Miles Cameron - The Fell Sword

The longbows on the town walls shocked them. The Thrakians had taken for granted that the company archers were already gone, retreating. The flight of three hundred arrows, even at long range, emptied saddles and killed many horses outright.

And then Gelfred struck, leading his scouts in a charge from under the walls to the west. He only had fifty men, but they made a great deal of noise, and the khan’s men feared a larger trap – and so they broke.

Instantly, the Vardariotes switched direction – their best trick. Arrows flew in every direction for a moment, but the Easterners were broken. They left two or three dozen dead behind them.

The Vardariotes formed a crisp array, picked up their wounded, and trotted away into the shadow of the olive trees. Gelfred’s men took no casualties and melted into the woods to the north and west of the town.

The Red Knight watched the last of the action from the base of a south-facing tower. Then he turned his charger and cantered heavily around the town, in time to see his archers, led by Bent, riding out of the north gate.

Bent saluted, and the archers cheered.

The action lost him forty men, but it bought him another day.

‘He is making us dance to his tune every day,’ Aeskepiles said.

Demetrius scratched his jaw. ‘My men performed well this morning. Those are the Empire’s best soldiers – we matched them.’

Aeskepiles shook his head. ‘No. We lost.’

‘We’ll catch him tomorrow,’ Demetrius said. ‘But our horses need rest, and my men need sleep.’

That night Dariusz doubled the guards on the horse herd. The raid came in the hour of death, when men sleep most heavily, three hours after midnight, and took no one by surprise. The fields were dark, and the woods were darker, and they only found a dozen dead men, but Dariusz slapped Verki on the back.

‘It’s good to win one,’ he said, looking at the dead man-at-arms.

The rest of the army slept. Their horses rested.

At midnight, Gelfred came in from the west and demanded to be taken straight to the Duke, who was awake.

‘He looked as happy as his sourpuss face can manage,’ Nell muttered to Wilful.

Wilful shrugged. ‘We’ll be fighting again tomorrow, mark my words.’

Nell slapped him as one of his hands drifted over the treaty line, and he subsided and took a bite of garlic sausage.

Two hours later, Ser Giorgios brought back the raid. He was despondent, having lost almost a dozen men. ‘They were waiting for us,’ he told Kronmir, who took his horse.

Kronmir nodded. ‘They aren’t fools,’ he said.

‘You would know,’ Ser Giorgios said. It wasn’t accusing, merely factual. Moreans took a different view of these things.

‘I would know,’ Kronmir said, and went to report to the Duke.

Two hours before sunrise, the Imperial Army had its light horse in motion.

An hour before sunrise, their baggage, all their women and children and most of the non-combatant men, marched away – west. It was the first day they hadn’t marched north in several days. Mag knew why, and when she kissed her man goodbye she gave him a hard squeeze.

‘What do you know?’ John le Bailli asked.

‘Same as you,’ Mag said. She winked. ‘Don’t be brave.’

He kissed her again. ‘Only the brave deserve the fair.’

‘Just my point.’ She kissed him again, fought the urge to cry or say something foolish, and pushed him away lightly, her fingers on his cold breastplate.

She climbed back up on her wagon box and looked over her convoy. She pumped her fist once, and the wagons began to roll. West.

The Empress Livia referred to the plains and wheat fields of Viotia as the dance floor of Mars. Both of the major battles of the Irk campaigns were fought there – and two of the three battles of the Second Civic War. There was space on the plains for armies much bigger than the Imperial Army commanded by the Red Knight, but the hand of history was palpable here.

The ground was flat for miles. Lonika rose in the middle distance, almost ten miles away, a forest of turrets amidst the cliffs of crenellated walls.

At the strategic level, the plains of Viotia offered the best manoeuvring space on this side of the Green Hills. He could march his army in almost any direction.

But at a tactical level, they represented a nightmare of hedgerows, small tilled fields, farm ponds and stone walls – some of them ten feet high – stone barns and outbuildings, churches with fortified walls, a monastery as big as an Imperial castle, sheep pens, and streams running so full that they flowed over their carefully tended stone banks, all criss-crossed with excellent roads that had high hedges or stone walls of their own. Most of the fields were quite large, but a few were very small indeed.

His rearguard covered the crossroads where the wagons had turned west. They waited, a detachment of the company’s mounted archers dismounted behind the walls, backed with two squadrons of Vardariotes, until the sun was high in the sky and the wagons were long out of sight to the west. On roads this good, wagons could make five miles an hour.

Ser Jehan kept them in place for another hour. When the first Thrakian scouts came down the road from the south, they received a volley of arrows that emptied a handful of saddles. The Alban mercenaries mounted without haste and trotted away, and the Thrakians kept their distance.

It was noon before Captain Dariusz occupied the crossroads.

He looked west along the old Dorling road and watched it for a while. He could see the enemy army halfway between his horse and the distant loom of Lonika, waiting. He watched them for a bit, too. Then he snapped his fingers.

‘Stepan,’ he said. ‘Inform Lord Demetrius he has his battle.’

Aeskepiles rode into the crossroads and examined the enemy array, and then made a sign, unfolded his hands and produced a shimmering lens of air. He played with it for some time and added a second, and by the time Lord Demetrius came up, he had the thing focused on the enemy.

Demetrius looked through it like a child with a new toy, but his attention was elsewhere. ‘Why has he halted? Have they dug traps?’

Ser Christos spat derisively. ‘No, my lord. The ground remains frozen. If it wasn’t, we’d be fetlock deep in mud.’

Demetrius sat watching. ‘Why fight me at all?’ he asked. ‘The capital is wide open. He can march in and take Lonika.’ He shrugged. ‘We have no siege equipment.’

Aeskepiles smiled. ‘You have me,’ he said. ‘And your own mages, worthy young men that they are.’

Demetrius shrugged again. He rode west a few paces and turned, looking over the fields from a better vantage point. ‘It’s not a bad position,’ he said. ‘He’s got his right flank covered against the farm and all those little outbuildings, and his left refused with a nice high wall. A tough nut to crack.’ He turned and grinned. ‘Let’s get him.’

The Thrakians didn’t waste time. Their cavalry marched into the field, and then split up into companies and began to form lines. Duke Andronicus’ infantry marched straight up the road to a point where their pioneers had knocked holes in the old farm wall. They marched through a gap forty feet wide, with the farmer standing cursing them.

‘You fucking- That’s a year’s work! A year ’ s work!’

A spear point licked out and saved him from any further effort. He fell forward, over his own wound, and bled out on the ground he’d tilled throughout his life.

The heavy infantry were almost two thousand strong – all by themselves, they equalled the whole of the Imperial Army. They flew three great banners: the Virgin Mary, Christ Crucified, and Christ Harrowing Hell. They marched in silence, formed up to a few shouted commands, and halted, waiting for the cavalry to form on them.