Authors: beni
Lavastine hesitated, but he did, after all, owe the Eika princeling something in return for their lives. "Visions can't lie. I did not tell him everything I intended."
"Ah." Fifth Son whistled and his dogs bounded over to crowd at his heels. They, too, had been feasting on the corpses, perhaps even on Bloodheart. Scraps of clothing stuck to their tongues, and the saliva dripping from their jaws had an ocherous tint. Most of his soldiers had cleared the cathedral, leaving it empty except for the ravaged corpses. "You're a wise foe, Count of Lavas. Alas for you that Henry's army did not come sooner."
He did not turn to leave; he did not trust them that much. He edged sideways while never letting his gaze leave them until he was at the great doors, awash in sunlight. Then he was gone.
Sanglant bolted. Lavastine started after him, but the prince ran not after the fleeing princeling but rather to the altar where lay Bloodheart's corpse. The old priest had vanished; only the broken arrow haft remained. Sanglant upended the wooden chest and a downy spill of feathers wafted into the air as a cloudy haze. What in God's Names was he about? He coughed and pawed through the clot of feathers desperately, finding nothing, then gave up and knelt instead beside Bloodheart's body. With a howl, he wrenched the gold torque of royal kinship from the dead enchanter's arm.
The five dogs, crowded at his heels and sniffing and scrabbling at the corpse, raised their heads and howled wildly in answer.
"We had best be gone," said Lavastine. "We will head for the gates."
"Is that . . .
creature . . .
truly Prince Sanglant?" asked Erkanwulf, and several other men muttered likewise.
"Quiet!" snapped Lavastine, and then they hushed of their own accord because the prince now walked toward them with his retinue of dogs nipping and barking at his heels. He now held a spear and a short sword, gleaned from the corpses. Liath could not bear to look at him, and yet she kept looking at him. She could not believe he was alive, and yet, even if he was, could that . . .
thing . . .
truly be the man who had fallen at Gent over a year ago?
He broke away before he reached Lavastine and his men, as if he didn't want to get too close, and came to the huge, open doors of the cathedral. There, he stopped short as if chains had brought him up. As if he dared to go no farther.
"Come," said Lavastine to the prince as he led his party up beside
—but not too close to—the dogs. A few of the men held their hands up over their noses, those who could reach them under the nasals of their helms. The count crossed out onto the steps that fronted the cathedral. The square beyond lay empty under the hazy afternoon sunlight. "We must make haste. My son—
But he broke off, unable to speak further. In the far distance, Liath heard the sound of horns and the frenzied shouting of Eika.
That Sanglant had stepped out from the shelter of the cathedral she knew without looking, because of the stench. But now he spoke. His voice was hoarse, as if it had grown rusty from disuse
—but then, his voice had always sounded like that.
"The horns," he said, head flung back to listen. "They belong to the king."
STROKE after stroke felled the Eika. As the Lady cleaved through them, some looked into Alain's eyes, sensing the doom that came upon them, and others simply dropped their weapons and fled. Even their savage fury could not stand long before the Lady's wrath
—and surely not without the throbbing beat of the drums, now silent.
But there were yet more of them, even in disorder, than remained of Alain's contingent. When an Eika princeling rallied his forces and drove his soldiers back into the remaining wedge of infantry,
she
pursued that princeling through the thick of fighting and slew him. His forces faltered and broke and ran from her while Alain's men howled in glee and set back to their work, but even so, Eika kept coming on, and on. There were so many, and their scaly skin so tough to penetrate.
We can't hope to win through.
Then the call came, resounding from the last rank higher up upon the hill.
"Fesse! the banner of Fesse!"
And then they heard the horns and the thunder of cavalry.
"Henry!" cried another man, and they let out a great cheer: "The king! The king!"
With new spirit they pressed forward, cleaving and hacking at the Eika. Eika banners wavered and retreated
—or fell. Eika soldiers hesitated. Some withdrew in an orderly fashion, some fought on, but slowly the hill cleared of them, and Alain struggled free of the press and got to higher ground.
It was true! There, sweeping across the field, came the banner of Fesse and the personal standard of Duchess Liutgard herself. Farther, a line of cavalry under the standard of Princess Sapientia cut wide toward the east, retreating toward the river's shore pursued by those Eika who fled to their ships. Long shadows from the afternoon sun hatched the western road. Yet another mass of soldiers emerged from the forest under King Henry's banner.
Alain's legs gave out from under him and he staggered, dropped, and was only caught by the sudden flurry of hounds that pressed against him, licking him, whining. He slipped on a clod of dirt and fell hard on his rump.
"My lord Alain." A soldier gripped his arm and bent with concern over him. "My lord! Here, here! Water for our lord!"
They swarmed around him and for once the hounds sat quiet and allowed the soldiers to bring Alain water, to slide his helm off and wipe his face in cool liquid.
"I never saw a man fight so fiercely!" cried one of his soldiers.
"Aye, we would have been dead if not for you, my lord. You shone with the battle lust, you did!"
He winced and thrust himself up.
"A victory!" they cried, celebrating around him with their cheers. Alain squinted, but most of the fighting was now out of his view. The Eika were routed.
And the Lady of Battles had vanished.
"Come," he said to the hounds. He began the hike to the top.
"Victory!" sang his soldiers as the horns sounded distantly to announce the king's arrival on the field.
Eika corpses littered the hillside, but for every Eika who lay dead, one of his own men did, too.
