Kingmaker (17 page)

"Good,” Lawgrave nodded. “Don't touch the stones. We'll have to leave them in place until morning. It will continue to drain your strength but you can sleep."

Sort of. The magic tugged on her, slowed her movements, her thought processes, and filled her with a lethargy that was anything but comfortable.

She tried to stand and found that she couldn't.

"I've got a blanket,” Lawgrave said. “Lie down in the wagon. I'll drive the wagon."

Nobody else in the army would get much sleep that night but Ellie wasn't about to protest. The magic was too draining and she'd be needed in the battle.

"What about you?"

"I've got to keep up the shields."

But he was already exhausted. “Are you sure you can do it?"

"I must."

She nodded. Mark's plan might be their only hope, but it would press every soldier, every mage, every sergeant to their limits and beyond. In Lawgrave's case, he was putting everything into tonight's deception. At best, he would succeed and be worthless the next day, when the real battle raged. She didn't even know what the worst could be. Lawgrave had warned her about overdoing magic but they hadn't really had much time for a real apprenticeship. She didn't know what the consequences of overuse might be.

She did, though, have an idea of what could happen if Dinan's twenty mages opened up against the camp and there was no magical opposition at all. Whoever got in their way was in a world of hurt.

The sergeants knew their orders and silently led their men into their assigned areas when they arrived back at the gates of Dinan six hours after they'd left.

The army was tired from marching. They wouldn't be completely fresh for the battle, but the men seemed to be in high spirits. These were professional soldiers and had plenty of respect for a clever trick.

A third of the army was detailed about half a mile behind the camp. Another third was assigned to each side of the camp, but behind it creating a U-shaped encampment with the old camp being at the top of the U facing the city. Only the covering force they'd abandoned that afternoon covered the top of the U.

Ellie noted the placement, then collapsed back into sleep.

She struggled back to consciousness as the fingers of dawn touched the sky. The wagon she shared with Lawgrave had been pulled around to the right side of the U.

"You okay?” she asked Lawgrave.

He didn't answer.

She looked more closely and saw his hand move a stone a fraction of an inch. His breathing seemed impossibly slow but a pulse beat hard in his forehead.

She reached over and wiped the sweat from his eyes. She'd thought he was a terrible man when she'd first met him but now he didn't look frightening at all. He looked old and tired.

"They're coming."

Ellie recognized Dafed's voice and climbed out of the wagon to check on the situation.

Sergius was having second thoughts. “They'll overrun our camp. Shouldn't we bring everyone up? We have prepared positions in the camp. Our defenses here are terrible."

Mark simply shrugged. “It's too late to change the plan. Besides, if we rushed forward, they'd either push their way through or return to the city. Either way we wouldn't hurt them.

"Sullivan is a capable general and his captains have fought more battles than everyone in this army put together. We can't count on him being completely stupid."

Ellie kept her mouth shut. The magic was still draining on her and she felt more than stupid herself so why couldn't their enemy have problems too?

"Here they come.” A single bugle call came from the nearly abandoned camp.

As a crescent of the sun cleared the horizon, Dinan's city gates and sally ports swung open.

Lightly armed footmen scurried out.

They were expendable, intended to trip any traps that Sergius might have set.

A couple more bugles sounded in their old camp and the small guard they'd left stirred to life. Nobody had told them the plan before the army had marched off but Ellie was certain they had heard that the army was back. They jogged into place, setting their pikes along the earth walls that guarded the camp.

Some shouted curses at the Dinan forces and one turned and dropped his trousers.

"Couple more minutes.” Lawgrave's voice barely reached Ellie although she was only a few feet from where he slumped in the wagon.

"Hang in there, buddy,” she said.

After the auxiliary infantry had deployed, Sullivan's knights trotted out.

Compared to this group of a thousand or more heavy knights, Arnold's small heavy cavalry looked like a punk gang. Their burnished armor gleamed red in the rising sun.

A group of maybe fifty knights rode toward the camp walls, clearly angered by the soldier who was still mooning them.

