Shadow Blizzard

19 The Field Of Fairies

It seemed like absolute insanity. A continuation of my nightmare that had suddenly become reality.

Even two days after we had galloped out of Ranneng and set off along the New Highway to Avendoom, my comrades and I still couldn’t believe that the Lonely Giant, the most famous and impregnable fortress in all the Northern Lands, had fallen. Destroyed. Annihilated. Wiped off the face of the earth by the army of the Nameless One.

Everybody had thought that until the Horn lost its final ounce of power, the Nameless One wouldn’t dare to stick his nose out from behind the Needles of Ice. They were hoping that we didn’t have to give the sorcerer a serious thought until the middle of spring. Who would risk forcing his way through the Desolate Lands in winter? It was absolute insanity!

The Nameless One had taken the risk and he had struck a terrible blow. The Order had failed to foresee his attack—everyone had been too preoccupied with the orcs in the south of the country—and the sorcerer’s army had reached the fortress with no difficulty. The Wild Hearts had not been expecting an attack, but they had held the enemy under the walls of the citadel for four whole days and fought to the death. Rumors had spread round the country, each one worse than the last. Some said that all the Wild Hearts had been killed. Some, that certain units had managed to escape from the fortress and retreat. Some insisted that the walls of the bastion had been destroyed by Kronk-a-Mor, others that there had been supporters of the Nameless One among the Wild Hearts, and they had opened the gates for him.

We rode full tilt for Avendoom without sparing the horses. Everything could still be put right, all we had to do was to reach Avendoom and the Council of the Order, and then they would fill the Rainbow Horn with power. Without his magic, the Nameless One was not dangerous, and we would cope with his army one way or another. We had to cope.

The sorcerer had chosen the time of his attack very cunningly. At this very moment, when our armies had been pulled back beyond the Iselina, the north was especially vulnerable. If the king decided on a general engagement … Would he have time to gather the number of soldiers required?

Naturally, not all the soldiers had gone south. Some must have stayed on the northern borders. At least some …

The New Highway was crowded with people. Following the news of the invasion by the orcs, everyone had fled north, but now the refugees were fleeing by the hundreds to the south or west. On foot, on horses, on carts, on wagons, on sleighs, and even in carriages, all the people were dreaming of only one thing—how to get as far away as possible from the war. Every face was frozen in a grimace of fright, like a death mask.

Egrassa spurred his horse on mercilessly and rode pell-mell through the crowd, disregarding the shouts and the curses. We tried to keep up with him. It was a genuine race, and the prize was victory. It was a crazy gallop that tested the stamina of riders and horses. Who would be the first to give way? Who would beg for mercy?

The first horse fell on the second day. It was Eel’s mount. The Garrakian managed to leap off the falling animal in time to avoid injury, and he continued on Kli-Kli’s horse, seating the gobliness behind him. But this kind of pace could not be maintained for long, and by evening our steeds could barely stand. Just a little farther, and we would have to cover the rest of the distance to Avendoom on foot.

Egrassa halted the group on the edge of a large and wealthy village.

“We’ll stay here for the night. I hope there will be free places at the inn.”

“I’ll gladly sleep out in the street, as long as we can find fresh horses,” Eel declared.

Without saying another word, we walked toward the single-story timber building. It had the badge of the guild of innkeepers, and a sheet of tinplate with the name of the inn painted on it—Y.

“An original name, there’s no denying that!” Kli-Kli snorted contemptuously. “If the innkeeper’s as good as the name, I’m afraid for my stomach.”

“You can sleep in a snowdrift, and we’ll wake you in the morning,” I told her.

“You’re such a kind lad, Harold. It just melts my heart,” the gobliness retorted, giving as good as she got.

The establishment turned out to be quite decent. At least it was clean. And most important of all, there weren’t too many people. I counted eleven, including the fat innkeeper. As soon as he saw us, the landlord started looking nervous. Now why would that be? We didn’t really look like bandits, did we? The other people in the room took no notice of us at all and just sipped their beer.

“Do you have any rooms?” asked Lamplighter, taking the bull by the horns.

The innkeeper was about to lie, but he glanced at the morose-looking elf and changed his mind.

“Yes, noble gentlemen.”

“Good, then we’ll stay.”

The owner gave us an imploring glance and started sweating for no obvious reason, but he didn’t say anything and led us off to show us the rooms. As usual, I shared one with Lamplighter and Kli-Kli. After we’d settled in, we were the first back to the large room.

Nothing in the inn had changed. The ten tipplers were still sitting in the same places. We took seats at the bar and while we were waiting for Hallas, Eel, and Egrassa to join us and supper to be ready, we ordered beer.

Naturally, Kli-Kli wanted milk and, surprisingly enough, she was given it straightaway. The innkeeper kept sweating copiously. That was strange. Of course, the place was heated, and right royally, too, but it wasn’t that hot! When this strange man poured the beer for me and Mumr, he missed the mugs, his hands were shaking so badly.

“Can we buy horses in the village?” Mumr asked the owner casually.

“Perhaps you can, sir. To be quite honest, I don’t know about that.”

“How’s that, you don’t know? You live here!”

“I’ve really never taken any interest in horses. I can tell you who sells what kind of victuals. Sausage, for instance…”

“What would we want with your sausage?” Lamplighter retorted. “Are you selling your own horses?”

“I don’t have any horses.”

“Don’t lie to me. When I went into the stables, I saw ten beasts with my own eyes! Or are they not yours?”

“They’re not mine, sir. They belong to guests.”

“I see,” the warrior muttered disappointedly, and stuck his nose in his beer mug.

“Is there any news from the north?” Now it was my turn to start asking the questions.

“People are fleeing,” the landlord sighed, and cast a nervous glance behind me.

“And what about the king?”

“He’s gathering an army. There’ll be a battle any day now. That’s what they say.”

“And what about the Order?”

“The magicians? They’re waiting for something. The people blame them for the Nameless One coming.”

And so saying, he walked away, leaving us to ourselves.

“A strange situation, don’t you think, Harold?” Kli-Kli said thoughtfully, speaking through her teeth. “Our landlord is as nervous as if someone was holding a knife to his throat.”

“Maybe he just doesn’t like the look of your face.”

“Maybe,” the little gobliness said with a serious nod. “Or maybe it’s something else.”

“What, for instance?”

“Haven’t you noticed something odd? There are ten horses in the stable. There are ten men in this room. They’re sitting in twos at five tables. And sitting so that they cover the way out of the inn.”

A little bell started sounding the alarm in my head.

“Coincidence,” I said, but I realized I didn’t like this, either.

“Uh-huh,” she said, inconspicuously lowering one hand onto the handle of a throwing knife. “Precisely, coincidence. Mumr, are you listening?”

“Oh, yes!” said Lamplighter. He had his eyes screwed up and was gazing into a metal dish leaning against the wall. It was polished like a mirror and reflected the entire room very clearly.

“Well then, another strange thing is that, although they’re sitting in twos, they’re not saying a word. It’s as silent as the grave.”

“We get the idea, Kli-Kli. Why don’t you sing us a little song, and sing loud,” I suggested.

Kli-Kli helpfully started crooning a simple melody.

“What are we going to do?”

“Drink our beer and wait for the others to come,” Lamplighter answered.

“It looks like that’s what they’re waiting for, too.”

“I know. They’ve decided to take us all at once. Is your crossbow loaded?”

“As always. Who are they?”

“What does it matter who slits your throat?” asked Mumr, keeping his eyes fixed on the “mirror.”

Kli-Kli sang and wove her fingers into a pattern that I couldn’t make out.

“Don’t even think about it!” I hissed.

She didn’t seem to hear me. Loud footsteps in the corridor leading to the barroom told us and the unusual strangers that at least two guests were approaching. I recognized Hallas’s shuffling step. The innkeeper ducked smartly down under the bar. And that was the signal for action.

Kli-Kli casually snapped her fingers and a bright flash lit up the room behind us for a split second. I heard howls of pain and fury. Two of the scum put their hands over their eyes and another one just howled and rolled around on the floor. The others had been shocked by the unexpected shamanic spell, but they came rushing at us just the same. They were each holding something very sharp and deadly.

Without wasting any time, Kli-Kli flung her first two knives. I fired the crossbow and started reloading it while the gobliness sent another two knives flying through the air. Mumr blocked the attackers’ advance, waving his bidenhander from side to side. Afraid of being sliced to shreds, the lads halted their frontal assault, and at this point Hallas and Eel walked into the room.

The two Wild Hearts didn’t bother inquiring what the dustup was all about. Seeing us pinned back against the bar by five unpleasant types who were armed to the teeth was enough to spur them into action. They piled into the brawl. Mumr was no slouch, either. Tables and benches were sent flying. I was wary of firing the crossbow, in case I hit my own side. But Kli-Kli flung my beer mug and hit one of the attackers full square on the head.

Hallas pitilessly finished the man off when he fell, and the last bandit left alive, realizing that things were looking bad, made a dash for the door. I fired, but, as bad luck would have it, I missed. The lad jumped out into the street and Eel chased after him. There was a howl, and a moment later Egrassa walked in, looking sullen and holding a bloody dagger.

“Just don’t tell me that was the last one, and you didn’t leave anyone alive.”

“He was the last one, Egrassa. Did you climb out through the window?”

The elf didn’t answer Kli-Kli’s question, he just cursed.

“It was all a bit unexpected. We never even thought of taking one for questioning.”

“It’s my own fault. I shouldn’t have finished off the one who was trying to get away. Well, what are we going to do now?”

“What did these goons want?” said Hallas, giving the bodies on the floor a fierce look. “Look what a mess we’ve made of the place!”

“Where’s the innkeeper?” I asked, suddenly realizing I couldn’t see him.

“I’m here, noble gentlemen,” a frightened voice jabbered from under the bar.

Mumr reached in and hoisted the trembling owner out into the open.

“Now, you tell us what it was your friends wanted!”

“They’re not my friends! Oh, no!” the terrified man bleated. If Lamplighter didn’t stop making those terrible faces this gent was going to throw a faint.

“Not your friends? Then who are they?”

Lamenting and wringing his hands, the innkeeper told us. The lads had arrived at the inn the evening before, frightened him to death, put a knife to his throat, and advised him to be as meek as a lamb and act just as if nothing had happened. The guests of the inn, not being stupid, had all sensed the danger and cleared out, without bothering to pay. There were no guards or Chasseurs anywhere near, so all he could do was pray to the gods and hope that everything would be all right. He’d never seen these lads before, but they definitely weren’t bandits. You could see right away that they were serious people.

“Serious!” Mumr snorted, releasing his grip on his prisoner. “Maybe they were serious, but they were real fools, too, letting themselves get killed that easily.”

“Maybe they weren’t looking for us?” I suggested.

“No, it was us they were after,” said Eel, who had been going through the dead men’s pockets. “It’s just as I suspected.”

Lying on the Garrakian’s open palm was a slim golden ring with a poison ivy crest.

“Servants of the Nameless One.”

I’d forgotten all about them, but they couldn’t have forgotten about us.

“Servants of the Nameless One!” the innkeeper repeated in horror, instantly turning pale. “No, good gentlemen! I don’t know these murderers! What a disaster! If the local folk find out who I have lying in here, they’ll set the inn on fire. The red cock will crow here, as sure as death!”

“Stop whining!” said the gnome, interrupting the poor man’s lamentations. “If you want your inn to stand for another hundred years, get rid of the bodies. And tidy the place up! And then tomorrow we can forget we ever saw you and not say anything to the Heartless or the Sandmen.”

