Days Of Light And Shadow (72 page)

Chapter One Hundred and Fourteen.

“Sweet Silene! What’s happening down there?” Iros asked the question to no one as he looked over at the enemy camp, waiting nervously for the battle to begin. He was far from alone.

Y’aris’ watchmen, a fearsome sight in their blackened armour, were firing arrows into the backs of the abominations. He could see it as clearly as anything. But he didn’t understand. No more did any of the others. Captain Maydan sitting on his horse beside him looked just as confused as he did. And Tinderfell, Commander of the one hundred and fifty dragoons of wind riders, sitting on his other side, looked about ready to fall off his black horse in shock.

It made no sense. The watchmen and the abominations were fighting each other? Though in sooth they weren’t. The watchmen were firing arrows into their midst, but the abominations didn’t seem to be doing anything about it. They scarcely even seemed to react. Maybe they couldn’t feel the arrows.

But it didn’t matter.

Iros knew that when he suddenly realised that he couldn’t hear the elders chanting any longer. Their prayers had ceased. And that he knew was the signal for the next phase of the attack.

“The horn!” He yelled it as loudly as he could, hoping that his voice would carry far enough in the still air even without the gnomish device, and others picked up the cry. Soon they were all calling for the horn to blow, so loudly that when it finally did they almost didn’t hear the two mournful cries.

But the cannoneers heard the horn’s call and replied.

The opening volley wasn’t as precise as it should have been as some of the cannon fired ahead of the others, but they did all fire and the noise was deafening. Thunder in the air and in the ground. The smoke was blinding. And the cheers as they watched the barricades being torn apart by the cannon could surely be heard for a league or more. Perhaps it could even be heard by the Divines themselves.  The cannons were hastily reloaded and then as the second volley tore through the enemy lines the cheers grew even louder.

Soon the cannon fire was continuous. There were so many cannon in action, and they were all firing out of sequence that the air wouldn’t stop thundering and the ground wouldn’t stop shaking. As for the flimsy fortifications, they were quickly being torn apart, shredded by the withering cannon fire, and many of those seeking shelter in the trenches behind them were suffering the same fate.

It was mist laden madness for the abominations to stay there. And finally someone must have realised it. Someone must have seen their soldiers being torn apart in their thousands as they hid behind their makeshift fortifications and given the order. For it was only then that the abominations finally began their charge. Even then though they were without direction. Some ran forward into the waiting arms of Herrick’s army. Others charged backwards, attacking the black clad watchmen. And all the while they were being cut down from both sides.

Beside him Saris circled Iros’ horse nervously, constantly scenting the air and yipping worriedly. The hound had never been in a war before and she didn’t really understand all the noise and smoke. But at least she didn’t run away in terror. She was a brave and loyal hound. The wolves were doing the same.

“Archers!”

Iros gave the command, wondering how anyone could actually hear him over the roaring of the cannon, and drew his crossbows. Beside him thousands of elves and sprites did the same, as they waited for the fastest of the abominations to reach them. It was a nervous time that seemed  to stretch on endlessly. The things had always seemed surprisingly fast despite their ungainly shambling. But eventually the quickest of them came within range of the longbows and the arrows flew.

Hundreds of them fell as, despite the huge range, the elves proved themselves to be every bit the archers he had believed them. But for all the hundreds that fell, thousands more kept advancing, rushing for them as fast as wolves. Hungry wolves.

At two hundred and fifty paces the magic shortbows could find them and Iros watched as the sprites’ white arrows   buried themselves in the abominations’ heads. And all the while the cannon kept firing, tearing great holes in the sea of their enemies, breaking the abominations into bloody pieces. He only wished that the cannon could fire faster.

Then they crossed within two hundred paces and Iros knew it was his turn. He raised the first of his double stringed crossbows, took aim at the nearest of the enemy, and let loose his first bolt. It sank into the neck of an abomination, but didn’t seem to bother it too much. A man would have dropped dead on the spot, but not this murderous nightmare.

Iros lined it up again and let loose his arrow. This time his aim was slightly more fortunate as his bolt found the abomination’s knee. It wasn’t a lethal injury, but Iros didn’t care when it fell down and he knew it was crippled. It would be a good long time before it reached them.

Iros dropped the first crossbow and picked up his second, sending two more bolts straight into the body of another abomination. Again neither killed the thing, but one managed to turn it aside a little, just before a white arrow slipped cleanly through into its head and carried it to the ground.

After that it was a frantic battle for Iros to reload both his crossbows, pulling the strings back and notching the bolts in place, all the time worrying that one of the things would reach him and rip out his throat. Longbows didn’t have the same problem as they were loaded faster and all while the archer was staring at his foe. But when he was done and both crossbows were reloaded, they didn’t seem that much closer. Immediately he found his next target, lined it up and put two more bolts into it. This time one actually found its head and the thing fell down. The bolts from his other crossbow weren’t so fortunate, and only one even found its target’s body.

He reloaded frantically.

And so it went on. The things kept rushing at them in numbers and they kept cutting them down, but all they while more and more of them edged closer. Soon, he knew, it would be time for the next phase of the battle. For when the cannon  fell silent as the infantry charged, forming a solid steel wall from behind which they could attack.

