Arts of Dark and Light: Book 01 - A Throne of Bones (5 page)

He glanced over at his son, who was thundering along not far behind him, hoping that this unexpected sight of the enemy had not unmanned him in any way. He was delighted to see that Marcus had thrown back his head and was laughing at something one of the knights had said, as fey and unconcerned in the face of the foe as any of their legendary forefathers.

Behind them, the sun’s rays were deepening from oranges and reds into scarlets and purples. Before it would rise again, Corvus knew, the seven of them would be back atop that hill overlooking the field, but in the company of nearly six thousand armed men.

A large black crow flew overhead as they rode, and Corvus smiled up at his namesake.

“Come back tomorrow, little brother,” he shouted at the crow. “Come back tomorrow, and I shall feed you well!”

MARCUS

The ragged lines of the goblin army below stretched out to the south as far as Marcus could see. The evil sound of their drums boomed rhythmically without cease, as if they were the heartbeat of a single giant beast.

Over the drumming—and between curses directed alternatively at the legion’s scouts, its artillery, and its suppliers—Marcus heard the first decurion telling his reguntur that the army they were facing was somewhere between twenty and thirty thousand strong. Marcus tried to find some relief in the grizzled old cavalryman’s apparent lack of concern at the legion being outnumbered five to one and focused on his assigned task of counting the number of wolfriders on the enemy’s right wing.

The enemy lines were only about one hundred paces away from the legion’s front line, but the drums, the shrieks of the crudely armed warriors, the growling and howling and whining of their wolves, and the occasional shouting of the men behind him made it surprisingly hard to keep track of the number. The fact that the goblins were not arrayed in tidy, disciplined lines, but in loose mobs in constant movement rendered it more of an exercise in estimation than an actual count.

It was considerable comfort to be up on the hill and on the left flank, above and well away from that teeming mass of inhumanity. He glanced back toward the center, behind the reserves, and saw the legionary standard. He couldn’t see his father, but he knew Corvus was down there somewhere. He did recognize Saturnius, though, stout and portly in his armor, waving his arms as he shouted at someone. He grinned, glad that he wasn’t the object of the legate’s ire.

The goblins had arrayed themselves much as his father had predicted they would, although there seemed to be rather more wolves lined up on the flank facing the Marcus and the Second Knights than on the other side of the battlefield.

“How many wolves, Tribune?” Julianus demanded.

“I make seven hundred, perhaps seven hundred twenty, Decurion.”

“Lucius and me both count eight hundred. Remember, it’s better to err on the side of too many than too few. Still, that’s not bad.”

Not bad that only three hundred knights held the right flank against eight hundred enemy wolfriders? It wasn’t exactly a state he would be inclined to describe as good, either. But he held his tongue. The decurion was not a man known to appreciate wit at the best of times, and this did not seem to be a wise moment to try his temper.

As if in response to the wolves snarling below them, Marcus’s stomach growled. He had done his best to choke down some bread and cheese when they’d been awakened before sunrise and ordered to take their position on the northernmost hill, but he’d had little appetite.

It wasn’t that this morning would be the first time he’d ever seen combat. On his journey to the elven royal city of Elebrion with the Church embassy last year, he’d been attacked by an ulfin, a grotesque wolflike creature, although he hadn’t even managed to draw his sword and had only survived the attack thanks to the alertness of his dwarven servant, Lodi. Since the campaign began, he’d ridden on more patrols than he could count and had gotten into five skirmishes. He’d even killed his first goblin three weeks ago—two of them, in fact, when the patrol he was leading encountered a small band of raiders. But today marked his first actual battle.

He had known that war wasn’t likely to be as glorious as the chronicles recorded, but as his father had predicted, his senses were reeling in shock from the impact of the experience. The sights, the sounds, the scale of it all…it was simply too much for his senses to take in at once. His heart was pounding, his palms were moist, and his mouth was dry. He hadn’t been this frightened since the night he’d found himself soaring through the night sky over the towers of Elebrion, dangling like a giant mouse caught up in the talons of Caitlys Shadowsong’s warhawk.

