The Bloodstained God (Book 2) (46 page)

“The usual, then.” He grinned again. “Well, if you’re going to assault me with formality then I must surrender. You shall have Manoc for your wolf gift, and there will be no charge. How can I charge when I have gained ten pounds in weight just eating your food?”

“Bento, I am very grateful,” she said, surprised by his sudden capitulation.

“That’s better,” he said. “Now go away and leave me to eat in peace.”

Sara nodded her head, a sort of vestigial bow, and stepped lightly out of the room. She was to have the book after all, her favour gift to Wolf Narak. She could not help but smile as she walked the length of the corridor that led to the library.

Today she thought she might take a crust or two with her to the pond and feed the ducks.

Pascha stood on the wall with Skal beside her. He seemed quite comfortable now, if a little impatient.

At first
Skal had seemed almost afraid to walk the wall. No, that was wrong. It was not fear, more like a feeling of trespass on the past. This was where a defining thing had happened for the young lord and Pascha had seen it. Skal had expected to die when he had fought to stem the breach that Telan troops had made those many months ago. He had stood side by side with other men, outnumbered, hard pressed and desperate. He had resigned himself to death, and then he had lived. Such moments change men.

The first time they had gone up to the platform Skal had been very quiet. He had looked at the boards more than the enemy beyond, as though he expected to see his own blood staining the wood, but his sacred moment had passed, and now he was his young impatient self again.

Pascha had delayed and delayed for as long as she dared. By now the Seth Yarra army was more than a week north of Fal Verdan, and its vanguard must even now be treading the leaf litter of Narak’s sacred forest.

“Surely we must attack them soon, Deus?” he asked.

“Yes, soon.” Pascha was becoming almost as adept as Narak at giving nothing away, and she understood why he did it. The Wolf God had reasons that he would not or could not tell. So did she.

“Tomorrow?”

She looked at him and smiled a deliberate, enigmatic smile. She said nothing. She knew that it irritated him. Tomorrow? Yes, tomorrow. At dawn she would strike a blow at the heart of the Seth Yarra force beyond the gate and then she would send the signal and wait for Hestia and Terresh to attack. Her men, Skal’s men, would be lined up behind the wall, cavalry to the fore, men on the ropes ready to swing the gates wide. Then there would be a one sided battle.

She looked across the killing ground. There were still signs of the first battle of Fal Verdan out there: fragments of twisted armour, broken arrow shafts, the occasional glint of metal in the short grass and at the foot of the wall she could still see a few charred bones hard up against the stone. It had been a bloody fight.

Beyond the killing ground there were two camps. Trees had been felled for firewood, for building, and now the camps could be clearly seen, and clearly showed their differences. The Seth Yarra tents were laid out in a great square with small fires at every alternate junction. They used a pale cloth that was clearly visible through the denuded branches that remained. Their rows seemed to have no centre, though Pascha knew very well where the centre was.

The Telans, on the other hand, had laid out their brown canvas in concentric rings with a great fire at the centre, and a tent that could be nothing else than their commander’s residence. There was no mingling, and that alone should have been enough to alert the Telans to the trouble they were in.

The real commander, the Telan King, or indeed the Queen, was a few miles to the south, and Pascha would tell her tonight that the attack was to happen at dawn. It would be as much a relief to them as it would to Skal.

She spoke without looking at him. “We attack tomorrow, at first light.”

“Tomorrow?” He seemed almost shocked. After so long waiting she could not blame him for it. She had prevaricated until the last possible moment. The purpose of the attack was almost gone. “Do you have any further orders?” he asked.

“You know your business, colonel. Have the men ready behind the gate at dawn.”

“Indeed I shall,” he said, and turned to stride away already looking for his officers, stepping quickly and keenly. He was a man who did not wait very well, she reflected. She found his impatience a likeable trait. Skal was young, but he was not ignorant of war. He had fought several engagements, been grievously wounded, and yet still wished to be in the thick of it. She knew his reasons well enough. He wanted glory to rebuild his blood, to raise up his family name which had been cast down by his father’s treachery.

Mortal men were strange, she thought. All that effort and then death.

*              *              *              *

In the morning Pascha was up before the sun. She translocated to a perch high above the pass, hidden from human eyes. She lit a small fire, laid her bow down beside her and rested beside it. She could see Skal’s men, three thousand of them, lining up along the pass. The men stood beside their horses, keeping them as quiet as possible. The horses steamed gently in the cool of pre-dawn, and their smell rose up to her through the morning air. Behind them, along the pass, stood the infantry, a prickly caterpillar of steel. The foot soldiers would be lucky to get a taste of the battle, she thought. With the Telans attacking and a thousand Avilian cavalrymen carving through the Seth Yarra it should be over quickly enough.

She had spoken to Hestia and Terresh the previous night, and by now they should have moved up to join their men by the gate. She could see the tent in the middle of the Telan camp where they would be waiting for her signal. Terresh had put half his men to exercise in full armour – not an unusual thing for the Telans, and it gave them an excuse to be ready to attack their former allies.

The other half, or a good number of them, had left in the dead of the night and moved into the forest behind the Seth Yarra camp.

Everything was ready.

Pascha closed her eyes and saw through the eyes of sparrows about the enemy camp. She had been doing this for weeks, learning their routines. There was a tent in the centre of the Seth Yarra camp where the commander met with his officers every morning. It was a routine as certain as the rising and setting of the sun. Fifteen of them gathered there. She had little idea of what passed between them, but it looked like a normal daily briefing. The commander was a grey haired man with a limp – just the sort of man to have a behind the lines command, a soft war, guarding something that hardly needed to be watched. His officers did not seem to like him very much, and Pascha understood why. He shouted at them. Perhaps his leg pained him, but for whatever reason he was always in a foul temper. Maybe he had wanted to be with the main army attacking through the White Road Pass. It made no difference to Pascha.