Lightning struck the battlefield as the nearest of the abominations crossed to within seventy or so paces of them. Huge swathes of it crashing down all around, and Iros realised that their few warspells had finally unleashed their magic. Fire and lightning unleashed. Iros could see huge fire balls tracking across the sky, arcing like arrows as they crashed down among the ruined fortifications, and hopefully killing whatever still called them home. More fireballs struck further afield still, setting the temple ablaze.

The elders and the priests were busy as well. Here and there he could see flashes of white light as abominations suddenly burst into explosions of dust, while others simply stopped moving, making themselves easy targets for the archers.

But the enemy kept coming no matter how many fell. There were just so many of them.

At fifty paces another horn sounded and the infantry charged. Forty thousand or more soldiers armed with swords and heavy steel shields ran from between their lines to smash into the advancing horde as the cannon finally fell silent. They had to. After the infantry advance they’d be firing into the backs of their own men. But their thunder was quickly replaced by the screams of the men as they cut loose. And of course the archers kept taking the enemy down. That was the purpose of the infantry charge. To hold them back.

Swiftly the battle ground turned into a confused nightmare. Men were screaming as their swords flew furiously. The abominations were screeching as well. Meanwhile Saris was growling her head off, torn between the need to obey her master and the urge to rip the enemy apart. Lightning crackled through the air, the sharp tang of its endless strikes burnt at the nostrils and stung the eyes. Fireballs  transformed the far end of the battlefield into an inferno and sent a pall of smoke high into the air. And all the while Iros fought to remain calm while he loaded and fired his crossbow as fast as he could into the heads of the abominations.

He only wished he was as capable with the weapon as the others were with their bows. Or even as capable with it as he was with his swords. Every fibre of his being   ached to wade into battle with his swords and start beheading the foul things. To fight as he had been trained to, and not to struggle piteously with the awkward weapons from the safety behind the infantry wall.

In front of him he could see many men screaming in fear and pain as they met the teeth and claws of the enemy. Many were falling. The abominations were terrible foes, and in their panic too many soldiers were falling back on their old ways and making the mistake of trying to stab them. Unless you stabbed them through the head that didn’t even slow them down. The soldiers had to take their heads. But as those men fell others seemed to learn from their mistakes, and it became apparent that there were increasingly more of them than there were abominations, so long as the archers kept thinning their numbers. At least three or four of the abominations fell for every man who went down.

At least the enemy didn’t seem to be getting any closer.

And then the most terrible thing happened. Iros ran out of bolts. It wasn’t unexpected; he’d always known that it had to happen. But as he reached into his quiver for the next four bolts and found nothing but empty air his heart nearly stopped beating in horror. He looked down in alarm, and saw the empty quiver. Fifty bolts gone, and only a half a dozen abominations to show for it. It wasn’t enough.

More importantly, how many arrows did the rangers have left? They each had had a hundred or more to begin with, some two hundred but they fired much more rapidly than he did with his crossbows. They had to be running low as well. And the sprites were the same. The next phase of the battle was almost upon them. He dropped his crossbows onto their straps around the horse’s neck and drew his swords, preparing for the charge.

One by one he could see the rangers all around him doing the same as they ran out of arrows. And many of the sprites already had their swords drawn. While in front of him he could see the consequences as the abominations started to reach  the front line in ever greater numbers. Soon he knew, they would start pushing the infantry back, no matter how many had fallen.

Before he was ready for it, the horn sounded once more, three mournful cries that echoed across the battlefield, and just as if they had practiced it every day of their lives, the last of the rangers still with arrows slung their longbows over their backs, and drew their close combat arms, a strange assortment of swords, spears and polearms. That was something Iros still found unsettling. Dragoons standardized their weapons, and so he knew that every man among them would be drawing a bastard   sword and steel shield close. He would have been too had he been with them. It was the perfect armour for a heavy cavalry charge. But rangers weren’t dragoons, and he could only pray that what they lost by being less conventional they made up for with their natural skill with their weapons.

As for the windriders, they had no shields and only rapiers for swords. Small slightly curved swords that were light and sharp. With so little armour they had to be fast and deadly. Fortunately he had seen them practicing, and he knew they were.

“Strike for their heads!” Iros yelled out the instruction as he waited for the command, and the other captains echoed the call. But they surely already knew it. It had been told them a thousand times a day.

Then he heard the cry of the Commander from the far side of the field, the smash of thousands of heavy steel swords against steel shields, and kicked his horse’s flanks.

The charge had begun.

Of course it was a very short charge, the front line was barely a dozen paces from them by then, and the horse barely made a trot, but that didn’t matter when they reached the line and the first of the abominations.

Unexpectedly one of them broke through the lines of soldiers just in front of him. It streaked toward him, aiming for the only part of his body it could reach, his Iros’ legs, which were clearly in its sight.  Iros took its head cleanly. A single swing of his long sword reaching down from above separated half its head from the rest at an angle, and the thing fell down.

But there was no time to congratulate himself on the strike. No time to celebrate his survival. The next was on him mere heartbeats later, and he had to fight.

He did.