The Bloodforged (34 page)

“W
e can't get it out, General!” The frantic cry came from the base of the northwest tower. They'd managed to douse the fire to the south, but the men operating the bucket line couldn't keep pace, not even after Rig had written off the stables. A minor loss, that; with the cavalry out in the field and the stables a safe distance from anything else, they could afford to let it go. Not so the tower, or the other parts of the palisade that were burning out of control. With the outer defences breached, the fort would be easy prey, even with a ring of fire keeping the enemy at bay.

“Find a way!” Rig cried, knowing he was potentially
condemning dozens of his men to death. They had to hold on a little longer.
Just a little longer . . .

For the hundredth time, he thanked the gods they'd managed to destroy Whitefish Bridge. If the enemy had been able to get siege engines across the river, the fort would have fallen in a heartbeat. As it was, the Kingswords were being ground down by attrition. The Oridians had long since stopped trying to advance. Even the flaming arrows had ceased to fall. Spent the last of their pitch, most likely. Not that it mattered; the damage was done. Worse, the wind had changed direction, pushing the creeping wall of fire to the northeast. The flames were in danger of jumping the wide clearing that protected the fort. All Sadik had to do now was wait.

Rig started to raise his bloodbow, to force his arching arm to draw and his bleeding fingers to grasp the bowstring, but there was no point. It had been ages since he'd seen a target. The Oridians were sheltering in the trees now, protected by branches and shields and gods knew what else. Hazarding a blind shot would be senseless, a waste of a good arrow. Like his enemy, Rig could do nothing but wait.

He glanced at the sky, at the pitilessly slow track of the sun.
Come on, Morris.
The worst part was, he couldn't be sure how much time had passed, couldn't even be sure there were enough men on that field in Andithyri to make a difference. So many unknowns . . .

Morris had warned him. They'd all warned him. Rig had listened, at least on the surface, but he'd already made up his mind. Sometimes, it seemed as though he'd made up his mind in the cradle.
As bold as a Black.
He'd worn that old saying like ancestral armour, but he'd always known that someday it would be the end of him. “What do you think, Morris?” he murmured, his voice lost amid the cries and the
whoosh
of the catapult and the distant roar of the flames. “Is today the day?”

A long, tortured groan sounded from behind him. Rig whirled in time to see the northwest tower buckling. The outer wall tore away in a shower of flaming debris, taking a handful of screaming soldiers with it. Men and timber tumbled down the slope toward the briar patch. The inner wall remained intact, Rig saw; only a few tongues of flame still licked at what was left of the tower. They could be doused easily now.
A
stroke of luck
, he thought.
The collapse spares the rest of the tower.
Such a callous attitude would have horrified him a year ago, but the commander general of the king's armies could not afford to be sentimental.

“General!” The voice came from below, a runner scrambling up the ladder to the wall walk. “Word from Andithyri!”

This is it.
The news he'd been waiting for. A bitter, metallic taste on Rig's tongue told him just how much he feared it. He'd posted two scouts up a tree with a pair of longlenses and orders to watch the enemy's movements on the Andithyrian side of the river.
If they so much as glance east, I want to hear it straightaway.
It would be the only sign, the only way of knowing whether Morris had managed to move his men into position without being seen. If he hadn't . . . If the Oridians spotted him and repositioned in time . . .

“The enemy's rear lines have peeled off,” the runner said breathlessly. “Almost half of them have turned round!”

Rig's limbs felt weak. “Where are they headed?”

“We saw Kingsword banners over the rise, on the Andithyrian side. I don't know how you smuggled those men across the river, General, but the Oridians have spotted them. They're moving to intercept. With the time it took me to get here . . . I guess they'll have engaged by now.”

Rig nodded. His head swam with disbelief, but he made himself move, putting one foot in front of the other until he'd reached the southwest tower. The archers stood aside to let him peer out the arrowslit, but it was a waste of time—he couldn't see anything through the smoke. The wind had continued to push the fire north, edging it slowly toward the fort.
If it keeps up like this, they'll be able to manoeuvre around it to get at the walls.

