Andrew Hartley - Act of Will

Mithos had split his force, half of them assaulting the rear of the raiders, the other hundred forming a line facing the Shale cavalry, whose advance had already slowed. The raiders were trying to pull out, pushing hard through the thin wedge of villagers, swerving towards the citadel as they wrenched themselves free. By the time the raiders had freed themselves completely, pulling away from us and the Shale army, they must have lost sixty men and horses. Something like a hundred remained.

A roar of triumph went up from our infantry forces at this temporary respite. The Shale cavalry had slowed to nothing, but they were still a long way from where their infantry had dismounted. They stood uncertainly in their dark scale armor and black dragon-motif cloaks, trying to gauge what had happened.

Mithos appeared at the head of the Verneytha cavalry. His helm with its wire-wound dragon crest and fearsome mask was tipped back from his face. He found Garnet returning with his men, blood-streaked but exuberant, and called out to him, “Attack the Shale cavalry. Chase them to their lines, and watch for the raiders at our backs. Charge!”

As he bellowed that last word he pulled his helm down over his face and turned his steed. With a cry that rang from our force, the horsemen turned and followed. The hundred Verneytha horses that had stood between Shale and the raiders formed the first wave; the other hundred, augmented by the Hopetown garrison and the villagers, made a less ordered second. Right at the front, her sword aloft, was Renthrette.

I stood atop our crippled wagon and watched the Shale cavalry hesitate. They began to move forward, but the sight of our men crashing towards them broke their spirit. Officers shouted and the ordered ranks broke. Some met our charge head-on, some waited, and others fled back towards their infantry, our riders at their heels. Less than half of Shale’s renowned cavalry made it back alive.

To the north, the remaining raiders watched us as we regrouped. They had started to attack from behind, but the Shale line had broken so suddenly that they had pulled back.

“Where are the others?” said the teenager, whose face was streaked with blood. “The ones in white.”

I turned and squinted back to where they had been, but there was no sign of them. They had gone.

“There!” said the last of our blue-caped spearmen.

Out of the thin and blowing mist, the Empire troops appeared, right alongside their brother raiders only a few hundred yards away. We had kept the red force from joining with the black, but this was just as bad.

Orgos and Duke Raymon had brought their two companies together and marched them towards the center of the plain, where we might keep a block between the raiders and the rest of the Shale force. We set the wagon trundling towards them and the brief security they offered.

“Will,” called Lisha, “over here.”

I walked across, glad to leave the frightened soldiers to their own thoughts. A handful of women had spilled out of the citadel and one of them began to wail high and long. I saw her bent over one of the bodies, her face twisted and disfigured with grief and her cry floating through the air. I looked away quickly and tried to shut the sound out, but another voice began, joining her in abrasive harmony. The soldiers couldn’t bear it. A ripple of unease was coursing up and down their ranks, a ripple you could see. I turned my back on the mourning women, slowly walking to where Lisha stood in front of the Greycoast infantry lines with the duke and the rest of the party.

“Now what do we do?” Garnet asked wearily.

“We weaken them some more,” said Lisha. “Mithos, the Verneytha cavalry are fast. Can you get them close enough to throw their javelins?”

Mithos shook his head. “Only if you can keep Shale’s archers focused elsewhere.”

“We need a diversion,” said Lisha.

Orgos nodded. “You’ll get it,” he said.

The green-caped cavalry wheeled off to the south as our infantry advanced slowly on the long, solid line of black shields of the Shale army. I forced myself to concentrate on reloading the crossbows.

A moment later the unearthly silence was broken by a distant swish that lasted a second or more. I looked up to see the air dark with arrows and our infantry standing under them, their body-sized shields locking swiftly together across the front and over the top at Orgos’s order: a half-tortoise. I think they had waited until the first arrows were in flight before the formation shaped itself. The concave oblongs of timber, hide, and metal plates fitted together like the parts of a puzzle in a single movement that took less time to assemble than the arrows took to fall. I held my breath, heard the dull rattling stutter of the shafts striking home, and watched for holes appearing in the tortoise shell. Incredibly, I didn’t see a single man go down.

Almost simultaneously, the Verneytha cavalry attacked the southern tip of Shale’s infantry block. By the time the enemy saw them coming it looked like a full charge. Shale’s foot soldiers, now dismounted and standing four or five deep, raised their spears to meet an attack that never came. Instead, there was a long, pronounced volley of javelins, after which the horses wheeled away. In seconds the maneuver was over and our forces were returning to the center. Shale lost a couple of dozen men, maybe more. But we were out of hit-and-run tactics.

The change in the tide came sooner than any of us expected. The Shale infantry saddled up once more and advanced across the plain towards us. This new movement held our attention until we heard the familiar drumming of horses’ hooves to our rear. Turning, horror-struck, we found the raiders passing at speed between us and the citadel.

“Raise your shields,” bellowed Orgos. It was too late. The arrows came pelting like heavy rain as the horsemen veered west towards the Shale line.

I think it was the randomness that was so appalling. In an instant our scenes of victory were bleeding and crying out around us. An infantryman in the front line called out for a surgeon over and over. Closer to me, a soldier screamed as his friend lowered him to the ground and tried to draw an arrow from his stomach. One of the village boys lay crumpled at my feet. I hadn’t seen him fall and figured he had just fainted. I tried to lift him and found the arrow in his side.

Orgos’s eyes flashed desperately about him and took in the damage. I watched the raiders ride away as they had done so many times before. As they crossed the plains, a shout of triumph rose up from the Shale force. We couldn’t even give chase. There was nothing we could do, and the red, white, and black united. Their lines swelled and pressed towards us.

It’s over.

I looked at Orgos, and his eyes were fixed on the approaching enemy, his nostrils flared and his lips parted slightly as his breathing came slow and even. For once there was no hope in his face. He looked too tired even for desperation. He felt my gaze upon him and turned towards me. As the enemy came at us, outnumbering us and bent on our utter demolition, I saw Orgos’s values crumble and his better motives crushed beneath the raiders’ brutal heel. It wasn’t defeat that he couldn’t stand, it was this heartless calculation, a calculation that had epitomized the raiders’ operations since before we had even arrived. What could you believe in after this? They came towards us, and all his principles, all his honor and hope for human nature evaporated before them, dispelled by their stronger magic of greed and callousness. In a moment, his spirit was broken.

“Pull back!” shouted Lisha suddenly. There was a flicker of life in our frozen forces, and Orgos became himself again, or seemed to, though there was a deliberation in the effort that was unconvincing. I have rarely had a stronger sense of a man acting to keep the show moving.