LORD RIVA
THE SARASINIAN 5th ARMY
SOUTHERN AHRENIA
BORDIS
The Ahren shrieked as they thundered toward the southern lines. Riva stood there, awestruck by their roiling fury, his visor hiding the fear his eyes would have almost certainly betrayed.
The Herenians readied their spears. He was never more grateful for calm companions than at this very moment. Was there anything more inspiring than men facing death with such grim determination? How many would have fled if not for their unwavering comrades beside them?
A glance told him that Mozga had already reached safety, but Nohrt and the Sarasinian champions were still running. Would they make it? This was not the time to ponder such things, however. Commanders bellowed orders, though Riva swore his heart was louder, thumping over the din. He sucked air into his lungs, stale air laden with the sweat of unwashed bodies, piss, leather and shit. He locked shields with the men on either side of him and hefted his spear. This was it–time to meet the enemy onslaught.
The centre of the Ahren host picked up speed, outpacing the wings until the entire mass took the form of a gigantic wedge. Did they mean to punch through the Sarasinians? The line of purple must have looked fragile from a distance. A tempting target, and not a bad plan, at least in principle, for splitting the Fifth in half would almost certainly end the battle before it even started. Would the youngsters part so easily, though? He knew them well enough to believe otherwise.
Virgilio’s slingers had already started lobbing missiles, and as the Ahren came within range his archers unleashed their fury, pouring black clouds of arrows onto their heads. Men screamed and fell and were crushed underfoot, but the wedge rolled onward. The missile troops began to retreat, filtering back through the spearmen while they still could.
The Ahren drew nearer. Sarasinian veterans hurled javelins over the heads of the youngsters. The foremost Ahren toppled over, some men with multiple shafts jutting out of them. The trench slowed the rest for a time, but only as a long as it took to bridge by rolling corpses into it.
The northerners would not be denied their grand charge, and they hit the Sarasinian shield wall with the sound of a thousand tree trunks snapping in half. The southern line shuddered and flexed under the impact, but held. Spear points flashed. Men screamed in fear and rage. The noise was like nothing else.
If the enemy had indeed hoped to overpower the centre, they were to be disappointed. Their wedge became a shapeless bulge as frontrunners found themselves trapped between the southern line and the weight of numbers at their backs. Tightly packed and unable to move, they were to discover that the more is not necessarily the merrier. With no room to wield their weapons, they were easy meat for Sarasinian spears. Warriors spilled out along the sides, some surging toward the Herenians. A fresh torrent of missiles found them, but did little to cool their ardour. They returned fire as they closed, giving javelins to the air.
For Riva time seemed to slow, and dread seized him in the moments before the terrible shafts began their descent. He leaned forward so the top of his helm almost touched the rim of his shield. He waited, half-expecting to see an iron point burst through the wooden boards. Instead, nothing happened. Where the javelins landed, he didn’t know. When he found the courage to peer over the top of his shield again, he saw hundreds of Ahren lying with arrows sticking out of them. The survivors began dropping them into their section of the trench. It didn’t take long to top the thing off.
Instead of flinging themselves at the Herenian wall as their brothers had in the centre, the enemy stopped short and thrust underarm with their spears. Riva’s men replied, and both sides parried blades or took them on shields, jostling each other, roaring and spitting. The second and third ranks thrust overhand, past the helms of the men ahead, trying to find targets in faces and necks. Where they did, mouths contorted and eyes widened in shock and pain. Dozens dropped, screaming, though almost all of them were northerners. The lethal rain of missiles from Virgilio’s bowmen and slingers erupted again, adding to the enemy’s grief.
The battle raged until mid-morning. Mounds of corpses gathered where the two sides met, three or four deep in places, enough to make close-quarter fighting difficult. The Ahren eventually withdrew, dragging the bodies of wounded and slain comrades behind them. Riva marvelled at the scale of the killing. Save for a few scattered patches of earth and grass, the ground lay thick with gore.
Riva’s commanders used the lull in fighting to reorganise their lines. A mere handful of Herenians had fallen, and their bodies were carried back through the ranks and placed at the rear. Others were bleeding, but no man who could still wield a spear would give up his place in the wall. On the Ahren side, amidst the bodies, dying men cried for their mothers.