“What happens now, General?” The question, softly spoken, came from one of the archers. A slip of a girl, no more than eighteen, with wide hazel eyes that reminded him of Alix's.

I don't know.

The answer, however truthful, was not one he was prepared to give. He was still casting about for something to say when he heard the horn.

Rig closed his eyes and muttered something between a
prayer and a curse. “Better late than never, Morris.” He looked through the arrowslit again, though of course it was too soon to see anything. His head spun, still dizzy with disbelief. It had actually
worked
. “Ready your bows,” he told the archers. “They're coming.”

“The enemy?” The hazel eyes widened in surprise. “But the fire . . . won't they run straight into it?”

“With eight thousand Kingswords driving at their rear?” Rig smiled darkly. “Let's hope so. If not, I owe Commander Morris what's left of my estate.” A grim joke, that, since neither of them would be alive to settle the bet.

They're too many, General
, Morris had said.
So you dress the Resistance up in armour, have them fly Kingsword banners. What then? Even supposing Sadik takes the bait, the most it'll draw off is a few battalions. That leaves fifteen thousand at his fingertips, and they still hold the ford.

Unless, of course, more than half of them could be lured across the river. With the Kingsword fort in his sights at last, Sadik would not be able to resist. He'd come at them hard, leaving only a few thousand men behind to protect his position in Andithyri. But when Kingsword banners were spotted on the Andithyrian side of the river, he'd be obliged to split his host, leaving his rear dangerously vulnerable. Sadik wouldn't think twice about it, confident that Rig couldn't possibly cover more than two fronts at a time. He would never expect the attack from behind, pinning his men between the Kingswords and the fort. Between eight thousand men and a wall of fire.

“General!” Commander Wright's voice sounded urgently from the wall walk above.

Movement in the trees, shadows drifting, ghostlike, behind the curtain of smoke. A horse screamed. Rig tore out of the tower and up onto the wall walk. Oridian cavalry swarmed on the far side of the flames, searching for a way around. It was their first good look at the enemy since lighting up the perimeter, and Rig didn't hesitate. He nocked an arrow and fired, sending an enemy cavalryman tumbling from his horse.

A second shaft followed Rig's, burying itself in one of the ghostly riders. The hazel-eyed archer appeared at his side, already drawing for another shot. On his other side too, a pair of archers sighted through the smoke, and beyond, he saw
Commander Wright draw his own bow. All around him, Kingswords and Onnani came out from under cover to punish the enemy for straying so near to the fort. In the distance, he could hear the clash of metal as the southern battalion drove into the enemy's rear. From the north, he knew, a second battalion was sweeping down in a pinching manoeuvre, led by Morris himself. Beset on two sides, pinned between the river, the flames, and the fort, the Oridians had nowhere to go.

So many unknowns, so many things to go wrong. But they hadn't. For once in this gods-damned war, they'd gone exactly right.

Rig drew a deep, satisfied breath. Smoke had never smelled so sweet to him. Flames had never been so beautiful. The pain in his arms and fingers was forgotten, replaced by the subtle thrum of the bloodbond as he drew on his enemy.

For Raynesford, Sadik, you son of a bitch.

*   *   *

When Rig judged
that the fort was out of danger, he left Wright in command and called for his horse. By then, only a handful of enemy stragglers could be glimpsed from the palisades, and they paid the price. Most of the rest had fallen or fled. Bodies littered the forest floor, charred or bloodied or both. A few had actually made it past the wall of flames, only to blunder into the briar patch. Through the veil of smoke, their twisted limbs were scarcely distinguishable from the sharpened logs that had ended them.