Singing the praises of all the gods and all good gentlemen, the innkeeper dashed off at speed to carry out these instructions.

“How did they find us, that’s what I’d like to know.”

“What difference does that make? They found us, and that’s what matters, Harold. The Nameless One is still hoping to get his hands on your tin whistle.”

“It’s not mine. What do we do now?”

“What do we do? What do we do? I don’t know about you, but I’m going to bed,” Hallas sighed, getting down off the bench. “It’s late.”

“What about supper?” Kli-Kli asked in amazement.

“Somehow I’ve lost my appetite.”

“There’s one good thing,” Egrassa said with a chuckle. “We won’t have to look for horses. Or pay for them.”

This time I knew I was asleep; even though it seemed so real, I could stop this nightmare—all I had to do was open my eyes and it would be gone. I could, but I didn’t want to wake up. Valder kept whispering quietly in my head, telling me that this dream was very important. I tried to protest, I struggled to resist his voice, but the archmagician could be very convincing.

I gave in. All I could do was just watch and listen, constantly telling myself that everything that could happen to me had happened already, even if it was a long time ago. That it wasn’t happening to me … Not to me … It was just a dream.…

It promised to be a clear day, even though snow had fallen again yesterday and the entire sky had clouded over. Even the frost that had held the whole of the north in its cold embrace for the last week had retreated, and the soldiers had stopped worrying that their weapons would freeze to their hands.

Stalkon’s army had been waiting since early morning for the Nameless One’s army to appear. Mounted scouts had reported that the enemies’ advance units were no more than two hours away. They had also said that the Nameless One would confront Valiostr’s army of less than twenty-eight thousand with a force of at least sixty thousand. Lieutenant of the Royal Guard Izmi Markauz took a deep breath of the fresh morning air. They were in for a tough time today. In the absence of the two Armies of the North, the king and his commanding officers had already worked a miracle by assembling eighteen thousand regulars, three thousand mercenaries, and seven thousand members of the militia. The king was also waiting for another fifteen thousand men who were on the march to Avendoom from the border with Isilia, but any fool could see that they would only get there after the battle had already been won or lost.

“What do you think, lieutenant? Will things get hot?”

“They will, Vartek.”

“It’s a bad spot, though.”

“Nothing better could be found. Can’t greet our visitors at Avendoom, can we? The walls won’t save us, and the lay of the land is on our side here. How are the lads?”

“They’re betting on who’ll be the first to kill one of the enemy.”

“But they know the royal guard won’t go into action unless things get really bad. Our task is to protect the king.”

“And what are the Beaver Caps for?” Vartek grumbled. “I’ve heard they’re putting all of us in the left reserve.”

“That’s what I’ve heard, too,” Izmi said with a shrug. “But we’ll get a chance to swing our axes. Or are you impatient?”

“You should put your armor on, milord,” the marquis said instead of answering.

“There’ll be time enough for that.”

“The light cavalry is already involved in skirmishes with the advance forces, just beyond that wood. Perhaps there won’t be any time.”

“Milord!” cried a soldier, running up to them with a piece of paper in his hand. “From the commander of the center!”

Izmi ran his eyes over the lines of writing and nodded to tell the messenger that he was free to go.

“Vartek, get over to our men. Leave a hundred, no, better a hundred and fifty guards with the king, and take all the rest over onto the left slope.”

“So we are being stuck in the reserve!” Vartek said, frowning discontentedly.

“Just do it, guardsman!” Izmi’s voice suddenly had a hard edge.

“Yes, lieutenant!” Vartek picked his snow-dusted helmet up off the ground and ran to carry out his orders.

Before he went to the king for his final instructions, Izmi looked round the field one last time. For some stupid reason someone had called this huge open space, almost a league in length, the Field of Fairies. The lieutenant didn’t know how they had come up with this name, and he didn’t want to know. So it was the Field of Fairies. Would it have been any easier to fight here if it was called the Field of Ladybugs, for instance? Or the Field of the Great Prophecy?

Of course it wouldn’t.

So what difference did it make now? The military council hadn’t chosen this place for the general engagement by accident. It was four days’ journey from Avendoom, and the Nameless One’s army had to pass through it. At the southern end of the field stood the Pimple, a tall hill with shallow slopes. The king’s headquarters were on its summit. The gnomes had set up two of their long-range cannons up there, and another monstrosity that hadn’t been seen before—a Crater. Unfortunately there hadn’t been enough time to bring a second Crater and its crew of gnomes from Isilia.

The huge hill was the basis of the entire defense, and the core of Stalkon’s army was there. Two thousand infantry of the line, five thousand cavalry, and six thousand Wind Jugglers. A powerful force, especially taking into account that the enemy would have to climb the hill under fire from the bowmen on the summit, and a cavalry charge downhill had a more shattering impact.

Izmi wasn’t too concerned about the center. Six thousand bowmen could stop anybody. And there were a thousand light cavalry on each flank of the center. He and his men were on the left, and on the right there were the Moon Stallions, brave lads. If anything went wrong, the archers would help out, and they could always be moved across to the army on the right.

The transports and the healers were behind the hill.

Half a league away, directly opposite the Pimple, was the dark Rega Forest. Two roads came down from the north, skirting round the forest on the left and the right. They ran parallel to each other for the full length of the field.

The left road cut across the Wine Brook and ran between the Pimple and another forest—the Luza. The right road ran between the hill and a narrow but deep and swift-flowing little river—the Kizevka. Standing on the road right between the hill and the river was a village—Slim Bows.

The village had provided the base for the army on the right. It had been a good decision to position soldiers in Slim Bows. If the enemy came along the road on the right, he would have to pass through the village, unless he wanted to storm the hill under fire from the bowmen, or sail along the river. And there was no need to worry about the flanks of the right army—they were securely defended.

In one week the army had transformed Slim Bows into a small fortress. They dug out a moat and ran water into it from the river, built an earthen rampart and stuck enough stakes in it to make every hedgehog in Siala jealous, dismantled all the houses and used the materials to build walls and towers for bowmen.

They built two walls, and if the enemy happened to take the first one, the defenders would have time to pull back behind the second. Now there were two thousand crossbowmen and three thousand swordsmen, selected from various detachments, ensconced in Slim Bows. The gnomes had put three cannons on the first wall. About nine hundred yards behind Slim Bows stood the dark wall of the two-thousand-man reserve.

Izmi was far more concerned about the left army. Nine thousand infantry, of which four thousand were militia and guardsmen from Avendoom, standing in the road between the Pimple and the Luza Forest. The soldiers had been divided up into battalions so as to completely cover the space between the hill and the forest. The battalions were stationed about fifty yards beyond the Wine Brook.

Although it wasn’t very wide—only about a yard—the brook was deep, and it was not going to freeze. There had been a bridge here, but the eager soldiers had dismantled it, and now the enemy cavalry would have its work cut out to cross the brook. In any case, they wouldn’t have enough space to get up a gallop. And the enemy infantry would have to break formation crossing the obstacle and then, before they could raise their shields again, they would be treated to thousands of welcoming crossbow bolts.

The three hundred elfin bowmen had been positioned between the battalion on the left (based on Jolly Gallows-Birds taken from twelve ships) and the Luza Forest. The dark elves themselves had insisted on being placed there. Izmi hoped that their bows would help the left army to stand firm.

But Stalkon’s left army was the most vulnerable spot in the forthcoming defensive action, so two thousand of the reserve had been placed here.

Izmi looked into the distance, to where he could just make out the wall of the Rega Forest. On the bank of the Kizevka, right beside the road snaking out of the forest, stood the Castle of Nuad. Its twelve-yard-high walls and four round towers rose up menacingly above the road. The castle’s garrison of four hundred men had been reinforced with five hundred Wind Jugglers. The enemy would either have to take the citadel by storm and delay his attack on the right army, or cover this section of the route under constant bombardment from the defenders of Nuad. There was another unpleasant surprise waiting for the Nameless One in the form of two gnomish cannons. And if the enemy did get by, he would be hit from the rear by three hundred horsemen lying concealed within the walls of the castle. No great force, but even so it was capable of causing plenty of trouble.

Izmi’s arms bearer appeared in front of him.

“Milord?”

“Prepare my armor.”

The young lad nodded his hatless head, and Izmi set off for the king’s tent. Stalkon’s headquarters were surrounded by a formidable ring of Royal Guards and Beaver Caps. Several other warriors, holding flambergs—terrible two-handed swords with wavy blades—were guarding the royal standard.

The king was in the tent with his younger son, Stalkon of the Spring Jasmine, who was in command of the cavalry in the center, and the head of the Order of Magicians, Artsivus. There were also two magicians unfamiliar to Izmi—a man and a woman. Both of their staffs were marked with three rings. So they were powerful, even if they weren’t archmagicians.

The king noticed the lieutenant, nodded in greeting, and gestured for him to wait until the conversation was over.

“It is a real solution to the problem, Your Majesty,” Artsivus continued, huddling under his warm rug.

“And what if the wind blows in our direction? Blows it onto us? We’ll lose the army before the battle has even started!” the king’s son blurted out abruptly.

“I assure you,” the unfamiliar magician droned, “this spell will not affect people and—”

“Please remind me, Mister Balshin,” the king interrupted. “Are we talking about the same spell that wiped out the entire population of a village to the south of here only this summer? What was the place called, now?”

“Vishki, Your Majesty,” the woman replied reluctantly.

“Thank you, Madam Klena. You are most kind. It was Vishki. The very same village where you almost captured the people who were carrying out a special Commission for me?”

“That was a regrettable misunderstanding,” said the head of the Order, interceding for the two magicians. “The thief and the elves were not in any danger.”

“I can well believe that,” the king agreed, although there was not a trace of belief in his voice. “Of course they were in no danger, except from your experiments, which cost me an entire village. When I gave my permission for this insane experiment in spring, Your Magicship, I had no idea that there would be civilian casualties!”

“Believe me, Your Majesty, neither did we,” said Klena. “The ogre’s books that we used contained an error. It has now been corrected, and the tragedy at Vishki will not be repeated.”

“You must give permission, Your Majesty,” said the old magician, still trying to persuade the king.

“No, Artsivus. Don’t you understand what a great risk it is?”

“I understand,” said the magician, lowering his head like a bird. “But you know I understand these matters … I guarantee that the spell will work properly.”

The king drummed his fingers on the table without speaking.

“The scouts report that the Nameless One has fifteen thousand ogres. Fifteen thousand! They’ll simply brush aside our left flank without even stopping. After the Nameless One himself, that is the greatest danger that threatens Valiostr. It will take at least eight of our soldiers to kill one ogre. We simply don’t have the numbers. We can”—Artsivus laid special emphasis on the last word—“we can save the kingdom if we eliminate the ogres. That is the very reason why I have spent so long studying the ancient books of that race, that is why Madam Klena and Mister Balshin have been experimenting for so long with this spell and finally been successful, through the method of trial and error.”

“It was a fine error!” the prince observed. “Hundreds of people killed in a couple of seconds, and you call it an error!”

“You only have to give the order, and two minutes later there won’t be a single ogre left in Valiostr. That will greatly weaken the Nameless One’s army, Your Majesty,” the Master of the Order continued, ignoring Stalkon Junior. “I assure you, only ogres will be killed.”

“All right!” the king finally decided. “Do it, and may Sagra be with you!”

Artsivus nodded, and Balshin and Klena bowed hastily and left the tent.

“I am relying on your experience, Your Magicship. When should I expect results?”

“In two or three minutes.”

“So soon?” the king asked in surprise. “But didn’t you tell me that the balance between the sorcerer’s powers and the powers of the Order made such potent spells impossible?”