The northerners attacked again, and again they fell, their shouts of defiance and rage turning into anguished squalling as the Herenians stabbed them and trampled their bodies under boots. Riva admired the enemy’s courage, but their suffering was horrific. This was not war, but slaughter. And the battle was to continue like that for several more hours, with the Ahren attacking and retreating, ebbing and flowing like the ocean tides, one swell after another dashing itself against the Herenian line. The men were as mindless as the sea, too, for the fate of the wave before seemed of no concern to the one after.
The sun passed overhead, creeping across the sky until its rays touched Herenian backs. A few more hours and it would slip over the horizon. Night fighting was virtually unheard of, so unless the Fifth prevailed before twilight, both armies would retire until the following morning. Mind you, for how much longer could the Ahren stand to bleed?
Virgilio’s army, Riva decided, had far and away proven itself a superior fighting force. It would not be a stretch to say that it had, with minimal losses, laid low at least ten thousand enemy warriors. How many were injured was a question only the gods could answer. The other clans, their spiteful, greedy brothers over the Asfour, would be watching with great interest. And taking notes, no doubt, hoping to take full advantage of whatever passed here.
Virgilio’s army was not without problems, however. Despite having inflicted considerable losses on the enemy, the opposing host still had him outnumbered and, now, more or less confined to the field. His front line hadn’t ceded ground, but neither had it taken any, and there seemed no option apart from enduring the seemingly endless waves of assaults. After a full day of it, fighting was starting to feel like trying to push actual water back into the sea.
And while the Fifth had fought like heroes, signs of debility were becoming evident. As they waited for the next Ahren surge, men leaned on shields, their arms leaden, exhausted. When the enemy came, they were put down with less and less fervour. Even the fanatical Sarasinian youngsters seemed to have lost their fire–how long since their last song? The missile troops were silent, having run out of ammunition. Riva looked up at the general’s knoll and wondered how the man was planning to break what was fast turning into an awful deadlock.
“Here they come!” bellowed someone. “Shields up!”
Riva had advanced to the third rank: his time to fight had arrived. Nohrt tried one last time to discourage him from doing so, but he told the man bluntly to leave him be. What would folk say if he refused his place at the front? And, anyway, what of the men behind him nursing hurts? Should they fight again ahead of him? Never. “Sons of Herena!” he bellowed. “Stand fast! Here come more bodies to feed this wretched land!” The men raised their weapons and cheered.
The Ahren charged, and at last he felt their spears grinding against his shield and glancing off his helmet. The sound grated, but it wasn’t long before he forgot about it and became caught up in the elation of fighting. His fear, at first renewed, gradually melted away as he yelled and stabbed. He could feel his spear blows meeting resistance, but between the narrow slit in his visor and the confusion of battle, he could hardly see what he was doing. It seemed more like blind luck when the point of his spear slipped into a neck, followed by a bright gush of red. A man fell and was quickly swallowed by the turmoil. “Yaah!” he screamed. Let no one say he was not a warrior!
An eternity of shoving and stabbing later, the Ahren withdrew. As they did, a fresh wave of javelineers rushed forward to pepper the Herenian line with missiles. The man on Riva’s right took a pair in his shield and another through his collarbone. He dropped his spear and tried to pull the shaft free, oblivious to the barbed point poking out of his back.
The enemy charged again, only this time something felt wrong. This new wave looked very familiar. Taller men with halberds, long-handled axes and heavy coats of double mail. No poor tribesmen, but elite warriors with peaked helmets that glittered in the sun. Herenians, surely? Riva blinked, wondering if he wasn’t seeing things. Had part of his own line somehow swung around to face itself?
But there was no mistake. The Herenians’ shock on facing such well-equipped enemies was palpable. And the newcomers wasted no time in getting to work. Up and down the Herenian line, they slipped axe beards over the tops of shields and pulled them down, while comrades leaned past to fell the warriors behind. Axes slammed into helmets, and more than one halberd spike found its way through a visor slit. A dozen of Riva’s men dropped in quick succession, leaving a yawning gap in the front line. Men moved to fill it, but their spears had grown dull and pushed uselessly against the enemy’s armour. Riva’s own halberdiers answered better, but there were too few of them to make a difference. The northerners renewed their efforts, screaming in triumph, sensing that the tide was beginning to turn.
