Shadow Blizzard (61 page)

“Now we’ll give them a fight!” Bedbug exclaimed, tightening his grip on the halberd.

His mood was clearly beginning to improve.

*   *   *

“Hey, neighbors! Neigh-bors! How are you doing? Not frozen yet?” shouted one of the men standing to the right of their battalion.

“Why, do you want to come across and warm me up?” a mischievous voice replied. It sounded like one of the militiamen this time, too.

A roar of laughter ran through the ranks again.

“Down, you peasant! But if you do feel cold we can invite you to come visiting!” the answer came back.

“If it gets too hot here, that’s when we’ll come over! We’re not cheap! Always willing to share the heat and the enemy!” Jig barked out, surprising even himself.

The ranks backed him up with a united roar.

“Listen, you,” said Bedbug, nudging Jig awkwardly in the side. “Here, this might come in handy.”

“What is it?” asked Jig, looking at what Bedbug was holding out to him—a bundle of pond weed or dried grass, tied round with a blue ribbon that had faded with age.

“Well…,” Bedbug said, and hesitated. “You remember in the guard hut I told you my granny was a witch?”

“So?”

“Well, she made this. It’s an amulet. She said it wards off bad spells for anyone who carries it.”

“So?”

“What do you keep saying that for?” Bedbug asked angrily. “Are you going to take it or not?”

“What about you?”

“I’ve got one just the same.”

Jig shrugged, took the bundle of grass, and stuck it behind his belt. He didn’t believe in Bedbug’s fairy tales, but Sagra took care of those who took care of themselves. This piece of trash couldn’t do any harm, and Bedbug would feel better.

“Hey! You up on the horse! How are things down there? Is there going to be a fight, or can we all go home now?” one of the pikemen asked a messenger who had jumped the Wine Brook and steered his horse between the two battalions toward the hill.

The rider reined back his mount.

“Not much longer to wait!” The messenger had to shout loudly, so that the rear ranks could hear him. “The mounted patrols have already left the Rega Forest, the scouts have gone into action on the right-hand road, right beside Nuad!”

“Who have they got, then?”

“Mostly men from the north! Tribes that live on the Shore of the Ogres! And the barbarians, of course!”

“No need to worry about them just yet,” Bedbug growled. “A rabble.”

“And who is there that’s more our style?”

“Crayfish! Moving along the left road, half an hour away from you!”

“How many of them?”

“A lot! Eight thousand cavalry and about fifteen thousand infantry.”

Some whistled, some swore, some appealed to Sagra.

“Did you see any shamans?” asked the magician standing behind Jig.

“What I didn’t see, I didn’t see, lads! Take care! Sagra willing, we’ll meet again!”

“Good luck to you!”

“You take care!”

But the rider had already gone rushing off toward the hill and he didn’t hear the soldiers’ good wishes.

“Well, the wait’s almost over, Jig. Not much longer.”

“You look like you’re trembling.”

“That always happens to me. Nerves. It’ll pass. Eight thousand cavalry!”

“We’ll hold out. They won’t get to us through that forest of pikes, don’t be afraid. No, better to be afraid.”

The priests of Sagra walked along the line of the battalion, offering the soldiers spiritual comfort before the battle. Like all the other soldiers, Jig murmured a prayer to the goddess of death.

The sound of two loud bangs came from somewhere to the north.

“Magic!” gasped one of the pikemen nearby.

“In the name of the Nameless One, what magic?” the unit officer reassured the anxious soldiers. “That’s the sound of the half-pints’ cannons at Nuada. The fun must have started there already!”

The soldiers craned their necks, trying to see what was happening on the far side of the Field of Fairies, but the long dark tongue of the Rega Forest prevented them from seeing the castle and anything going on close to it.

“Look!” someone shouted.

Jig shifted his gaze from the forest to the left road. The first forces of the army of the Nameless One had appeared on that side of the field.

*   *   *

“Does she have a name?” asked the gnome, lighting up his pipe.

“Actually, it’s a he.”

“All right, so what’s his name?”

“Invincible.”