“This is the very simplest of all the spells that I know, Your Majesty. It was difficult to assemble, but now a first-level student could manage it. And as for the balance, for better or for worse, that is true. While there is still power in the Rainbow Horn, the Council of the Order can absorb the power of the Nameless One. His free shamans are a different matter. We won’t be able to spare any time for them.”

“So my soldiers are going to be roasted by shamans?”

“The Order has five free battle magicians. Those who will not be required for our circle. If Your Majesty will permit it, I shall send them to the army.”

“Of course.”

Artsivus grunted and got up out of his chair, leaning on his staff. He called his apprentice, Roderick, and left the tent.

“I hope you know what you are doing, Father.”

“I do, Artsivus has never let me down. How are your men?”

“The cavalry are spoiling for a fight.”

“Order them to dismount. Send the horses to the transports.”

“But…”

“Listen to what I’m saying. Everyone is to dismount. Cavalry in the center won’t do us any good at all. When the gnomes’ cannons start roaring, the horses will go hysterical and at the very least break formation. In the worst case they will wreck the entire line of defense. Better to have five thousand dismounted cavalrymen to reinforce our infantry lines and halt anyone who tries to break through to the Wind Jugglers than to trample our own comrades-in-arms. Dismount. I know what I’m talking about.”

“But what if the heavy cavalry of the Crayfish Dukedom advance against us?”

“Then you will order the bowmen to fire at the horses. Not very chivalrous, but effective.”

“Very well, Father, I will do that.”

“Izmi, my boy, move all your men away from my tent. I’ll manage well enough with the Beavers.”

“The duty of the Royal Guard is to protect its king.”

“In times of peace. In times of war that is what the Beaver Caps do. Remove all your men. We’ll be needing every one of them soon.…”

“How I regret that my father is not here,” Izmi exclaimed bitterly. “He would have been able to convince Your Majesty.”

“I also regret that Alistan is so far away.”

“My king!” exclaimed an adjutant, rushing into the tent. “Baron Togg’s mounted archers have clashed with the Nameless One’s advance units and, following a brief engagement, withdrawn from the Rega Forest into the cover of Nuad!”

“It’s started. Send the army commanders to me!”

“Fasten it tighter! Tighter, do you hear me! Damn you, are you stroking a girl or securing a cheval de frise? It’s a cheval de frise, isn’t it? Then why in the name of darkness have you got it gazing up at the sky? To frighten away the sparrows? Angle it, you thickhead! That’s right. And now fix it so that no bastard on a horse can come anywhere near us! Don’t even think of relying on the brook, that won’t save you from the cavalry, but a good horse trap and a handy pike will get our backsides out of this cesspit. Why did Sagra have to send me such witless monkeys to command?”

Jig listened as one of the unit officers in his battalion gave some men from the militia a roasting. At least it was some amusement before the battle. The guardsman held his halberd against his body with his left hand, took a clove of garlic out of his pocket, cleaned it, popped it in his mouth, and started chewing with relish.

“Are you eating that garbage again?” asked Jig’s partner, Bedbug, making a sour face.

“You don’t like it?”

“Who could like it, when you stink like the Garlic Stalls on Market Square? That stench of yours will drive me crazy—and the Nameless One, too.”

“That would be good.”

“You spend half the day eating garlic!”

“If you don’t like it, you can leave. Milord Lanten needs every guardsman he can get in Avendoom right now. If we can’t hold out, the baron will be responsible for all the defenses. It’s not too late to go back.”

“Don’t talk nonsense!” Bedbug snapped irritably. “I didn’t spend four days trudging all the way here just to push off back home at the last moment.”

“Then stop bellyaching.”

“I’m not bellyaching. I’m just beginning to get angry. We’ve been hanging around here like idiots for an hour and a half now, and no one’s arrived. My feet are frozen.”

“Do you know if they’re going to feed us?” one of the soldiers in the first line asked.

“You’d better ask our battalion officer that,” someone farther back, probably a crossbowman, advised him.

“I’ll feed you this, if you don’t shut your mouths!” barked a unit officer who was walking along the first line, showing them his fist. “You’re like little kids! Too impatient to wait!”

“You try standing here with a halberd or a battleax, like us, and we’ll see how you like it! We’re telling you, the frost is burning our feet!”

“Better your feet than your backsides. They’ll burn for a bit and then stop! And if you’re so smart, why don’t you clear off home to mummy, and stop stirring up my men! The militia have gone green already and their stomachs are churning! And then you start frightening them!”

“Who’s gone green?” said another voice from the rear ranks. “We haven’t gone green, we’ve gone blue! From cold!”

Loud guffaws ran along the ranks of the central battalion of the left army.

Jig laughed, too. Maybe these militiamen would turn out all right after all. A lot of them wouldn’t be needed in this battle anyway—provided the enemy didn’t break the formation, of course. It was a strong battalion, as long as it remained a single united whole.

Jig’s and Bedbug’s luck had placed them in the third rank from the front of the central battalion. The first two ranks consisted of pikemen—the lads had been covered in metal all the way up to the tops of their heads and given pikes the size of wagon shafts: You could have skewered a mammoth on them. At the moment the pikes were pointing up at the sky, like tree trunks, but they would be put to use just as soon as the battle began. And the reason for the pikemen’s heavy armor was simple—the lads needed two hands to hold the pikes, and shields were out of the question. So, since the main blow was taken by front two ranks, they had to wear all that metal.

The men in the third rank were armed with halberds. They had one very simple job to do—strike at the heads of anyone who somehow managed to get close to the front rank. Immediately behind Jig’s rank there were three ranks of men with crossbows. Their role was even simpler—to fire and then withdraw as quickly as possible to the empty center of the battalion, making way for the fourth and fifth ranks, consisting of pikemen armed with seven-yard pikes.

These lads were known as “anglers.” At present all the men behind the crossbows were maintaining their distance, so that the crossbowmen would have space to withdraw in after their volley.

Immediately behind the “anglers” there were several ranks consisting of a jumbled assortment of men whose main job was to press up against the front ranks if a formation of infantry of the line clashed with the battalion. And, of course, if the ranks were broken, then they would fill the breach for a while, if only with their own bodies. This was a task that could be managed even by soldiers who weren’t trained to work in battalion formation and men from the militia.

Right at the center were the commander, the standard-bearer, a number of Beaver Caps, the trumpeters, and the drummers, who gave the signal to maneuver. So the battalion was actually quite a formidable force, and it was well protected against attacks on its flanks.

“Bedbug, what are you gaping at?”

“Look over there, at our neighbors,” the guardsman chuckled. “Those lads have had a real stroke of luck. As safe and cozy as in Sagra’s pocket. Didn’t I tell you we should have gone across to them?”

There was another battalion standing to the left of Jig’s, the one that was closest of all to the Luza Forest.

“Why do you think they look so cozy?” asked Jig in surprise, breathing garlic all over Bedbug.

“Because they’ve got so many Beaver Caps and Jolly Gallows-Birds. And three hundred elves with bows, too!”

“Well, as far as the Gallows-Birds are concerned, they’re not right in the head. And the Beavers have been put in the third line, so that battalion hasn’t got any halberdiers. And those lads with the fangs … Sagra alone can understand the elves. Into the darkness with them, I say. They’re all smiles, and then suddenly they stick a knife under your ribs.”

“I’d rather have their knife under my ribs then be dispatched in the darkness by the Nameless One’s magic. And what’s more, they have bows, and I’ve heard dark elves are even better with them than the Wind Jugglers.”

“You don’t have anything to worry about, lad,” the nearest pikeman put in. “We’re only three hundred paces from the yellow-eyes, so if need be they can reach our enemies with their arrows.”

“I’ll stop worrying when this is all over,” said Bedbug, refusing to be cheered up.

“Make way! Make way, will you!”

All eyes turned toward the battalion commander. He had another man with him. Obviously not a soldier.

“This way, good sir. Stand just behind them.”

A young man in a cuirass and a light helmet, armed with a short sword, stood right behind Jig.

“Hey, commander!” one of the anglers shouted. “What’s all this about? Can’t you see you’re breaking up the formation? What do we want a swordsman here for? Is he going to jump over our heads?”

“Why don’t you shut up, you ignorant oaf! He isn’t a swordsman! He’s a gentleman magician! I can stand him at the other side of the battalion if you like.”

“No, if he’s a magician … no … I’m sorry, good sir.”

“Take good care of His Magicship, lads. He’ll save your little souls for you if the Nameless One’s shamans get uppity.”

“We will!” the ranks roared all together.

A look of relief appeared on the faces of many soldiers. Nobody had said anything, but they had all been wondering what would happen if the battalion was attacked with magic. Soldiers could fight soldiers, but what could you do with shamans? Sagra had heard their prayer and sent them magicians.

“Now we’ll give them a fight!” Bedbug exclaimed, tightening his grip on the halberd.

His mood was clearly beginning to improve.

“Hey, neighbors! Neigh-bors! How are you doing? Not frozen yet?” shouted one of the men standing to the right of their battalion.

“Why, do you want to come across and warm me up?” a mischievous voice replied. It sounded like one of the militiamen this time, too.

A roar of laughter ran through the ranks again.

“Down, you peasant! But if you do feel cold we can invite you to come visiting!” the answer came back.

“If it gets too hot here, that’s when we’ll come over! We’re not cheap! Always willing to share the heat and the enemy!” Jig barked out, surprising even himself.

The ranks backed him up with a united roar.

“Listen, you,” said Bedbug, nudging Jig awkwardly in the side. “Here, this might come in handy.”

“What is it?” asked Jig, looking at what Bedbug was holding out to him—a bundle of pond weed or dried grass, tied round with a blue ribbon that had faded with age.

“Well…,” Bedbug said, and hesitated. “You remember in the guard hut I told you my granny was a witch?”

“So?”

“Well, she made this. It’s an amulet. She said it wards off bad spells for anyone who carries it.”

“So?”

“What do you keep saying that for?” Bedbug asked angrily. “Are you going to take it or not?”

“What about you?”

“I’ve got one just the same.”

Jig shrugged, took the bundle of grass, and stuck it behind his belt. He didn’t believe in Bedbug’s fairy tales, but Sagra took care of those who took care of themselves. This piece of trash couldn’t do any harm, and Bedbug would feel better.

“Hey! You up on the horse! How are things down there? Is there going to be a fight, or can we all go home now?” one of the pikemen asked a messenger who had jumped the Wine Brook and steered his horse between the two battalions toward the hill.

The rider reined back his mount.

“Not much longer to wait!” The messenger had to shout loudly, so that the rear ranks could hear him. “The mounted patrols have already left the Rega Forest, the scouts have gone into action on the right-hand road, right beside Nuad!”

“Who have they got, then?”

“Mostly men from the north! Tribes that live on the Shore of the Ogres! And the barbarians, of course!”

“No need to worry about them just yet,” Bedbug growled. “A rabble.”

“And who is there that’s more our style?”

“Crayfish! Moving along the left road, half an hour away from you!”

“How many of them?”

“A lot! Eight thousand cavalry and about fifteen thousand infantry.”

Some whistled, some swore, some appealed to Sagra.

“Did you see any shamans?” asked the magician standing behind Jig.

“What I didn’t see, I didn’t see, lads! Take care! Sagra willing, we’ll meet again!”

“Good luck to you!”

“You take care!”

But the rider had already gone rushing off toward the hill and he didn’t hear the soldiers’ good wishes.

“Well, the wait’s almost over, Jig. Not much longer.”

“You look like you’re trembling.”

“That always happens to me. Nerves. It’ll pass. Eight thousand cavalry!”