And perhaps it was. The Herenians had fought all day and were now too tired to keep their shields up, let alone deal with shock troops. They paid a high price, for nearly every man in the first rank was soon on the ground. Those who had until only moments earlier made up the second and third ranks drew swords and flung themselves at the enemy. They shoved the Ahren back in places, desperately trying to re-establish their careful formation, but the northerners were relentless. Riva could scarcely believe it–everything had been going so well, and seemingly out of nowhere his spear wall was collapsing! The Ahren roared, no doubt seeing their success as the prelude to a rout.
Axes and halberds continued to claim their shield-mates, but the Herenians did not panic. To turn and run would spell not only their end, but probably the end of the Fifth as well. And they knew it. So, bearing the deaths of their comrades with great stoicism they fought on, determined to hold. All the while, Riva wondered what Virgilio was doing. Could he see that his entire right wing was at grave risk of being chopped down?
The man in front of him was suddenly hammered into the ground, and Riva found himself in the first rank staring at an enormous Ahren axeman. He tried to get his spear into the eye slit in the man’s helm. It didn’t work. Others put points on him, but his mail shirt turned each one. The axe rose and then fell almost before Riva brought his shield up to meet it. The force of the blow would have put him on his knees if not for men at his back, holding him up. He braced for a second blow. Before it came, someone with better aim took the man through his visor. Riva thought him finished, but he lifted his axe again with a roar. Riva managed to counter, somehow, but at the cost of his shield’s iron rim and a sizeable chunk of wood. He was pondering what to do next when someone jostled him, causing him to lurch into the man and inadvertently take him to the ground.
“Yuurgh!” screamed the Ahren, dropping his axe and trying to wrest Riva’s helm away.
“Maah!” Riva yelled back as he tossed his spear to focus on battering the man with the remnants of his shield. It didn’t do much, so it went the way of the spear. They traded gauntleted punches to little effect. He’d have drawn his sword if he’d had the room, so he went for his dagger instead. Almost as soon as he had it unsheathed, though, the thing leaped from his hand somehow and was gone! He felt around, and by sheer good fortune his fingers closed on what turned out to be a mace. The press of bodies prevented him from swinging it with any real force, but he managed to land enough blows against the side of the man’s helm to knock him out. He didn’t stop there, of course. Screaming like a madman, he brought the mace down again and again until the helm’s rivets burst and fresh blood oozed out. “Bleh,” he rasped at man’s corpse as he fell on it, too spent to do anything else.
Riva eventually found his feet again. The Herenian ranks had moved past him, bolstered by missile troops who had rushed forward to lend a hand. It was definitely not, he knew, an encouraging sign, but at least the line was restored. Did it mean that the reserves been used elsewhere, then? And where were the horses?
He looked at his mace. Though it had served him well, it was less than ideal for fighting in a shield wall. He was still sifting through the detritus of the field, hoping to find something better, when an Ahren warrior sprang out of a corpse-pile. The man came on, shrieking, with a loose spearhead clutched in one hand. Riva started, but was too shocked to do anything beyond stand there. Luckily his brigandine checked the blade, and after a brief tussle he managed to crack the man’s braincase open with the mace. As the body joined the wreckage once again, one leg nudged the haft of a long-handled axe. Riva had just laid a hand on it when he became aware of a man yelling at him. He braced to defend himself, a weapon clutched in each fist, but then he recognised the man’s armour even though it was sheeted with blood. “Nohrt?”
Nohrt lifted the visor of his helm and spat out a string of unintelligible words.
“Here!” shouted Riva, lifting his own visor. “Here! Take!” And with that he thrust the axe into Nohrt’s hands.
“Yaa!” said Nohrt, or at least that was what Riva heard, and then he slammed down his visor and brandished the weapon in an apparent gesture of gratitude. “Yaa!” he said again, and strode off purposefully toward the front line.
Men were running everywhere, most toward the fighting but some away, and Riva lost sight of Nohrt in the swirling chaos. He surveyed the battlefield and marvelled, yet again, at the scale of the butchery. Blood, bodies and the bloody parts of bodies covered the ground. As far as he could see was red, and in places the vital fluid of thousands had pooled and congealed in enormous rivulets. Dying men lay where they had fallen. Some wailed, others waited for the end in silence. They failed to notice that they were amongst enemies. Perhaps they didn’t care.
