A Plague of Swords, Page 3

  Guisarme was looking at the valley. “Aye. I won’t leave, either.” He gave Ablemont a wry smile. “We’d best win, then.”

  It took them the better part of the morning to form the army on the plain. Ablemont was separated from the king and from Guisarme, who commanded the advance battle, and he had plenty of time to watch the unbannered line opposite, which waited in perfect array.

  A little before the sun was high in the sky, the royal standard dipped, and the whole line started forward, a echelon of blocks of knights on horseback, with a second line of infantry at their backs.

  The enemy host stood unmoving.

  The royal standard gathered speed.

  Ablemont let his mount go from a walk to a trot and kept his eye on the standard.

  He looked to his front. By chance, he was almost perfectly aligned with the center of the enemy mass.

  They were all on foot.

  In one motion, all of them...thousands of them...lifted spears from the ground. The spears rose like a glitter of sun on rain.

  And in the next heartbeat, the spears fell again, forming a dense thicket, points forward, breast high.

  The enemy lines looked much denser than they had a few moments ago. Indeed, even through the slits of his visor, Ablemont could see line after line of men standing like puppets and joining the array.

  The spearheads began to go back and forth, as each rank pushed, then withdrew their spears. The result looked like some steel-edged millipede, or a hermetical threshing machine.

  The royal standard accelerated again, and Ablemont’s horse flowed into a canter. He lowered his lance into the rest automatically.

  The enemy spears ahead moved like waves of rain or snow.

  Ablemont put his spurs into his mount, and the great horse exploded forward, unused to such abuse. The war cry of Galle burst from thousands of throats, and every lance came down...

  The spear wall was unbelievably dense...Ablemont had an impression of an uncountable horde of glittering, empty-eyed men behind them.

  And then he was lying on his back. He got to his feet, found his sword, and went forward. All around him were knights, down or rising, and ahead, the braver and more fortunate knights had penetrated the wall of spears and were killing.

  Or being dragged from their horses.

  Ablemont waded in, safe in his superb armour, and began to kill, aware that he needed to guard himself after successful attacks. It was not like fighting men; his adversaries made no attempt to guard themselves, and he hacked them down. He beheaded several and saw the writhe of their worms, guarded his visor, and kept forward.

  But the press grew denser, not looser. He stepped back twice, risking glances to find his household knights, and he realized that he had gone too deep in the enemy host. He stepped back, and back again, and the adversaries around him ignored him, continuing to use their spears in near-perfect unison. He cut, and thrust, and his arms began to seem leaden, and there was still no shortage of foes, and none of them were fighting him.

  Greatly daring, he paused to take breath.

  He was ignored.

  He didn’t like what he saw, and he pushed straight back to his own knights, but they were now farther back than he’d imagined, and it was like a nightmare...they seemed to recede as he advanced.

  He pushed faster. He was all but running through the ranks of the enemy, and no blow fell on him. He saw his own banner a few paces ahead and he cut, cut again, cleared a small space and burst out of the enemy and into open air.

  There was dust in the air, and men were screaming. His own men.

  But there were shouts of recognition, and he got clear of the battle line, backed again, and opened his visor.

  It was difficult to see anything. The dust of the plain was rising as thousands of stamping feet, equine and human, pounded the moisture out. The sun glared down, but he was dismounted and he couldn’t see over the men around him, and sweat was pouring down his arming cap over his eyes.

  “Water,” he said.

  “What the hell is happening?” he asked. None of his captains were there.

  A canteen was put in his hand, and only then did he see that they were already intermixed with the infantry line.

  Losing, then.

  The enemy remained perfectly silent. They simply pressed forward, in seemingly inexhaustible numbers.

  Ablemont backed out of the new line and found the royal standard off to the right. Ser Geofroi had it up on a small, round hill. Ablemont looked back at the forward edge of the fight to see the threshing spears winnowing his infantry. Men were beginning to run.

  Ablemont wondered where any of his household knights were, but he left his visor up. “Follow me!” he roared.