“We’ll hold out. They won’t get to us through that forest of pikes, don’t be afraid. No, better to be afraid.”

The priests of Sagra walked along the line of the battalion, offering the soldiers spiritual comfort before the battle. Like all the other soldiers, Jig murmured a prayer to the goddess of death.

The sound of two loud bangs came from somewhere to the north.

“Magic!” gasped one of the pikemen nearby.

“In the name of the Nameless One, what magic?” the unit officer reassured the anxious soldiers. “That’s the sound of the half-pints’ cannons at Nuada. The fun must have started there already!”

The soldiers craned their necks, trying to see what was happening on the far side of the Field of Fairies, but the long dark tongue of the Rega Forest prevented them from seeing the castle and anything going on close to it.

“Look!” someone shouted.

Jig shifted his gaze from the forest to the left road. The first forces of the army of the Nameless One had appeared on that side of the field.

“Does she have a name?” asked the gnome, lighting up his pipe.

“Actually, it’s a he.”

“All right, so what’s his name?”

“Invincible.”

“Well now, that certainly suits him,” the cannoneer said with a nod, examining the shaggy ling, who was nestled securely on Honeycomb’s shoulder. “My name’s Odzan, but the lads all call me Pepper.”

“Honeycomb.”

“Yes, I know already. The commander told me. A Wild Heart, if I’m not mistaken?”

“Yes.”

“I heard what happened to you up at the Lonely Giant. Was it really hot?”

“I wasn’t there.”

“Ah … I heard that fifty of your lads survived and managed to get away.”

“Forty-seven.”

“Ah … Are they in your unit?”

“No, they’re in the center, as far as I know.”

“Hmm,” said the gnome, blowing out a smoke ring. “Then how come you ended up in the army on the right?”

“They said they needed a unit officer.”

“So you and your lads are going to defend our beards?”

“It looks that way.”

There it was again in the distance. Boom! Boom! The gnome stretched himself up to his full low height, took out a little spyglass that had obviously been made by a dwarf, and pointed it at the castle that stood directly in line with Slim Bows.

“They’re having a hot time of it. Forty minutes they’ve been blasting away. And the enemy’s in no hurry to come our way. Surely Lepzan’s not going to do all the work for us? He used to be a real jackass, too. Couldn’t even light a fuse properly. And now just look at him blaze away! I remember what happened one time in the Steel Mines…”

Honeycomb wasn’t listening to the garrulous gnome. He leaned against the wall and closed his eyes. It had been a bit of a surprise to find himself at the Field of Fairies. It wasn’t all that long since the magician at Cuckoo Castle told the Wild Heart he was well and completely cured of the after-effects of the orcish shamanism. A month and a half at the most.

When he left the Border Kingdom, Honeycomb had made his way to Ranneng, and from there to the capital, where he had to deliver the letter left for him by Alistan Markauz. When his business had been dealt with and the Wild Heart was wondering what to do next—wait for the group to come back to Avendoom or go straight to the Lonely Giant—the Nameless One had invaded the kingdom.

Chance had brought him together with Izmi Markauz, who remembered the yellow-haired warrior from his fight with the ogre in the royal palace. The lieutenant of the Royal Guard immediately offered the Wild Heart the command of a unit of a hundred men. Honeycomb had tried to refuse at first, saying his place was with his comrades who had survived the fall of the Lonely Giant, but Milord Izmi could be quite persuasive.

So now Honeycomb found himself in command of sixty swashbuckling rogues, selected for Slim Bows from various different forces, and forty crossbowmen from Shet’s detachment of northerners. The warrior had never commanded anything bigger than a platoon of ten men before, and at first he was a little frightened, but after a week with the unit he realized there was practically no difference between ten men and a hundred. Just give the orders and make sure the lads didn’t do anything rash when there’s no need.

And now his unit had been ordered to defend one of the three cannons located at Slim Bows.

“Will you look at that! I swear on my granddad’s bugle, those lads have all the luck!”

The gnome’s sudden exclamation roused Honeycomb from his reverie. The Wild Heart got to his feet, picked his ogre-hammer up off the ground, and looked to the left. There was a detachment of cavalry approaching the hill at full gallop. And another detachment the same size—a line of red and green—was heading toward the left army.

“Four thousand in a detachment!” declared Rott—the commander of the crossbowmen in Honeycomb’s unit—screwing up his eyes. “It looks as if the Crayfish have put all their cavalry into the field. The left flank is in for a tough time all right.”

“Rouse the lads,” Honeycomb ordered as he watched the red and green wave rolling on. “If they falter going up the hill, they’ll come our way.”

Bang! The heavens trembled and Honeycomb ducked and pulled his head into his shoulders in surprise.

“That’s the boom of the Crater on the hill,” Pepper chuckled, raising his head to look up at the sky.

Honeycomb looked up, too, and he saw a column of smoke go soaring up toward the sun, hang for a moment at its highest point, as if it was wondering whether it ought to fall or not, and then come shrieking down toward the ground.

The gnomes on the hill had miscalculated—the cavalry had already ridden past the area where the ball landed—and the mighty explosion simply threw soil up into the air. The only positive outcome was that the horses in the rear line of the cavalry were terrified, and for a while there was complete chaos in the lines.

“What do you think you’re firing at, you villains?” Pepper roared, shaking his fists, as if they could hear him. “Fire at the target, you lousy bunch of dwarves. You’ll be reloading the thing for another half hour now! Crack-handed idiots! Who’s in that team up there? Zhirgzan! Rotate our weapon. With the help of the gods, we’ll hammer the cavalry in the left flank! When are we ever going to get a chance to fire?”

Izmi Markauz’s horse was still nervous after the shot from the Crater, and he scratched its ear. The animals didn’t like the strange noise, but there was nothing that could be done about that.

On the left flank of the center everything was still calm and the reserve had not been required. The greater part of the battle was still to come, and all the soldiers of the Royal Guard could do was watch as the Crayfish cavalry that had arrived along the left road divided into two equal sections and made for the infantry in the center and the battalions of the left army.

Bang!

Bang!

Two explosions shook the air behind the prince’s back and two cannonballs went flying over the infantry’s heads and hurtled toward the advancing cavalry. The first whistled over the horsemen’s heads and landed far down the field, without doing the enemy any harm. The second smashed straight into the galloping cavalrymen, knocking several men down, and exploding in the center of the attacking formation.

Even from there he could hear the screams of the men and the whinnying of the wounded and terrified horses. The Crayfish cavalry’s attack formation was broken, creating a scene of total pandemonium. The riders could scarcely control their hysterical horses, and there was no way the attack could be continued.

“Well done, the gnomes!” shouted one of the bowmen standing behind the infantry.

The prince turned round. The bowmen standing only ten yards away from him had certainly not been wasting their time. Each of them had brought two sharp-pointed poles up onto the hill, and now they were surrounded by an entire forest. Before the enemy could get to the Wind Jugglers in their light armor, he would have to force his way through this barrier. Facing a barrage of arrows. And if he did manage to get through, the warriors would hang their bows on their shoulders and take up their swords.

Bang!

Stalkon thought he must be mistaken, but it really was a cannon shot. The left flank of the enemy cavalry was flung up into the air and pieces of broken human bodies and horses went flying in all directions.

“That was a shot from Slim Bows, milord,” the prince’s arms-bearer told him.

“So I see. The gnomes are spoiling for a fight, too.”

Meanwhile something like order had been restored to the ranks of the cavalry and, to the sound of jeering from the soldiers on the hill, the Crayfish retreated to the rear of the Field of Fairies. The prince reckoned it would take the enemy at least fifteen minutes to recover from what had happened. Exactly the amount of the time the gnomes needed to cool their weapons and reload them.

A horn sounded, and the unit commanders gave the order.

“Halberdiers into the fourth rank.”

“Into the fourth rank! Change places with the pikemen!”

“Crossbowmen, at the ready! Pikemen in the fifth and six ranks, stay awake!”

“Crossbowmen, make ready!”

As if the action was taking place in a training exercise, not in a real war, Jig moved into the fourth rank without any fuss or bother, and stood sideways so that the crossbowmen could get past him easily. Bedbug repeated his partner’s movements like a reflection in a mirror. The only hitch was the magician, who didn’t know what he was supposed to do; a sergeant who happened to be close by shoved him into a gap.

“Crossbowmen into the fourth rank!” The order rang out in the battalions on both sides of them.

All the battalion commanders had chosen the standard arrangement for defending against cavalry. When horsemen attacked, the men with halberds could make the best use of their weapons from the fourth rank, striking slashing blows from above or thrusting above the shoulders of the pikemen standing in front of them. From there the halberdiers couldn’t impede the first or second ranks, and the halberds didn’t catch on the pikes. The fourth and fifth rows of “anglers” became the fifth and sixth rows.

A horn sounded again, and an order rang out in the battalions.

“Front ranks down on one knee! Pikes at the ready!”

Sticking the heels of their pikes into the frozen ground and angling their weapons so that if the cavalry tried to take the battalion head on it would have to break through a forest of pikes, the soldiers went down on one knee.

“Second ranks! Pikes at the ready!”

The second row lowered its pikes, holding them at the level of their hips, above the shoulders of the kneeling front rank.

“Third rank! Pikes at the ready!”

Another forest of pikes was added to the ones already lowered. The soldiers standing in front of the crossbowmen held their weapons at the level of their chests, in order not to hinder the second row in the fight.

The cavalry were close, a hundred and fifty yards from the Wine Brook. The horsemen had lowered their lances, preparing to rip the battalion open, to shatter it like a blow from a battering ram.

Jig watched a rider in the front line who seemed to be coming straight at him. The warrior, in a horned helmet with green plumage and a scarlet and green tunic that concealed his armor, lowered his long lance decorated with numerous ribbons and little flags.

Arrows sang in the air—the detachment of elves standing beside the Luza Forest had started bombarding the cavalrymen’s right flank. The dark elves might handle their bows like gods, but here were only three hundred of them against several thousand, and they wouldn’t stop the cavalry.

The uproar was indescribable. The earth shook under the pounding blows of thousands of hooves. A horn gave a low growl and the unit commanders yelled fit to burst.

“First line of crossbows! Fire!”

A sklot gave a dry click right beside Jig’s ear. The second line of crossbowmen had already taken the place of the first.

“Fire!”

Then another switch of ranks.

“Fire!”

The third rank of crossbowmen hastily withdrew to the center of the battalion, where their comrades were reloading their weapons.

“Fifth and sixth rank! All together! Pikes at the ready!”

The fifth and sixth ranks of anglers had already occupied the places where the crossbowmen were standing. They swung their pikes over to the left in order not to hinder the second and third rows, and froze.

Now all three battalions standing on the left road looked like very big, very angry, and very dangerous hedgehogs that were impossible to approach.

The time between salvoes from the crossbowmen and switches of rank was no more than eight seconds. The crossbows inflicted a lot of damage on the front ranks of cavalry, the elves rained arrows down on the enemy, and now the horses in the rear ranks had to advance over the bodies of the dead, which reduced their speed. And the Wine Brook had its effect, too—while the first ranks (most of them already dead) had leapt cleanly across the obstacle, the rear ranks noticed the brook too late, and dozens of horses and riders went tumbling head over heels, sowing even more confusion.

The horses had to be reined back, disrupting the rhythm of the attack formation so that the famous impact of a shattering blow from heavy cavalry was lost. But the scramble didn’t extend all the way along the Wine Brook. Many horsemen hurtled toward the battalions, as if they wanted to winkle those accursed crossbowmen out of their centers.

