf. These were her own relatives, and they had joined the enemy...
But the enemy seemed as bewildered as she was. The next line of stonemen hesitated in mid-charge, as if uncertain whom they should attack. After a brief pause they attacked everyone anyway, indiscriminately, swinging their axes and clashing swords with all alike. Yaret fought off one before she had to whip round to defend herself against an Ioben with a knife. She managed to catch him in the groin with her sword so that he stumbled over, cursing her.
She did not want to kill him – probably a mere goatherd, and her countryman to boot. Almost family, now that Obandiro was gone. But maybe she ought to kill him before he could stab someone else. This was impossible.
Her head was spinning with dismay and her limbs were quivering with fatigue. As he began to rise, she slashed at his sword arm. Then she yelled to Morad, “Watch your back!” Morad swivelled, but too late: an enemy axe came hurtling through the air and caught his leg. Morad toppled over with a cry.
She could not reach him. Nor could Jerred, who was fighting off two enraged Iobens.
It’s mayhem, she thought. We’re going to lose this one.
For now another line of stonemen was breaking out from the trees. There were too many. The Melmet army could never defeat them, not now that the Iobens had turned on them as well.
So this was it. Her final battle. Here she would fall in service to Obandiro, and Obandiro would never know.
In her weariness Yaret let her sword point drop. It was the wrong moment; a large stoneman was running at her. She threw herself aside, sprawling on the muddy ground, so that he tripped over her legs. He went down heavily on top of her. Before he could recover, she had whipped out her knife and plunged it in between his shoulder blades.
I just stabbed a man in the back, she thought. She needed to get up, to help the others: but the dying stoneman was lying on her legs, like a dreadful memory of some other time, and she was trapped. The new line of the enemy was only yards away. She could not move.
So it ends, she thought, in blood and ignominy. Oh, Obandiro.
Something shot past her overhead with a loud whistling burr. Two of the charging stonemen staggered and then fell, and she could not work out why.
There was a second long whistle and burr, and two more of the enemy reeled back, collapsing against each other. In fact, they seemed to be somehow tied together.
A third missile whined swiftly overhead. Again she could not see it properly, for it moved too fast. Whatever it was caught three of the enemy this time – and now Yaret observed something that she had never seen until this moment: stonemen panicking.
The three men seemed to be tangled in something that was wrapped around their heads. One pulled at it, crying out in fear, and cried out again as his hands began to drip blood. None of their fellows went to their aid. Instead a number of them began to run away, stumbling over bodies in their haste to flee.
Yaret managed to shove the dead man off her legs, and struggled to her feet. Some of her comrades were already starting to chase the fleeing stonemen when she heard a voice behind her calling sharply.
“Wait!”
A fourth missile shot past her and another pair of stonemen fell, heads entangled, she could see now, in a cord or chain. At the sound of rapid galloping behind her, she turned: a single man was riding up, his saddle laden with looped chains, a spear in one hand, a long chain swinging in the other.
“Keep clear,” he shouted, and as he rode past her he began to swing the chain more rapidly and strongly, letting out a greater length with every rotation until it spun in a huge lethal arc around his head. She thought there were blades at the far end, each on its own length of chain, but moving so fast that she could not be sure.
With a whistle the flying blades shot out and hit a stoneman. The chains wrapped themselves in swift decreasing circles round his head. The rider wielding them pulled his weapon free with a twist of his arm; and the stoneman crumpled, his face and neck scarlet with multiple gashes.
Almost simultaneously the unknown rider stabbed the next stoneman in the eye with the spear in his left hand. The three entangled stonemen were dispatched with the same spear through their ribs even as the rider wrenched his chain from round their heads, taking half a man’s scalp with it.
Two whirls of the chain, and another pair of stonemen fell. And then the lone horseman proceeded to wreak havoc amongst the enemies within his reach: their swords and axes could not touch him before he slew them with his spear or flying blades.
All the stonemen nearby who could run were now doing so, heading for the cover of the trees. The rider wheeled his horse round to address the remnants of her troop, who were watching open-mouthed. He was dark and fierce and eager.