  He ran to the royal standard. His legs were already very tired, and the deep earth of the ploughed field over which he was trying to run felt as if it were trying to suck him down.

  Long before he reached the standard, he had to stop running. Had to breathe. But a dozen men, two knights he knew and some of his better armed foot, stuck with him, and they plodded across the open ground even as Ablemont saw the far right begin to collapse under some unseen impulse. The dust there...or was it smoke?

  He began to climb the hill toward Ser Geofroi. He could see the man.

  The center of the enemy began to come forward.

  There were heaps of dead at the base of the hill.

  Ablemont made it to the circle of waiting knights, and he saw Ser Tancred by the king, and he went to them.

  “Ribeaumont is dead,” the king said. His visor was open. “What is happening?”

  “Get the king mounted.” Ablemont heard his own voice begin to issue orders. “Sire, you must ride clear, immediately. This field is lost.”

  Guisarme nodded sharply.

  Just behind Guisarme, the deep center of the enemy spearmen struck the Gallish knights.

  Ser Geofroi didn’t go back even a single step. His sword moved like a levin bolt, and he danced, pushed, and killed. He, at least, had worked out how to fight these things. His blows severed spines, and when his sword broke, he took an axe. Behind him, the standard flowed, silken and defiant.

  A horse was brought, and then another, and Ablemont got the king mounted as if he were a page.

  “Go with him,” Guisarme said.

  “But...” In fact, Ablemont wanted to go.

  “I’m old, and have sons at home to avenge me.” Guisarme nodded, a hand on his visor. He had a long, Alban-style poleaxe.

  Ablemont’s long years of service at court had not prepared him for this. “Thank you,” he said weakly.

  “Hah!” Guisarme said. “I’m delighted to find you are more a man and less an arse than I thought. Now go. Save the king.”

  He slapped his visor down and turned away into the maelstrom.

  Ablemont mounted.

  From here, on horseback, on a small hill, it was possible to see the extent of the battle. To the right, the marshal’s advance battle was destroyed. But on the left, the rear battle had done terrible damage to the enemy at the onset and now struggled grimly with the horde that remained.

  Except that beyond the far end of the rear battle came another army. Ablemont could see the spears. He could also see what appeared to be animals—horses and cattle.

  All doomed.

  He cursed.

  The king looked at it, blank-eyed. “How can we be losing?” he asked.

  Ablemont wanted to spit, “How are we doing this well?” Despite the odds and the nature of the foe, the line was still intact, and even as he watched, Ser Geofroi cut an open space into the front of the enemy. The wall of carrion in front of the king’s standard-bearer was a testament of his preux—his prowess—and the monsters, or men, or whatever they were, had increasing trouble getting at the knight. But Ablemont wanted to scream at the king.

  But the enemy was pressing along on both flanks of the hill, the wings moving straight ahead. The hill was going to be cut off.

 
; “Time to go, Sire,” Ablemont said.

  The two of them started down the hill and headed north, straight away from the enemy. The army’s left was beginning to break up and men were running. Nobles who had dismounted seized their horses, although sometimes their own men killed them and took the horses themselves.

  The fabric of the army unraveled before his eyes.

  But he took the king’s bridle and rode, headed for the base of the ridge that they had descended to form for battle. As far as he could see, there was no pursuit.

  It was as if the enemy had only one single will.

  Ablemont thought that should have meant that any man who fled would be safe. He got them up the face of the ridge, hoarding the strength of the horses, because they had, by his estimation, two hundred leagues to cross before they reached a safe fortress.

  Down on the hill, the royal standard still flew. They were too far to see individuals, but the line seemed steady, a ring that covered the hilltop, and the victorious wings of the enemy center had bypassed the little hill and moved on, almost to the base of the long ridge, and to the left, the stalemate had been broken, and the left was gone, shredded between two forces, and it was clear that the enemy possessed more than one will.

  “Blessed Saviour,” Ablemont said.