“Hold formation, you monkeys!”

“Stand firm! Don’t run! Pikes!”

“Ho-o-o-old!”

“Sta-a-a-a-a-a-and!”

The cavalry came rolling on, closer and closer, closer.…

“A-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-aa-aa-aa-aaa-aaa-aa!”—all the battalions uttered the same mighty roar, combining the anticipation of battle, and a curse, and fear … and the desire to instill fear in the horses and their riders.

The horsemen were no fools; they had no intention of running onto the pikes.

The cavalry always tries to frighten the infantry, and it always believes the infantry will run. And very often the infantry does run, although its salvation lies in holding a solid formation, not in running away.

Most of the Crayfish had swung their horses round in time, and now they were hurtling along the line of the battalions. Another section went galloping into the gaps between the bristling squares of infantry. The crossbowmen on the sides couldn’t risk firing at the enemy in case they hit their own comrades in the other battalions, but the crossbows in the rear ranks didn’t hesitate, and as soon as the cavalry flew out into the rear they fired a withering salvo, and then they were joined by the crossbowmen from the front section of the battalion, who had already managed to reload their weapons.

But even so, some riders among those who attacked the left army drove their armor-clad horses straight at the pikes without the slightest fear. Some of them were fools, some were recklessly brave (that is, hopeless fools), some were carried away by the dash and fury of the battle, and some simply didn’t manage to halt or turn their horses in time. The front of the battalions took the impact of several hundred horsemen.

Rumbling and clattering, desperate screams, the clanging and scraping of metal on metal.

The impact of the cavalry sent the ranks staggering back. Some men fell.

“A-a-a-a-a-a!” One of the riders was unable to stay in the saddle and, like a stone from a catapult, he went flying over the heads of the cavalry to land somewhere in the rear ranks.

Jig hoped very much that the lousy rat would be welcomed with wide open arms back there.

Up at the front there was a full-scale scrimmage. The pikemen were zealously skewering anyone who came within their reach. One of the horsemen reared his mount up on its hind legs and rode it at his enemies. The horse immediately ran its belly onto four pikes and collapsed, crushing two soldiers in the front rank; the rider leapt down agilely off the poor beast and started waving his sword, hoping to hold out until help arrived, but Bedbug had his wits about him, and his heavy halberd came plunging down on the valiant man’s head right between the horns of his helmet. Without hesitating, Jig added a blow of his own, thrusting his halberd in under the man’s helmet.

While several soldiers in their section were pulling their pikes out of the horse’s body, another horseman performed the same maneuver, and his horse crushed part of the second rank. Two more horsemen drove in through the gap, then more.

And more.

The cavalrymen were losing their horses, but they were achieving something very important—a frontal section of the formation of the central battalion had been torn open, and the Crayfish who were nearby wasted no time.

Jig went dashing forward. The halberdier’s job is to deaden the momentum of the attackers but, without even knowing how, he found himself in the thick of the slashing and hacking. There were no more than fifteen Crayfish, and only three of them were still on their horses. The pikemen grasped their swords.

Jig struck one of the cavalrymen in the back with the shaft of his halberd, hacked at the leg of another with all his might, then took a good swing and thrust the spike of his halberd through the heavy cuirass of some noble warrior. Bedbug, who had somehow appeared beside him, cut off a horse’s leg, and the rider fell straight onto some soldier’s thoughtfully positioned pike.

Before Bedbug could straighten up, a cavalryman nearby struck downward with his lance and pinned the guardsman to the ground. Jig screamed out loud and attacked. The rider held out his shield. The guardsman struck again, caught his enemy by the neck with the hook of his halberd, and jerked, dragging him off his horse. Once again one of the pikemen was there to finish off the man, who was lying dazed and helpless on the ground after his fall out of the saddle.

“Form up!” someone shouted at Jig, and a soldier pushed him back.

He obeyed—he couldn’t bring Bedbug back now. The cavalry breakthrough had been halted and the pikemen re-formed their ranks.

“Cro-men, fire!”

The crossbows sang again. The crossbowmen in the frontal ranks of the battalion were joined by those from the rear ranks, who had already shot the cavalrymen who galloped through to the rear.

The remnants of the cavalry of the Crayfish Dukedom sensibly withdrew, taking crippling casualties from the steel rain of crossbow bolts.

“First rank stand erect! Crossbowmen! Into the third rank! At ease! Pikes in the air! Horse traps out of the ground! Ten paces back! To the count of the drum, march!”

Jig tramped back willingly with all the others, leaving an area littered with the bodies of men and horses in front of them.

“Hey, friend!”

Jig didn’t realize straightaway that he was being spoken to. It was a pikeman he knew.

“Glad you’re still alive.”

“Me, too.”

“Great, the way you dragged that bastard off his horse! Good for you!”

“That was too good for him! He killed Bedbug.”

“Yes, I saw. I’m sorry for the lad, but we gave them a good mauling!”

“What did they do to us?”

“About eighty gone.”

“Ha-alt!” came the order, and the battalion stopped.

The right and left battalions had followed the example of the central one, moving back to maintain the line of defense.

“Rest!” The order ran along the ranks.

It was only now that Jig realized just how heavily he had been sweating during the brief battle.

Izmi sighed in relief. Despite his misgivings, the left army had withstood the impact of the cavalry, and not only withstood it, but inflicted serious losses. More than a thousand Crayfish had been left lying on the ground, most of them killed by the hail of crossbow bolts and the elves’ arrows. The sections of the Nameless One’s army that retreated had now reunited with the cavalry that had been testing the strength of the center a few minutes earlier, and the surviving horsemen were re-forming into a broad attack formation. Izmi reckoned there were slightly fewer than seven thousand of them.

“Am I mistaken, milord? Doesn’t it look as if they’ve decided to break through on to the hill?” Vartek asked, screwing up his eyes. “The gnomes haven’t had time to reload the cannons yet.”

“Lower your visor and be prepared to lead the men out to help if the Crayfish crush the infantry.”

“Work, you sons of dwarves! Work!” Pepper tongue-lashed his cannoneers. “Can’t you see what’s happening out on the field? The center’s not the left army, they can’t muster that many pikes! We’ve got to give them a hand!”

“We are working, Pepper! Can’t you see?” red-bearded Zhirgzan panted in his deep bass voice.

“Then you’re working too slowly! Load faster!”

“Wait, Pepper!” said Honeycomb, who had borrowed the gnome’s spyglass to take a look at what was happening at Nuad. “Swing the cannon round.”

“What? What for?”

The Wild Heart handed the spyglass to the gnome without saying a word. Pepper looked in the direction indicated and roared.

“Agh, damnation! Looks like our turn’s come! Swing it round! Swing it! And stick that ball up your backside! Load it with grapeshot!”

“My prince, I’m afraid the gnomes will not have time to fire a second salvo,” said the Beaver Cap standing beside Stalkon: Two of the Beavers had been attached to the Prince of the Spring Jasmine as his bodyguards.

“Sound the alert!”

He had seen the cavalry’s unsuccessful attempt to break through the left army. Now the combined forces of the Crayfish would try to break the center.

“Tell the bowmen to aim at the horses!” the commander of the center ordered, keeping his eyes fixed on the approaching enemy.

“Already done!”

“Your Magicship! Is there any way you can help us?”

“I do not have any attack spells of sufficient power, Your Highness,” replied the magician sent by Artsivus. “I doubt if I could eliminate even fifty at a time.”

“Well, what about five times instead of one?”

“Then I’m afraid I would not be able to protect the soldiers against the magic of the shamans.”

The prince pursed his lips.

“But I think I can do something that will be useful to you.”

“What?”

“The Skating Rink,” the magician said, and smiled.

Izmi Markauz cursed the moment when his men were sent into the reserve. The center would need help now. That massive cloud of horsemen would sweep over the hill like an avalanche and not stop until it reached Avendoom. It looked as if the king had been too hasty in dismounting the cavalry. With them, there would have been a chance. Now everything depended on the will of Sagra and luck.

The Crayfish infantry had already appeared on the left road, and their sheer numbers were appalling. They were deploying along the Rega Forest, with the clear intention of attacking all three Valiostran armies. And with numbers like that, they could pull it off. In addition, several hundred warriors from the northern tribes were already hurrying along the road from Nuad to Slim Bows. The castle was still showing its teeth and mauling anyone moving along the road on the right, and as far as Izmi could see, the enemy hadn’t stopped trying to take the most northerly bulwark of Valiostr’s forces. But a large part of the Nameless One’s army had passed Nuad, completely ignoring the hail of arrows.

The sorcerer’s army was moving straight into battle from the march, and that was the defenders’ only advantage. If the enemy had arrived all at once and bided his time, the defense would have been crushed like a ripe berry. But as it was, Valiostr still had a chance. All that had to be done was beat those who were at the front, then the ones who followed, and so on to infinity, for as long as their strength held out. Sagra be praised that the enemy had been deprived of his ogres!

“Just look at that! Look at it, will you! That’s a massive force moving up on us. Looks like the lads in the center will have a hard time of it!” one of the pikemen shouted.

“Don’t be so quick to bury them,” said Jig’s neighbor, spitting on the ground. “We’ll see how the horsemen handle their lances running uphill.”

The cavalry advanced, and the riders set their horses to the gallop. The enemy passed the area where the bodies of the men killed by shots from the gnomes’ cannons were lying, and started climbing up the hill. From the center of the Field of Fairies the uphill slope didn’t look very steep. But the reality of things is usually far worse than what we expect. Weighed down by their armor and their riders, the horses found it far from easy to manage the climb.

“Three fingers of arc! Take your aim from the unit commanders! Fire!”

A throng of arrows shot up into the air from the three thousand bowmen, hurtled over the heads of the infantry, and came crashing down on the front ranks of the enemy. Then another volley followed. And another. Even in their heavy armor men were killed—with that number of arrows many found their way in through a joint.

But the horses bore the brunt of the blow. Without any effective protection, they fell, leaving their riders with no chance of escaping the bombardment. The commander of the cavalry had apparently not expected to come up against such a large number of bowmen.

A horn sounded the retreat, and then something unbelievable happened: The ground under the hooves of the horses and the feet of the men turned to ice, and the unmitigated slaughter began. The bowmen fired arrow after arrow at the enemy without pause. The unit commanders yelled commands continuously, changing the angle of fire and making adjustments for the wind. The cold-blooded execution continued. The front rows of the infantry and the dismounted cavalry became impatient and started bombarding the Crayfish from their crossbows.

“They’ve massacred them, milord! I swear by Sagra, massacred them!” Vartek exclaimed.

“I can see,” said Izmi, watching as about six hundred dismounted enemy horsemen launched a desperate attack on the line of infantry.

The skirmish was brief and bloody. The Crayfish were not well loved, and they paid the Valiostrans in the same coin. When it was over there was nothing left of the cavalry of the Crayfish Duke, a force that he must have spent years assembling and training. Stalkon’s men took no prisoners.

“Ah, may the darkness take me!” said Vartek, pounding himself on the leg in his frustration. “I’d give everything to have been in the place of the foulest louse-ridden infantry man in the center!”

“And you’re not the only one, Marquis! Not the only one!”

“Wait!”

“What should we wait for!” the red-bearded gnome asked indignantly. “We have to fire!”

“I’ll fire you! Wait, I’m telling you!”

“What for? They’ll be trampling all over us in a minute, Pepper!”

“Then let them! If I tell you wait, then you wait!” the cannon commander roared furiously.

“Rott!” Honeycomb called to the commander of the crossbowmen.

“Yes, sir?”

“Are the lads ready?”

“Oh, yes!”

