Gurkish Fire had left a stinking black scar through the grass, shrouding the summit in smoke as the rain started to spit down. Below, she could see the troops of the Open Council slogging steadily up the hillside under drooping flags. They were battered by cannon fire, sodden from the river, exhausted from the climb. But they were coming, and in numbers.
“What do we do?” asked Vick.
Pike surveyed the scene with the disappointed air of a cook come home to find his kitchen in a terrible mess. “Prepare to pull back.”
Vick looked down towards Stoffenbeck, fires burning in the rubble-strewn streets, wounded trickling towards the rear. “The king will be left with his arse in the breeze.”
“Would you rather fight?”
To her, fighting was a knee in the balls, a thumb in the eye, a punch in the throat. It was a nail hidden in a heel of bread, brass knuckles and fistfuls of soil, a sock with a rock in it. It was hurting someone as quickly and as badly as you could with whatever was to hand. None of that was any use in a battle, against armoured men and ranks of pikes. Against flatbow volleys and cannon-stones.
What would she even be fighting for? She hardly knew any more. Maybe she never had. Desperately searching for something to be loyal to, as Glokta had once told her.
“Your Eminence!” A Practical was stumbling across the grass, pointing wildly behind him. A rider was coming over the brow of the hill.
He was a beefy man with a mud-stained uniform and a great wedge of brown beard, and a lot of other riders were appearing behind him. The enemy, Vick supposed. Some lord of the Open Council, got around their flank and climbed the back of the hill, ready to finish them off.
“Good timing, Lord Marshal Rucksted!” called Pike. Vick wasn’t usually slow on the uptake, but it took her a moment to make sense of things.
“Glad we didn’t miss the party, Your Eminence.” Rucksted reined in beside them and frowned through the clearing smoke and the mist of rain towards the approaching troops of the Open Council. He beckoned an aide over with one finger. “Arrange a charge and get rid of this rabble, eh? There’s a good fellow.”
And Vick realised that what she’d taken for a phantom of her battered hearing was the very real drumming of approaching hooves. A very great number of hooves. It seemed reinforcements had arrived after all.
She stumbled to one of the broken trestles, her stiff hip aching.
Had to sit on her hands to stop them shaking.
Savine stared, mouth open in disbelief as, with awful, nerve-shredding slowness, all her ambitions came apart at the seams.
It felt as if it had taken days for the Open Council’s cannon-mauled ranks to emerge from the smouldering orchards, then edge in multicoloured tatters across the broken ground towards the bluff. Isher’s blue lines had buckled as they reached the hill, wavered, re-formed and gradually begun to climb.
The enemy’s cannon had fallen silent, while their own were finally mounted on the hill below her and began to pound steadily at Stoffenbeck, puffs of dust among the roofs marking the impacts of their stones, columns of smoke marking the fires they had set. Orso’s lines bowed backwards in the centre, Stour’s Northmen attacking furiously on the left.
The fierce smile had spread across her face. With that bluff in their hands, the town could not be held. The centre would give, Stour would break through on the left, the day would be theirs.
And the throne would be hers.
Then, as the veils of smoke from the cannon below her shifted, she noticed something. A glint of steel in the saddle between the rocky bluff and the one beside it. A thin rain was falling now, turning the battlefield hazy, but as she stepped forward, squinting through her eyeglass, there could be no doubt.
More steel, and more. A flood of it, spilling down from the high ground. Horsemen. A vast, dully glinting wave of them.
“No,” she whispered. They tore into the flank of Isher’s ragged units, took them by surprise and broke them like blue dust, surging on towards the orchards. The red blob of Barezin’s re-formed legion came apart long before they hit, scattering back towards the river.
“No,” whispered Savine again. As if the word was a prayer. But how often had she boasted to Zuri that she believed in nothing that could not be touched, and counted, and totted up in a ledger? They had been sure Orso would get no reinforcements. They had counted on it. And yet here they were, armed and eager, ripping all her plans to bits.
“No,” whispered Savine. A moment ago, she had tasted victory. Now nothing was certain. She wanted to sink to her knees. She wanted to lie down in the grass. But someone had to do something.
An engineer at the nearest cannon was just touching smouldering match-cord to powder-pan as the rest of the crew hunched away, hands over their ears. Savine started striding towards them, one hand under her belly. “We have to get—”
There was a blinding flash. She was turning her face away, raising one hand, starting to gasp, when she was snatched off her feet and flung into the ground.
Heroics
“The bastards are running!” snarled Antaup.
“I noticed,” said Leo, watching in helpless fury as the Open Council’s forces crumbled and fled for the river.
A moment ago, they’d been close to flanking the enemy on the right. Now they were in danger of being flanked themselves.
“By the dead,” he growled. The army of Angland had done their part. Fought for every inch of ground, forced Orso’s men from their positions, bent their crescent in the centre until it touched the outskirts of Stoffenbeck. They were still fighting, through the smoke and spitting rain, the melee broken up into a dozen ugly little struggles among the buildings.
“Shit!” He smashed at his armoured leg with his armoured fist. Another hour and the day would’ve been theirs. But they didn’t have another hour. They didn’t have another moment.
“We could still pull back!” roared Antaup over the noise.
“To where?” snapped Leo. “To what?” They’d leave Orso with the field, with the initiative, with every chance of reinforcement, while their own alliance would fall apart. He’d go from liberator to laughing stock. History would record him as a treacherous loser.
“You know what?” Jin leaned in with that huge grin of his. “I reckon another tap might shatter the bastards!”
“The cavalry are fresh!” As if Jin’s smile was catching, Antaup had one, too. “One more throw of the dice?”
Now Leo was smiling. How could he help it when his friends were laughing at death? He had to stop himself turning to ask Jurand what he thought. He wished him and Glaward were there now. He looked up towards the king’s standard. The Steadfast Standard, flapping free above the smoke and ruin on the high clock tower, the golden sun glinting as the real thing slipped through the spitting clouds overhead.
There was still time. If he could shatter Orso’s centre… seize that flag… take the king himself prisoner… none of the mistakes would matter. Victory sponges all crimes away, Verturio said. Or was it Bialoveld? What did it matter? The day would be won with swords, not words. This was the moment he’d been waiting for. There wouldn’t be a better. There wouldn’t be another. It was a moment for heroes.
In battle, his father had always told him, a man finds out who he truly is. He was the Young Lion. And a lion doesn’t slink away with his tail between his legs. A lion fights to the last.