Jim Butcher - Captain's Fury

Over and over, Marcus saw the same brief, hideous tableau repeated: A Cane raider would swing his hafted scythe overhead and straight down in a smashing, two-handed blow. The tip of the scythe would land hard against the top of a legionare's helmet, and with the power and weight and leverage of a full-sized Cane behind the blow, the tip of the simple weapon would pierce even Aleran steel, straight down through the top of the helmet and into the skull of the doomed legionare beneath.

It was a deadly tactic. The foe could adjust his aim with relative ease, and there was no practical way for a legionare fighting in close formation to dodge the diving tip of the Canim scythes.

Marcus brought his own shield up in time to catch the inner edge of a scythe falling toward his skull, and dropped to one knee. The scythe's edge managed to carve straight down through the steel of his shield, despite the strength of the standard Legion battlecraft that strengthened it. Marcus grunted, summoning strength from the earth to twist the shield, trapping the weapon, and with a powerful blow of his gladius , he parted the wooden haft from the scythe head, drove a wounding blow into the Cane before him, and fell back, trying to clear the weapon head from his shield while another legionare shouldered into his position-and was promptly felled by a falling scythe as the Cane Marcus had wounded was replaced just as swiftly as he had been.

After that, it became a desperate nightmare of a battle. The Legion spears were not long enough to outreach the Canim haft-scythes, and their comparatively slender wooden shafts were easily shattered by the sharpened inner curves of the scythes. The legionares , fighting on raised mounds of earth behind the palisades, fought nearly eye to eye with the Canim, and it did them no favors. The second rank could not press up onto the earthworks and employ their shields to shelter their compatriots in the first rank, and the Legion's favored tactic-the steady press forward with murderous swords thrusting and chopping between miniscule openings in the shieldwall-was simply not an option from the defensive position.

It was, Marcus reflected grimly, a tactic that would have made short work of the Canim. A steady press inside the reach of the Canim haft-scythes would leave the weapons all but useless-but fighting from a static position, the foe's new armament was taking a savage toll on the Legion.

The Canim broke the ranks on the earthworks almost at will, but never pressed their advantage. Why should they? More and more legionares stepped up to fight, and more and more went down, helms shattered. Even the heavily layered shoulders of their body armor could not wholly turn aside the force of a well-swung Canim haft-scythe, and the toll of dead and wounded steadily mounted.

"Sir!" Marcus shouted at Crassus. The young officer was near the front ranks of the battle, and as Marcus watched, he stepped up over a wounded legionare , his face a mask of determination as a Cane swung a haft-scythe in a finishing blow. Crassus's sword lashed out, and the young Citizen's blade shattered the steel of the Canim weapon in one swing and wounded the Cane holding it in another. Crassus seized the fallen man and dragged him back, while other legionares pressed up to take his place.

"Sir!" Marcus screamed. "We've got to press them, sir! We've got to push them back before they cut the men apart!"

"No!" Crassus bellowed. "Hold the line! You hold that wall until the engineers signal us, First Spear!"

Marcus's instincts and experience screamed that Crassus was making the wrong choice-that his naturally conservative tendencies as a commander, which were so ideal in other circumstances, were fatally flawed this day. The First Aleran could ill afford such a mistake in leadership.

But it could afford a loss of unity even less.

"You heard the man!" Marcus bellowed, urging his men forward. "Hold the wall! Hold! Hold!"

He had no idea how much time went by. He was briefly blinded twice- once by the blood of a Cane, and again by the blood of a veteran legionare named Barus. He was once caught off guard by a haft-scythe, and only the raised crest of his centurion's helmet kept him from sharing Barus's fate. The Cane weapon left a deep crease in his shoulder armor, and the straps and edges beneath cut into his flesh, but he kept fighting, kept supporting his men, desperately clearing the wounded from the line and urging fresh legionares into the fight.

After a lifetime, the trumpets began to blare up higher on the hill. The engineers had finished their work.

"Fall back!" Marcus screamed to his men in the tumult. "Fall back to the wall!"

The Canim howled and surged forward as the Aleran legionares began to withdraw from the palisade. They hacked into the wooden barrier, chopping away enough material to create myriad openings, and began to press the retreating legionares .

Without the Knights and the reserve waiting on the hill, it could have become a rout. Several cohorts broke altogether, but Marcus somehow kept the Prime from fragmenting, withdrawing step by step up the hill, fighting all the way. Where discipline began to fail, teams of Knights smashed into the Canim lines, and now the haft-scythes, so deadly in one circumstance, became hindrances in another. Knights Terra and Ferrous smashed through the weapons like toys, piling up fallen Canim like cordwood, and the cavalry's initial charges down the hill left windrows of dead behind.

It would be enough, Marcus saw, as Antillar Maximus, a long blade in either hand, plunged through the ragged remains of the decimated Ninth Cohort and shattered the fragile momentum a squad of raiders had gathered to pursue their advantage. The First Aleran was steadily gaining the security of the thicker stone walls of the ruin, fighting in a shrinking half circle as the men at the rear retreated. Without being ordered, he positioned the Prime at the outer edges of the defense. They would be the last cohort to gain the walls.

A flight of Knights Aeris screamed by, low enough to employ their spears, spitting Canim entirely with the speed of their passing. One man weaved aside from an upraised scythe, but the weapon's point caught in his armor or gear, and he was hauled down into a howling mob of furious raiders. As the Knights Aeris completed their pass and arced around for another, men began to drop, wounded or killed by Canim balests, and they were forced to withdraw.

Increasingly, it was the efforts of the close-combat Knights that made the critical difference as the Canim surged forward into the steadily shrinking Aleran lines. Showers of missiles from the newly crafted walls slowed some of the Canim, but there were simply not enough missiles in enough concentration to break them, and the Knights had to expend more and more effort, now fighting in the ranks with the legionares .

That was when the Canim unleashed their sorcery once again.

Marcus had little time to gawk, but he did catch a patch of unusual motion at one of the fallen palisades. A number of Canim figures in mantles of pale, pale leather appeared, filing steadily forward, swinging lit braziers in rhythm in front of them. They fell into a line, facing the hill, and then as one reached their clawed hands into gaping pouches slung across their bodies. They withdrew their hands as one single motion, sending out splattering arcs of scarlet liquid, and as one body the ritualists threw their heads back and howled.

Lines of violet flame sleeted suddenly from the skies. They struck the hillside near the distinctively deadly forms of the battling Knights and erupted into spheres of hellish fire and light. Men screamed and died, and if the skyfire wasn't the enormous destructive force that had struck the First Aleran at the Elinarch two years before, the more precise, smaller eruptions of fire certainly struck with telling effect.