'Stand and face!' roared Nunan, still unwilling to believe this really was a rout.
He'd lost a third of the legion to the enemy. God knew how many more were lying wounded and dying out there. He couldn't contemplate losing the rest to fear.
'Hold your strikes. These are our people.'
Were they?
Nunan's standard was upright and proud unlike too many others, discarded on the field. His extraordinarii were with him. Yet all they could do was watch from their position while the legion, such as it was, disintegrated.
His hornsmen blared for order but the sound was lost in the cacophony consuming the Bear Claws. Estorea's finest. On the field, knots of terrified legionaries were hacking at those they had so recently known as friends, lashing out at anyone who looked suddenly different. The innocent living were surely being sent to bolster the ranks of the dead. Other soldiers stood in mute shock, just staring. The mass, carrying wounded with them if they had the courage left, just ran. Up towards the fires at the crag base.
'We aren't going to form a line here,' said Nunan to his centurion. 'We have to get them all out of here. Take half and get back up the road. Reform there. We have to make a defence before the Tsardon break the cavalry.'
The centurion nodded. His eyes were wide, his face disbelieving.
'Go.'
'Yes, General. What about the - the dead, General?'
Nunan took a breath, unable to fully accept what he was saying. 'Leave the dead to me.'
'Yes, General.' He turned. 'Count off fifteen. You're with me. The rest, protect the general. Get those we can back up the road to me. Move.'
Nunan stared at the battlefield. Hundreds had streamed past him. Hundreds more were lost in themselves on the battlefield. He really had only one option. The Tsardon advance was being severely hampered by Kell driving her cavalry forward and back across their tight, crowded line. It was giving him precious moments but it couldn't last. Attrition and tiredness would both take their toll. Soon enough, the dam would burst.
'Get amongst our people. Give me some order. Wounded away.
Disengage from the dead. You know where to send them. Break up and move fast.'
Nunan ran into the midst of the confusion. The dusty ground was covered in broken equipment, blood and bodies. He had to assume all that still lay there were alive, if only barely. Ahead were a group of thirty infantry, mainly hastatii. Leaderless and confused, floating wreckage. They were facing a knot of the dead twice their number. Nunan felt his heart skip a beat as he breasted through them, shouting them to lower weapons and back away. But they were screaming at each other and at the dead and he had to stand in front of them to get them to notice him
This close it was so easy to see why many had simply run away. How could a man stand against his friend? How could he strike him yet how could he not? None should be made to face the fallen. Yet here they were. Nunan felt his shoulders sag. He knew some of these men and women. Perhaps
...
'You're sure they're dead?' he said. 'They aren't attacking.'
And they weren't. They were just standing, staring. Like they were waiting for something.
'Of course they're dead, General,' said a hastati soldier, barely containing himself. 'Look, it's Darius. I was next to him when he fell. What is this, General? God has turned against us.'
'Not God, just one of his wayward people,' said Nunan and raised his voice. 'Disengage. Get back to the road. Find the extraordinarii.'
'But General, our people.'
'And take wounded with you. These aren't our people.' Nunan shuddered. 'Not any more.'
The hastatii turned and ran. Arrows were falling. The Tsardon advance was gaining ground inch by tortuous inch. Kell's cavalry had split again and rattled into both flanks of the enemy. The dead were beginning to move too. Forming into larger groups, organising into lines.
Nunan stared, hypnotised for a moment. He watched them pick weapons from the ground if they had none. Men and women displaying no pain, fear or understanding. His legionaries with fatal wounds walking as if compelled by some guiding force. Huge sarissa gashes, stove-in helmets, split faces and bodies.
'How can we fight this?' he said. 'What can we do?'
'General?'
He turned to his extraordinarii. 'Nothing. Let's get about our business.'
Kell called the charge and her cavalry struck the rear right flank of the Tsardon. They'd tried to bring pikes to bear but it had served only to weaken the front of the line. Her horse drove through the flimsy defence, its shoulders breasting through shields, bodies flung to the sides as the uncertain defence splintered.
She'd brought her people in on a narrow front, aiming to punch a hole right through to attack the rear of the pike blocks and expose the archers. They represented the biggest danger to the shattered Bear Claws. But she couldn't go on losing people like she was.
Kell brought her sword down on the head of a Tsardon warrior. He crumpled and she was beyond him, striking out right at the next. Yet to her left, three of her riders were taken from their saddles by arrows. The charge lost pace, riderless horses turning to seek escape. Her own archers poured shafts into the lines in front of them. They struck shields, found holes in armour, pierced face and neck or skipped harmlessly over the ground.
She began to turn, seeing more Tsardon reserve running to bolster the flank. She dug her heels into her horse and dodged her way through the press of horseflesh and enemy, charging back into open ground. Kell galloped away fifty yards before pulling up to allow the detachment to fall in around her. Away three hundred yards to the other side of the field, the Tsardon were moving quickly towards the road. The cavalry cover was faltering, outnumbered and being worn down. Horses were tiring and with no cover or relief, the outcome was inevitable.
In the middle of the field, Bear Claws, those that could, were pouring away from the front and up the road, leading to an increased pressure from the Tsardon she was trying to hold back. And the dead. Dear God-surround-her, the dead were forming into a new front line and no one was standing in their way.
'We've got to get round behind them,' a captain shouted in her ear. 'We have to make them turn.'
