Lescari Revolution 03: Banners In The Wind (11 page)

But before the horns could alert the marching men, the chill wind snatched their warning away. It wasn't till the first company crossed the stream to crest the shallow rise beyond that they saw what lay ahead. Halting, those first militiamen sent runners back to the banners still hesitating on either side of the water. The white and gold standard fluttered.

'Ware behind!' Failla screamed pointlessly. She could see more renegades charging up the road to attack the rear of the confused column. Those curs must have been trailing just far enough behind to escape notice.

'Get over the water, you bog-hopping bastards!' Dinant growled.

Failla saw what he meant. The Triolle men needed to use the stream to slow those renegades instead of having it cut their own column in half.

She could only watch, anguished. Too late. Triolle's militiamen were forced to draw up on the southerly bank, the rushing water at their backs.

At least on this closer side of the stream, the Triolle men were now forming tight ranks across the road. She saw mounted men forcing their horses through the hedges into the dull green fields beyond, some clearly mercenaries in the Tallymen's quartered brown and blue.

'Will they outflank that palisade?' she wondered aloud.

But after an initial foray, the horsemen returned to ride along the hedge line, moving little faster than the men on foot.

'Turnip fields,' Dinant said savagely. 'All holes and Drianon knows what else under those toppings.'

Failla saw he was right. Discarded turnip leaves waiting for the plough cloaked the pocked ground, hiding hollows to trap an unwary hoof. Spurring on a horse would be lethal folly.

A rush of arrows hissed from the town's walls. The renegades holding the road were much too far away and every missile fell short, utterly wasted.

'Sheepshit!' Dinant stormed along the battlements back to the gatehouse.

Failla saw the renegades behind their brushwood barricade were using crossbows to harry the advancing Triollese. Men fell writhing in the road as the leading edge of the column hastily withdrew. Scuffles broke out amid those militiamen being driven back towards the stream by their retreating comrades.

Those still penned on the far side were engaged in a vicious struggle. Worse, more renegades were splashing through the shallow water to either side, outflanking the fighting on the road.

Failla breathed a little easier when she saw mounted Triollese cutting across the perilous fields, intent on intercepting them. But there were far more men approaching on foot than barred their way on horseback.

'Do not open that gate!' Dinant bellowed wrathfully. 'Any man tries and I'll cut off his hands!'

Failla spared a glance inside the walls to see a confused gathering in the archway below. Halberds waved frantically above helmeted heads, shouts loud in the confined space. The Ashgil men were desperate to go to the aid of the Triollese despite the breach that would open in their own defences.

Then sentries on top of the gatehouse raised a new cry. 'Fire!' 'Ware fire!'

Failla saw dark smoke billow from the outermost ramshackle huts where the high road met the buildings that ringed the town. She hurried back to the gatehouse in hopes of a clearer view.

Dinant leaned perilously out between the crenellations, trying to see. 'Are there renegades in the alleys?' he roared.

The closest archers shook their heads. Shouts from those further along the walls echoed their apprehension and bemusement.

'What caught fire down there?' Dinant was asking himself more than Failla. 'Didn't we get everyone inside the walls?'

'Maybe someone from a hamlet arrived too late, after the gates were shut last night?' Though that still didn't explain why some cooking fire had rioted out of control at this precise moment.

Frowning, Failla sucked on her forefinger and held it up to the breeze. The wind that had been blowing steadily from the south all morning had dropped. It hadn't ceased entirely - she could still feel its breath on her cheek - but the smoke from those smouldering hovels wasn't following it towards the town walls. Nor was it rising upwards in this unexpected calm. It was drifting back towards the renegades holding the road. Dense smoke rapidly obscured the barricades. Low billows rolled across the fields towards their friends advancing across the stream.

She couldn't see what was going on. She couldn't even see Tathrin's banner. All they could do was wait. One by one all the voices along the walls fell away. The tumult in the arch below stilled. Waiting militiamen looked up, their faces pale and strained.

