War of Shadows (45 page)

Pursued by the stampeding creatures, the Tingur fled toward Lysander’s main army line. Yet even from here, Blaine could see that if the Tingur expected protection, their hopes were in vain. Lysander’s soldiers blocked the Tingur’s escape at sword’s point, giving them the choice between fighting the creatures and being cut down by their own side.

“I guess Lysander doesn’t want to dirty his hands dealing with the beasts,” Blaine said, glad that the Tingur’s folly gave his own side a chance to catch their breath. Blackened grass and the charred carapaces of dead monsters covered the open stretch between the opposing armies. A glance down his own line assured Blaine that although his vanguard had taken some damage in the fight, few of his soldiers had been seriously injured or killed.

“Hang on,” Blaine said. “Here it comes.”

Bellowing a war cry, Lysander’s main forces charged toward the defenders’ line. Horsemen led the way, with infantry not far behind. They rode through the battle between the Tingur and the beasts, trampling those who got in their way.

With an answering shout of their own, Blaine led their charge. The Solveigs and Verner followed a moment later.

Lysander’s army bore no resemblance to the motley Tingur. Well armed and well armored, the attacking army moved with
the skill of practiced fighters. And unlike the hapless Tingur, who had been carried into battle on raw emotion, it was obvious from the first sword’s strike that Lysander’s soldiers had a plan.

Warhorses thundered down the plain. Foot soldiers ran between the big horses, swords at the ready to engage. On horseback, Blaine had the advantage, and he used it to cut his way through the onslaught. Four men fell in quick succession, spattering Blaine’s legs and his horse with blood.

Faces blurred as they rushed past him, but Blaine realized that many of Lysander’s soldiers did not have the look of Donderan men. With a jolt, he realized that the warlord’s army included recruits—or mercenaries—from the enemy kingdom whose mages had brought down the Great Fire and the Cataclysm on them all.

Piran came to the same conclusion, and rage colored his features. “Bloody Meroven mercs!” Piran shouted, following up with a string of obscenities. Piran was fighting a large man who was armed with a war ax, and it was taking all of Piran’s skills to stay out of the way of the heavy ax long enough to get in a few strikes of his own.

Blaine faced down his own opponent, a seasoned warrior on a massive warhorse whose barrage of sword blows gave Blaine little time to worry about Piran. Blaine fended off the strikes, but he could feel the fatigue from the fight with the magicked beasts already taking its toll. He was mindful of the agate amulet at his throat, a talisman that deflected and minimized the drain of magic but did not remove it altogether. Remembering Carr’s savaged features and tortured body ignited Blaine’s anger, dispelling any tiredness, and he let that rage warm his body and drive him onward.

Strike. Parry. Strike. Block. Blaine and his opponent circled
each other warily, each sizing up the other’s strength, speed, and skill. Blaine saw cunning and dead-cold ruthlessness in the soldier’s eyes, and he wondered what the other man made of him. Out of the corner of his eye, Blaine could see two other soldiers heading for him, but he dared not take his attention away from the man he battled.

His opponent landed a strike that got inside Blaine’s guard, slashing down on his vambrace, but it was blocked by the heavy leather before it could damage skin and bone. Blaine swung, slicing into his attacker’s arm, deep enough that the man drew back, but not far enough.

Blaine dug his heels into his horse’s sides, and his mount jolted forward. Blaine angled his sword, and the horse’s motion drove it into the gap above his attacker’s cuirass, deep into the man’s throat. Blood bubbled and gurgled as the soldier shuddered, alive enough to know he was dying quickly.

The soldier’s horse panicked and bolted, nearly tearing Blaine’s sword from his hand. His opponent clung to the saddle for a few strides, then toppled from his mount as the terrified horse galloped away.

Kestel had loosed her horse, and on foot she was deadly with her throwing knives, moving nimbly enough to evade the horses and ducking in and out of the action. Down the line, Blaine could spot Borya and Desya standing in their saddles, firing their bows with lethal aim. The twins galloped toward the enemy in a two-man offensive that took Lysander’s soldiers completely by surprise for its boldness. Too late, as the astonished soldiers began to drop to the ground, arrows in their chests, did their companions realize that the twins posed a true threat.