  “I want out of here,” the king said suddenly, his first words in many minutes. He turned his horse and rode over the ridge.

  Ablemont was a courtier. He had betrayed his brother and his land to get the position he now held. He had stayed with the king through scandal and social peril and the near-ruin of his niece.

  And now, for the first time, he hated the king. He didn’t want to ride back and die with Ser Geofroi and Guisarme. But he knew he should, and he knew that were he the king, he could not have ridden away.

  He spat.

  He had hoped to gather fugitives into some sort of a rear guard, but the hilltop was curiously empty, and the moment they were over the ridge, the sound of battle vanished, and the world was mostly silent, although some screams penetrated the still air.

  Ablemont opened his visor and rode down the ridge, his hands shaking while he held the reins. He rode carefully, unlike the king, who rode hard, and reached the distant plain well ahead of him.

  Ablemont was beginning to consider rational things—like how the king would behave when he realized that Ablemont had seen him turn tail and flee; like what resources remained in their camp, and what orders he should give. Could they stop for provisions? What was behind them? How soon would the enemy catch them up?

  Or would there be no pursuit?

  Why Arles?

  The king was headed for the camp, now visible as a long line of palisades.

  Ablemont’s battle shock was wearing off.

  What do we do now? he wondered.

  He was still pondering the future when the unmistakable form of a great black dragon rose from the camp. Ablemont’s horse bolted, and his heart seemed to stop, and he was well to the west on the plain in front of the camp when he was finally thrown by the utterly panicked horse.

  The dragon moved on rotting, silent wings. It was, perhaps, a mercy that in falling, Ablemont struck his head. He was unconscious when the dragon took him.

  The king was not so lucky. He was still aware when the worms ate his eyes.

  Part I

  Alba

  Across the north of the Nova Terra and the Antica Terra, summer came. It came in Etrusca, where every man’s thoughts turned to war, and to Galle and Arles, where famine stalked, war prevailed, and the Wild washed like a rising sea around the settlements of men. In Iberia, peasants prepared for a fine harvest—and lived in fear of the news from over the mountains.

  Summer came first to the grain fields of Occitan in the Nova Terra, where the wheat was already golden as a maiden’s hair and the cornstalks were knee high, promising the richest harvest that any woman could remember. And on the hills, the olive trees promised another kind of riches, while bunches of grapes began to form in weights that had the farmers cutting stakes and propping vines across the whole of the south, even as they looked over their shoulders for bogglins and wights.

  But even the promise of agricultural riches was not enough to keep men from fear of the Wild. Rumours came from the north—from Alba—of civil strife and victories—confusing rumours of Wild allies, of human perfidy, of a church divided, a king killed and a young king born. Out in the new country beyond the mountains, most families—those that had survived the spring—packed their poor belongings and fled to the oppression and relative safety of noble landowners and heavy taxation. A handful of people from Occitan and Jarsay—woods men and women, for the most part, who spoke with Outwallers and irks—felt a sea change. The Fox and the Sossag ceased to raid, and a few irks approached the westernmost human settlements to offer trade.

  But the changes were most profound in Alba. In Harndon, Ser Gerald Random kept order—aye, and more—in a city that had seen fire and battle. Three thousand Galles prepared feverishly to sail for Galle, where the royal army had been shattered—destroyed, in fact—by a mysterious host from the Wild, and the King of Galle was feared to be dead. A year of bitter rivalry between the city and Galle was put aside, and ships from Genua, Galle, Venike, and Alba were put at the disposal of the Sieur Du Corse to launch his men to rescue Galle’s desperate people.

  And in Harndon, returning citizens, exiled by the now-discredited de Rohan’s government, or merely having fled the fighting, spoke aloud of the queen and of her newborn babe, the king, in the tones people usually reserved for church. As workmen cleared the last timbers from the ruin of the great tournament grounds, and as those same beams, adzed clear of their charred portions, were turned into new dwellings for those burned out of the fighting, hope swelled in the people, increasing as fast as the heat and new summer sun.

