Nether rode down that aisle. After a moment List and Duiker followed, jogging to keep up. As soon as they trod on the path they could feel the earth shivering beneath their boots — not the deep reverberations of countless hooves, but something more intense, muscular. As if we stride the spine of an enormous serpent. . the land awakened, the land eager to show its power.
Fifty paces ahead the ridge of a weathered, vine-cloaked wall appeared. Squat and thick, it was evidently the remnant of an ancient fortification, rising over a man's height and clear of the cattle. The path that Nether had created brushed one edge of it, then continued on down to the river.
The girl rode on without glancing back. Moments later List and Duiker reached the stone edifice and clambered up on its ragged but wide top.
'Look south,' List said, pointing.
Dust rose in a gold haze from the line of hills beyond the heaving mass of refugees.
'Coltaine and his Crows are in a fight,' List said.
Duiker nodded. 'There's a village on the other side of those hills, right?'
'Yes, sir. L'enbarl, it's called. The scrap looks to be on the road linking it to the ford. We haven't seen the Sialk cavalry, so it's likely Reloe sent them around to try and take our flank. Like Coltaine always says, the man's predictable.'
Duiker faced north. The other side of the island consisted of marsh grasses filling the old oxbow channel. The far side was a narrow stand of dead leadwood trees, then a broad slope leading to a steep-sided hill. The regularity of that hill suggested that it was a tel. Commanding its flat plateau was an army, weapons and armour glinting in the morning light. Heavy infantry. Dark banners rose amidst large tents behind two frontline legions of Tithansi archers. The archers had begun moving down the slope.
'That's Kamist Reloe and his hand-picked elites,' List said. 'He's yet to use them.'
To the east the feints and probes between the Weasel Clan's horsewarriors and their Tithansi and Hissari counterparts continued, while the Sialk and Hissar infantry steadily closed the distance to the Wickan defences. Behind these legions, the peasant army swirled in restless motion.
'If that horde decides to charge,' Duiker said, 'our lines won't hold.'
'They'll charge,' List affirmed grimly. 'If we're lucky, they'll wait too long and give us room to fall back.'
'That's the kind of risk Hood loves,' the historian muttered.
'The ground under them whispers fear. They won't be moving for a while.'
'Do I see control on all sides, or the illusion of control?'
List's face twisted slightly. 'Sometimes the two are one and the same. In terms of their effect, I mean. The only difference — or so Coltaine says — is that when you bloody the real thing, it absorbs the damage, while the other shatters.'
Duiker shook his head. 'Who would have imagined a Wickan warleader to think of war in such. . alchemical terms? And you, Corporal, has he made you his protégé?'
The young man looked dour. 'I kept dying in the war games. Gave me lots of time to stand around and eavesdrop.'
The cattle were moving more quickly now, plunging into the stationary clouds of dust masking the ford. If anything, to Duiker's eyes the heaving flow was too quick. 'Four and a half feet deep, over four hundred paces… those animals should be crossing at a crawl. More, how to hold the herds to the shallows? Those dogs will have to swim, the drovers will get pushed off to the deeps, and with all that dust, who can see a damned thing down there?'
List said nothing.
Thunder sounded on the other side of the ford, followed by rapid percussive sounds. Columns of smoke pillared upward and the air was suddenly febrile. Sorcery. The Semk wizard' priests. A lone child to oppose them. 'This is all taking too long,' Duiker snapped. 'Why in Hood's name did it take all night just to get the wagons across? It will be dark before the refugees even move.'
'They're closing,' List said. His face was covered in dust-smeared sweat.
To the east the Sialk and Hissar infantry had made contact with the outer defences. Arrows swarmed the air. Weasel Clan horsewarriors battled on two sides — against Tithansi lancers at the front, and pike-wielding infantry on their right flank. They were struggling to withdraw. Holding the earthen defences were Captain Lull's marines, Wickan archers and a scattering of auxiliary units. They were yielding the first breastworks to the hardened infantry. The horde had begun to boil on the slopes beyond.
To the north the two legions of Tithansi archers were rushing forward for the cover of the leadwoods. From there they would start killing cattle. There was no-one to challenge them.
'And so it shatters,' Duiker said.
'You're as bad as Reloe. Sir.'
'What do you mean?'
'Too quick to count us out. This isn't our first engagement.'
Faint shrieks drifted across from the leadwoods. Duiker squinted through the dust. The Tithansi archers were screaming, thrashing about, vanishing from sight in the high marsh grasses beneath the skeletal trees. 'What in Hood's name is happening to those men?'
'An old, thirsty spirit, sir. Sormo promised it a day of warm blood. One last day. Before it dies or ceases or whatever it is spirits do when they go.'
The archers had routed, their panicked flight taking them back to the slope beneath the tel.
'There go the last of them,' List said.
For a moment Duiker thought the corporal referred to the Tithansi archers, then he realized, with a start, that the cattle were gone. He wheeled to face the ford, cursing at the tumbling clouds of dust. 'Too fast,' he muttered.
The refugees had begun moving, streamers of humanity flowing across the old oxbow channel and onto the island. There was no semblance of order, no way to control almost thirty thousand exhausted and terrified people. And they were about to sweep over the wall where Duiker and the corporal stood.
'We should move,' List said.
The historian nodded. 'Where?'
'Uh, east?'
To where the Weasel Clan now covered the marines and other footmen as they relinquished one earthen rampart after another, the soldiers falling back so quickly that they would be at the slatted bridge in minutes. And then? Up against this mob of shrieking refugees. Oh, Hood! What now?
List seemed to read his mind. 'They'll hold at the bridge,' he asserted. 'They have to. Come on!'
Their flight took them across the front of the leading edge of the refugees. The awakened land trembled beneath them, steam rising with a reek like muddy sweat. Here and there along the east edge of the island, the ground bulged and split open. Duiker's headlong sprint faltered. Shapes were clambering from the broken earth, skeletal beneath arcane, pitted and encrusted bronze armour, battered helms with antlers on their heads and long red-stained hair hanging in matted tufts down past their shoulders. The sound that came from them chilled Duiker's soul. Laughter, Joyous laughter. Hood, are you twisting in affronted rage right now?
'Nil,' List gasped. 'Nether's twin — that boy over there. Sormo said that this place has seen battle before — said this oxbow island wasn't natural … oh, Queen of Dreams, yet another Wickan nightmare!'
The ancient warriors, voicing blood-curdling glee, were now breaking free of the earth all along the eastern end of the island. On Duiker's right and behind him, refugees screamed with terror, their headlong flight staggering to a halt as the horrific creatures rose among them.
The Weasel Clan and the footmen had contracted to a solid line this side of the bridge and channel. That line twitched and shuffled as the raised warriors pushed through their ranks, single-edged swords rising — the weapons almost shapeless beneath mineral accretions — as they marched into the milling mass of the Hissar and Sialk infantry. The laughter had become singing, a guttural battle chant.