“Well now, that certainly suits him,” the cannoneer said with a nod, examining the shaggy ling, who was nestled securely on Honeycomb’s shoulder. “My name’s Odzan, but the lads all call me Pepper.”

“Honeycomb.”

“Yes, I know already. The commander told me. A Wild Heart, if I’m not mistaken?”

“Yes.”

“I heard what happened to you up at the Lonely Giant. Was it really hot?”

“I wasn’t there.”

“Ah … I heard that fifty of your lads survived and managed to get away.”

“Forty-seven.”

“Ah … Are they in your unit?”

“No, they’re in the center, as far as I know.”

“Hmm,” said the gnome, blowing out a smoke ring. “Then how come you ended up in the army on the right?”

“They said they needed a unit officer.”

“So you and your lads are going to defend our beards?”

“It looks that way.”

There it was again in the distance.
Boom! Boom!
The gnome stretched himself up to his full low height, took out a little spyglass that had obviously been made by a dwarf, and pointed it at the castle that stood directly in line with Slim Bows.

“They’re having a hot time of it. Forty minutes they’ve been blasting away. And the enemy’s in no hurry to come our way. Surely Lepzan’s not going to do all the work for us? He used to be a real jackass, too. Couldn’t even light a fuse properly. And now just look at him blaze away! I remember what happened one time in the Steel Mines…”

Honeycomb wasn’t listening to the garrulous gnome. He leaned against the wall and closed his eyes. It had been a bit of a surprise to find himself at the Field of Fairies. It wasn’t all that long since the magician at Cuckoo Castle told the Wild Heart he was well and completely cured of the after-effects of the orcish shamanism. A month and a half at the most.

When he left the Border Kingdom, Honeycomb had made his way to Ranneng, and from there to the capital, where he had to deliver the letter left for him by Alistan Markauz. When his business had been dealt with and the Wild Heart was wondering what to do next—wait for the group to come back to Avendoom or go straight to the Lonely Giant—the Nameless One had invaded the kingdom.

Chance had brought him together with Izmi Markauz, who remembered the yellow-haired warrior from his fight with the ogre in the royal palace. The lieutenant of the Royal Guard immediately offered the Wild Heart the command of a unit of a hundred men. Honeycomb had tried to refuse at first, saying his place was with his comrades who had survived the fall of the Lonely Giant, but Milord Izmi could be quite persuasive.

So now Honeycomb found himself in command of sixty swashbuckling rogues, selected for Slim Bows from various different forces, and forty crossbowmen from Shet’s detachment of northerners. The warrior had never commanded anything bigger than a platoon of ten men before, and at first he was a little frightened, but after a week with the unit he realized there was practically no difference between ten men and a hundred. Just give the orders and make sure the lads didn’t do anything rash when there’s no need.

And now his unit had been ordered to defend one of the three cannons located at Slim Bows.

“Will you look at that! I swear on my granddad’s bugle, those lads have all the luck!”

The gnome’s sudden exclamation roused Honeycomb from his reverie. The Wild Heart got to his feet, picked his ogre-hammer up off the ground, and looked to the left. There was a detachment of cavalry approaching the hill at full gallop. And another detachment the same size—a line of red and green—was heading toward the left army.

“Four thousand in a detachment!” declared Rott—the commander of the crossbowmen in Honeycomb’s unit—screwing up his eyes. “It looks as if the Crayfish have put all their cavalry into the field. The left flank is in for a tough time all right.”

“Rouse the lads,” Honeycomb ordered as he watched the red and green wave rolling on. “If they falter going up the hill, they’ll come our way.”

Bang!
The heavens trembled and Honeycomb ducked and pulled his head into his shoulders in surprise.

“That’s the boom of the Crater on the hill,” Pepper chuckled, raising his head to look up at the sky.

Honeycomb looked up, too, and he saw a column of smoke go soaring up toward the sun, hang for a moment at its highest point, as if it was wondering whether it ought to fall or not, and then come shrieking down toward the ground.

The gnomes on the hill had miscalculated—the cavalry had already ridden past the area where the ball landed—and the mighty explosion simply threw soil up into the air. The only positive outcome was that the horses in the rear line of the cavalry were terrified, and for a while there was complete chaos in the lines.

