K Parker: The Belly of the Bow

The general consensus in the courtyard after Chapter was that being sent to Scona with a further three thousand men was a fitting punishment for Anaut Mogre for not seeing that one coming a mile off; if he was truly the best the Separatists had, then pretty soon the balance of power was going to undergo a significant shift. But as far as the war went, regardless of Anaut Mogre’s ineptitude, sending another army was no bad thing; after all, another three thousand men couldn’t do any harm, and there was an outside chance that, purely by coincidence, they might do a power of good.

When Bovert and his party returned home, they were much more polite to Gannadius and kept pouring him drinks he didn’t want; on the strict understanding, they added, that his vision was really a gigantic hoax, and he’d been talking through his rear end. Prophets, they gave him to understand, were fine by them, just so long as their prophecies were guaranteed to be false.

In the heat of the battle, Gorgas couldn’t help smiling. When asked by his sergeants what was so very amusing about being attacked on three sides by a greatly superior force on unfavourable ground, he simply shook his head and said it was a personal thing.

They’d had the misfortune to come upon Avid Soef just as he was emerging from the Baudel marshes; his men were exhausted and in bad order, scattered and confused and caked with mud that made their boots almost too heavy to lift, and in consequence he stood still and resolutely refused to attack. As far as Gorgas was concerned, this was a serious problem. Even with Sergeant Baiss’s company added to his own, he still had no more than four hundred men, as against Soef’s two thousand, so he was in no position to launch an attack. On the other hand, he really didn’t want to wait around in open country, with the Baudel marshes in front of him and the Baudel river behind him, not knowing whether yet another army of two thousand-odd halberdiers might suddenly appear behind him and cut off his retreat. All he could think of was to try the harrassment tactics that had worked so well in the mountains, and see if he could lure Soef after him into the equally treacherous wetlands to the west or the north. The trouble was that if he did that, he’d have to go there too, and in the mud and ooze of the bogs he’d lose the mobility that gave him his killing advantage. At least here on the level Baudel plain his men could outrun the halberdiers as far as the river. He set about trying to provoke an attack.

Soef, however, didn’t want to know. As the first sparse line of archers strolled up the field towards him, he ordered general retreat and fell back on Sheepridge, a rocky hog’s back that provided a natural rampart behind which his men could take cover. If Gorgas wanted to get a shot, he’d have to come within twenty yards; too close for comfort even for light-footed archers against dog-tired halberdiers.

Baffled, Gorgas withdrew to his previous position and ordered his men to dig trenches, cut and hammer in stakes. It was, he reckoned, a matter of nerve and patience. The bottom line was that Soef was the invader, the one whose mission it was to seek out and destroy the enemy; eventually he was going to have to mount an attack whether he liked it or not. For one thing, sooner or later the halberdiers would run out of food; it would turn into a siege without walls. As for his fear of another Shastel army, he had no reason to suppose there was such a thing loose on the island. The fact that he hadn’t known about Soef didn’t necessarily mean that the enemy had an infinite supply of soldiers wandering around the place. He would sit tight and wait; and, since by retreating to the ridge Soef had obligingly added another hundred and ten yards to the distance his men would eventually have to cross in the face of Gorgas’ archers, he didn’t mind.

Whether he’d overestimated or underestimated his enemy, he could never be sure. Whether the force that suddenly materialised forty yards from his right flank in the middle of the night was a daring sneak attack or a foraging party that had got hopelessly lost and blundered into his pickets thinking they were halberdiers didn’t really matter; the important thing was that they burst into Gorgas’ camp with only a few shouts and screams for warning, and it was too dark to shoot. Gorgas woke up from a dream he couldn’t remember, with a crick in his neck and a headache, already aware that something was wrong. He stuffed his feet into his boots (either his feet had grown or his boots had shrunk, but he’d never before had so much difficulty doing such a simple thing), grabbed his coat, his quiver and the new, the wonderful bow, and thrashed his way through his tent-flap.

He bumped head-on into a halberdier. Luckily, he was pressed right up close against Gorgas so that his halberd was jammed across his chest. With a great effort the halberdier shoved him away, which gave Gorgas a chance to jerk an arrow out of his quiver and hold it out in front of him, just handy for the halberdier to impale himself on as he rushed forward. The amazed look in the man’s eyes as he flopped to the ground said I didn’t expect that more eloquently than words ever could.

The camp fires were little islands of light; beyond them there was nothing but noise and invisible movement. Gorgas nocked another arrow on his string and stepped nervously out of the light, trying to think what the hell to do. All around him were confused single combats, men shoving and kicking and slashing at sounds, shapes, partial evidence of movement. Someone ran past him, about five yards away; before he knew it, he’d swung the bow up, reached forward with his left hand and let the string pull off his loosing fingers. He had no idea if the shot had gone home, or who he’d been shooting at; reflex, his old, reliable, get-out-of-trouble-quick reflex, faster than thought, which had shaped his entire life. Before he could nock another arrow, someone else collided with him from behind, treading on the back of his knees and sending him sprawling. He managed to avoid landing on the bow but lost his grip on it; he rolled sideways and jumped to his feet. The man, whoever he was, didn’t recover so quickly. Gorgas reckoned he could make out the shape of a man on his hands and knees, and kicked hard at where the head should be. His toes jarred on heavy plate, painful in spite of the thick toecaps, and whoever it was grabbed his ankle and threw him. He landed on his left shoulder, and his floundering left leg cracked into something half soft, which could have been a man’s face. The grip on his ankle relaxed; he slid his hands along the ground to help push himself up, and felt something under his left hand, either a bow-handle or a halberd shaft. The shape was rearing up, so he flipped onto his back and kicked up at it with both heels. That seemed to have some effect and the shape collapsed backwards, giving him time to scramble up with the halberd ( which means he’s the enemy, what a relief ) and lunge with it towards the other man’s last known position. Nothing there but empty air.

He stood still for a moment, and realised that he was waiting to see what happened – bad idea, bad idea. It also dawned on him that the nebulous, undecided duel he’d just fought had left him more frightened than he’d ever been in his life before. No good, he thought, unless he did something quickly it was going to turn into a disaster, a massacre.

Do something. Quickly. Do what?

There were lights coming; in the distance – was that Sheepridge over there? He’d completely lost his sense of direction – in rows, like an army marching with torches or lanterns. The likeliest explanation was Avid Soef and the rest of the two thousand, coming to finish the job, in which case the only sensible thing he could do was run away and hope nobody killed him, deliberately or by mistake, while he was at it. One thing for sure; those lights couldn’t mean anything good. Better to run away on general principles, while he still had arms and legs and eyes, the full working capital he’d managed to bring with him from the Mesoge. As usual, Niessa had been right; he had nothing to stay here for.