"Drop it now,” Lawgrave breathed. “You've done all you can."

Ellie reached in and gathered her stones.

Before, the stones had gone quiescent once she'd completed a casting. Because the camp illusion had been intended to endure, the stones still glowed with energy—energy they drained from her. She had to work to break the pattern.

She didn't feel any less tired but the constant drain vanished, replaced by the feeling of exhaustion she might get if she had to spar five or six opponents in a row. And she'd done that plenty of times in training. She knew how to suck it up.

"They'll see the camp breaking. Soldiers packing.” Lawgrave was letting her end her spell but he was maintaining his own.

"Can't you stop?” she begged him. “You'll kill yourself if you keep this up."

Lawgrave had always been gaunt but now his skin seemed to adhere directly to bone with no muscle, no flesh in between.

"Almost. Waiting for pikemen. Sullivan still hasn't committed."

As Sullivan's knights spurred toward the nearly deserted camp, the soldier on the barricades, someone Ellie now recognized as one of the sergeants who'd competed with Dafed for the right to face her as the army's swords champion, pissed down into the dry ditch in front of their fortified camp.

He was a good half-mile away but Ellie heard his words as clearly as if they'd been electronically magnified. “I told Lady Aeffan she shouldn't sleep with that donkey. But she wanted a mule for a child."

One of the knights, on Ellie's guess Lady Aeffan's son, rose in his saddle, lowered his lance, and spurred his horse directly toward the wall, spurring ahead of the lightly armed infantry scouts. A group of his friends followed.

Ellie wasn't sure what his plan was when he got there. Maybe to ride his massive horse through the earth walls all by himself. It didn't matter, though, because Dafed's buddy had gotten what he wanted.

The two swivel-guns were hidden in the no-man's land between the city and the camp. Now, at point-blank range, both unloaded at the charging knot of knights.

More than half of the knights went down instantly. The others quickly turned and fled.

"Looks like the guys got a little creative,” Mark said. He didn't sound unhappy, though.

"You don't think they'll decide to abandon the attack?"

Mark only laughed. “Sullivan is cautious but he's not a complete fool. He knows he can roll over a couple hundred men in the rear guard. And he'll do it because he'll want to trap Sergius. Believe me, if your magic worked, he won't pass up this opportunity.

Sure enough, Sullivan wasn't going to do that. A vast array of pikemen assembled under the walls of the city, protected by the city's heavy cannon.

Meanwhile, a group of light cavalry trotted out from one of the sally ports and charged the swivel-guns.

The guns both got off a couple of shots but the light cavalry was dispersed and took the losses stoically.

When they got within a hundred feet of the cannon, Sergius's gunmen broke and made a dash for the camp.

The light cavalry chased them back, firing with long-barreled single-shot pistols and, when they ran too slowly, spearing them with their sabers.

Only when twenty musketmen stood and fired a volley did the cavalry retreat. They'd done their job, though. They'd cleared the pickets and forward defenses that protected the camp. Ellie could only hope Sergius's men had spiked the swivel-guns before they'd abandoned them.

Now it was time for the heavy infantry.

Sullivan's pikemen moved forward like an irresistible force.

Lawgrave's eyes went wild. He tried to move a stone, but the effort was too much for him. He leaned forward, his head smacking into the board that held his pattern. His bright gems scattered.

Ellie felt the magic backwash like a kick in the gut but Lawgrave got the full dose. He moaned and went limp.

Whatever he'd concealed from Sullivan's mages was concealed no more.

In moments, Sullivan's mages would scry the trap, send their warnings. But surely it would take time before that word got to Sullivan and his generals. By then, she had to hope it would be too late. Now it was up to the soldiers to do their part.

Ellie didn't think it would be any easier for them than it had been for Lawgrave.

Sullivan's pikemen marched forward in a concentrated phalanx.

The camp's guards had lost their two swivel-guns, but they still had the big cannon they'd captured in the forest and they used it to hammer away at the approaching infantry.