“Act as you think necessary!”

Rott nodded and readied the powerful army crossbow standing on the wall for action. Weapons like that were used for defending castles and fortresses. Six long, heavy steel bolts could be loaded into this monster at once. Naturally, this miracle of military ingenuity was heavy, and carrying it around was a good way to get a hernia, but for firing at the enemy from behind a wall, there was nothing to beat it. Apart from its formidable penetrating power, which put the sklots of the infantry of the line in the shade, the “hailstorm” also possessed another absolutely invaluable quality—its rapid rate of fire.

Honeycomb slapped his helmet, lowered the nose guard, and glanced out from behind the wall.

There was a disorganized brown and gray rabble moving toward them along the right-hand road—barbarians and northern tribesmen. He could recognize both of them from his sorties beyond the Needles of Ice.

The barbarians wore only skins of mammoths and polar bears, along with boiled leather with plates of seal bone sewn onto it, and, instead of helmets, they used the skulls of animals from the Desolate Lands, which gave them a rather terrifying appearance. They were armed with axes and clubs, because they knew almost nothing about bows and arrows. In battle they often went completely berserk. Honeycomb would never have denied that the barbarians of the Desolate Lands were good warriors, but they were no match for the warriors of the northern tribes.

Ask any Wild Heart who he’d rather fight against if he had a choice—a thousand barbarians or five hundred northern tribe warriors, and he would choose the barbarians without any hesitation. There’d be some chance of finishing that battle without too many casualties. But that could never happen with the savage northern tribes. These short men with black hair and narrow eyes were magnificent hunters, and even better warriors. They were highly skilled in using short spears to hunt seals, and to skewer their enemies. And in addition, these lads were hardy, they lived where no other people could live—on the Shore of the Ogres.

Now here they were, totally ignorant of words like “strategy” and “tactics,” “reserve” and “flanking maneuver,” advancing on Slim Bows with the obvious intention of taking the fortified village. And the frightening thing was they just might be able to do it.

The catapults installed inside the second wall started bombarding the attackers with crocks of incendiary mixture and rocks. The small detachment of Wind Jugglers added its efforts to those of the catapults.

“At the enemy!” Rott barked. “Fire at will!”

Slim Bows launched a hail of steel. When he had used all six bolts, Rott dragged the crossbow down off the wall, handed it to the loader, and was immediately given another one. Honeycomb was using an ordinary sklot. He aimed it at a tall barbarian with a beard and a face daubed with blue paint, held his breath, and pressed the trigger. The bolt went straight through the skull helmet with no difficulty.

“Pretty good,” Pepper said with a nod of approval, and then suddenly he yelled, “They have bowmen!”

The northern tribe warriors started peppering the wall with arrows from their short-jointed bows. One of the arrows hit a gnome in the neck as he held a smoldering fuse. Another bounced off the cuirass of the soldier who was reloading Rott’s “hailstorm.” A third went through the leg of a swordsman standing behind the crossbowmen.

“Healer!” Honeycomb roared. “Increase the rate of fire!”

“How can we fire any faster?” asked the commander of the crossbowmen, raising his sklot. “These brutes are good shots!”

“Ugh, damnation! I’ll give them what for!” Pepper picked up the fuse dropped by the dead gnome and carried it over to the cannon.

Honeycomb managed to put his hands over his ears in time. The cannon roared, and the wall was wreathed in smoke. The two other cannons farther along the wall fired immediately after the first.

“Those gnomes are always inventing some tricky gadget or other!” said one of the crossbowmen, coughing.

The blue-gray, foul-smelling smoke stung their eyes. Pepper was already tongue-lashing his team to make them get a move on and reload as quickly as possible. When the smoke cleared, it was obvious that the grapeshot had cut a broad bloody swathe through the ranks of the enemy. The northern tribe warriors were retreating in panic. But six hundred barbarians—either completely witless or delirious with battle fever—had carried on and were already swarming across the moat.

“Swordsmen! Make ready!” Honeycomb yelled so hard that his voice almost cracked and broke. “Pepper! Leave that cannon for now and you and your lads get behind shields!”

“Damned if I will!” The gnome cursed, threw aside the swab that they used to clean the cannon, and took up his battle-mattock. “You’ll never see gnomes hiding behind anyone else’s back! Zhirgzan! Give me my helmet!”

At Nuad the battle was raging. The enemy had obviously decided to finish off the indomitable castle, no matter what the cost. The battalions standing on the left road heard a distant cannonade.

“My nephew’s over there,” the pikeman suddenly said.

“What’s your name, brother?”

“Bans.”

“I’m Jig.”

“My hands are frozen. They’ll freeze to the pike even through my gloves soon,” Bans complained.

“Want some garlic?”

“Will it warm me up?”

“They’re the ones who’ll warm you up,” said Jig, nodding in the direction of the Crayfish infantry advancing on them. “In a couple of minutes it’ll be hotter than in a gnome’s furnace.”

“How many of those lousy mongrels are there?”

“As many as there are of us. Or more.”

From the hill Izmi Markauz saw the enemy infantry divide up into three unequal sections and start moving toward the positions of the army of Valiostr. The smallest detachment, which was the farthest away, advanced on Slim Bows, almost at a run. About ten thousand Crayfish, split into five sections, made for the left army. The rest of the infantry and a countless horde of barbarians moved to attack the center.

“Why are our magicians not doing anything, milord?” Vartek asked indignantly. “The entire Council of the Order is up there on the hill!”

“The entire Council, my dear Marquis, is a standing in a circle, holding each other affectionately by the hand,” one of the guardsmen growled from under his helmet. “It’s thanks to them that the Nameless One hasn’t done anything to us yet.”

“Commander!” panted a guardsman who came running up at that moment. “The king has ordered us to watch the left flank of the defense and go into action if they need help!”

“At last!” Vartek growled in delight.

“Is there anything else?” Izmi Markauz asked the messenger.

“They say all the ogres are dead!”

A rumble of joy swept through the lines of guards.

“Who says so?”

“Everyone does. I heard it myself from one of the scouts.”

“Excellent. You can rejoin the ranks.”

“We fought the lousy brutes off! My, but they were stubborn buggers!” said Pepper, waving his bloody mattock.

The barbarian attack had broken down. Two thousand crossbowmen along the entire front of the right army had wrought carnage in the ranks of the attackers. The few barbarians who had managed to cross the moat and the embankment had been finished off by the swordsmen. Now there were mounds of bodies lying under the walls and Honeycomb was afraid that after a few more attacks like that the enemy would be climbing up onto the wall over the corpses of his comrades, like a stairway.

“Zhirgzan! Drop that repulsive thing!” Pepper told the red-headed gnome, who was examining a captured skull helmet curiously. “Get loading! You saw the way those slanty-eyes legged it, didn’t you?”

“They won’t run a second time.”

“What makes you think that, centurion?”

“They’re good warriors, even if they are superstitious. Next time they’ll realize that not everybody dies when the thunder roars, and they’ll continue with the attack.”

“Honeycomb!” called the company commander, walking up to them.

“Yes, commander?”

“Our losses?”

“Eight killed and seven wounded.”

“Here, take this fellow into your unit,” said the commander, indicating a pale, taciturn young lad. “This is His Magicship Roderick. He’ll give your boys a hand if need be.”

Roderick nodded rather nervously and cast a fearful glance at two swordsmen who were throwing a barbarian’s body over the wall.

“Do you have chain mail, Your Magicship?”

The Wild Heart didn’t really believe this lad was a magician. By his reckoning, even Kli-Kli could run rings round this pallid youth.

“Yes,” said the youth, nodding hastily.

Horns sounded outside the walls. The enemy had launched another attack.

There was a loud crash behind him, the heavens echoed the sound, and the smoking comet fired from the Crater hurtled down right into the center of the front square of infantry that was advancing on the center.

It was an appalling blow. Everyone who was anywhere near the explosion was torn to pieces. The impact of the Crater’s shell put Izmi in mind of a god stepping on men by accident.

The infantry was advancing in five units. Three in the first line and another two behind them, at a distance of a thousand yards.

Jig gazed with a strange indifference through the ranks of men and raised pikes at the steel tortoise moving toward them.

“They’ve got crossbowmen!” one of the pikemen shouted.

Jig’s blood ran cold. If the enemy infantry had sklots, then even in their armor the front ranks would be hit hard. At close range a bolt would go straight through the armor as if it was paper, not glorious Isilian steel.

The elves started bombarding the detachment advancing against the left battalion.

“Let me through! Let me through, I say!”

The magician, who had stood behind Jig all this time without saying a word, was scrambling his way forward.

Jig gave a piercing whistle and yelled: “Let the magician through to the front, you damn blockheads! Quick now, or we’ll all be catching steel bolts!”

That did the trick, and the pikemen moved aside to make way. The magician dashed forward, stood in front of the first rank, and held out his hands with the open palms toward the detachment of infantry that had almost reached the Wine Brook. A blinding ball of fire went darting from the magician’s hands and struck the first row of shields, vaporizing them, together with the men, then moved on to the second row, and the third row, and the fourth row of the crossbowmen, until it finally exploded.…

That set them wailing! Jig could hear the howls of dying men as they were burned alive. Many of the soldiers in his battalion swore in satisfaction when they saw how many casualties a single man could inflict on the enemy.

Meanwhile the magician created another fireball, then another, incinerating men by the dozen. The lines of infantry faltered and broke, scattering in panic along the bank of the Wine Brook. The smell of burnt flesh even reached Jig’s battalion.

Suddenly the magician swayed and collapsed in a heap on the snow. Someone from the front ranks dashed to the fallen man, picked him up, and pulled him back into the battalion.

The vigilant unit commanders roared:

“Crossbowmen make ready! First rank! Fire! Second rank! Fire! Third rank! Fire!”

When they’d done their job, the crossbowmen moved back. They were replaced by another nine ranks taken from the rear and the sides of the battalion.

“Fire! Fire! Fire! Fire!”

The confused enemy infantry were caught in a deadly steel shower.

“Agh! The magicians have gone into action!”

Izmi wasn’t listening. Like everyone else, he was following the action in the left army. Some unknown magician had shattered the central detachment of attackers with ease, but the right and left detachments were still moving forward, and had already crossed the Wine Brook. And the other two detachments of the Nameless One’s troops were not far behind.

“Milord!”

Izmi Markauz turned away from the battle scene and looked at the soldier with a huge two-handed sword who had approached him.

“Milord, His Majesty has put my unit at your disposal.”

“How many men do you have?”

“Two hundred.”

Not bad. Two hundred Beaver Caps was more than he had counted on.

“Good. Move across to that copse behind the left army. But don’t get involved in the action just yet.”

“Yes, milord.”

Something told Izmi that help would be needed over there very soon now.

“They have crossbowmen, commander.”

“Ah, the lousy bastards!” roared the commander of the six thousand Wind Jugglers, who were now standing behind the infantry and the dismounted cavalry. He raised his fist to the heavens. “How many of them?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then find out! And be quick about it! Or they’ll pick off all our infantry! Nark!”

“Yes, commander?”

“Take your thousand men and get forward! Put the lads in with the swordsmen. Let them fire point-blank from there! If anyone in the infantry doesn’t like it, tell them I ordered it! Get going!”

“About three thousand!” panted the soldier, running back. “The scouts say three thousand! Marching ahead of the infantry.”

“I can see where they’re marching, I’m not blind.”

The cannons roared behind them and the soldiers ducked, but the commander of the Wind Jugglers took no notice.