Some of Piran’s cursing was in Merovenian, the native tongue of the mercs, which seemed to rattle his opponent. To
Blaine’s knowledge, Piran’s fluency was limited to obscenities, but he could hold his own in at least half a dozen dialects. He switched between languages, keeping up a steady stream of curses.

“It’s not enough for your mages to burn down the Continent!” Piran shouted as he landed a crazed series of sword strikes. “Now you’ve got to sell your swords to muck up what’s left!” The speed of his blows, coupled with the unpredictability of his strikes as rage fueled his fighting, managed to get Piran inside his enemy’s guard, and with a triumphant slash, he opened the soldier’s belly.

“Take your guts and your stinking Meroven shit back across the border!” Piran screamed.

By now, the forefront of the battle had passed them by, and both Blaine and Piran slipped from their mounts, preferring the maneuverability of being on foot. They sent their horses running for the rear lines. Kestel joined them, and Blaine looked across the battlefield, taking advantage of a momentary lull.

Far to one side, he glimpsed the Solveigs’ forces, which appeared to be holding their own. To the other side, where Verner’s son, Birgen, led his father’s troops, it was harder to tell which side was currently winning. One thing Blaine was sure of was that the wind had picked up.

“Temperature’s dropping,” Piran noted.

“Sky isn’t looking good,” Kestel added with a glance upward. Dark-gray clouds had massed, promising snow. “Zaryae said there would be storms.”

One more thing that anchoring the magic might fix
, Blaine thought.

“I could do without this,” Piran grumbled. “It’s not like I was homesick for Edgeland.”

Blaine heartily agreed, eyeing the storm clouds warily. The battle was far from over, and an incoming storm would make it all the more miserable—and unpredictable.

“Trouble!” Kestel said, and Blaine turned to see three of Lysander’s soldiers running toward them. The battle had shifted once more, coming back over the same few feet of ground it had just yielded, and Blaine knew they could take and lose the same thin stretch many more times before the day was over, at the cost of many lives.

In the distance, Blaine could hear his captains shouting orders and saw the units respond as he and Niklas had trained them.
We’re holding our own
, he thought.
Let’s see if it lasts
. His hand went to finger the magic-deflecting amulet at his throat. True to Rikard’s word, the amulet had pushed aside the worst of the magic they had faced. All morning, Blaine had been alert for signs of magic, though he hoped that the mages had stayed with Rostivan and Quintrel. Lysander was known to be skeptical—even hostile—toward magic, and Blaine wholeheartedly hoped that rumor was true. So far, no major magic had been worked nearby, but surely that was unlikely to last the entire battle, and Blaine lacked assurance that the amulet could completely avert magic’s effects, or protect him from its drain.

Blaine’s attacker came at him with a morning star, swinging the spiked iron ball from its chain with one hand while he jabbed and thrust with a sword in the other. Blaine backed up a step and nearly fell over a corpse, but he glimpsed a metal shield in the dead man’s hand and snatched it up in time to block the deadly morning star’s strike. The ball hit the shield with a loud clang, leaving a dent Blaine was thankful was not in his helm or skull.

Piran took the offensive, charging his opponent before the fighter expected it. With his bald head, loud voice, and
wild-eyed grimace, Piran looked like a maniac, and his penchant for risky moves made him unpredictable. Swearing in several different languages with curses that would have shamed the most hardened brigands, Piran came at his attacker with a berserker’s frenzy. He landed three blows before the astonished soldier got his guard up, scoring a deep cut in his opponent’s shoulder, a gash to the man’s thigh, and a slice across his chest.

Kestel and the third man stalked each other warily. The attacker, eager for a fight, feinted to draw Kestel’s strike, but she read the attempt for what it was and went in the other direction, moving inside the man’s guard to score a deep puncture in his left shoulder. Enraged, the enemy soldier came after her with several pounding blows. Kestel parried the first blow, then leapt backward over a fallen corpse to get beyond the man’s reach as his swing went wild.

Even angrier now, the soldier stepped over the dead man and raised his sword for the kill. The movement left his chest open, and Kestel dodged out of reach of his sword. With a flick of her wrist, one dagger caught the soldier in his sword arm, while the second dagger buried itself deep in his chest. He fell across the corpse, and Kestel kicked his sword out of reach, then retrieved her blades, stopping to slit his throat before she cleaned the weapons on the dead man’s cloak.