'Ware!' Some unconscionable time later, Dinant's shout shattered the tense silence. He took a pace back from the battlements. 'Mark your targets carefully!'

Men were stumbling out of the swirling smoke. Coughing, pawing at their eyes, renegades waved unseeing swords at the empty fields ahead of them.

They must have lost their bearings entirely, Failla guessed. Or they were simply heading away from the sounds of the battle still raging on the roadway. Only they didn't realise their wandering had brought them so much closer to the walls.

Now Ashgil's arrows found their marks. Renegades collapsed to their knees, skewered through chest or belly. They sprawled, writhing, mouths agape in unheard agony. Others fell headlong to bury the scarlet wreckage of their faces in the dark earth.

Failla flinched at every death, desperately hoping none of these dead were Triollese, fatally bereft of whatever coloured tokens they had carried.

A swirl of wind snatched the smoke away. For an instant, she saw the road and gasped. Those renegades barring the Triolle column's path had fled to join their comrades in the fields.

No wonder; their bundled brushwood was burning, penning them between two walls of spitting flame. Failla saw Triolle men were already thrusting their halberds into the barricades. Ripping them apart, they tossed the bundles over the hedges to smoulder damply on the wilted turnip tops. More militiamen were breaking through to follow them, kicking aside showers of sparks as they ran to cut down as many choking renegades as their ferocious blades could reach. Those beyond their halberds' murderous reach fled in all directions.

Failla searched desperately for Tathrin's standard. Across the stream, the smoke was still as dense as when it had first arisen. Battling men were indistinguishable shadows. The dead toppling into the stream were impossible to identify.

She caught her breath as figures emerged from that uncanny gloom. She snatched Dinant's spyglass from his startled grasp. Raising it, her hands shook so hard she couldn't bring the distant vista into focus. Failla clenched her jaw and forced herself to stand rigid.

That man in a russet surcoat must be a Shearling. She knew that mercenary company had supplied Tathrin with several experienced sergeants. Those men alongside him must be Triollese. They were all splashing across the ford, barely slowed by the running water. Now they were running headlong towards the town, closing the gap with the militia cohort busily destroying the burning barricade.

Failla saw a mounted contingent had formed a resolute rearguard on the road. Horses jostled but obeyed their masters, slowly backing and sidling through the treacherous stream. In their midst, Failla saw the captain's standard: their rebellion's golden circle of hands. Surely Tathrin must be safe if that banner still waved so boldly?

'Open the postern, not the main gates!' Dinant was bellowing through the trapdoor to the ladder leading down to the watchroom below. 'Send twenty men out to block off all the alleyways, in case any scum are lurking there!'

Straightening up, he assessed the advancing column's ragged progress and yelled along the walls. 'Watch for vermin among the warehouses. We don't want renegades sneaking into cover while we're beating them back from the gate!'

The only thing Failla saw moving amid the ramshackle buildings was the inexorable fire. It was spreading in all directions. Shutters flapped open as roofs sagged, their rafters consumed from within. That was another puzzle. Those mouldering buildings were very far from tinder-dry, after all the autumn's rains. Whenever she'd been up here on the walls, the stink of mould and rot had tainted the breeze.

New cries came up from below. 'Buckets! Buckets!'

'We let everything outside the walls burn!' Dinant shouted down the clamour of protest as he ran to the inner face of the gatehouse to look down into the town. 'That leaves no cover for attackers to get close to the gates. Just get buckets ready to quench any embers blowing over the walls!'

The upturned faces looked horrified at that prospect. Men and women hurried away to the town's wells.

Looking at the burning hovels, Failla didn't think there was too much danger of sparks drifting on the wind. Fierce golden fires swiftly consumed the damp timbers and shingles, leaving only dull black charcoal. Now there was surprisingly little smoke rising. She used Dinant's spyglass to look more closely. Was that a glimpse of flickering crimson at the heart of each conflagration or just her suspicious imagination?

