Arcanum (102 page)

“What are they doing, Master Büber?”

With the lens at his eye, he tracked between the far bank and the valley-side.

“Taking apart our earthwork, my lady. They mean to use their wagons again, and my guess is they’ll be able to bring them up all the way to our lines this time.”

It suddenly became simple.

“Master Büber. Go and talk to the centurions. Take whoever will go with you. The rest of us will hold out here as long as we can, then turn and run.” She turned to Reinhardt. “Put no more than two centuries of spears on the first embankment facing the bridge. The bows will be up here with me.”

“Two, my lady?” His voice was weak, uncomprehending.

“No more than that, yes. When they fail, the crag will be surrounded quickly. Everyone else will be behind the second embankment, and you’ll have to lead as many of them as you can save back to the bridge at Rosenheim, and try and protect that from the dwarves as best you can. Put pickets on the west bank, too, in case they cross the hills rather than follow the road.”

Then she looked at Ullmann, who must have realised she was keeping something special for him.

“My lady?”

“I need your Black Company. I have no intention of sacrificing the lives of the bowmen for nothing. Nor yours. But we will have to fight our way out. Do you understand?”

She was certain he did. She wanted him separated from his own personal army. Whether he agreed with her was, for the moment, irrelevant. He couldn’t refuse her openly.

“You have your orders, and you need to hurry,” she said. Ullmann and Reinhardt realised they’d been dismissed, along with their advice, and Sophia thought it was better that Büber got among the troops now, rather than staring up the valley through his distance-pipe, looking for a likely crossing point.

“You can do that later,” she told him. “Go and collect your men, while we still have some.”

Büber closed the tube and carefully replaced the covers over the lenses. Everything he touched was left with a rime of bloody fingerprints. He walked past her on the way to the gate, and she whispered, “HaShem go with you, Peter.”

He paused, nodded, then carried on.

The sun crawled across the sky until it lanced straight down the valley, turning the dark river into a white-gold line too bright to look at. Across on the west side of the valley, the dwarves were lining up their wagons on the flat ground. They’d all but demolished the embankment – at least the part Ullmann could see past the shoulder of the hill – and they’d taken out a few of the small drystone walls that divided the farm land, all outside of bow-shot.

Büber had marched off before midday, taking two-thirds of the centuries with him into the forest behind the Kufstein crag. He’d taken the Crossed, despite Sophia’s releasing them from their sentences. Or perhaps because of it. He’d also taken both centuries of Jews, and Aelinn’s mob of domestic servants, stable boys and porters. There’d been nothing he could do about that.

He’d watched the trees swallow them, one by one, until none were left. If they were out of his sight, they were out of Sophia’s too.

Büber could take his army wherever he wanted: over the mountains and back to Juvavum if he chose. He could leave them all here to die, and rude, rough Peter Büber would be prince.

Ullmann glanced over his shoulder at Sophia, who was adjusting her skirts so that she could fight and run in them better. There were rumours about her and Büber. He knew them false, because he’d started them: but with Felix gone, he’d be using those rumours differently now.

Below the crag were the remnants of their spearmen: two centuries on the first wall, two more on the second one, which didn’t stretch any significant distance. The dwarves could go around the end. Everything appeared small and weak in comparison to the force massing opposite them.

The top of crag itself was covered with crossbowmen, slowly lining up at the palisade and checking their angles. The bridge, both ditches, and the ground either side were all in range. As in the earlier engagements, it would be a bloody slaughter, except this time they knew it wouldn’t be enough.

There was still time for him to walk the short distance between the two armies, and talk terms. Considering their own small losses compared to those they’d inflicted on the dwarves, they should have the upper hand in any negotiations. What was wrong with setting the dwarves on Bavaria, as long as they left Carinthia alone? If München wasn’t going to send anyone to fight on their side, then they deserved to be besieged – again.

Then he remembered he’d ordered the ruler of München to be killed. Had it been done, and, importantly, had it been done secretly? Where was Augsburg? Most likely relying on Carinthia to sort out its problems like the Bavarians had always done.