Blaine parried his attacker’s sword, feeling the force of the blow reverberate up his arm. The morning star swung again, and once more Blaine deflected it with the shield, but the sharp points dug deep into the metal, and when the fighter yanked back his weapon, it jerked the shield from Blaine’s hand, nearly breaking his fingers. His opponent chuckled, thrusting with his sword and almost getting inside Blaine’s
guard. The soldier’s hand drew back, ready to let the morning star fly once more.

Blaine grabbed a broken pike from a dead soldier’s hand and blocked the deadly blow, tangling the chain and jerking the weapon out of his attacker’s hand. Blaine thrust forward, and his sword caught the soldier in the middle of the chest, dragging the blade down through his belly. The soldier gave one more savage swing with his sword, opening a deep cut on Blaine’s shoulder before Blaine knocked it away with the broken pike and slammed the wooden pole against the attacker’s head, dropping him to the ground.

Piran was making short work of his own opponent. The soldier tried to parry, but Piran’s wild attack had rattled him badly. Cursing creatively, Piran scored a two-handed hit that cleaved the man from shoulder to chest.

“And your mother was a poxy whore!” Piran finished as he stepped back from the dead man, breathing hard.

“Bad form to keep insulting them after they’re dead, Piran,” Kestel said.

“That’s the problem, Kestel. You’ve already heard all my good insults,” Piran replied. “I’ve got to try them out on someone.”

Snow was falling, a few flakes at first and then rapidly growing into a steady, heavy downfall. Coupled with the wind, it limited visibility, making it difficult to see where the next attack might come from.

“Something’s happening,” Blaine said, pointing. Lysander’s troops were falling back, though the battle was far from decided. Not far enough for a retreat, but enough to put a few clear feet of space between themselves and Blaine’s troops.

“Nice of them to give us a rest,” Piran quipped suspiciously.

A sudden pounding in Blaine’s head nearly made him cry
out. “Watch yourselves!” Blaine warned as one hand went to the pendant. Kestel stepped closer and grabbed his arm, and immediately the effect lessened, a benefit of the null talisman she wore.

“Now, would you look at that?” Piran said in a wondering voice. Blaine and Kestel turned, and Blaine lost contact with Kestel’s grip. Piran was staring at the snow, and he reached a hand toward the snow as if to grasp something that only he could see.

Blaine frowned, then caught a glimpse of something in the curtain of shimmering snow. Shadows became faces, and Blaine gasped in recognition. His mother. Carensa. Servants, long dead, whom he had known since childhood. His hated father. Carr.

Carr’s image triggered a jolt of rage, and Blaine blinked rapidly, struggling against the vision. He gripped the pendant tightly, and the vision blurred, sliding away from him as if the magic-dampening amulet had broken the spell. Kestel’s touch on his arm cleared his head, and when he looked once more, the images were gone. Kestel grabbed Piran’s arm, and he shook free of the illusion.

“They’re regrouping, and they’re going to attack while our men are woolgathering,” Blaine said, glancing around wildly. “Noise! We’ve got to make noise.”

Blaine grabbed his dented shield and the broken pike and began to hammer on the metal, shouting at the top of his lungs. “Wake up! They’re coming!”

Piran snatched up three or four tin cups that had littered the battlefield, dropped or knocked from their owners’ belts. Holding them overhead, he slammed them together over and over again as his rough voice carried over the wind.

Kestel ripped the dented helm from one of the dead men
and began to beat on it with the wooden handle of a fallen war hammer. “Danger!” she shouted. “Move!”

Blaine and Kestel ran along the line in one direction while Piran ran in the other, setting up as loud a clamor as they could muster. Blaine’s head felt as if it would explode, both from the magic and from the cacophony. All around them, men roused from their vision, and the illusion faded.

Lysander’s troops, cheated of their easy victory, readied for the charge, but this time, Blaine and his men beat them to it. Perhaps the illusion reminded the men too well of what they had lost or who was left behind. Or maybe, tired, cold, and injured, they were ready for a fair fight without tricks.

Whatever the reason, Blaine and Piran led the advance, rallying their spent troops behind them, swords in hand. Kestel snared the reins from a riderless horse and swung up to the saddle. Borya and Desya rallied the soldiers, much like they had long-ago herded errant livestock on the flatlands of their boyhood. Buoyed by rage, Blaine’s troops closed the distance between themselves and Lysander’s soldiers, fighting all-out and ready for vengeance.