The Fate of the Fallen (The Song of the Tears Book 1) (46 page)

The spearmen began to straggle into position, but they were
so damned slow! Nish’s throat had gone dry; he could hardly speak. ‘Hurry, the
enemy is on the march.’

He jogged back through the lines to the rear, showing
himself to as many of his troops as he could and trying to look the part of the
Deliverer. He didn’t feel it. He felt sure they were all going to die.

‘Archers!’ Nish indicated the slightly higher ground to left
and right, further up the hill. ‘Take position there and there; be ready to
fire over the heads of our troops. Don’t shoot until I give the order.’

He sent scouts to keep watch from the rocky heights behind
the camp, in case a detachment circled around and attacked from the rear.

Monkshart came running down the slope, dark robes flapping about
his long shanks. ‘What on earth are you doing, Deliverer? You can’t risk
yourself in battle.’

Nish brandished his sword and Monkshart stepped aside
smartly. ‘I lead the Defiance,’ Nish shouted, raising his weapon high so the
firelight blazed off it. ‘To victory or to death!’

‘Victory or death!’ roared the Defiance, putting themselves
between him and the zealot.

Nish headed back towards the front line. Monkshart drew his
own weapon, though he didn’t follow. Nish recruited a dozen boys and girls to
act as runners, for his orders would not be heard over the din of battle, and
crouched behind a spindly bush. The enemy were halfway up the neck now,
advancing more rapidly than he’d expected.

He wouldn’t have driven troops that hard, since the slippery
climb would soon exhaust them in their heavy gear. And since there had been no
sign of an army from the lookout last night, they must have made a forced march
to get here. They would have been weary before they began the climb –
another small advantage to the Defiance.

The leaders were so close now that he could make out
individual soldiers. Nish sent runners back, ordering his archers to fire at
once, and again as the enemy reached the top of the slope below the dip, then
to be ready for hand-to-hand fighting.

He signalled his front-line troops to crouch down. They did
so, clutching their weapons. Dawn was breaking and he could just make out their
faces – fearful but, he hoped, resolute. The archers fired over their
heads and the ragged volley opened up a few gaps in the enemy’s front line,
though not enough to make a difference to either side. He prayed they’d do
better with their second volley, though massed archery fire required careful
training and they hadn’t had it.

An enemy officer ran out ahead of his fellows, waving his
sword and urging them on. If Nish had brought a crossbow he could have picked
him off. The army broke into a plodding run. Good! They’d be exhausted by the
time they got to the dip.

The enemy archers fired from the flanks and a dozen of
Nish’s spearmen fell. A fresh-faced youth, the camp joker, began to scream in
agony and jerk at the arrow in his belly. Other soldiers were moaning, wailing,
begging for help. It could be enough to demoralise his green troops.

‘Stand firm,’ he cried. ‘Fire!’ he roared, running out into
the open and brandishing his sword above his head. His archers fired again,
though with no more impact than the first time. Return arrows whizzed by. He
hastily dropped flat.

The advancing army reached the dip and began to labour, but
the troops pressed on, their boots churning the wet earth to sticky clay. It
would make the dip harder for those behind to cross, but Nish’s previous
optimism was fading rapidly. The enemy was a strong, disciplined force and,
despite the advantages of position, he didn’t think his troops were going to
survive the initial onslaught. Once the enemy broke through their lines, the
Defiance would be finished and so would he.

The light was growing rapidly now. Nish could see the
insignias on the soldiers’ shields, and the look in their eyes, for many of
them had their helms up, the better to see.

Their archers fired a second volley. Arrows whizzed above
him, tearing a bloody hole through the centre of his defensive line. Their
spears were pointing in all directions, his troops able to think of nothing but
their dead and dying friends. The first experience of bloody battle was always
shocking, even for well-trained soldiers. Nish could see his troops’ morale
wavering. They were staring at the approaching tide in horror and if he didn’t
act now they would turn and run.

‘Defiance!’ he shouted, leaping to his feet. ‘Rise up for
your Deliverer. Rise up and come at them.’