And today’s fighting hadn’t even begun.

The sound of thundering hoofbeats suddenly stopping nearby jarred him from his thoughts. “Pissed yourself yet, cousin?”

Marcus looked up. Gaius Valerius Fortex, the tribune commanding the Second Knights and his elder by three years, towered over him from the back of his big black warhorse, Incitatus. His cousin’s pale green eyes glittered with amusement. “I imagine that right about now you’re wishing you’d taken that bishopric Magnus offered you!”

I was holding out for an archbishop’s hat, Marcus tried to reply, but the words stuck in his throat.

“I’ll take it, if the tribune’s got no use for it,” Julianus said, making Fortex and some of the nearby riders laugh.

“How pretty you would look in a red cassock and mitre, Julianus! And with that bull’s voice of yours, the priests could give their bells a rest. They’ll just tell you when to bawl out matins and vigils.” Fortex swatted the decurion on the shoulder and turned back toward his cousin. “Don’t worry, Marcus. You’ll live to see your little elf girl again. Yonder pack is a big one, but they’ll run as soon as we charge them. Those wolves look fearsome enough, but their bark is worse than their bite. Count yourself bloody fortunate we didn’t have to break out the pigstickers.”

Marcus nodded and attempted to grin but his mouth didn’t seem to work properly. Everyone around him was cheerful, almost jocular. Even the decurion had an uncharacteristic smile on his face. They all seemed to be eagerly looking forward to the incipient clash of arms. Were they all mad? Didn’t they realize they might die here today? He hadn’t lost control of his bladder yet, thank Immaculatus, but his mouth was dry, and he was finding it hard to swallow.

Fortex was right. The very last thing he wanted to try at the moment was to ride down the hill wielding one of the giant oaken lances that were used to penetrate the thick hide of a warboar. One slip at just the wrong moment, and a rider would catapult himself right out of the saddle.

“Courage of the vine, cousin,” Fortex suggested, handing a half-empty flask down to him. “Remember, an officer has to keep his throat well-wetted throughout the day. You can’t expect anyone to hear an order when your voice is cracking.”

Marcus nodded and squeezed a dark red stream into his mouth. He winced at the sour taste, but it did relieve the dryness. “Thanks.” He handed the flask to Julianus, then pointed at the enemy lines. “What are they doing down there?”

Below them, a group of goblins on foot was beginning to emerge from the mass of wolfriders. Each carried little curved objects that looked much too small to be proper bows, but it wasn’t until they stopped about twenty paces from the base of the hill and began to withdraw equally small shafts from the quivers slung on their backs that he realized that was precisely what they were supposed to be. His cousin and the decurion were quicker on the uptake. Fortex had already kicked his horse and galloped away from the front.

Meanwhile Julianus was waving his free hand and bellowing orders. The decurion did not, however, drop the wine flask. He used it to point out the approaching archers.

“Slingers, front and center!” His voice was loud enough to drown out the goblin drums, which, up close, was nearly deafening. “Knights, shields ready!”

Marcus fumbled for his shield, a wedge-shaped piece of wood covered with a thin plate of blackened steel with his name, tumae, and legion engraved. He took two steps to the left to stand in front of his horse, as he’d been drilled, slipped the shield on his left arm, then held it before him. He’d already learned in the early skirmishes of the campaign that the goblin bows had little range, and he also knew their archers would have time to loose only a few shafts before the Amorran slingers would force them to retreat.

Without thinking about it, he began to count the goblin archers. There were thirty-six of them in all, at a distance of around sixty paces. He was relieved to see they were raising their bows high, to shoot for the cavalry, rather than aiming them directly at him and the others at the fore of the Amorran line.

The goblins loosed their first volley.

“Shields up!” Julianus roared. “Shields up, dammit!”