“So there are twice as many of us as there are of them,” the old warrior muttered through his teeth, watching as the balls fired from the cannons landed in the farthest ranks of the enemy infantry. “So much the better. They won’t be able to touch us. Bows have a much longer range, and we know how to use them. Listen to my orders! Two fingers of arc! Correction for wind, a quarter-finger to the right! We’ll keep hitting those bird-brains until they start firing! Fire!”

The northern warrior leapt the wall easily, and Honeycomb only just managed to jump aside in time. His short, black-haired enemy handled the spear with a broad notched tip masterfully. The weapon danced in circles and zigzags, and the Wild Heart had to be quick on his feet. Although the crossbowmen were firing continually, on this section of the wall the enemy had managed to break through into Slim Bows, and now the battle was raging along the wall. They had to try to hold out until reinforcements arrived.

The warrior with the narrow eyes suddenly shot up into the air, obviously intending to strike down at Honeycomb with his spear. The Wild Heart dodged to one side and swung his ogre-hammer, and the spiked ball struck the life out of his unarmored enemy.

A barbarian popped up from behind the wall, wearing a polar bear’s skull on his head, and his terrible ax struck the back of the red-headed gnome, who was fighting a soldier dressed in the colors of the Crayfish Dukedom.

The ogre-hammer descended on the bear skull, shattering it into splinters and crushing the barbarian’s head.

“Damnation!” yelled Pepper, thrusting a lighted torch in the face of another soldier and swinging his mattock into the man’s crotch.

“Centurion! Cover my lads!” Rott called as he and twenty of the crossbowmen brought over the reloaded hailstorms.

Seven of the men started methodically picking off the enemy warriors who had climbed over the wall; the others opened fire on those who were crossing the shallow moat. Reinforcements arrived in the form of fifty swordsmen, and together they managed to throw the enemy back off the wall. The magician, who had miraculously survived the slaughter, flung a few final gouts of fire after the routed enemy.

“Stop throwing that fire!” Pepper yelled. “Stop throwing that fire! There’s powder here!”

“Rott! Fire as they retreat! Pepper, get to the cannon! Your Magicship, get off the wall, or you’ll catch a stray arrow!”

The first and second ranks of the left battalion parted for a few seconds to let the Beaver Caps through. Armed with double-handed swords, the warriors maintained wide spaces between them as they dashed straight at the waiting pikes of their enemies. The others followed the Beavers slowly.

Striking with wide, sweeping movements, the Beavers chopped off the pikes and sliced into the ranks of the enemy, breaking up the formation. Of course, not all of them avoided a fatal encounter with an enemy pike, but most of them managed the job well. Swinging the large swords like scythes, they cut deep into the ranks of the attackers, inflicting appalling casualties on the shocked and terrified infantry, and their comrades came crowding on behind them, crashing into the enemy, striking with their pikes and barging on like a mammoth in a china shop, slowly and inexorably following the wedge formation of the Beavers.

The right battalion had also clashed with the Crayfish infantry, but Jig couldn’t see how things were going there. The order ran along the lines:

“Crossbowmen into the sixth rank!”

The battalion was preparing to deliver a thrust like a battering ram, and no crossbows were required for that, so the crossbowmen were moved back and replaced by pikemen.

“Ranks one to six! Pikes at the ready!”

“To the drums! At the double, forward!”

The drums started rumbling in the center, the battalion thrust out its spikes and swayed.

Boom … Boom … Boom … Boom … Boom … Boom-boom … Boom-boom-boom-boom!

The drums speeded up and the battalion rushed forward, moving faster and faster toward the two-thousand-strong detachment of the second line that was advancing to take the place of infantry burnt by the magician and shot down by the crossbowmen. Jig diligently pressed against the back of the pikeman in front of him and yelled, bracing himself for the impact.

With their line broken by the bombardment from the bowmen on the hill, the enemy’s surviving crossbowmen went rushing back without having fired a single shot, and most of them were trampled by their own infantry. The men of the line were not so easily dealt with; they kept on pushing forward up the slope, trying to get past the area under bombardment as quickly as possible. Many of them raised shields to protect themselves against the arrows. One enemy detachment even managed to create a perfectly good “tortoise,” but it ran into the icy patch on the hill and fell apart, and the bowmen immediately picked off the unfortunate warriors.

“Shields together! Lances! Crossbowmen fire at will!” young Stalkon ordered.

The prince realized that, despite the casualties inflicted by the bowmen, this time the enemy would reach them. The rear ranks of bowmen halted the bombardment that had ceased to be effective, took up their swords, and merged into the ranks of the infantry. The only ones who continued firing were Nark’s thousand men and a few crossbowmen, but even they were soon forced to stop. A ragged volley from the Crayfish archers was neutralized by a magician, who made most of the arrows burn up in the air. The enemy infantry pushed forward several hundred men armed with double-handed swords, with the clear intention of breaking the tidy formation of the center.

“Beavers, look lively now!”

The Beavers had their wits about them. The shields parted for a moment to let the warriors of the legendary force through. When the enemy has a sledgehammer, you need a sledgehammer, too—that’s an incontestable rule of war. Skirmishes sprang up along the front, men fighting with their double-handed swords one-to-one or in groups. The Crayfish fought well, but they were still no match for the Beaver Caps and the advantage was with Valiostr, but even so the king’s son gave his order to the bugler:

“Sound the retreat!

The bugle gave the signal several times, and the swordsmen pulled back behind the shields before the enemy infantry, enraged by the death of their comrades, could reach them.

“You’re a pretty good magician, lad,” Pepper panted to Roderick. “You should make more of those balls of fire, then you’d be absolutely invaluable.”

“I try my best, Mister Gnome,” the young magician said with a wry smile.

The magic that had scattered a steady line of infantry advancing against Slim Bows had obviously cost him a great effort.

“Well, centurion, you’re blowing hard already, but it’s only just past noon,” the gnome called to Honeycomb. “Are you alive?”

“Yes, I’m alive. Here, hold Invincible.”

“What do I want with that crazy rat of yours? Do you think I didn’t see the way he went for that barbarian’s face?”

“Hold him, I tell you! I’ve got to go and see the commander!”

The gnome grunted discontentedly and set the ling on his shoulder.

“I hope it won’t gnaw my beard off. Be quick, will you!”

“Rott, while I’m away, you’re in charge!”

“Understood!” the commander of the crossbowmen replied imperturbably.

Honeycomb found his commanding officer in the center of the village, where the temporary hospital was located. Someone had slashed his face open, and the healers were working on him. Honeycomb had to wait until they finished.

“Who’s this you’ve brought me? Who’s this you’ve brought?” one young man, wearing the badge of the guild of healers, was yelling.

“But all his clothes were soaked in blood!” said the medical orderly, trying to make excuses.

“He’s got a cut! Do you understand, you blockhead! An ordinary deep cut!”

“But he was yelling as if his throat was being slashed!”

“How many times do I have to tell you lot that the first ones to bring to the operating table are the ones who aren’t talking! If he’s yelling and asking for help, that means he’ll survive! Nothing’s going to happen to him! But if he’s lying there saying nothing and as pale as a corpse, then he’s in a bad way! And if you bring me any more walking wounded, I won’t answer for what I’ll do to you! Load them all into carts and take them to the main hospital behind the hill! They can sort them out! Bring me only the seriously wounded, the ones with abdominal injuries and lost limbs. Can you manage to hammer that into your men’s heads?”

“Did you want to see me, centurion?” the commander called to attract Honeycomb’s attention.

“Yes, commander. We need to put two hundred swordsmen and at least a hundred crossbowmen on the bank of the Kizevka. Do we have any reserves?”

“We can find reserves,” said the bandaged commander, looking hard at the Wild Heart. “I just don’t understand why we need to move the lads across there.”

“I don’t think the northern tribes will storm the wall again.”

“Where else will they go? They won’t swim down the river!”

“That’s exactly what they’ll do.”

“I understand if it was summer, but it’s perishing cold. Who’s going to jump into the water when it’s about to freeze over?”

“They’re well used to swimming in icy water. They live in the Desolate Lands, after all.”

“What a wild idea!”

“I just don’t want to find them in our rear all of a sudden.”

“All right. I’ll give the order. Get back to your men, we’re expecting another attack any minute. By the way, have you heard the Order got rid of all the ogres?”

The battle seemed to go on forever. The poleax in the prince’s hands grew heavy, but he kept hacking and slashing, like one of the dwarves’ magical toys. The straight line had disappeared a long time ago, and the entire front had broken up into separate skirmishes. They had managed to throw the enemy back four times, and four times he had come back at them, determined to crush the accursed infantry.

These were the finest men of the northern kingdom of Valiostr, those who had been in the heavy cavalry and served as sandmen, the kind of men that superb fighting forces were built around. Practically all the bowmen had joined in the hand-to-hand fighting, and only a small group of the most experienced Wind Jugglers, no more than six hundred of them, had moved aside from the seething action to fire selectively at the enemy.

Stalkon was guarded and protected, his back was covered, and the enemy was given no chance to fire at the king’s son. But even so, despite all their subterfuges, the heir to the throne found himself on the ground twice. The first time he was knocked off his feet by a blow from a battle hammer. Fortunately, one of the two Beavers detailed to protect him had survived the bloody melee and he held off the eager enemy with broad sweeps of his sword until Spring Jasmine was back up on his feet.

The second time a crossbow bolt caught him on the helmet. Fortunately it was only a glancing blow and the bolt bounced off without wounding the prince. But Stalkon was stunned and he fell to his knees, completely disoriented for a moment. One of the barbarians was about to grasp this opportunity, and if not for Ash—the commander of the Wild Hearts who had survived from the Lonely Giant—Spring Jasmine would not have survived the battle.

The cannons and the Crater were silent. It was pointless firing now—more of their own would be killed than of the enemy. All they could do was grit their teeth and keep slashing away.

Stalkon took another heavy blow from a barbarian on his battered shield, jabbed the bearded savage in the face, and split his skin and flesh open with the poleax. It was time to finish this battle, and the sooner the better. As if he had heard this thought, the king sent the right cavalry reserve of the center to support the infantry by attacking the enemy’s flank.

Nuad was holding. The position in the center had evened out and the sudden appearance of the cavalry had disconcerted the ranks of the Nameless One’s army. The Moon Stallions had appeared at exactly the right time. Slim Bows was calm for the time being—the barbarians, northern tribesmen, and units of Crayfish infantry had been forced back and now they had withdrawn to regroup. But things were not going so well for the left army. The left battalion was busy completing the rout of its opponents, the central battalion had just rammed into the second line detachment of infantry, and the right battalion was barely managing to hold, but its opponents were tenacious, and the ranks could falter at any moment.

“Vartek, gallop over to those two hundred Beavers. Tell them to attack the rear of the infantry pressing the right battalion! Do it!” Izmi ordered.

“Commander! It looks as if the elves are in trouble!”

“I can see! Do as I ordered! Bugler! Sound the attack!”

Purple spheres suddenly appeared in the ranks of the right battalion and started methodically annihilating the soldiers. The men faltered.

“The right battalion is retreating, Your Highness!”

“So I see. Gallop to the reserve, let them close the gap. I wonder how our magicians managed to let the shamans get so close?”

Before Jig could understand what was happening, the front ranks had been killed. But it had all been going so well! The battalion had successfully rammed the second line detachment of infantry. Following orders, Jig was back in the third rank when the right royal scrimmage broke out. The heavy halberds were ready and waiting for anyone who managed to get close to the pikemen. Then suddenly dark purple smoke had started rising from the armor of the front ranks, and the suits of armor had fallen to the ground, empty—their owners had disappeared into thin air.