He was looking at the Tsardon, who outnumbered her cavalry ten to one and rising. There would be no glory this day. The very best they could hope for was for some to survive and buy others the time to take the path up through the crags. It all but brought a tear to her eye. It was a difficult and challenging climb. She and Nunan had been up, not ten days before, for some relaxation and exercise. That had been fun and the views had been spectacular. How the world turned.
'They can slaughter us there. Trap us against the castle and the river bank,' she said. 'All we can do is buy the infantry as much time as possible. We cannot break them here.'
'And should the dead turn on us?' he asked.
'Ride away, Captain. And rendezvous with the legion. Some time today all of us will be standing on our own two feet, shoulder to shoulder with the hastatii, just doing what we can. I'll not put my horses in their way.'
The captain nodded. 'What would you have me do, Master Kell?'
'Take the message across. We are reforming to a single force. Get moving.'
She watched him take two others and ride away and felt her hopes fade into the gloom along with them.
'Dahnishev!' yelled Roberto. 'Dahnishev!'
He was close to breaking. His arms were quivering with exertion. Adranis's wound had not stopped bleeding and it was only the continued flow that convinced Roberto his brother was still alive. Herides was ahead of him, trying to find the surgeon. Heads were turning. People were running towards him. He didn't want any of them.
'Get back to your tasks,' he said, choking on a sob. 'Get me Dahnishev.'
He was running towards the harsh dark rock wall into which a single deep gouge formed a treacherous pathway to its head some three hundred feet above. People were moving inside it. Through the trees that covered the slope, Roberto saw tents being pitched. He saw people carrying baggage, chairing the injured, and tending wounds on makeshift stretchers or just on any patch of clear ground.
So difficult to see. The woodland was dense up here. Worse than further down where he'd been able to move more easily. There was so much mess up here. So many legionaries screaming their pain. Every blade of grass it seemed was covered in blood.
'That Ascendant. Bastard Ascendant,' he muttered. 'You'll pay, Gorian Westfallen. You'll pay.'
'General?'
Roberto looked to his left. A bloodied medic had fallen in next to him. 'Yes?'
'Surgeon Dahnishev is this way.'
Roberto felt a cascade of relief. 'Bless you, my friend.' 'Let me help you.' 'No. Just show me.'
It wasn't far. A small tent, brand new by the looks of its creases, set in the lee of the crag. Soldiers were clearing the ground in front of it and setting up the triage site. Roberto could hear Dahnishev shouting instructions, his voice like a call to prayer. Roberto breasted through the tent flaps, gasping at the smell of blood and bile that struck him. The tent, a square shape, no more than twenty feet on a side, was packed with more wounded than he could quickly count. Dahnishev had an operating table set up in one corner and he was covered to the elbows in blood, which also smeared his face and clothes.
'Clean him up and put him outside. Watch he doesn't die unseen,' said Dahnishev, seeing Roberto's entrance. He hurried round the table and snapped his fingers to an orderly to help him.
'Please, Dahnishev, please. You have to save him.'
'Dear God-embrace-me, Roberto, did you run all this way with him like this?'
'No choice,' gasped Roberto, feeling blood pounding around his head, fogging his thinking.
'It's a miracle he's still alive, then. So we have that in our favour. Get him to the damn table.'
At last, Roberto let his brother go. After hurried scrubbing and the scattering of more sawdust on the floor to soak up the blood where they stood, Dahnishev and the orderly laid Adranis on the table. Dahnishev took a quick look at the wound and breathed in hard.
'Prepare him,' he said to the orderly. 'Clean the wound, get my instruments sterilised. I'll be back soon so don't dawdle. This man is not going to die, do you understand?'
'Yes, Master Dahnishev.'
'Good. Roberto, outside with me.'
Roberto gaped and gestured towards Adranis. 'My brother—' 'Will not die in the next minute and if he does I could never have saved him. Out. And let my people do what they're best at.'
Roberto let himself be brought out into the breaking dawn. The bedlam outside was growing. More and more wounded were coming out of the tree line right in front of the crag.
'I can't cope with all this,' said Dahnishev. 'I lost half my staff in the hurricane.'
'Just save my brother,' said Roberto. 'And not just because he's my brother. He's Master of Horse for this legion.' 'I know, Roberto, I work here too.'
Roberto blinked and looked behind him. 'Got this all pitched fast, didn't you?'
'Never fight without a secondary medical facility ready set up,' said Dahnishev. 'Not when you don't have a stockade.' 'Of course, of course.' Roberto sagged.
'Look, I didn't get you out here to discuss my brilliant planning and vision. I saw what happened out there. I'm hearing the stories now. And all around us, men and women are going to start dying. Do you understand?'
Roberto nodded. 'I know. I thought of nothing else while I carried Adranis up here. I won't have him become one of them.'
'And how do you propose to stop him, should he die?' asked Dahnishev.
Roberto knew the answer to that too. And he knew the consequences. He swallowed and looked up into Dahnishev's hawk face. 'Is the naphtha up here?' Dahnishev pursed his lips and nodded.
'I had it moved,' he said quietly. 'We couldn't afford to lose it to the Tsardon.' 'No indeed.'
'Can it be countenanced? Even now?'
'What else do we have? The dead are coming this way and we are showing no signs of standing before them. We are, what, fifteen hundred fit legionaries probably, facing the same number of dead backed by six thousand Tsardon. We have to even the odds.'
'Yes, Roberto, but to burn our own
...'
'I know, I know.' Roberto felt sick at the thought. 'It may be pragmatic but it's also the worst crime we can commit. We could do with a word from the wise and a little understanding to smooth the way.' ·
'He's right over there. Let's make this quick. Your brother needs my urgent attention.'