She watched from the trees as the officers arrived, the earlier men walking slowly, talking, the last few at a run, worried to be late and the target of their commander’s acerbic tongue. By the time they had gathered the sky above the Dragon’s Back was pink with the promise of dawn and the tent glowed yellow with lamplight.

She abandoned the sparrows and drifted within, seeing the embers of each man’s mind. It was like a gathering of camp fires in the dark, long after men had ceased to feed them. She could see other things now. When she’d first seen men in this way they had all looked the same, but now there were events within the fire, new colours, turmoil. Each time she looked brought more, and she understood more.

But that was not her purpose here. She reached out, spreading her will like a blanket above the coals, and then she extinguished them. She felt a rush of energy, warmth like a hot spring all around her and through her.

She opened her eyes. Her eyes stung, her lips felt hot and dry as though she had a fever. She reached down to her side and lifted up her bow, touched the cloth wrapped, oil soaked arrow head into the small fire and drew back the string. She let it go and the arrow flew high and true, arcing across the killing ground to land in a shower of sparks about twenty yards short of the Seth Yarra camp.

Her part was now complete. She stood and looked down. At first there was nothing. The camps looked sleepy and calm. Skal’s men waited below. She could hear a horse stamping, moving restlessly in the midst of the small army. It was as though she had done nothing at all.

There was a shout from beyond the wall, somewhere in the Seth Yarra camp. More shouts answered. There was a ring of steel on steel, and the battle had begun.

*              *              *              *

Skal saw the arrow fly. It streaked across the dawn sky, a meteor of death, a portent of battle. He looked up to the fighting platform on the wall. A group of Berashis stood there, eyes turned to the Seth Yarra camp, waiting to see if the Telans kept their side of the bargain.

Moments passed slowly. He turned and looked back at his men. He saw his own impatience reflected in their eyes. Some of the men were scared, but they all wanted it to start so that it would be over with. He drew his sword and laid it across the saddle in front of him. How long did it take to start a fight?

One of the men on the wall held up a hand and Skal leaned forwards, eager to see it fall, for that was the signal. The hand stayed high. From beyond the wall he could hear the sound of steel on steel. Just one blow, and then seconds later another, and then an avalanche of sound.

The hand dropped. Ropes creaked as men hauled on them and the triple gates began to open. To Skal they seemed to open reluctantly, revealing the scene beyond with intolerable coyness. Now the noise from beyond the wall was unmistakable. The cries of men, both those of pain and warlike intent, rang across the top of the sibilance of the steel. He glanced backwards and raised his sword.

“Forward!” he shouted, and spurred his horse at the gap between the gates, even though it was barely large enough to slip through and the men behind him were three abreast. Then he was through, sword in hand, riding across the killing ground. He did not ride without restraint. Keen though he was, he was not foolish enough to arrive in the midst of the enemy alone.

His men caught up with him. They fanned out into a line, some with swords, others with lances, and twenty abreast. Skal increased the pace. Ahead of him the Telans were doing just as had been asked of them. They were attacking from the west and the south, leaving the enemy open to a cavalry charge from the east, and a possible escape route north. The gap closed quickly. Skal raised his sword and picked out a man on the edge of the melee. The Seth Yarra had seen them now, but far too late to adjust their lines. A few men turned to meet them, raising shields. A handful of arrows fell among his men and one or two went down.

He brought his blade down and felt it jar against something. Whether bone or armour he could not tell. He was already past, ploughing into the mass of the enemy, raising the sword again. Now he released the reins, used his shield to fend off blows from the left while he hacked away on the right. He kept moving, using his knees to control the horse.

The enemy seemed to dissolve before the onslaught. They were trying to pull back, but there was only one way to go: north. Skal found himself in space for a moment and looked around. The plan had worked very nicely. Dead Seth Yarra littered the forest fringe. The Telans were pressing in almost at walking pace, and his own men had turned swinging north to cut through what remained of the enemy ranks. They were retreating in good order, though. He rode a dozen yards back towards the wall and signalled his infantry, now only two hundred yards away, to move to cut the enemy off. He watched them wheel, heard orders shouted back into the body of men, and turned again.

An arrow struck him a glancing blow on the shoulder, whipping his ear as it went by. He touched the side of his head and saw blood, but it was only a nick. He spurred forwards, calling his men to follow, and they swept through the enemy again. One of the Seth Yarra infantry landed a blow on his leg before being cut down himself, but it was well protected – nothing more than a bruise would come of it.

Telan archers were pouring arrows into the retreating force which now numbered about seven hundred men, diminishing fast.

It was too easy. They had the tactical advantage of cavalry, total surprise and superior numbers, but it had still been too easy. Whatever Passerina had done seemed to have sown confusion among them. They had been slow to react, slow to organise, and by the time they had pulled themselves together the battle was all but finished. It was a slaughter now. They were outnumbered almost ten to one and the Telan archers still hadn’t let up. Wherever the Avilians were not, there the arrows fell.

The plan was for some of them to escape, but that was proving difficult to achieve. They clung together in a knot and fought fiercely. If he didn’t do something promptly there would be none left to flee northwards, to warn the main Seth Yarra army.

It was time to make a mistake and timing was important here. He had to give a small number of them a chance to escape into the woods to the north. It was the obvious way to go. He couldn’t let more than a couple of dozen get away or they might insist on returning to the fray.