Bacosh cavalry came back at them-Jaryd saw Damon smash one from the saddle, saw a clever lean and duck from his companion stab through another's side, and accelerated onto another's blind side himself to cut through his unprotected neck from behind. He could see back to the first rank now, some dividing, very unwisely, to chase the talmaad, and others galloping back to reengage the Lenays. Many of those were being followed by talmaad, shooting men in the back whose armour would not stop it, and shooting the horses of those where it would. The combined force of human and serrin cavalry, devised by Errollyn, was designed to be lethal to the first enemy rank, who found themselves both engaged up close and shot by deadly accurate fire from afar and behind. Already they were panicking, wheeling about to try to clear the field of serrin fire, eager to confront the Lenays but not wishing to turn their backs on the talmaad.
Damon and friends yelled with triumph and charged, felling more confused and frightened cavalry, and now encountering knights whose armour remained intact, but whose horses were struggling with multiple arrow strikes and dying. Some hit the ground hard and struggled to rise once more. Lenay men generally ignored them-they would be dealt with later, and were too slow afoot to bother fast-moving cavalry.
Soon the Regent's cavalry were falling back, then retreating at full gallop. More artillery flashes erupted upon the left flank, and Jaryd spared a moment to view the bluff from which they came. No fighting was visible. Had that assault failed?
Now serrin were pursuing the retreating Bacosh men, zigzagging through the Lenay warriors with bows in hand, seeking shots at retreating backs. They looked furiously determined, striving to kill as many as possible while the chance presented. Behind them came the main Lenay army, on foot, and running. Fast.
Damon was yelling, standing in his stirrups to attract attention, pointing across the river. Already other Lenay cavalry were charging that way, and Damon followed, gathering more men as he went. Shouted orders were of no use here. The noise of hooves and massed voices was too loud for anyone save an immediate neighbour to hear. But the plan was to get across the Dhemerhill River, and up the relatively exposed left flank under the cover of Ilduuri artillery on the ridge.
Jaryd hit the water amidst several hundred other horsemen, with more hundreds following. The horses plunged and struggled for a moment, and then were clear to the far bank and running once more, skirting a large farmstead and leaping fences. To the right were masses of enemy soldiers. To this side, the way was clear, as few braved the falling artillery for the next thousand strides at least. Damon's party cleared a final fence and emerged onto rolling green fields, swords out and yelling as they charged at full speed.
Rhillian reined up further back than her comrades, holding her bow in the air as a signal for others to do the same. Bacosh cavalry were trying to escape, some fording the river to the left, others galloping off to the right, across the impenetrable line of infantry before them, talmaad and a few Lenay cavalry in pursuit. Those would try to run up the steep valley sides high enough to find a way around. In this valley, a cavalryman could run out of room very fast, with infantry behind plugging up his only escape.
Behind, she could hear the Army of Lenayin approaching, the deafening roar and rattle of thousands of charging men. She spaced her horse a little further from her neighbour, held him still, then placed her first arrow to her bowstring. She fired, low and flat, as other serrin did the same, stopping their horses completely. Arrows flew as the roar behind grew louder. Sporadic return fire arced high and ineffective; the Regent's forces had not yet gathered archers close enough to the front rank to make their shots count. Rhillian fired again, and thought that this form of warfare was agreeable to her. A horse could carry numerous quivers, and she had a lot of arrows. She would sit here and shoot them at her enemies until there were no arrows left, then retreat to get some more.
Suddenly the Army of Lenayin were bursting past her, and she felt as though she were mounted upon a beach, a great wave crashing across the sand. There were thousands of them, and she could feel their fury shaking her bones. The Army of Lenayin had been defeated at Shero Valley. It had lost its king, and run before an enemy. It had marched in humiliation behind the victorious Regent across Rhodaan and then into Enora, with banners flying low in shame and mourning. It had suffered the worse realisation that all along, they'd been fighting for a dishonourable cause. They'd been misled, tricked into a war that many of them might have gladly fought, but for the other side. And their so-called allies had treated them with contempt, called them barbarians, and lately tried to murder their favourite princess for daring to wed the soon-to-be King of all the Bacosh. The Army of Lenayin had borne this weight for weeks and months, living for the moment of redemption and retribution. They were not merely in the bloodlust of Lenay warriors in battle. They were genuinely, blood-curdlingly furious.
The Army of Lenayin smashed into the Bacosh first rank and killed nearly all of them within moments. Gaps opened first by serrin archers became gaping holes as flanks were exposed, and quickly exploited with superior swordwork and brute force. Lenay men dove into spaces and hacked limbs from the men beside them, holding off their forward opponents long enough to strike sideways and open the way for their neighbour, who returned the favour to his neighbour, and on across the ranks. They roared and swung and bludgeoned, with the fury of madmen and the skill of artisans, and across the valley the air was filled with flying blades and blood.
And then, when that first contact had penetrated so far that most armies would have considered it a success and paused to regroup, the later ranks of soldiers pushed past their leading comrades, fresh to the fight, and took over the charge. Beyond the packed forward ranks there was space, space enough for a Lenay warrior to move, to swing, to clever-fake and spin, and perform all the deadly tricks he'd rehearsed all his life, if only in the hope of impressing his friends and village girls at evening practice. Bacosh men-at-arms, mostly peasants and village folk with solid skills but none of the artistry, simply died, falling in horrible, screaming wrecks before a class and power of soldiery they had never before encountered. The Army of Lenayin, now five hundred paces beyond the Bacosh soldiers' front line, began to accelerate.
“Good gods!” Arken exclaimed in the saddle at Sasha's side, looking over the battlefield. The Army of Lenayin was flooding out from the Dhemerhill Valley, beyond its protective walls, and now churned inexorably toward the banks of the Ipshaal. The Bacosh forces looked stunned, not so much retreating as sinking like saplings in a flood, as Lenays ran through them and past them, and left the slower ones for comrades behind to deal with. “Look at them!”
Similar exclamations rose from across the Ilduuri lines. Their own attackers had faded back down the slope for the second time, and men with a vantage now gathered eagerly on this side to see the battle below.
“They're still going!”
Excited yells rose to a crescendo, and then men were hammering on their shields and roaring, chanting for Lenayin. Upon her horse, Sasha wiped tears from her eyes. Of all the moments in her life she had ever felt proud to be Lenay, all were as nothing before this. She stood in her stirrups, pointed her sword at the sky, and yelled with the rest of her Ilduuris.