Riva cursed himself for so readily giving up his axe. Nohrt the hero was probably already hard at work cutting apart scores of enemies with it. He wouldn’t be surprised if the big oaf even managed to turn the entire fucking Ahren host by himself. He’d have spat if his throat wasn’t so dry. He looked around for a water bearer. “Fuck,” he said, not seeing one.
A stray arrow flickered overhead. It should have been a reminder to put his visor down, but his eyes went to the general’s knoll instead. Plenty of activity up there, with dozens of messengers running this way and that. No doubt the old man was watching, and no doubt he had a plan. But what? How was he going to pull his nuts out of the fire, so to speak? And when? Ah, but at last Riva saw a water bearer, and any thoughts not related to thirst left his head. He called, and a boy who couldn’t have been older than eleven or twelve struggled over, his skinny arms straining to hold a sloshing bucket and a sheaf of arrows. No one came for the ammunition, but Riva gladly relieved him of the bucket. The lad offered no ladle, and he dared not remove his helm entirely, so taking a sip of water proved quite the challenge. He brought the bucket to his mouth, pouring a good amount down his brigandine in the process. He later reflected that he could have taken off a gauntlet and cupped water into his mouth, but at the time he was very thirsty and clearly not thinking straight. When he finally got some past his lips he detected the metallic tang of blood, but swallowed anyway.
“Please.” Someone called to him. He looked and saw a man lying on the ground.
“Please,” said a man. “Water.” He was, without a doubt, an enemy.
At first, Riva ignored him. Only after he had drunk his fill did he take the bucket over to the man.
“I may need,” said the man, nodding at it, “your help. Please.” He was unarmed and had both hands pressed to his belly. The ratty garment beneath was soaked red and clinging to his skin, and Riva could see teeth through a cut on his left cheek. Too injured to be a threat.
“You fought bravely, brother,” said Riva, helping him to sit up. The man was not of gentle birth, obviously, but there seemed little harm in honouring him. He knelt, plucked away a gauntlet, and used his bare palm to sprinkle water into the man’s mouth.
The Ahren swallowed and looked at him, eyes bright with emotion. “Are we winning?”
Riva looked away, to the front where warriors still screamed and spat and stabbed. “To be honest, I don’t know.” He let the man have as much water as he wanted, and pretended not to notice that most of it dribbled from the wound on his face.
“Many thanks.” The man leaned back on one elbow.
“Do you know me?” asked Riva.
The man peered at him, perhaps finally noticing the quality of his attire. “Lord Baros?”
Riva shook his head in mild rebuke. “Archon Riva of Herena.”
It took a moment for his words to sink in. And then a look of fear crossed the man’s face. “Oh.”
“Don’t worry,” said Riva with a smile. “I wasn’t planning on killing you.” Not if he didn’t have to. And anyway, the poor bastard probably wouldn’t last more than a few days with that pierced gut of his. “More water?”
As the man opened his mouth to reply, Riva felt the ground shuddering under his boots. Moments later, thousands of voices roared in celebration. Startled, he leapt up and unsheathed his sword, half-expecting to see northern fighters running rampant through his shield wall. Not the end that had been foreseen–of all the blasted luck! Even so, he resolved not to show his back but to meet his doom head-on.
But he was not fated to die, at least not that day. For it was the northerners who had broken, and his men were hacking into them as they ran. He stared, open-mouthed, at purple banners impossibly far ahead and put two and two together–Virgilio had sent cavalry against the Ahren left wing. A surprise attack against an unprotected flank, sowing confusion and panic enough to put the entire host to flight!
He continued to stare. Ordered ranks became a thing of the past as every southern line dissolved. Men rushed forward, seized by a new fever of bloodletting. The noise grew to levels he had scarcely thought possible.
So, the Lion had saved them after all. They would know for certain in the next few days. And if the Ahren horde were truly crushed, every scrap of land south of the River Asfour had just passed from its hands.
The bucket of water and the dying Ahren forgotten, Riva struck out in the direction of the general’s knoll. His horse was in the woods beneath, saddled and waiting. It would carry him to join the slaughter.