Marcus raised his shield, and a moment later, he heard a loud clattering sound behind him as the arrows began falling on the upraised shields of the knights, followed by the terrible, gut-wrenching shriek of a wounded horse screaming. While their rider’s shields guarded their vulnerable eyes and their saddles protected their backs, the horses’ naked haunches were still exposed to the falling arrows.

A few moments passed, and his arm began to ache, but another round of clattering rain quickly quenched any desire to lower his shield. Fortunately, the two dozen Balerans seconded to them by the tenth cohort arrived, and he lowered his shield as the air resounded with a series of whip-like cracks. With the ease of long-practiced experts, the elite slingers hurled their tiny missiles at the archers below.

Two goblins collapsed immediately, followed by a third, who fell clutching a shattered knee. The remaining goblins managed to loose one more haphazard volley, in which most of the shafts fell well short of the Amorran lines. Then another hail of stones drove them back to the safety of their own lines. They left seven of their number on the ground behind, presumably dead.

To Marcus’s far left down the front lines of the army there was a hissing sound, followed by a thunderous report. He turned his head. An evil-looking purple haze was rising from the midst of the infantry cohorts positioned on their south flank.

“What is that?” he asked the decurion.

“Battle shaman,” Julianus replied with disdain. “Not much of one, by the looks of it. A damned stupid one too. He should have saved those spells for the assault, used them to blast a hole in our line for their spearmen to enter. The scorpios and mules will put an end to that nonsense soon enough.”

“Pity we don’t have any Michaelines,” Marcus mused regretfully.

“We don’t need them. Goblin magic is nothing. Watch and see.”

Two more purple explosions erupted somewhere in between the seventh and eight centuries before the shaman’s position was spotted by the artillerymen. Marcus could tell the goblin had been seen because a dozen or more of the legion’s onagers loosed in quick succession. The last rock was hurled high into the air before the first one had even landed. Two of the scorpios also sent their huge bolts sailing into the mass of goblins in the same vicinity.

He couldn’t see if any of them actually hit their intended target, but the massive projectiles must have at least put a fright into the shaman, as no more magical attacks followed.

Time passed, and the sun rose higher. Based on its height, Marcus guessed it was about an hour before noon. The air was heating up, and the last patches of frost had vanished some time ago. The steam was no longer rising from the horses, and he was beginning to feel the first sense of perspiration under his arms.

The cohorts chanted, the goblins shrieked, and the wolves howled. Finally, after another shaman caused a great purple cloud to explode high over everyone’s heads, the goblin infantry moved forward to engage its Amorran counterpart. Then the air was filled with the clashing of metal on metal and the cries of the combatants. But that was all to Marcus’s left.

He glanced back to the standard, and this time he saw the yellow plume of his father’s helmet bobbing amidst a group of centurions’ helms, though he couldn’t see what Corvus was doing. Somehow, seeing it helped ease the tension in his guts a little.

The wolfriders before Marcus were still doing nothing more than mill about, snapping and snarling to little purpose. From time to time a goblin would ride out from the lines, gesticulating and screaming at Marcus’s men, but to no avail.

“What are they doing?” he asked the decurion.

“They’re trying to draw us off the hill,” Julianus answered. “They don’t dare to come up to meet us for fear we’ll charge them while they’re climbing the slope. The archers didn’t bring us down to them, so now they’re trying insults.”

“It might work better if we could understand anything they were saying.”

“Or if we gave a damn what they thought of us.” Julianus grinned and pointed to movement at the front of the wolfrider’s lines. “No one said they were clever. Look, they’re going to try the archers again.
Slings,
get your useless Baleran arses up here!”

Once more, the goblin archers advanced and loosed a pair of volleys, to little effect. Once more, the legion’s slingers rained stones down upon them before they could manage a third volley. Once more, the goblin archers fled in disarray, leaving more of their fallen behind them. It was rather like a ritual dance, Marcus observed, albeit a deadly one. Like Sisyphus and his rock, if the rock kept rolling over the condemned man.