Some few lived, some stirred, groaning, and some few would be dead soon enough, not having been granted the mercy of a quick passage out of life. His hounds pressed round him, Sorrow, Rage, Terror, Steadfast, Ardent, Bliss, and Fear; battered and bloody, they yet lived when so many others had perished, including poor Good Cheer.
He gained the height of the hill at last to find the camp in utter carnage, tents torn down and ripped by the passage of feet and the swell and ebb of uncaring battle, chests burst open, bags whose contents lay strewn across corpses and churned-up ground alike. Nothing remained of Lavastine's pavilion. Of the rough wooden observing platform, constructed so hastily yesterday, only a few logs still stood. Alain clambered up on them.
From this vantage place at the top of the hill, Alain could see the banners of Henry's armies, but none from among those which had marched out beside Lavastine at dawn.
"I pray you, come down from there, my lord!" called one of the soldiers. "There are still Eika lurking, and they have bows."
As Alain jumped down he stumbled on a spear haft. He caught himself, grabbed for purchase and gripped the cloth of a tabard. A dead man rolled limply into view. It was Lavastine's captain. The Lavas standard lay trampled by his side.
Alain pried it out of the dirt and hoisted it high into the air, but as his men cheered around him, he could only weep.
THEY rode like demons, but the vanguard commanded by Duchess Liutgard stayed ahead of them and thus had the honor of thundering onto the battlefield first.
But Princess Sapientia was not to be deterred from her fair share of the glory. After their first awful pass through the battlefield when it seemed that every Eika fell beneath their horses' hooves with no resistance, Sapientia reined her horse around and for a mercy took an instant to catch her breath and survey the chaos.
For chaos was all that met Hanna's eyes. She had never seen so many people in one place at one time, nor heard such a din of screaming and howling melded together with the clash of weapons. Sticking tight to Sapientia's side, she could at least consider herself well protected. Father Hugh as well as certain oath-bound retainers kept close to the princess' side in a ring meant to protect her from death.
Hanna was not sure at that moment whether it was worse to witness the gruesome work of a battle from afar or to be thrown into its swirling, deadly currents. She would have gladly forgone both and risked another avalanche in the Alfar Mountains instead.
"The ships!" cried Sapientia suddenly and with a sudden gloating triumph in her voice. "To the ships! We shall stop them there!"
And off they went, pounding across the battlefield again. Distant banners marked the line of other units, some faltering, some pressing forward, but Sapientia paid no heed to the rest of the battle. She wanted to stop the Eika from reaching their ships. And, indeed, as they came up alongside the river they waited well out of the main fighting, which flurried round a distant hill and the flat stretch of plain beyond it, and had only isolated groups of fleeing Eika to contend with. These they slaughtered easily.
Ships lay beached on both the eastern and western shore, but it was the western shore
—the one they guarded—which
concerned them now. Eight ships were already launched into the water, steadying for the flight downstream. A half dozen bodies floated downstream in their wake.
"Send men to burn any ships they can reach!" ordered the princess, gesturing toward one of her captains.
"Your Highness!" shouted Father Hugh. "Is it wise to break up our formation? And we must not let the horses get pinned up against the river. We'll lose our mobility."
"But they are all so disordered," retorted Sapientia. "What matters it, as long as we outnumber them?" It was done as she commanded. Melees broke out around the ships and, soon after, smoke rose from a handful, fire scorching up the masts.
A warning, the touch of a horn to lips, sounded from the outer ranks. Hanna stood in her stirrups to get a look, but what she saw chilled her and she shuddered despite the heat of the sun over the battleground.
Eika did indeed flee the battle now in disorderly groups
—but not all of them, not those who were wounded, dead, or dying, not those who had kept their wits about them in the face of disaster. Pressing briskly and with purpose toward the river's bank marched a host of Eika, several hundred, in good order and with several standards borne before them. With shields raised in a tight wall and the gaps between bristling with spears, they held off the human soldiers who harried them from behind. Were those bones swaying from the standards? Mercifully, from this distance, she could not tell for sure.
"Form up!" cried Sapientia, but it was too late; in her overconfidence she had allowed her troops to scatter.
"Send the Eagle for help!" shouted Hugh. "If they can be struck from behind while we charge from this side
—"
"Nay!" cried the princess, glancing back over her shoulder to see how many riders remained with her. Others hastily mounted and galloped back from the shoreline. One man took an arrow from the ships and fell tumbling down from his horse. "I won't have it said I begged for help at the first sign of trouble. May St. Perpetua be with us this day! Who is with me?" With sword raised she spurred her horse forward straight toward the Eika line. Battle-trained, it did not shy away from the glittering ranks of spears and stone axes.
"Damn!" swore Hugh as her retainers followed her. He caught Hanna by the arm before she could ride after them. "Go to the king!" Then, sword drawn, he raced after the princess into the thick of the fight.
Already the Eika line had swung north along the river, cutting off Hanna's escape in that direction. Princess Sapientia vanished into a maelstrom of battle as the Eika host swallowed her troops. Some riders fled the skirmish, abandoning her; others bore down after her into the Eika tide, both sides caught in a desperate struggle
—one for life, one for honor. In a moment Hanna, too, would be trapped by the flood tide of the battle as it reached the river's bank.
She kicked her horse to the south, down along the shoreline toward the ruins of Gent, and as she rode, her spear scraping up and down along her thigh, she began to pray.
SANGLANT led them through the streets at a steady jog. Fifth Son had withdrawn his troops, but other Eika scurried through Gent, fleeing the battle now that the drums were silent and Bloodheart, and his illusions, dead.