Brian Ruckley - Bloodheir

Taim turned to the little wedge of Haig men drawn up beside him. There was no sense in waiting. There was to be no subtlety to this; it would be won and lost quickly, in the first savage moments when men must choose between courage and fear.

“Go,” Taim shouted at the Haig men. For an instant, he was not sure they would do as he commanded. But then they were running, and crying out, and driving their way to the heart of the fight.

“Us too,” Taim called to his companions, and they charged in.

The battleground was constricted, the slaughter compressed into the small open space where the bridge disgorged the road between huts. Taim’s horse stamped on someone as it lunged forwards. It barged through and took him up against a woman who was laying about her from horseback with a long thin-bladed sword. She cut at Taim’s arm. He blocked the blow and swung for her flank. Her horse lurched sideways and carried her out of his reach. A spear stabbed into her stomach from below, and he turned away, seeking another opponent. More warriors were still coming across the bridge. Taim saw one of his men battered to the ground and trampled. A horse reared beside him, and twisted and crashed down on its side. He urged his own mount on, closer and closer to the bridge. He killed one man, and another.

He glimpsed villagers rushing up to the edge of the fray, falling on injured or unwary Black Roaders, clubbing them and jabbing at them with knives. He hacked and slashed until his arm ached. And, quite suddenly, it was done, and the enemy were all dead or downed, and the bridge still belonged to Taim and his men.

Sleet was falling, and the day’s light was almost done. Taim could hear people cheering. He sat on his horse at the mouth of the bridge and stared off down the valley. There were other companies of warriors on the road, out there in the gloom, drawing closer.

He sheathed his sword and turned back towards the village. One of the Haig warriors grinned up at him.

“It’s not done yet,” Taim said wearily before the man could speak. “Is there a ford across the river anywhere near here? Another bridge?”

The spearman shook his head, his brief joy dispelled by Taim’s grave expression.

“Get whatever you can find out of the houses, then,” Taim said. “Benches, tables. Anything. We need to put a wall across the bridge.”

The Black Road came across the bridge only once in the night: a single, wild rush not of warriors but of commonfolk, who came pouring out of the darkness brandishing staffs and axes and looted swords. They swarmed over the half-built barricade and spilled on into the village, howling with a delirious glee. The fight spread quickly, tumbling itself into side streets and across the inn’s yard, into doorways.

In the almost moonless dark, it was hard to tell friend from foe. Villagers fought alongside Taim and his men, and the killing was frenzied and frenetic. A youth clad in a mail hauberk far too big for him came at Taim, lunging clumsily with a short sword. Taim knocked him down. The boy — no more than fourteen or fifteen, Taim guessed — sprawled at his feet, stunned. He lay groaning in a pool of yellow light cast from the window of a hut. Taim stared at him as he struggled to rise.

“Don’t,” he muttered, too softly for anyone to hear.

Someone came running and drove a spear into the small of the boy’s back. He wailed and writhed. Like a fish, Taim thought as he backed away. He ran towards the barricade, stepping over bodies. Figures rushed at him and he cut them down. At the bridge, the struggle was intimate. Men were on the ground, wrestling and stabbing with knives. Some had climbed atop the heap of timber and furniture and were swinging staffs at every head that came within reach. Taim ducked low and cut their legs from under them. More came scrambling over the barricade, and he killed them as they came.

Eventually, the night’s quiet descended once more, punctuated only by the groans and cries of the wounded, who lay amidst slush and puddles. Taim went to the inn and slumped in a chair before the fire. He was foggy from lack of sleep, dull-eyed and heavy-limbed. He stared into the flames.

Someone brought him a bowl of broth. Someone else set a beaker of ale down on the table beside him. No one was talking. There was coughing, thick and liquid; mutters of pain from the wounded who were scattered around the room. A child was curled up on the floor in front of the fire, asleep. Taim’s head nodded. His face slackened.

A hand on his shoulder startled him back to wakefulness.

“There’s beds upstairs,” someone was saying to him. “We’ll find you if you’re needed.”

Taim climbed the stairs, and found a bed with a coarse blanket and a hard mattress. He stretched out on it and was instantly asleep.

Dawn lit the village in muted greys. There were still corpses strewn across the road and slumped against the walls of huts. A torpid silence hung over the little collection of buildings. Those who moved did so quietly and carefully, as if fearing to draw even the slightest attention to themselves. Some were readying themselves to walk southwards: folding a few possessions into packs, searching out the last few scraps of food they could find.

There would soon be no one left here save those without any choice in the matter, Taim knew as he looked out from the doorway of the inn. Behind him, laid out on tables and on the floor, were the sick and the injured. They could not walk away from here. Nor would the old woman he’d seen sitting on a stool in the inn’s kitchen. She was too frail for the long road to Ive.

He could see the barricade across the bridge. All through the night, huts had been stripped of their contents to build it higher. Twenty or so Lannis and Haig warriors were sitting in its shelter now, talking softly amongst themselves, sharing water from their skins. Taim lifted his gaze, followed the rise and fall of the bridge across to the far side of the river. There was movement on the tall, steep slope above the road: shapes shifting amongst the rocks. A lot of them. And he thought he could make out a long line of riders snaking its way up the valley. He wondered dispassionately how long the bridge could be held; how many dead it would take before the Black Road could overwhelm them. How much time could be bought for those struggling southwards. And whether he had any choice in any of this. Did he want to sacrifice his men — himself — in this cause?

Something flashed out from the high ground north of the river. His first, instant thought was that it was a bird, but it darted down and skittered across the surface of the road not twenty paces from where he stood: a crossbow bolt. Another followed it. He heard its dry, muffled impact in the turf roof of one of the cottages.

Someone was behind him, peering over his shoulder.

“What’s this place called, anyway?” Taim asked.

“Ive Bridge.”

Taim nodded. “Ive Bridge. Yes, I suppose it would be.”

“At the bridge. Ive Bridge,” the old woman said.

Orisian moved closer, coming up to Torcaill’s shoulder.

“You’re sure?” the warrior asked the woman.

She grimaced at him. “I’m old, not stupid. I can tell the difference.”

“Lannis men?” Orisian said.

She fixed him with a look that bordered on the contemptuous. “Is it that you’re all deaf, is that it? Yes, Lannis men. Fighting on the bridge. Black Road all over the place, other side of the river, apparently. Not this side yet, though.”

“How far is it?” asked Orisian.

She considered her answer for a few moments longer than he would have liked. “Half a day, I should think. Not more. Probably less.”

They watched her shuffle off down the road. She moved steadily, for a woman of such age. They had seen others, on this road, less strong and more desperate. The long trail down from Stone had been all but empty. Only a handful of goatherds and hunters had shared it with them. That mountain track had brought them to the Ive road now, though, and they had found themselves caught up in a steady trickle of people trudging southwards. All of them told the same tale of defeat and destruction, and testified to the truth of it with their bent backs and fretful faces. Every one of them — men, women, children — looked lost, cast adrift; hounded by fears and grim memories.