  And farther north still, at Albinkirk, the queen herself sat, the focal point of hope for her realm, on the warm green grass of Midsummer’s Eve, her babe across her lap and her back to a great oak tree that towered above her with a magnificent, cool canopy that kept the new heat at bay. The tree was ancient, and grew at the head of a narrow, steep pass that ran from the country north of Albinkirk into the Wilds of the Adnacrags, and here, in long-ago times, so it was said, Men and the Wild had met in council. The king, in her lap, cooed, gurgled, and tried to use his newfound hands to grasp the spectacular golden fur of the queen’s new friend Flint, who sat with her under the tree. Flint was a clan leader of the Golden Bears, and his presence, as a chieftain of the Wild, with the Queen of Alba, who might herself have been styled “Queen of Men” that summer, marked them as the very center of the change that rolled outward from them over the Nova Terra.

  Before them, a young wyvern, head high, crest engorged with blood, spat his protests against the encroachment of the Abbey of Lissen Carak on the traditional hunting and breeding grounds of his clan. By the queen, the abbess, Miriam, representative of the abbey, sat with head bowed, quietly translating the wyvern’s words. Throughout the meadow that surrounded them was a curious fair, where men sold every product of human hands from Venikan glass beads and Hoek bronze kettles to the best Etruscan steel crossbows and Albin-made knives and linen woven by women at the very foot of the valley. Merchants from the Antica Terra hawked their wares shamelessly alongside brass-lunged farm wives and local cutlers, cordwainers, and armourers. A tall, handsome man with a travelling forge fitted premade Etruscan breastplates to wardens (never call them adversaries, brother!) and Outwallers who crowded his stall while a squire in the Red Duke’s livery sat on a stool and sketched the scene rapidly, his lively charcoal capturing the beauty of the queen, the dignity of Flint, and the intense eagerness of one of Nita Qwan’s young warriors to own a hardened steel breastplate, light as air, strong as magic. He negotiated quickly with his hands, offering so much Wild honey, so many pelts, and an agreement was reached for the Fair at Dorling, two weeks hence, without a word spoken. The smith measured the
warrior with a tape of linen and made marks.

  Adrian Goldsmith tossed his third sketch of the day aside and went on to his fourth, squandering a small fortune in paper because the captain had ordered him to do so. It was, in many ways, the richest scene of human and Wild interaction he had ever seen, or thought perhaps he ever would see, and he turned his back on the queen, who tended to draw every eye at the best of times, and then, against his will, turned back to her as Blanche, the captain’s acknowledged mistress and the queen’s handmaiden, leaned forward, her white-gold hair catching a ray of sun, her startlingly slender waist hard with muscle under her kirtle, to take the king from his mother’s arms and change him into clean linen. The three of them formed something—it lasted only three heartbeats, and Adrian’s charcoal fairly flew, capturing Blanche’s attention, the queen’s love, the king’s fascination with Blanche’s hair.

  And then, freed of her son’s weight, the queen rolled forward a little and bent her head, speaking quietly to Flint. The great bear raised his head, and nodded, slowly, and his muzzle opened and a series of short barks emerged—bear laughter.

  The wyvern stood, poised as if for fight or flight, and perhaps, new to the ways of council and conciliation, that is how he saw the proceedings. Now the queen whispered to Miriam, and Miriam nodded. Then the Duchess Mogon—after the queen, perhaps the most important personage present—rose from her great chair of maple wood and joined in, her bronze and gold beak catching the same ray of sun that had penetrated the leaves to illuminate the light hair of Blanche Gold.

  The queen bowed her head graciously to each, and then nodded to the wyvern, stretched her bare feet, and smiled.

  “We find that the abbey is at fault in encroaching on your lands, Sythenhag. We will not attempt to examine the rights and wrongs—it is clear that these predate human occupation of the fortress. Nor is it the intention of this Tree of Judgment to force the Order from the fortress that they have protected so well most recently against our common enemy.”

  The wyvern bridled, its head shaking. Its great beak opened.