“Who’s in charge? Gather your men and join forces with the next squad. The enemy will stay back for a few minutes now. Not long. But Kelvha’s army is only a quarter-hour away. Hold fast till then.”
“Kelvha?” said Jerred.
“Ten thousand men. I came ahead.” The man grinned with a flash of teeth. Then he was gone, riding up the line on his rough-haired horse towards the Baron’s men, who were still fighting off Iobens as well as the foe. Yaret watched another pair of stonemen fall beneath the flying blades: at the sight of the lone rider, yet more turned tail.
Jerred, who was sitting on an Ioben, punched him several times in the face before getting to his feet.
“Do what the man said,” he shouted at his troop. “Join with Melmet.” He gestured at the neighbouring squad of Melmet men, who had also watched the stonemen’s retreat with astonishment and relief.
Yaret hurried over to check on Morad, who was trying to sit up, despite the deep wound in one leg.
“Hear that, Morad?” she said. “Ten thousand Kelvhan troops are on their way. We’ll move you further back, to where you’ll be safer till it’s over.”
Together with Bred she managed to carry Morad behind the new line that the men were forming with the nearby Melmet company. There they laid him gently down, and Yaret checked his wound. Deep but not dangerous, she judged, so long as the bleeding could be stopped.
“The stonemen are all beating a retreat,” said Bred, gazing round. “Thank the stars that man rode up when he did. Who do you think he was? A Kelvhan?”
“Not Kelvhan,” said Yaret. “Not enough adornment. Or the right sort of horse.” She ripped the sleeves from the nearest stoneman corpse and began to apply one as a dressing to the bleeding leg.
“Veron,” gasped Morad.
“Veron?” Her fingers stilled.
“Never seen him,” panted Morad. “But he fits.”
As she resumed her task of dressing Morad’s leg, Yaret thought about it. The horseman had not been particularly small, nor had he worn the wolfskin cloak of Rud’s description back at the Gostard Inn: he had been clad in black-stained leather armour. He had not looked much like the other Riders of the Vonn that she had met. None the less she had a feeling that Morad could well be right.
Whoever he was, he had saved them for the moment. Further up the line she could see Iobens surrendering to the Baron’s men. The darkburns had all rushed off across the plain or back into the trees; the stonemen had not reappeared. The Melmet army had several welcome minutes to prepare themselves for the next onslaught.
And once she had bandaged up Morad and was returning to the front, here, at last, the onslaught came. No darkburns; just a line of stonemen running out of the trees. She lifted her sword in weary resolution.
But no sooner had this new assault begun than it abruptly ended. For with a raucous cacophony of horns and a heavy drumbeat of swift hooves, another, vaster army swept down the hillside from the east, behind the stonemen.
The Gostard troop, abandoning their formation, huddled together to avoid being trampled – for hundreds of great horses ridden by knights clad in full plate armour were charging round and through and occasionally over any unwary Melmet soldiers. The ground shook with their hoofbeats until Yaret felt as if she were caught in the middle of a thunderstorm.
When the cavalry reached the nearest stonemen, they made short work of them with their glittering swords. All up the line she could see the same thing happening: there was nothing left for Jerred’s troop to do.
It was over quickly. The horsemen looked around for more foes to vanquish, and found none. Yaret felt almost like a vanquished foe herself, surrounded by these proudly stamping horses and their equally proud riders. So this was Kelvha, here at last…
As the Melmet soldiers slumped to the ground, battered and exhausted, the final Kelvhan troop of cavalry rode past them on to the battlefield.
The splendour of this group made Yaret look at it with wonder. In the centre rode a young man, who wore golden armour and an excited, happy air. Those with him formed a protective ring, holding spears out as if in warning to the weary Melmet soldiers not to get too close. The other Kelvhan riders halted, parting ranks, and saluted as the group made its ceremonial progress to the front.
And over all the heads she saw a gold and scarlet standard being planted, and flying in the breeze, as Kelvha claimed their victory.