The spearmen came to their feet in a sinuous wave and began
a stumbling, shaky advance. The enemy were now churning through the dip, moving
ever more slowly and wearily as the sticky clay clumped on their boots, making
every step a labour. The front line now covered the slope and was jamming up as
those behind continued to push forwards. Their archers could no longer see past
them to shoot.

‘They’re bogging down,’ cried Nish, waiting for the spearmen
to reach him. ‘They can hardly move.’ He raised his sword. ‘At them.’

They split to go around him and he went with them, sword
out, knowing that the enemy wouldn’t recognise him and he could die at any
moment. His heart was pounding but he felt perfectly calm and clear-headed. He
would wield his third-rate force as well as he possibly could and if he failed,
if he died here, it would be the end of all his troubles. And maybe his death
would inspire others to resist, as Irisis’s death had been his inspiration and
driving force. Either way, he would go with a smile on his lips.

He felt the ground soften beneath his boots. He was on the
edge of the muddy patch. He took a step backwards onto firmer ground. ‘Here we
stand! The Defiance!’

‘The Deliverer!’ roared his troops, thrusting out their
spears, and for the first time he knew they were with him all the way.

The grim-faced, staggering army came onto them and there was
no more time for thought as they struggled and fought and slipped and died in
the greasy clay that was soon sticky with spilled blood, brains and entrails.

Nish hacked and slashed, cutting up at the tall soldiers,
his sword going into a groin here, a ribcage there. He twisted to tear out the
blade then jerked sideways as a giant of a man hacked down at him with a
two-bladed war axe. It shaved threads off his shoulder seams then buried itself
to the handle in the clay. The soldier wrenched furiously at it but the suction
was so strong that it wouldn’t budge. He tried to step backwards to get a
better heave but his boots had worked down into the clay and before he could
pull them free a spear took him in the throat.

The enemy’s whole front line had fallen now and, trapped in
the sticky mud, those behind them made easy targets. Nish’s spearmen started to
advance. He ordered them back. ‘Stay here, on solid ground. Let them come onto
your spears.’

The enemy, ordered to clear the rebels as quickly and
brutally as possible, trampled over their dead and dying comrades and continued
driving onto the spears, and dying before they could reach their enemy. Their
officers were so far back that they hadn’t realised what the problem was.

The soldiers couldn’t bypass the dip without crossing onto
the steep sides of the neck above the marshes, which would put them at an even
greater disadvantage. They had to scramble over their dead and dying comrades,
and as they did they were cut down by the spearmen or the archers, now firing
from the rises further back.

The army’s archers still couldn’t fire for fear of hitting
their own men, but gaps were opening in Nish’s front line as the relentless
attack continued. Half his spearmen had fallen; the others had to be replaced
with fresh troops or the battle would be lost. The enemy dead were now so many
that they would soon form bridges over the bog, and if their superior troops
were allowed to reach solid ground in any numbers they would sweep his amateurs
away.

‘Spearmen, fall back! Swordsmen, to the attack.’

His forces, fired up from seeing the enemy taking such
terrible casualties, advanced in a rush. Nish stayed with them; having taken on
the role of the Deliverer, he could do no less. He felt no fear; he didn’t care
whether he lived or died. All that mattered was to drive the enemy troops back,
and deliver a blow to his father’s pride that would inspire the suffering
world.

But first he had to keep the enemy in the mud. It was time
to take the battle to them. ‘Advance!’

He sprang forwards up onto the carpet of bodies, and his
swordsmen followed him in a cheering, screaming wave that drove the exhausted
enemy back down the dip into the churned ground where, trapped in the sticky
mud and with the soldiers behind them pressing forwards and leaving them
nowhere to go, they died by the thousand. The carnage was sickening. The
memories would stay with him until he died, but there was no choice. It was
kill or be killed.

‘Fall back and drop to ground,’ Nish ordered, sending two
pigtailed runners, wide-eyed girls no older than twelve, scuttling low to tell
the archers to fire at will.

His swordsmen fell back, dropping into a crouch on solid
ground above the mound of dead. Though his archers were not trained to fire volleys,
many were skilled hunters, and in the growing light they exacted dreadful
slaughter on the soldiers trapped in the mud.