They’d be next, the proud, vainglorious lords of Bavaria. They’d go the way of Fuchs, stabbed with a Carinthian spear in the hands of a Bavarian housewife.

His anger was directed in all directions at once. It was the dwarves’ fault for going to war, Felix’s fault for refusing to hire mercenaries, Büber’s fault for taking away the best part of their army, Sophia’s fault for allowing him to do so. He needed Carinthia intact if any of his plans were to ripen and bear fruit.

If, if, if. If he’d been in charge now, those mistakes simply wouldn’t have been made. He gripped the top of the palisade and watched the play of light and shadow across the valley.

The first wagon rolled forward. He thought he might have imagined the movement, but it was followed by a second, then a third.

The bowmen had noticed, too, and were growing quietly serious, pointing.

“My lady?” he called. “They’ve started.”

She stopped her impromptu cutting and lacing and ran across, darting between the bowmen to press in next to him at the palisade. Her mouth made a thin, grim line.

“Regrets, my lady?” Even now, she could send out the white flag of truce.

“Plenty, Master Ullmann, but none about the company I keep.”

The men around her cheered at that, and Ullmann thought them fools. Better they had ten times the spears and five times the bows; a proper army, silent and disciplined, swift and deadly.

The good humour started to drain away, and he looked out again over the river. A murmuring started, and Sophia’s eyes narrowed.

“The distance-pipe,” she called. “Bring me the distance-pipe.”

It was passed forward, and by the time it was put into her hands, she was visibly trembling. She held it to her eye, twisting the tubes for focus. She grew still.

Then she was thrusting the apparatus at Ullmann and stumbling away. The bowmen parted before and closed behind her.

Ullmann lifted the unfamiliar device to his face. Everything was blurred, and green, then blue, but eventually he got it under control. He scanned the advancing wagons – gods, they looked so close – and finally lighted on the lead vehicle.

A thin, sharpened stake had been crudely nailed to the front of it, and impaled on top was a head, bouncing and jolting with every imperfect revolution of the wheels.

The spike came out through a crown of matted dark hair, and, despite the blood and mud, it was obvious whose head it was.

How they’d recognised him was anyone’s guess – none of the dwarves had seen Felix before, and he’d carried no distinguishing tokens, no crown, no seal. Even the armour he’d worn was plain, and the Sword of Carinthia … ah. So they had long memories, and the ancient, once-magical weapon had given him away.

The prince was dead, and there was no one to take his throne after him. He slipped down from the palisade, and went to find Sophia.

She was white, her eyes large and dark and staring. Her whole frame rose and fell in time with her deliberate, deep breaths. He wasn’t even sure that she was aware of his, or anyone else’s presence, when she suddenly hissed: “And you’d have me make a deal with these, these creatures?”

Ullmann thought of a dozen different replies, none of which would help, so he stayed silent.

“They cut off his head.”

They had. No one could deny it, because the head was there in plain sight, stuck on a pole and getting closer with each passing moment.

“They will pay for this.”

But not today, not with the army she’d purposefully split in two. Ullmann would remind her of that.

“My lady, I think we need to retreat. Save what we can of the men.”

“No,” she said baldly. She started towards the palisade, every step agony.

“My lady, I insist.” He reached out and pulled back on her sleeve.

She drew her sword and, in one fluid move, swung it down to where his neck and shoulder met. It stopped at the collar of his mail shirt.

“You insist? Or what? You’ll rid yourself of another troublesome woman?” Her knuckles had turned as white as her face. “A dagger through the ribs maybe?”

She lifted the sword-blade away, holding it high.

“We both have our parts to play, Master Ullmann. See that you play yours.” She strode off to be among the bowmen, who were sombrely going about the business of cocking their bows, pressing bolts onto the stock, saying their last prayers to whichever of the Aesir they thought might help them best.

Ullmann closed his eyes and raised his own entreaty. Gods, she knows. How could she know? How long has she known? With Felix dead, there’d be nothing to stop her doing whatever it was she wanted to do to him, because she was all they had now. The people loved her despite all the reasons they had not to. They would, quite literally, follow her to the gates of the underworld if she asked.