The pikeman Bans was one of the first to be killed. And then it was the turn of Jig’s own line. The weapons and armor of the soldiers beside him clanked as they fell to the ground. A second later Jig was the only one left alive out of the entire line. The battalion was still pressing forward, unaware of what had happened to the front ranks.

Jig saw three men wearing black cloaks straight in front of him. No armor, no weapons. One man threw his hands up, and a silver arrow went flying into a guardsman’s chest. And then it disappeared, without doing him any harm.

“Shamans!” The cry of fright from the rear ranks could be heard even above the roar of the battle.

“A-a-a-a-a,” Jig yelled with his eyes closed, realizing that this was the end.

The guardsman raised his halberd and struck out at the nearest sorcerer with all his might. For a brief moment he glimpsed a pale and utterly astonished face, and then the shaman fell at the raging guardsman’s feet with his head split open.

“You can kill them!” Jig barked. “You can kill the sorcerers! Kill them, lads!”

He swung his halberd again, and the men, suddenly intoxicated with their own courage, broke formation and dashed forward, each trying to get to the accursed shamans first. Jig hooked his halberd onto the leg of a shaman who had already started to work a spell and pulled, felling the man to the ground, then stabbed him in the stomach. His comrades finished off the final shaman and roared as they went dashing at the enemy infantry, which had faltered at the sight of such powerful sorcerers being dispatched so cruelly.

“The spells have stopped, Your Majesty! The sorcerers must have been killed!”

“What does it matter now?” the king asked bitterly.

The right battalion no longer existed. The enemy had struck the running men in the rear, and a few minutes later there were no more than nine hundred of them left. Fortunately the reserve of two thousand and the two hundred Beaver Caps he had given to young Markauz had got there in time.

That lad would make something of himself. His father would be proud of him. He could only hope that the guardsmen could help to save the elves. But that was unlikely. They wouldn’t be in time.

Epilorssa of the House of the Black Moon cursed and reached for another arrow from his quiver. The men had got carried away in the heat of the battle and completely forgotten about the second detachment of the second line. About two thousand men were deploying at the Wine Brook with the clear intention of wiping out the small group of elves by the Luza Forest.

“Duple! Duple!”

They couldn’t expect any help from anywhere. The neighboring battalion was finishing off its surviving opponents, the central battalion was still fighting on, despite the Nameless One’s shamans (Epilorssa had felt the magic), and the right battalion had been completely annihilated by sorcery and panic. The elves could have taken cover in the forest, but it wasn’t all that close, and it was not their way to show their backs to the enemy when they could still fight.

And they fought, firing arrow after arrow at the enemy. The enemy ranks broke into a run, shouting to urge themselves on. Many of them fell with an arrow in the face or a joint of their armor, but there were too few elves, and the distance between them and their enemies was too short. They wouldn’t have time to kill them all in any case.

The elves were standing in four lines. The first line fired from one knee, while the elves standing ten paces behind them fired from a standing position. Ten paces farther back there were more elves firing from one knee, but the archers had been shifted two body-widths to the right, so that they would not accidentally fire into the backs of the comrades standing in front of them. Behind this line was the final one, in which the warriors were standing once again.

Epilorssa gave another order and the front line jumped up, dashed back, positioned itself behind the back line, and started firing again.

Then it was the second rank’s turn to withdraw. Then the third rank, then the fourth. And then the first rank ran back behind its comrades again.

The elves withdrew, firing at the enemy continually. Almost every shot found its target. But the line of shields was very close now.

The crossbows clicked. The dark elves in the first and second lines fell, struck down by the metal bolts. Something hit Epilorssa in the chest and he fell, too. The elf couldn’t understand why he was in so much pain, why he wasn’t fighting and the snow was burning his face so fiercely.

The red snow.

“At those bastards as they run! Straight at their backsides! Fire at will!”

The bowmen standing behind the infantry of the center, which had beaten back the enemy, once again started showering arrows down on their retreating foe.

“Grapeshot, fire!” Pepper barked, and stuck his fingers in his ears.

There was a roar of cannons, the wall at Slim Bows was wreathed in blue-gray smoke once again, and a moment later the sound of the three weapons was echoed by the Crater on the hill dispatching its generous gift of fire.

A wedge formation of Jolly Gallows-Birds suddenly separated off from the left battalion, which had now disposed of its opponents completely. The men dressed in black set the entire Field of the Fairies ringing to their roar of “Wa-a-a-a-a-a-tch your back” and struck at the right flank of the detachment of the Nameless One’s army that was preparing to crush the surviving elves.

“There they are! There they are! Oh, damnation!” shouted one of the swordsmen, pointing toward the Kizevka. “Look how many of them there are!”

“Fire!” the officer ordered, and the crossbow bolts set the river water dancing.

“One finger of arc! All together! Fire!”

Bang! Bang! The cannons replied to the archers.

The wedge of “marines” sliced into the unprotected side of the enemy detachment without encountering any resistance and plowed on toward the center, sowing terror and death as it went. Their Jolly Gallows-Birds battalion was hurrying across to support them, and the central battalion, which had already polished off the first detachment of the second line, hit the enemy from the rear. The enemy forgot all about the elves and started defending themselves.

“Hey, Honeycomb! You were right! Those lads really did decide to take a dip!”

“Just keep firing!” the Wild Heart growled. “Pepper! What are you doing?”

“Give me a hand!” the gnome panted. He was holding a massive cannonball in his hands. “When will those lads ever reload my cannon? How far can you throw this?”

“What’s on your mind?” asked Honeycomb, taking the cannonball from the gnome.

“You’re as strong as a horse, centurion. Can you toss it over the moat?”

“With a good swing.”

“Go on then,” the gnome said, and lit the fuse.

If not for the Gallows-Birds, the dark elves would never have seen Zagraba again. Izmi Markauz reined in his horse in front of them and yelled.

“On the horses. Behind the cavalry, lads! Quickly!”

The elves didn’t waste any time, and leapt up onto the horses behind the guardsmen. Some of them even carried on firing as they did so. The enemy’s crossbowmen woke up and several guardsmen fell, but most of them were already galloping off, carrying their allies away to a safe distance. Izmi was the last to leave. Now he had to offload the elves and overhaul the enemy who had attacked the right battalion.

The retreating men still hadn’t crossed the Wine Brook, and the lieutenant of the royal guard was hoping to finish off the ones who were left. Vartek was galloping along, leaning down against his horse’s neck. Izmi saw a crossbow bolt in his back. The armor hadn’t saved him.

“Are you alive?”

The marquis nodded feebly. Izmi Markauz grabbed the bridle of the wounded man’s horse. He had to get him to the healers as quickly as possible.

Despite the unrelenting mass attacks, Slim Bows was holding out magnificently. It was a good thing the king hadn’t begrudged paying the gnomes properly. Fighting without the cannons would have been an awful lot harder. The left army had returned to its positions and completely restored its line of battle. But now, of course, it had no reserve, and the central battalion had been badly mauled in the fighting.

“What kind of surprise will the Nameless One have for us now, my prince?” asked Ash, slipping his beautiful blade of back steel back into its scabbard.

“What would you say about them, Wild Heart?”

Ash screwed up his eyes and looked toward the Rega Forest, where about thirty huge figures were striding across the field with clubs over their shoulders.

“Just as I thought,” the commander of the Wild Hearts chuckled. “If there are no ogres, then the giants go into action.”

“Get ready!” the prince ordered. “Bowmen! Into the front ranks!”

The sound was heard by everyone who was in the Field of the Fairies. It was like a string snapping in the frosty air. The gentle, melodious note rang out above the earth, and a few seconds later purple fire came crashing down on Nuad.

“D-damnation!” exclaimed Pepper, grabbing the spyglass. “Did their powder explode?”

“I’m afraid not,” said Honeycomb, shaking his head, still unable to believe what had happened.

Nuad was entirely engulfed in flames.

“It’s the Nameless One! It’s the Nameless One!” shouted Roderick, gaping wide-eyed and white-faced at the warriors.

“Don’t talk nonsense!” Rott snapped.

“It was the Nameless One who struck them! The Order has failed! Something has disrupted the balance!”

“My prince, the Order is leaving the hill!”

“What on earth is going on up there?” Stalkon Junior raged.

“Can you see anything?”

“No, first the ground shook, and then there was a billow of smoke,” Jig answered.

“I can see that much myself!” growled the centurion standing beside him.

From behind the tongue of Rega Forest, from the spot where Nuad stood, a column of blue-black smoke was rising up into the sky.

Suddenly the sky above the right army, which had been restored by using the reserve, started flickering. Everybody raised their heads and marveled at this wonder. A minute later the flickering stopped and a massive gout of fire fell on the battalion, consuming several thousand men instantly.

The ground shook again and the ranks of Jig’s battalion tumbled against each other. There were screams of fear.

“Easy now! Everybody on your feet! On your feet, I said!” a centurion roared.

The terrified men were already getting up. They were all staring at the spot where the right battalion had been. There was nothing there now but a gaping black hole. The ground itself seemed to be on fire.

“What was that?”

“Let’s get out of here!”

“May they dwell in the light!”

Jig looked up and saw the sky above them start flickering.

“Up there!” he barked, raising his arm to point.

“Everybody back!” shouted the magician, who had recovered his composure. “We have enough time. Back! Centurions, give the order!”

“Back! To the beat of the drum! At the double! Maintain formation, you apes! Let’s go!”

The central battalion sprinted away from the spot. The one that had been standing by the Luza Forest followed. The men ran as hard as they could, but not one dropped his weapon or tried to push his comrade in the back. Everyone realized that panic would lead them straight to the grave.

A minute later two gouts of fire crashed into the positions where the left army had been standing.

“The left army’s running, Your Highness!”

“I know that, and … darkness!”

The prince saw the two fireballs go hurtling into the places where the retreating army should have been standing. Then he was almost deafened by a crash behind him. He swung round and stared at the spot that had been the top of the hill a minute ago. Now it was a smooth, smoking platform. No cannons, no Crater, no royal pavilion.

“The king’s dead…” The word ran through the ranks of soldiers.

“Damnation!” Stalkon Junior cursed through his teeth, then he took himself in hand and roared: “Ash, stop them! If they run, all is lost! We have to retreat through Slim Bows!”

Even a fool could see that the Battle of the Field of the Fairies had been lost.

“I shall do everything necessary, my king!”

The buglers at Slim Bows almost burst their cheeks sounding the retreat. The army was withdrawing in haste, but without panic, behind the hill in the direction of Avendoom. Everybody had seen what that blow had done to the top of the hill. Everybody knew the king had been directing the battle from up there. Everybody realized that no one could have lived through that.

Honeycomb had seen the two balls of purple fire crash into the positions of the left army, but he didn’t know if any of the soldiers had survived. It was too far away, and the hill was in the way.

“The men are formed up, commander!” Rott reported.

“Leave the hailstorms, lads. Or we won’t be able to run if a thunderbolt comes our way.”

“It won’t,” said Roderick, who had stopped panicking and was calm again.

“How do you know?”

“If the Nameless One could have vaporized us, he would have done it a long time ago. Not even he’s all-powerful.”

“In any case, we have to get going. They’ll start storming us again soon. Pepper! Let’s go!”

“And the cannon? What about the cannon?”

“Let’s go! We haven’t got time to drag it along! I’ll buy you a new one later!”

“Oh no!” the gnome muttered, and started scattering powder out of a small barrel. “He’ll buy me one! Well, at least the enemy won’t get my precious darling! I’ll blow her up!”

Honeycomb was wondering how well the army would hold up at Avendoom. It had lost a battle, but not the war.