Peering over the wall of bodies, Nish tried to work out how
the battle was going, but he couldn’t see well enough. He crawled up onto the
death carpet, over corpses and live men twitching and moaning from ghastly
wounds, and gazed down the slope.

He estimated that the enemy had numbered about ten thousand,
a force that on a level battlefield would have annihilated his six thousand
ill-trained fighters. His father’s army had lost half their number, dead or
dying, with perhaps another two thousand too badly wounded to fight. Few of
those would survive the march back to their garrison. But that still left three
thousand, more than enough to destroy his ragtag force if he lost control of
it, or made one mistake.

Nish didn’t think the enemy’s officers would allow the army
to retreat, since they would be treated like deserters and executed. For
Jal-Nish’s troops it was victory at all costs, or decimation. How could he
capitalise on that?

‘They’re weakening,’ someone shouted from behind him. ‘At
them!’

Nish’s head whipped around. The speaker was a huge, burly
peasant, a giant of a man. A natural soldier, he had slain at least a dozen of
the enemy and now had the blood lust burning in him. He sprang forwards,
swinging his sword above his head. ‘Charge!’

‘Charge them!’ The cry echoed through the ranks and the
front line of swordsmen surged after him.

‘Stop!’ Nish cried, but they didn’t hear him above the roar
of battle.

The folly of one man could swing the tide to disaster, for
once they climbed into full view on the mound of bodies the enemy archers would
cut them down. Nish came to his feet and, as the peasant went charging past, swung
the flat of his sword into the man’s belly, knocking the wind out of him.

‘Stop!’ he roared, advancing on the others, who were leaping
up onto the pile, and flashing his sword at them. ‘That’s what they want you to
do. It’s a trap!’

One soldier ground to a halt, then the rest, and they turned
and scuttled back to their line. As the burly peasant went to his hands and
knees to follow, Nish smacked him across the backside with the flat of his
sword, to reinforce the fellow’s shame.

Nish was about to step down after them when something struck
him sharply in the back, knocking him off his feet. He’d been hit by a long
arrow, angling into his back muscle in the region of his lowest right rib, but
he struggled up, not feeling any pain.

He could feel blood running down his back though and, even
if the injury wasn’t mortal, it would soon weaken him. His knees felt shaky and
a mist passed before his eyes. Nish clung desperately to one thought –
before he fell, he had to ensure victory, and victory was still far from
certain.

It was hard to think straight, but he must. He tried to
concentrate and a desperate plan came to mind. The enemy had seen him fall and
must know that, whoever he was, he’d led the battle so far. If he could
convince them that the rebels were totally demoralised by his ‘death’ …

He staggered off the pile of bodies and fell down into
shelter. It really hurt this time. Worse, his entire front line was staring at
him, aghast, the soldiers’ weapons drooping in their hands.

‘Messengers and officers, to me,’ he croaked.

They didn’t move. What was the matter with the fools? Nish’s
eyes met the eyes of the huge peasant and he jerked his head at the fellow, as
if to say, come here; make up for your folly.

The huge peasant jumped up. An arrow shot over his head. He
crouched down and ran forwards, picked Nish up as easily as if he were a child,
and scuttled back with him.

‘Hold me up.’ Nish felt a chilly weakness creeping over him.
The peasant tugged at the arrow, sending a spasm of agony through Nish’s back.
‘Leave it,’ he choked. ‘Get my officers and messengers.’

They gathered around and he explained his plan. They looked
shocked, disbelieving. ‘Just do it, in the name of the Deliverer,’ he said
limply.

The officers went to their troops, the messengers darted
back and forth. ‘Ready,’ came the signal.

Nish nodded. That hurt too. His archers laid down a covering
fire. The huge peasant hefted Nish in his arms, taking care not to disturb the
half span of arrow protruding from his back, then carried him towards the rear
like an honoured dead.

Nish’s soldiers retreated with him, then formed into a mass
in the centre of the neck where it broadened just below the camp. The ones on
the outside threw down their arms, and all began to mill about. A great wailing
filled the air.