“What do you think you’re firing at, you villains?” Pepper roared, shaking his fists, as if they could hear him. “Fire at the target, you lousy bunch of dwarves. You’ll be reloading the thing for another half hour now! Crack-handed idiots! Who’s in that team up there? Zhirgzan! Rotate our weapon. With the help of the gods, we’ll hammer the cavalry in the left flank! When are we ever going to get a chance to fire?”

*   *   *

Izmi Markauz’s horse was still nervous after the shot from the Crater, and he scratched its ear. The animals didn’t like the strange noise, but there was nothing that could be done about that.

On the left flank of the center everything was still calm and the reserve had not been required. The greater part of the battle was still to come, and all the soldiers of the Royal Guard could do was watch as the Crayfish cavalry that had arrived along the left road divided into two equal sections and made for the infantry in the center and the battalions of the left army.

*   *   *

Bang!

Bang!

Two explosions shook the air behind the prince’s back and two cannonballs went flying over the infantry’s heads and hurtled toward the advancing cavalry. The first whistled over the horsemen’s heads and landed far down the field, without doing the enemy any harm. The second smashed straight into the galloping cavalrymen, knocking several men down, and exploding in the center of the attacking formation.

Even from there he could hear the screams of the men and the whinnying of the wounded and terrified horses. The Crayfish cavalry’s attack formation was broken, creating a scene of total pandemonium. The riders could scarcely control their hysterical horses, and there was no way the attack could be continued.

“Well done, the gnomes!” shouted one of the bowmen standing behind the infantry.

The prince turned round. The bowmen standing only ten yards away from him had certainly not been wasting their time. Each of them had brought two sharp-pointed poles up onto the hill, and now they were surrounded by an entire forest. Before the enemy could get to the Wind Jugglers in their light armor, he would have to force his way through this barrier. Facing a barrage of arrows. And if he did manage to get through, the warriors would hang their bows on their shoulders and take up their swords.

Bang!

Stalkon thought he must be mistaken, but it really was a cannon shot. The left flank of the enemy cavalry was flung up into the air and pieces of broken human bodies and horses went flying in all directions.

“That was a shot from Slim Bows, milord,” the prince’s arms-bearer told him.

“So I see. The gnomes are spoiling for a fight, too.”

Meanwhile something like order had been restored to the ranks of the cavalry and, to the sound of jeering from the soldiers on the hill, the Crayfish retreated to the rear of the Field of Fairies. The prince reckoned it would take the enemy at least fifteen minutes to recover from what had happened. Exactly the amount of the time the gnomes needed to cool their weapons and reload them.

*   *   *

A horn sounded, and the unit commanders gave the order.

“Halberdiers into the fourth rank.”

“Into the fourth rank! Change places with the pikemen!”

“Crossbowmen, at the ready! Pikemen in the fifth and six ranks, stay awake!”

“Crossbowmen, make ready!”

As if the action was taking place in a training exercise, not in a real war, Jig moved into the fourth rank without any fuss or bother, and stood sideways so that the crossbowmen could get past him easily. Bedbug repeated his partner’s movements like a reflection in a mirror. The only hitch was the magician, who didn’t know what he was supposed to do; a sergeant who happened to be close by shoved him into a gap.

“Crossbowmen into the fourth rank!” The order rang out in the battalions on both sides of them.

All the battalion commanders had chosen the standard arrangement for defending against cavalry. When horsemen attacked, the men with halberds could make the best use of their weapons from the fourth rank, striking slashing blows from above or thrusting above the shoulders of the pikemen standing in front of them. From there the halberdiers couldn’t impede the first or second ranks, and the halberds didn’t catch on the pikes. The fourth and fifth rows of “anglers” became the fifth and sixth rows.

A horn sounded again, and an order rang out in the battalions.

“Front ranks down on one knee! Pikes at the ready!”

Sticking the heels of their pikes into the frozen ground and angling their weapons so that if the cavalry tried to take the battalion head on it would have to break through a forest of pikes, the soldiers went down on one knee.

“Second ranks! Pikes at the ready!”

The second row lowered its pikes, holding them at the level of their hips, above the shoulders of the kneeling front rank.