Michael Stackpole - When Dragons Rage

Sallitt stood there silently, the mask’s ties floating softly on the breeze. Will watched the muscles bunch in his jaw and his eyes narrow. The silvery metal mail that fleshed the right side of his face contrasted sharply with his red hair and pale skin, but it flowed as if it lived, tightening as the man thought. Will actually saw a vein pulse at his temple beneath argent sheathing.

The elder Hawkins kept his voice even, but a tightness in his throat had lowered it. “We’ve been thinking on that. It was Tarrant Hawkins who was stripped of his mask. Events seem to have proven that to be wrong. But it’s not Tarrant Hawkins we’re offering this mask to. We’re offering it to you, Kedyn’s Crow. The past doesn’t matter. What matters is that you’ve earned the honor of a mask many times over.”

Crow started to shake his head and deny the honor.

Will stepped forward and took the mask from Sallitt’s hand. He looked up at Crow. “In Meredo, you accepted that I was your liege lord. You accepted a mask from the hand of a Norrington before. Will you take this one now, for me? For this company?”

The white-haired man nodded slowly and dropped to one knee. Will stepped behind him and fastened the mask on, catching a hair in the knot. “It’s not that this mask makes you one of this company, Crow. In taking these masks, they’re all joining you and Resolute in your war with Chytrine.”

The Norrington stepped away and untied the mask from his own right arm, then pulled it on. He reached back to tie it into place, but found Crow there. “A Norrington always has a Hawkins to help him, my lord.”

Will smiled as he felt the knot snug and tug a piece of hair. “Thank you, Crow.” He looked up and saw the other men, especially the Oriosans among them, smiling broadly.

Will aped their smile. “Well, now that’s done, men, we have killing to do. Let’s go. There will be a lot of it, so we might as well get an early start.”

Even before setting out for Nawal, Alexia had seen signs that her strategy was having an effect on the Aurolani forces. Crown Prince Bowmar and his core of two heavy cavalry battalions had hurried north on the Porjal road and set up in the hill country. As expected, they skirmished with the Aurolani lead element, which withdrew and waited for the bulk of the army to come up. When the Aurolani general—identified by arcanslata as a sullanciri —entered the field of battle, the Murosan cavalry withdrew to a new line of hills, with the infantry to back them up.

The Aurolani made several attempts to bring their dragonels up, but this was a tricky proposition. If they came too near to the cavalry formation, a quick charge by the Murosan warriors could kill the crews and destroy the weapons. To protect them, the Aurolani leader only advanced them with sufficient infantry cover, and the cavalry before that. When the cavalry pulled back for the final time, they withdrew to hills where the infantry—aided by magick to unfreeze the ground—had dug in. There the dragonels would be shooting uphill against targets behind cover.

The Aurolani did have skycasters—short, squat dragonels that launched a ball filled with firedirt that exploded over its target. Will had dubbed the missiles thunderballs and they burst into a lethal spray of shrapnel. While they would be able to deliver their thunderballs on target, they had to be positioned relatively close to the hill they were going to be shooting at.

The Murosan hill positions were by no means invulnerable. Positions like that had been overrun from time immemorial. With enough warriors moving fast enough, a enemy could overwhelm the defenders and sweep over them. The cost would be frightening, but it was the only way to dislodge them.

Not the only way , Alexia reminded herself. A single dragon could sweep over the line of hills and burn the defenders alive. Alyx had seen firsthand the destructive capability of a dragon’s fury. The city of Porasena in eastern Alcida had ceased to exist in less than five minutes.

Predictably, the Aurolani commander detached a part of his force to swing west through a gap in the hills to try to get around behind the Murosan position. Chances were that the two battalions of light cavalry would be insufficient to stop a full retreat, but they could slow it enough that the main force could come up. At the very least, the Aurolani light cavalry would be able to stop any supplies from getting through to the force astride the road, weakening that position.

The light cavalry rode under the banner of four crushed skulls, one each of white, red, blue, and green. Gibberers and vylaens mostly, with a few renegade men, the six hundred rode out under cover of darkness as if heading back toward Porjal, then came around the hills and moved swiftly west. With the night sky clouded and the moon no more than a sliver, the chances of their being seen by the Murosan defenders were minimal.

Alexia, on the other hand, had the benefit of a Gyrkyme scout who would be invisible in the night sky, but had sharp enough vision to return with a complete count of the force that was executing the flanking maneuver. The Aurolani detour would only be ten miles, which they could make easily in the night and arrive the next morning already set up behind the Murosan lines.

While that strategy was sound, it was based on misleading information. At the Murosan position were displayed all manner of unit banners, including those of the King’s Heavy Cavalry regiment; a famed unit that actually was under Alexia’s command. Yet while the King’s Heavy Cavalry was in the hills, it wasn’t in those hills.

It was, in fact, massed in the forested hills above the valley through which the Aurolani rode. The valley itself had been carved out by centuries of spring floods, so that, while narrow, it had a flat bottom through which a small stream ran. The stream had been completely covered by snow, and the snow, which was not deep, had frozen hard. The Aurolani, moving swiftly through the night, had no inkling of the disaster about to befall them.

Their first warning came when the Heavy Cavalry’s First Battalion charged out of the forest to the north. The three hundred heavy cavalrymen came riding fast out of the tree line. They actually were heading for the last part of the Aurolani line, having waited until the rear guard passed them before they launched their strike. They started from five hundred yards away and came on at a full gallop; they would be nearing the end of their effective charge when they reached the frostclaws.

The Aurolani clearly knew the limitations of heavy cavalry. As the rear element shot forward, lengthening that range, the forward elements split north and south, to curl around and slash at cavalry flanks. The Aurolani outnumbered the Murosans two to one and should have had an easy time tearing them up.

The Aurolani had opted for the first of three possible reactions to this ambush, and Alyx had positioned her troops to take advantage of any scenario. In this one, the Second and Third Battalions attacked from the north and south respectively, hitting the Aurolani units in their rear flank.

While frostclaws were fearsome fighters, they didn’t outmass by much a warhorse encased in armor. Their broken bodies whirling and feathers flying, crushed frostclaws squawked and gurgled as the cavalry pounded into them. Lances skewered gibberers, lifting them wriggling from saddles. Screams and shouts, shrieks and whimpers fought to be heard over the clang of metal and the crisp snap of bone and lance.

The rearmost element of the Aurolani, seeing what had befallen their comrades, raced forward, outdistancing the ambushing force. Alyx could imagine them believing they had escaped their doom. They pushed on west toward where the valley began to narrow again, doubtless intent on slipping into the forest to loop around and report back to their leaders.