Rig wended his way cautiously through the woods, the naked edge of his bloodblade glinting in the occasional shaft of sunlight slanting down through the trees. His knights flanked him, eyes raking the shadows for any sign of threat. In the madness of combat, even a friend could be an enemy. Yet they saw no one, friend nor enemy—at least not living. Here and there, a rustle of branches or a ring of metal would turn their heads, but these individual struggles, these small dramas, could not distract Rig now. Instead, he sought out the distant staccato rhythm of hundreds of blades glancing off each other. It drifted up from the south, borne by the wind and the smoke. The battle for the ford continued, though it could not be long now. With the Kingswords sweeping in from the
west, cutting off the enemy's escape, Rig had the advantage. He might not win the ford, but he wouldn't lose it, either.

He found the trail that followed the riverbank, urging Alger to a lope. Here they did find the living, fleeing Oridians trying to make their way across the river, or back upstream to rejoin their comrades. Rig cut down any of them foolish enough to get in his way.

The ford was just ahead now, and Rig could tell from the sounds that they'd won it: the low-throated horns urging the Kingswords on, the shrill trumpets sounding the enemy's retreat.
Bloody well done, Morris.
Rig swerved north to come in at the rear of the Kingsword lines, his gaze already seeking out the White standard.

When he saw it, his guts turned to lead.

The banner stood well behind the rear lines, under heavy guard. Morris never led from behind. Rig spurred his horse.

“Took you long enough,” Morris rasped as Rig pushed his way through the ring of knights. He lay on his back, pale as bone, hands folded over his belly. Rig didn't look at the wound. He didn't have to.

“Funny, I was going to say the same thing.” Rig's voice sounded odd to his own ears, thin somehow.
Nobody would obey that voice
, he thought, irrelevantly. Strange the things that came to one's mind in moments like these.

He knelt beside his second. Morris curled over himself a little, scowling down at his wound as though it were terribly inconvenient. “Spear,” he said, lying back with a grimace. “Barbed, of course, the bloody savages. Suppose I should be grateful it wasn't poisoned too.”

Rig cleared his throat. Started to say something. Stopped.

“Well, now,” Morris said, “this day will certainly go down in history. The day Riggard Black was lost for words.”

Rig laughed, a strained, strangled thing. “Yeah, well, I'm bloody exhausted. Somebody had to keep the enemy busy while you were faffing about.”

“Sorry about that, General. Guess my speech was too long—” A hiss of pain cut him short; Morris squeezed his eyes shut.

Rig glanced over his shoulder. The rear lines had moved even farther away. On the far side of the river, they were still sounding the retreat.

“Looks like I owe you some gold,” Morris said between gritted teeth.

“Damn right, so don't even think about dying before you pay up.” Rig was still trying not to look at the wound. Instead, his gaze strayed to the armour they'd cast aside, but that was no better, for it told the story well enough. The spear had taken him between breastplate and faulds, punching through the bottom of the cuirass. It had been torn out again, from the looks of things. Morris's guts would be in shreds; it was a miracle he'd lived this long.

The thought must have played clearly across Rig's face, because Morris said, “Not long now, I reckon, so I need you to listen.”

Rig dragged his eyes from the ruined armour, forced himself to look at the ruined man.

“You got him today, General—”

“
We
got him.”

Morris scowled impatiently. “Will you shut it and let me finish? He's going to come at you hard, you know that. But what you did here today—
don't
, damn it, just listen—what you did here today will make this army stronger than it's ever been. You're invincible in their minds now, General. Use that. You can—” He seized up again, choking off whatever else he might have said.

Rig grabbed his hand, his own jaw clenched so tight it hurt. “Enough. Just rest.”

Morris relaxed a little. He swallowed, throat working again and again, eyes tracking across the sky as though searching for something. He tried once more to speak, but all he managed was a cough.

Morris died with his hand in the shaking grip of his commander, who couldn't find a damned thing to say.

*   *   *

“He was a
good man,” Commander Wright said, as one did. Rig murmured agreement, as was expected of him. His mind was already elsewhere, trying to work through what came next, and after that, calculating how long it would take the Warlord to regroup. He wished Morris were here.

He downed a cup of wine in a single draught, a private toast to one of the best men he'd ever known.

“He was with you a long time,” Wright said. Beside him, Vel winced; she knew Rig well enough by now to guess how little he wanted to talk about this.