They fired three times before they ran out of time. The first two were solid shot and tore entire columns out of the approaching phalanx. The third, fired in conjunction with the first musketeer volley, was loaded with case shot—a hail of lead pellets each an inch and a half in diameter. Pellets big enough to slice through multiple pikemen, to bounce off the ground and keep moving.

Ellie forced herself to watch. She was responsible for this death and she couldn't hide from that.

The pike phalanx shuddered as it took the blow. Dozens of men fell from the ranks. But the phalanx didn't stop. For a hundred years in this alternate dimension, pikemen had been lords of the battle. They knew that they'd be hurt when they marched. But once the pikemen got close, nothing but an even larger group of pikemen could stop them.

Pikemen toughed it out. They knew they'd get their revenge in the end.

The camp's guard was mostly pikemen and they had the advantage of the ditch and the earth wall they'd built around the camp. They stabbed down and killed.

For a few minutes, it looked like a standoff. Ellie knew that wouldn't last.

Weight matters. Sullivan had too many men. His phalanx began to penetrate.

Sullivan was a capable general. He waited until that moment of weakness, only then sending his light cavalry around the flanks of the camp. If the small guard didn't retreat, they'd be cut off and cut down.

One slow blat of bugle and Sergius's men backed away from the camp walls, formed a pike square, and retreated. The square was their best defense against the horsemen. But it was pathetically weak against Sullivan's phalanx.

Sullivan's musketmen fired into them and the pikemen pushed ahead, trying to collapse the square. In this kind of warfare, most of the casualties are taken after one side is disorganized and Sullivan had the men to ensure that it was Sergius's rear guard that disorganized first.

Sergius's square sagged under the weight of Sullivan's pikemen and closed to fill the gaps left by Sullivan's musket fire. They marched slowly away from the camp, dying but maintaining the cohesion that kept most of them alive.

Their own musketmen fired a steady trickle of heavy bullets into the light cavalry, keeping them involved, making sure that they didn't circle too wide.

Sullivan didn't know it yet, but he was being led into a trap.

Ellie noted each landmark, praying that their square would hold, that they hadn't left two hundred men to be slaughtered.

Another three of their pikemen fell but the square closed again. It seemed impossible, but it looked like the pikemen might actually hold until they reached the line where the bulk of the army was hidden.

They were only a couple hundred yards from the base of Sergius's U when the first pikemen threw down their weapons and ran.

A ripple of panic ran through Sergius's mercenaries as more and more joined the flight. Unarmed, they could outrun Sullivan's pikemen. With the square breaking down around them, flight seemed the only option.

For most, it was a fatal miscalculation.

Sullivan sent in his knights.

In the movies, charging knights look romantic and noble. The reality, Ellie found, was more like sadistic thugs chasing down defenseless men.

The knights used their heavy horses to shoulder through their own phalanx, shouted hoarse prayers to their God of mercy, and speared and slashed into the backs of the running soldiers.

Of the two hundred men they'd left in the camp, perhaps twenty made it to the base of Mark's trap.

"God, they're slaughtering us,” Sergius moaned.

It wasn't that much more terrible than when they'd defeated Sullivan's ambush in the forest but this time it was their guys doing the dying. And in the forest, Ellie hadn't been able to see the sadistic joy on the face of the knights.

They rode down panicked soldiers, lanced the few who turned and tried to fight, and slashed bloody swords downward like scythes.

Ellie wasn't an innocent any more. She'd killed men without counting their loss, without especially mourning them. Without spending more than a few moments wondering about the loved ones they may have left behind them, suddenly without support and protection. But she hoped she had never, and would never, approach murder with the sheer joy that these men seemed to take.

"Real soldiers shouldn't panic,” Dafed observed. “Our men were holding together, were going to make it. We probably wouldn't have lost more than thirty men if they'd held."

The cold-blooded calculus of the battlefield might be necessary. Dafed and the other sergeants, if any survived, would need to make sure the men knew their mistakes and would never make them again. Still, Ellie's feelings were more like Sergius'. The destruction was more important than the mistake.