Alongside the tattooed girl, Cup, I ran down the hill. She was loosing arrows as she ran, so quick and so true it seemed like every foeman she looked at got a sharp reproach right after. As if her arrows followed wherever her gaze went. I lashed out with the morningstar ever and again to keep anyone from coming too close, but it didn’t feel like she needed me or even knew I was there.
At the bottom of the hill, we jumped down into the cut. The river was right up against the bank, so we splashed down in a foot or so of cold, quick water. There were three Half-Ax soldiers there who had their backs to us, firing on some of ours further up towards the bend. One of them never got to turn around, for Cup had time to get off a final shot.
Then we were pressed hard, and I can’t say how it was we didn’t fall. The man that came for me was taller than I am by a head or more, and had a longer reach. His bow was no use in such close quarters though, and he had to draw his knife. I backed away, swinging the morningstar in circles to keep him at a distance, but he was ducking to the left and the right, looking for a way to strike at me.
I saw Cup down on her back with the other fighter on top of her, the two of them struggling for the same spear.
I should not have looked away. My enemy crashed into me and drove me into the bank, knocking all the breath out of me. I sank down, struggling for air. He grabbed my hair in his hand and hauled me up again, bending my head back to bare my throat.
Behind him, running up the cut – surely the last sight I would ever see, I thought – came Rampart Knife. They all threw their blades at once. That seems unlikely, doesn’t it? They could not have been running seven abreast, with knives ready in their hands. Obviously my mind has added daggers that were not there. But I remember that rain of bright steel, and the Half-Ax man falling back, still upright for a moment with a cluster of hilts sticking out of his shoulder and his side.
Jon took him in the throat with a second blade, then turned and dragged me up on my feet as Veso and Lari between them brought down the fighter that was struggling with Cup. She grabbed up the dead man’s spear and nodded thanks.
“There’s more coming!” Jon shouted. “We can’t stay here.”
“You can’t go no further either,” Cup said, pointing. The cut up ahead of us was thick with grey uniforms, and more were pouring out of the woods. So many! It seemed there was no end to them. For every one that had fallen, there were a dozen more.
And they had seen us. Cut off from the rest of Mythen Rood’s tally, we were an easy and a tempting target. The bulk of the Half-Ax line headed straight on to where Catrin and Fer must be, already surrounded by a sea of grey. A smaller group that was still too many to count split off and advanced on us.
Cup hefted her spear. Rampart Knife drew fresh blades and took aim. The grey line became a thicket of drawn-back, creaking bows.
Then there came a sound I can’t ever forget, and can’t hope to describe. It was like a scream – a scream of rage, rather than one born out of pain or fear. And once it had started, it didn’t stop. It went on long past the point where anything living would have had to draw breath.
The Half-Ax fighters faltered. Their hands slackened on their bows as they looked past us.
Over us.
A long, long way over us.
Under the neverending scream, more sounds rose up. A roaring and a clattering, a boom of steel on steel.
I looked over my shoulder.
Every demon and monster from every story you ever heard was charging down the hill towards us. They were all in armour, but no armour could hide their fangs, their claws, their spears, their great balled battle-maces and war-worn shields. They were their own chariots. Their breath was fire, and the smoke of it hung over them like a hundred tattered shrouds.
Some of the Half-Ax fighters loosed their arrows. The shafts fell on the giant beasts, or wagons, or whatever you might call them, but fell as harmless as rain. From somewhere in that long line of fearsome engines, or maybe from all of them, a voice boomed out, so loud it was as if an earthquake had been given speech.
“Fuzakeru naaaaaa! You hurt him! You hurt him and this is what you get!”
Some of the great chariots ran on ahead of the rest. They were the ones carrying shields, or the things I thought were shields. But they were something else again. They were wide blades that had been held high and now were brought all the way down until they bit into the ground. They churned up the dirt and grass and weeds in front of them so it rose in a wave that swelled higher and higher.
When they got to the cut, all that churned-up earth fell in on top of the Half-Ax fighters there. The chariots themselves came right after and crushed them down. It would have been a terrible thing to see any other time. It was terrible still, but all I saw right then was rescue. So I didn’t turn away as the bigger, slower engines, with their spiked jaws and giant flails, rolled over the bridge the first ones had made into the centre of the Half-Ax line.
The battle did not end all at once. The Half-Ax fighters were brave, and fought on as long as they could.
It did not avail them.
72
The story of the Half-Ax war – at least, when I have the telling of it – is rounded out with three things more.
First. We went back to Mythen Rood in better form than we left it, with all those mighty chariots riding by our side. They had a name – just the one name, shared between all of them. It was Monono. And for dead Koli’s sake she was prepared to be a friend to Mythen Rood.
I had to wonder, though, if there would even be a Mythen Rood going forward. We had lost so many, more than fifty souls all told. Rampart Arrow was among them and so was her husband Gendel. Rampart Fire lived, but her wounds – on top of those she’d suffered at Calder ford – left her almost too weak to lift her head. The many friends I lost I will forbear to list.
We took the surrender of the Half-Ax tally in Mythen Rood from some captain or lieutenant who could scarce speak his own name for grief and holy dread. They had been about to torch the Hold, but chose to loot it first. I told him their greed and their tardiness were all that had saved them. If we had come back to that, to a smoking ruin, and to the sight of all them we loved dead in the ashes…
But we did not. Everyone who had hidden in the secret rooms was saved. Ban delivered my Vallen into my arms, and Jon’s. Jarter stood by her side with a cudgel in one hand and a dagger in the other, guarding my baby girl to the last as she had sworn to.
In the days and weeks that followed, we struggled to find a way forward. We had the great engines to watch over us, but nobody to tell us what to do. In my heart, I thought we were lost, but I put on a bold face whenever I stood in the Count and Seal. I had to, for Catrin had given me the firethrower and bid me speak in her name. She said she couldn’t speak for the village any more, now that what the Vennastins did to Koli was known by all and some. So I was Rampart Fire, whether I wished it or not, and had to make the best I could of it.
Second. When we took the prisoners home to Half-Ax, we found the Peacemaker already dead. He had made a grievous mistake in sending his whole army out against Mythen Rood. His own people had risen up against him and cast him down. The store of tech that he had gathered – such of it as had not travelled with his army – was looted and gone to the winds.
The people of Half-Ax were terrified when they saw us coming. It took a great many assurances before they would believe we had no interest in sacking their village or taking them as slaves. They only had the one example to go on, after all. We gathered them in a Count and Seal – a thing they had no name for – where we offered them a treaty and a chance to live under Mythen Rood law if they wished it.