The young man stopped and rested his hands on his knees, gulping down air. As soon as he stopped heaving, he spoke in a breathless rush. “There’s … there’s an awful lot of soldiers … in dark … green down there, creeping along the … gully. Thought you should know.”
“Green?” Kiva asked sharply. “Dark green?”
Athas glanced for only a second at his captain and then turned and leaned over the wall, cupping his hands round his mouth.
“Stand to!” He called, his voice echoing round the ruined building. “Enemy sighted.”
In a testament to the training and the fighting spirit of the Grey Company, every man was upright and arming in a matter of seconds. Kiva nodded at his sergeant and then vaulted over the wall, grasping his swords from where they still leaned against the crumbling stonework and sweeping them from their scabbards one after the other.
Athas turned to the young man. “Thanks lad” he uttered. “Now get inside behind the walls and keep yourself out of sight.”
As the young man walked across the threshold into the ruined building, Athas stopped him and handed over the hatchet that had been left on the wall. “Just in case.”
Moments later all twelve members of the Grey Company were at the wall. Like mercenary units everywhere, no two of them wore the same armour or bore the same weapons. The one thing that was uniform was the charcoal grey of their gear, from tunics to breeches to shield faces. Grey was the colour. Indeed, when fully ready, they were barely visible in the darkness, an army of ghosts in the flickering firelight.
Athas took his position at the far left as Kiva took a place on the right. The sergeant drew a long, curved southern blade from his back scabbard and stuck it point first into the ground near the wall before removing half a dozen arrows from his quiver and planting them into the loose mortar on top of the wall in a similar fashion. With a creak of his recurve bow, he prepared himself and then nocked an arrow. Kiva nodded at Thalo next to him and the dark haired archer put down his bow and struck a flint and tinder, sparking until the dry substance on the ruined wall caught light and blossomed. He put a few small sticks and knots of dry grass on it and then, nodding at the captain, took up his bow once more. Kiva hefted his two gently curved swords and gave them a practice swing. He’d never taken to using a shield and had never been a great marksman. Along the wall, between the sergeant and himself, a number of men drew their own weapons of choice, three more of them bows.
An eerie silence fell across the ruin as the Grey Company waited for battle. Ten of the company waited at this wall, while two others kept positions at the opposite corners where they could watch for any kind of flanking action.
The only sound that announced the arrival of the enemy was the scrape of a boot on rock as a man tried not to fall foul of the treacherous slope. Kiva nodded a second time to Thalo next to him, and the small archer dipped the tip of his arrow into the burning tinder before lifting and firing it deep into the thick undergrowth. There had been no rain now for almost three weeks and the brush was so dry that they’d already started three small fires accidentally and consequently could be fairly assured of a burning oil-covered arrow triggering a blaze. Indeed, the moment the arrow hit, orange flame leapt up from the flora, throwing back the curtain of the night and crawling along the intertwined branches at breathtaking speed.
As the fire spread among the bushes at a phenomenal rate, Kiva was beginning to ponder on the wisdom of his plan when a scream announced that the fire had taken its first target. The horrible crisping, gurgling sound of a man suffering an agonising death by fire was something that Kiva had never truly come to terms with. He’d hardened himself such that he could usually ignore it, but in the depths of night when dream came in his black robe, with unbidden images of fire and death, to take the remaining fractured shards of his soul, then the flames still ate away at his conscience.
Moments later a number of agonised voices added to the tumultuous roar as the flames took man after man, dragging Kiva’s attention back to the fight.
Almost a minute went tensely by before the first intact figure appeared from the brush, looking startled, having exited the smoke and the undergrowth and come face to face with the waiting Grey Company. They barely had time to register the surprise on his face and hear his brief monosyllable before Athas’ first arrow took him in the throat. The man toppled backwards, his blade clattering to the floor, and disappeared once more from view into the roiling thick black smoke. Glancing round, the big sergeant spotted another smoke-wreathed figure ghosting out of the brush.
“Here they come!”
Shapes began to appear, those who’d managed to find their way around the edges of the ever-growing conflagration and stumble through the smoke. The company let fly with arrows as fast as they could, each marking a single target as it appeared and announcing their shot to preserve their companions’ ammunition. Few of the attackers managed to move more than a couple of feet from their cover before being struck, invariably with instantly fatal results.
Gradually, fewer and fewer of them appeared until at last there was just the crackle of flames and the groans of the few who lay bleeding their last. Athas waited for a moment to be sure of the lull and then called down the line “count off!”
“I took three,” shouted Scauvus.
“Five,” Thalo called, nocking another arrow ready.
“Four for Marco,” called a light voice, “but only three for Alessus!”
There was the sound of a punch landing on an upper arm somewhere along the wall and a carefree laugh.
Athas nodded as he carried out his mental arithmetic. “And I took five.” He added. “That’s twenty down to arrow shots, plus however many dead in the flames. Not enough to turn a full brigade away, sir.”
Kiva strained to see into the distance. “They won’t come that way again until the fire’s gone out” he confirmed. Turning to face his unit, he added “three groups! One remaining wall each.”
As the dozen men split off to watch the walls, Kiva walked over to where the young man in white cowered, hatchet clutched in equally alabaster knuckles.
“Make yourself useful,” the captain barked, “long as you’re here. Stand and watch the fires. If a single living thing comes towards you up that hill, shout me or Athas, right?”
The young man nodded, the look of a startled rabbit about his eyes. Kiva returned to the rear wall, shaking his head, and looked up the hill toward yesterday’s field of battle. He glanced across at Athas and beckoned to him.
“We’d see them if they came at us from there, but we still don’t know how many of ‘em there are. I can’t run an effective defence without knowing what’s happening or what we’re up against. Get Scauvus to make a run to the top and see what’s going on.”
Nodding, Athas ran across to a side wall and spoke to a small, wiry looking man with dark, close-cropped hair and at least four days’ growth of facial hair. Scauvus dropped his bow next to his shield and walked across to the other side of the ruin. Dropping to a crouch and taking a couple of deep breaths, he tore off at high speed for the crest of the hill. The company watched as he ran, fast and nimble as a mountain wolf, up the steep incline and to the top, where he slowed considerably. A bad sign thought Kiva and, as the scout reached the crest and dropped to his stomach, his worst fears appeared to be realised.
“Ahh, shit” the captain groaned.
Athas appeared to have had similar thoughts. He began to nock and store arrows, gesturing to the men to be ready. Kiva strained his eyes once more to see Scauvus hurtling back down the hill as if the hordes of hell were at his heels his form disappearing momentarily from view as a brief change in the wind drove the column of choking smoke across in front of him. A couple of seconds later, the scout appeared out of the grey and jogged back up to the wall, out of breath and wild-eyed.