'Here they come!' Dinant was warning those clustered within the gatehouse.

The battered Triolle militiamen staggered into Ashgil. Failla watched sergeants in the quartered brown and blue of the Tallymen and the Shearlings' bold russet surcoats swiftly rally each separate militia company. With shouts and gestures, they directed men to tend to their own casualties as they reckoned up how many had come through unscathed. The Triollese were less hardy, collapsing all along the street. Some men were weeping; others slumped against the buildings to sit dead-eyed with shock.

Failla saw townswomen offering water, bandages and salves to the injured. There was no sign of concern over these men's erstwhile allegiance. They had come to Ashgil's aid and in the current crisis, that was enough.

Looking back to the road, at long last she saw the captain's standard approaching. Kilting up her skirts, she hurried down the ladder to the watchroom and on down the spiral stair to the cobbles smeared with blood and soot.

'Tathrin!'

For a heart-stopping instant he looked blankly at her, as if he had no notion who she was. Then a smile of delight lifted the exhaustion from his face. Only for a moment though.

'Is there some headquarters for the town's militia?'

As Failla nodded, Tathrin leaned forward and stretched out his hand.

'Show me. I must tally our losses and wounded and see the rest billeted and fed.'

'I can help you.' As he clasped her forearm and pulled, Failla set her foot on his stirruped boot. 'We should send for a man called Dinant.'

Springing up, the soldiery doubtless got a splendid glimpse of her garters. But they were too far gone to express admiration and Failla couldn't have cared less.

Tathrin smelled of stale sweat and fresh smoke. As she settled herself sideways in front of his saddle, his arm tightened around her and he pressed his face into her hair. 'Thank Saedrin you're safe,' he murmured.

'And you,' she said with equal fervour.

Gren rode up on the side that Failla was facing. 'Come to ride in triumph with your hero?'

She felt Tathrin stiffen. 'Where's Sorgrad?' he demanded.

'Here.' Loose-reined, the other Mountain Man rode up behind his brother.

Tathrin reined back his horse and looked sternly at Sorgrad. 'Don't you want to keep watch over those fires?'

'Everything's burned out now.' The Mountain Man smiled genially at Failla.

A burly Tallyman ran up, waving a bloodied hand. Thankfully Tathrin's horse was too burdened and weary to shy.

'Sergeant Estrid's compliments,' the crop-headed swordsman said swiftly. 'He wants to know when you propose paying us. Before nightfall, if you please, and you should know a fair few of us will march for the Great West Road come morning.'

The man clearly didn't relish relaying that message, though Failla saw the contempt in his eyes as he glanced at the Triollese militiamen.

'I'll send for Estrid as soon as I have established my headquarters,' Tathrin told him curtly. 'And Correll can come too and whoever else is so eager to run away clutching a purse.'

'Yes, Captain.' Looking rather startled, the surcoated mercenary went to rejoin his comrades.

Gren drew a hissing breath through his teeth. 'You'll have a job and a half to persuade them to stay on after this miserable showing.'

'I know,' snapped Tathrin.

'So don't rebuke me for saving the day out there,' Sorgrad said coldly.

Tathrin's arm tightened around Failla but she could see his thoughts were ranging elsewhere. 'Do we know how many renegades got away? How far do you suppose they've run?'

'As far as the nearest village,' guessed Gren, 'or whatever farms might still be standing hereabouts.'

'Are all the locals inside the town?' Tathrin asked her.

'I think so.' The desperation in his voice pierced Failla. 'Those hamlets that held out when the Dalasorians came mostly changed their minds once they heard what had happened to Wyril.'

Like Tathrin, Sorgrad was assessing their situation. 'We should be able to hold the town now, once all those outer buildings have burned down. But you won't drive those vermin out of whatever lairs they find hereabouts, not without more men. Renegades will be thorns strewn across whatever path you take till then.'