Starling puffed his chest and lifted his pike a little higher as the Young Lion rode past, but he was soon lost in the dust, and Starling’s pike drooped again. Shit, the thing was heavy. You were surprised how light it was at first, but once you’d been carrying it a while, damn thing got heavier every step. He coughed. So much dust. Spat, accidently spat down himself, spit all down his breastplate, but what difference did that make? Wasn’t as if he could stop to wipe it off. He was wearing gauntlets. And they weren’t on parade any more.
“Come on, come on, come on,” came that voice. Couldn’t tell who it was but he wished they’d shut up.
Bloody hell, they were getting close now. From the shouting over on the left, he reckoned the fighting had already started there. He flinched as a couple more bolts pinged down, rattled from helmets. He’d never fought in a battle before. Told everyone he’d been in Styria but he never went. Had a couple of brawls, one where he threw the Widow Smiler’s son in the millpond, but they’d been done so fast. Some harsh words and some jostling and all over in a few silly angry moments. This was nothing like it. So big, you were carried along, helpless, like a twig by a river. And so slow. So gradual. So impersonal. All that time to think about it. More like a formal dance than a brawl. He’d much rather have been at a dance, all in all. Didn’t know how to dance, but then he didn’t know how to do this, either.
Wished he was in the front rank, so he could see where he was going. Then he caught sight of where they were going. That drystone wall, and men standing there, lowering their own pikes, and bloody hell was he glad he wasn’t in the front rank. Everyone packed in so tight. No room, no room at all. Sort of a comfort, sort of a fear. Men protecting you, brothers at your shoulder, but how could you get out? You couldn’t. That was the whole point.
“Lower pikes!” roared Longridge. “Ready!” Grunting and scraping as men towards the front levelled their weapons, a gleaming forest of points.
Bloody hell, they were getting close now. He caught a glimpse of the enemy. Pikes and full armour. Open helmets so he could see their faces. Young faces and old. Scared faces and bared teeth. A fellow with a big moustache. Another smiling—smiling at a time like this. Another with tears on his face. Looked a lot like they did, really. Like they were advancing at a bloody mirror. It was mad, wasn’t it? It was mad. He had nothing against these fools, that he had to try to kill them, and for damn sure he’d done nothing to them that they should want to kill him. Unless the Widow Smiler’s son happened to be over there.
“Come on! Come on!” snapped that bastard beside him. Everyone had started growling, snarling, grunting, steeling themselves for the slow contact, and the tips of their pikes clicked against the tips of the enemy’s, and the shafts met, and scraped, and slid, closer and closer. A thicket of them, slipping and knocking against each other, and deadly metal on the end.
Someone screamed on the other side. Someone gave a wail on theirs. Now they stopped walking. Boots mashing at the dirt. Starling pressed up tight against the backplate of the man in front, felt someone press up tight against him from behind. His pike had met something, he thought, but he couldn’t tell what. No idea what the hell he was pushing at. He tried to look over the shoulder of the man in front. Tried to lift his pike high and push it downwards, but bloody hell, the weight of it, his shoulders were burning, haft knocking against all the others.
“Push!” roared Captain Longridge. “Push! Kill the bastards!”
Bloody hell, the noise. The growling and spitting and swearing, the squeal and grind of tortured metal and wood, now and again a scream or a whimper or a begging gurgle.
“No!” someone shouted. “No! No! No! No!” Getting higher and higher each time until it became a mad shriek.
Bloody hell, it was hard work, harder work than anything he’d ever done and for no reward but dead men. He snarled and shoved and strained and felt the sweat springing out of his forehead.
“Heave!” roared Longridge. “Heave, damn it!”
Starling saw the blade coming. The man in front pulled his head out of the way and it slid past his face while he stared at it cross-eyed. He tried to twist away but he was stuck fast. Packed in like sticks in a bundle. If he’d picked his feet up off the ground, he’d have been held there by the pressure of the men all around him. The blade kept coming, or maybe he was carried towards it, and the point touched his breastplate and scraped against it. There was a squealing and it made a long, jagged scratch on the metal, right through the embossed hammers of Angland.
“Come on! Come on!”
He strained and struggled and rammed desperately with his own pike, but he couldn’t even see who this one belonged to. Could hardly move his head, let alone anything else. All crushed in so tight.
“Fuck!” he snarled. “Shit! Fuck!” He twisted and kicked ever more desperately, and the bright point of the blade scraped sideways across his breastplate, caught on the metal lip near his armpit. He stared down at it, hardly daring to breathe, begging it to somehow hold there. He let go of his pike, tried desperately to twist around but couldn’t even pull his right hand free, could only get the faintest, useless grip on the shaft between finger and thumb of his left.
“Come on!”
Then with a groan the man beside him shifted, and the point jerked free, and it slid under Starling’s shoulderplate and ever so gradually pierced the padded jacket he wore underneath.
“Push!” yelled Longridge, and the men behind pushed at him, and pushed at him, and pushed him onto the blade.
He gave a snarl through his gritted teeth when it pricked him. Just a cold pinch, and then a biting, and a worse, and his snarl got higher and higher until it was a desperate, slobbering shriek, an impossible, unbearable pain cutting through his chest.
Lake just shoved. Didn’t know what he was shoving at, he just shoved. How could anyone know anything?
Be a man, his father had told him as he saw him off.
Damn it, his pike was stuck. He couldn’t even tell on what. Lodged in some Anglander or stuck in the mud or tangled with the wall. He gritted his teeth and wrenched and twisted but it wouldn’t come free.
“Come on!” someone was shrieking. “Come on!” But he couldn’t even tell which side it came from.
Be a man, he’d said, with his big calloused hand heavy on Lake’s shoulder, and his bottom lip stuck right out as if he was saying something weighty.
Men were being men all around him, crowded in close, stink of sweat and blood and smoke and fear, armoured shoulders crushed together, noise like hail falling on metal, ping, scrape, scratch, and the endless yelling and the orders echoing from the rear that no one could understand. He shoved at his pike again, shoved at it, but it was shoving back at him now. Far as he could tell, beyond the ranks in front the enemy were crowding in closer. No end to them. Clouds had come across the sun and their armour had a dull sheen to it now instead of a glitter. The glitter was off the whole business.
“Get off!” The man on his right kept shouldering him. He shoved with his elbow, shoved the best he could, tried to look round, and realised the fellow was dead. Or as near dead as made no difference, head flopping sideways with his helmet skewed across his face and his eyes rolled back and his tongue hanging out and a great crimson drool of blood down his chin.