Act of Will

SCENE LV The Enemy

The gatehouse was a mass of soldiers waiting for their orders. The drawbridge was down and the portcullis hung on its chains high above us. Since it took an age to lower the thing and we would be sending soldiers out right up to the moment when the raiders hit us, it would probably stay open all day. I watched Renthrette and Lisha organizing a line of spears and crossbows. It was all oddly familiar, but this time the sun was high, the air was clear, and we outnumbered the enemy two to one.

I moved around the wagon, freeing the bolts and folding the sides down halfway. I clamped the axles and began to assemble the massive crossbows. After that I slipped my head into my mail shirt, felt its coolness and weight through the soft leather beneath. All around me the village irregulars prepared themselves to meet the crimson raiders once more, the sun shining on their makeshift armor and newly ground ax bits. I belted my sword about my waist and laid a shield on the wagon floor as if I was a hero who knew what he was doing.

Renthrette was already armored and ready, though she had yet to put on her helm. I watched her dig her heels into the sides of her horse and shout at the swelling and straightening line of boar spears and homemade pikes; then she turned suddenly and looked north. I stood up and could just make out a dust cloud, broad and low on the horizon. Trumpets sounded from the citadel turrets and a cry of wild joy went up around me like when the dogs see the bear.

From the gatehouse came the first hundred of the Greycoast infantry, Orgos mounted on a white charger at their head. He wore a tunic of russet linen with dark leather armor, waxed and overlaid with rings of steel. A helmet of iron and boars’ tusks covered his head and the nape of his neck, topped with a black horsehair plume that trailed to his shoulders. Apart from the angular cheek guards, his face was exposed. While I felt like a hero but looked like an idiot in armor that didn’t fit-a fish out of water of the duke-of-Greycoaston-a-horse variety-Orgos was the real thing, and looked the part. He crossed our lines and nodded briefly to us, a nod of confidence and dignity. The men around me watched him and you could feel the way his presence lifted their hearts. I fiddled with my crossbows.

In the mouth of the gatehouse I could see the first ranks of A Company waiting, pressed to the walls to allow Garnet and his Hopetown cavalry to exit the city and veer towards us. They wore silver scale armor and chromed helmets with short blue capes like the men who had escorted us from Seaholme, but they looked confident and professional. Their hooves clattered over the bridge, and an appreciative shout went up from the Greycoast soldiers. Garnet, sitting pale at their head in grey mail and a horned helm, adjusted his shield and gestured to the riders with his battle-ax. They wheeled in front of the wagon, then formed a block at the corner of the citadel facing towards the center of the plains. Garnet also looked the part, calm and impressive astride that bloody immense horse. I scowled and wondered why I was the only one who looked like he’d walked out onto the stage by accident. Whatever I thought about the coming encounter, I still felt like a sham. Even the bloody villagers looked like they knew what they were doing, and most of them were armed with gardening implements.

The dust cloud was coming, but I figured we had a few minutes yet, more if they slowed their approach. I lifted one of the crossbows onto its assembled tripod and bolted it into place, swinging it round and looking down its twin grooves like an expert. Renthrette was unhitching the horses from the front of the wagon and leading them away, and as I snapped the last bolt into place she looked up at me silently, shading her eyes with her hand.

“What?” I said. I couldn’t see her face but I knew she was looking hard at me and thinking.

“Nothing.” She shrugged. “Good luck, Will,” she said, moving away.

I wanted to call her back, but had no idea what I would have said, and it would have spoiled this I’m-so-collected-and-efficient thing I was working on. She lowered her heavy iron helm onto her shoulders and her face was lost to me.

I was ready. The crossbows sat taut and deadly on their stands and I knelt behind them, consciously noting and re-noting where my personal weapons were so that I could seize them if necessary. The ranks had grown silent and expectant in the bright afternoon, all eyes towards the approaching riders. Orgos, still mounted, glanced over his shoulder to where the dust cloud had grown sharper and had sprouted men, distinct and shining in the sun. The sandy earth burst under their horses’ hooves like breaking waves and they sailed towards us, motionless in their saddles, crimson cloaks now visible at their backs, their pennanted lances raised. They were slowing down.

Orgos called to his company and they lowered their spear heads in readiness for the charge. I snapped back the catches on the crossbows. In the gatehouse, the second company waited poised to rush the raiders as they came in close. Beyond the scarlet horsemen I could just make out the Verneytha cavalry pressing them towards us like the second half of a vise. Somewhere amongst them was Mithos. It occurred to me that he didn’t know what we had discovered in the Adsine keep, let alone the news of the approaching Empire soldiers, but then neither did Greycoast or Verneytha. Like most of the things I could claim to have had a hand in, it didn’t seem to matter much now. I saw them coming towards us and I thought it again: If we could withstand the initial impact of their charge, our flank and rear attacks should leave them powerless.

Then the raiders stopped altogether just outside the flight of our arrows. We waited in silence as the dust cloud drifted away. A minute later, ten or twelve of the duke’s company came out to us.

“What’s going on?” I demanded.

“Your wagon looks a bit vulnerable, so we’ve been sent to reinforce these farmers, or whatever they are,” said a young corporal. He grinned and nodded towards the villagers bunched tightly around the wagon.

“Good,” I said, reflecting that no unit that Orgos escorted would look “vulnerable,” “but that wasn’t what I meant. Why have they stopped?”

“The raiders?” He shrugged. “Beats me.”

On the plains before us the raiders still appeared to be waiting, as if they wanted us to go to them. An arrow or two was loosed by some patriotic citizens on the citadel walls, but they fell hopelessly short. I was watching the raiders sit there as still and controlled as I had ever seen them when another shout went up: a long, pronounced hurrah that started in the citadel and spread throughout the Greycoast forces, even echoing down from the Verneytha cavalry. I turned to Lisha and the spear line in front of the wagon for an explanation, but only the handful of reinforcements seemed to know what was going on and laughed and cheered with the rest.

“Now what?” I shouted. At first they didn’t hear, and I had to clamber onto the front of the wagon and tap the young officer on the shoulder.

“What are they shouting about?” I said, conscious of a laugh creeping into my own voice as I caught something of their mood. The corporal leaned forward and pointed westwards towards the Downs and the treetops of the border forests.

I turned and looked. There was a dark ribbon of men and banners: the black flags of a great army of horsemen steadily advancing towards us.

“Reinforcements,” shouted the corporal.

“What?” I called back through the noise.

“We got word this morning,” said the corporal, “Shale has sent its entire army to smash the raiders. Two hundred cavalry and over seven hundred foot soldiers.”

I stared at him, suddenly cold.

But before I could say anything, there was another shout. A ripple went through our force, and the corporal’s smile faded as he stared off to where men were pointing: not towards the raiders, or to the army from Shale, which was advancing from the west, but behind us, to the south.

I turned, feeling a sudden swell of dread, and found that the plains at our back were suddenly awash in a thick grey mist. A moment later, the mist was blowing away, and in its place was an army that looked as if it had sprung from the earth like corn. But this army was not wearing the crimson of the raiders.

They wore white.

In the sparkle of their silver helms I saw our certain destruction.