Joel Shepherd - Haven

She stopped at her artillery position, not even bothering to watch the enemy's rounds landing. The artillery captain came running down to her, shield above his head as he left the protection of a near catapult in the light rain of arrows that nearby archers were directing at his contraptions.

“We're about to lose the ridge!” Sasha yelled. “Pull all your units off the ridge at once, and get them back to Jahnd!”

“If I stop firing now our left flank may fold!” he shouted back above the din of battle.

“We're going to lose it anyway!” Sasha retorted. “Your artillery is more valuable, you've done all you can here-now it's time to leave!”

He nodded and ran back to his men, yelling orders. Sasha turned and spared a look down at the Rhodaani formations. Black smoke rose, and fires spread. It was hard to see the formation clearly, just glints of steel through the smoke. On the wide flanks, Rhodaani cavalry was charging, accompanied by talmaad and Lenay cavalry back for a second charge. It met little opposing cavalry, but gathering now before the Regent's artillery were great rows of pikemen, apparently organised for just that purpose. Their pikes were huge, and their lines bristled like a porcupine. Cavalry hated that. It seemed the Regent had put some thought into how to protect his artillery from cavalry at least.

Andreyis came racing back from his latest mission, and Sasha sent him on a new one. “Tell Kessligh we're pulling off the ridge! We'll protect the artillery and try to make a new line for them to pass, but if we stay here we'll lose everything.”

He left. Yasmyn had been sent to carry another officer's message, and she had no idea where Daish was. Sasha turned and galloped up the line once more, to where her left flank was about to find itself without artillery cover.

She'd just reached the bluff when yells and running men alerted her that the line behind her had been breached. She spun her horse and saw a swarm of men-at-arms pushing through the Ilduuris and across the path she'd just ridden. Rear ranks were peeling off the adjoining lines to attack them, but as they did so, a second portion of newly thinned line also collapsed. The line now dissolved into a mass of fighting, flailing men with no semblance of order. The chaos extended a hundred paces across, and was growing wider. She, and everyone on this side, was now trapped.

An officer ran to her with wild-eyed desperation, shouting questions she could barely hear. She did not bother yelling back, but instead gestured with her hands-a firm line to hold along the ridge so they did not get cut off again, and this new front upon the ridge itself should fall back past the bluff and contract upon itself to make a pocket. She did it as calmly as she could, despite the fighting barely twenty paces from her side, and the officer seemed to absorb that calm, take deep breaths, then turned to run back and yell orders.

Sasha spun and galloped about the corner and onto the Ipshaal front. Soon she was met by Captain Idraalgen, senior officer on this flank.

“We're cut off, the middle just folded!” she yelled at him, dismounting from her horse. “We're about three thousand stuck on this side, and our artillery is retreating!”

Idraalgen did not look very surprised. “Do we attack?” he asked cheerfully.

Sasha laughed. “Yes, but backwards! Those trails up the mountains, can we use them?”

“Any trail is enough for Ilduuri,” he replied. “We'll contract into a tight pocket and funnel men up the trails from behind. They can chase us if they wish, but the trails are narrow-one Ilduuri can stop a whole army if positioned well.”

“Then that's the plan!” Sasha shouted, and slapped him on the shoulder. But she couldn't take her horse. Probably she should have had the stallion killed so that the Regent would not gain another mount, but she had a man take him off beyond the left flank and tie him to a tree. Killing horses was bad luck, and she was superstitious enough to think that a worse threat to this battle than her enemies gaining one more steed.

With her shield on one arm, Sasha took position by one of the trails where it began to climb through steep rocks and precarious trees, shouting for the rear ranks to make an orderly ascent. They came running past her, slinging shields to their backs and swords into their scabbards, then onto the trail at speed. After long fighting, battered, sweaty, and bloody, they ran up the trail, climbing fast in the knowledge that in single file, one slow man condemned every man behind.

Soon the extended right flank of their pocket was falling back from the bluff, amidst triumphant cries and yells from the Regent's men. Directly before her she could hear Ilduuris yelling back, a few in Saalsi, words to the effect that all the piled corpses at their feet did not look like much of a victory.

The pocket drew closer, armoured flanks closing in on all sides, and arrows began to fly more thickly as the Regent's men identified the source of the trail above. Sasha found shelter behind a tree trunk, her shield raised, and figured her men were down from three thousand to just a few hundred. Now it became tricky.

A sergeant alerted her to the endgame, racing from the line now only ten paces away, waving frantically at her to run. Sasha slung her shield and ran straight up the path. Arrows struck about her, and she realised the other advantage to having the shield on the back as Ilduuris wore it while climbing. She'd been in the saddle rather than fighting on foot, so her legs were relatively fresh, yet still it hurt. Fifty paces up she paused where Ilduuri archers had halted to sit just off the path, with an increasingly sheer drop below, and expend their remaining arrows on the men who now closed about the remaining Ilduuri.

Sasha took a knee alongside them and looked down upon the final act. Wounded men, she realised, seeing the last formation of perhaps twenty men fighting amidst the trees, their balance unsteady, clearly too wounded to make this retreat. The last healthy Ilduuri made the trail and climbed, and a gap opened behind him as the wounded men fought, and fell, one, then two, then two more. They could not have gone first-the path was too narrow and they'd have slowed the entire Ilduuri retreat if their comrades had carried them. That would have cost far more lives than just these twenty.

Sasha drew her sword, and yelled an old Lenay war cry. The spirits of these mountains would hear, she was sure of it. The last Ilduuri fell, throwing his blade at an enemy in final defiance.

“Get those fucks when they come up the path,” Sasha told the archers, and left them with a whack on the helmet. The archers put arrows to bowstrings and loosed downslope as men-at-arms tried to follow.

Sasha resumed running, confident that they would not be followed for long. The path was strictly single file, and treacherously steep to any who left it. Five Ilduuri, mixing bows and swords, could hold it indefinitely against any number of foes. In Ilduur, they trained for precisely that, shutting off large numbers of remote paths to invaders through the mountains. A few dozen determined men here could stop armies.

The path angled up and across the mountain face, trees growing sparsely, affording her a view of all the battlefield as she ran. Below to her left was the ridge above the Dhemerhill Valley. Ahead was her artillery position, now vacated save for one huge blaze that blocked the way-one of the hellfire ammunition wagons set afire to block the retreat. Behind it, the ridge was all feudal soldiers, many now pointing and looking up at the Ilduuri retreat, but with no way of stopping it.

The valley below was seething with the Regent's army, and the banks of the Ipshaal were now clearing, as men found it safe to enter the valley. Ahead of them, toward Jahnd, silver-armoured men were falling back across the valley in scattered groups. The land behind them was ablaze, and even now swarming with cavalry. Those were friendly, covering the Rhodaani Steel's retreat. A large force of horsemen, but too light of build, and lately too tired, to make any great impact upon the walls of infantry before them.