How had it turned out this way? His chest constricted as he imagined the weight of the huge stone used in pressing settle on him. He turned away and leant forward, hands on knees, in an attempt to get more air in.

It wasn’t over yet, though. A hundred different things could happen in battle, and almost all of them unexpected. There was no reason – no good reason – to give up hope. She was the only person who knew. If, may the gods forbid it, something was to happen to her, then that was that. The secret would be dead.

He took another breath and found that he’d recovered enough. Going through the still-open gate, he went down the lee side of the crag to find his men.

“Form up,” said Ullmann. “No one’s going to find us unready.”

They lined up, four ranks deep, and did it quickly. He could take pride in that.

He paced in front of them. “When the time comes, it’ll be hard fighting. The bowmen from the crag need to run the four or five stadia to the trees, and we’re to protect them until they’re safe. When we’re certain of that, we retreat, too. Anyone gets separated, we’ll regroup at Rosenheim. It’s more than likely that the dwarves will stop for the day here, but if they pursue us, we have to stand in the way. Any questions?”

There was silence, then a voice piped up from the back. “Prince Felix. Do we try and take him back?”

“Ah, lads. Would that we could, but don’t you see what a trap they’ve made for us, and what fools we’d be if we fell into it? I don’t like what they’ve done any more than you do, but we can all see why they’ve done it – to provoke us into doing something stupid. There’ll be other times, and yes, a bag of florins to the man who brings him back home. But not now. Let’s worry about the living, not the dead, as cold as that may seem.”

The Carinthian horns sounded, the dwarvish horns answered.

From where he stood behind the crag, Ullmann’s view was limited to the rear of the first earthwork. The spears had lined up to receive the lead wagon – with Felix’s head displayed banner-proud – as its front wheels fell into the ditch. The second would come up behind it, then the third, just like they’d seen earlier that day. The doors fore and aft would open, and there would be a ready-made tunnel stretching across the bridge all the way to beyond bow-shot where the dwarves were mustering.

There came a roar, and the spears braced to receive the charge. They stood firm as dwarf after dwarf hurled themselves out of the narrow opening in the lead wagon, almost directly onto the Carinthian spears. It was insane to fight like that, sacrificing so many, but soon enough there was a bulge in the Carinthian line, where the dwarves had forced them back with the sheer press of their bodies and ferocity of their blows.

Bows were useless at this stage, their bolts more likely to hit friend than foe, and, worse, more than half the spearmen at the earthwork weren’t even engaged. They were keeping their positions along the rampart rather than crowding the wagon’s opening.

Reinhardt rode back and forth as before, exhorting his men to hold. To Ullmann’s mind it was exactly the worst thing he could have done.

The line suddenly broke. A dwarf made it to the top of the embankment, was cut down, only to be replaced by two more, then several of them. The spears were were now split. And they were fighting not downhill but on the level.

Reinhardt rode into the melee, slashing with his sword, rather than calling for the retreat. And without waiting for the order, those on the limits of the line started to run back. A trickle became a flood, and the Carinthian line burst asunder. Reinhardt looked for a moment like he’d lose his own head, but used his rearing horse to clear a path ahead of him before bolting to the temporary safety of the second and final earthwork.

The bows all fired at once, and the battle suddenly flowed the other way. Dwarves were riddled with bolts, two and three to a body. Where there had been a score or more, now there were none, cut down by the hard rain from the crag above them.

More took their place, though, and in the time it took the bowmen to reload and resight, the ground between the first and second embankments was lost. The dwarves ignored the spears on the earthwork. They turned and made straight for the crag.

Of course they would. Getting rid of the bows was their priority. Ullmann barely had time to join the Black Company’s line and draw his sword before their fronts met.

The dwarves threw themselves at the swords with the same delirious vigour as they had at the spears. Leaping, they held their axes and hammers high, then drove them down. Most of them died in the air, impaled, but their momentum carried them onwards, knocking men over, breaking the ranks, leaving undefended gaps that were impossible to close.