‘Through the archers and rally the phalanx!’ he shouted to the two men, signalling at the same time.
Both acknowledged his cry and mounted their own horses.
Hawklan spun Serian round in front of the recover-ing group and drew the black sword. He was an ominous figure, cutting as starkly into the minds of his shaken troops as he did through the baleful, shifting, red light still pouring from the blazing sky.
‘To me, Helyadin, to me!’ he shouted, his voice still lost in the dying din from above, but his meaning unmistakable. The Helyadin started forward, first at the trot then at the gallop, as their leader drew them forward and as the rhythm of their movement began to displace the terrible possession of the noise.
As they rose, Hawklan’s own vision cleared. The Morlider who had been riding to attack Andawyr were scattered, most of them unhorsed by their panicking mounts, but so too were the Orthlundyn cavalry. The great blocks of infantry, both Orthlundyn and Morlider, were motionless.
He could not bring himself to look up, as if fearing to see some awful livid wound torn into the very fabric of the sky. Whatever had come to pass in the Drien-volk’s conflict, this battle here had to be won, and Creost defeated.
The thought took his gaze briefly to Andawyr and Atelon and thence to the Uhriel. Though their body-guards were gone, both the Cadwanwr were seemingly unmoved by the happenings around them, as was the distant figure of Creost, still jagged and awful in Hawklan’s sight.
At the edge of his vision, he saw the two ships bear-ing reinforcements for the Morlider. In the eerie stillness of the fallen armies and the whirling confusion of the demented horses, the smooth purposeful movement of the two vessels seemed strangely gro-tesque.
Soon the enemy’s reinforcements would be ashore.
Then the Helyadin were crashing through and over the Morlider archers, swords rising and falling, arcing red in the reflected cloud light and the blood of their hapless enemy. The swathe they cut, however, caused no great panic as most were too occupied with the terrors still shaking the sky above them.
Nearing the Orthlundyn infantry, Hawklan saw that, like his brother, Loman, though unhorsed, had recov-ered quickly from the ordeal. The smith was running along the ranks of fallen and crouching figures as desperately as Hawklan had run amongst the Helyadin. Under his exhortations, individuals were rising to their feet and struggling to help their neighbours.
‘Spread out. Get these people moving,’ Hawklan thundered, leaping down from Serian at the run and dashing forward to join Loman.
Then, as the infantry climbed up from its knees, he and the Helyadin were through to the broken front line of the Morlider, a thin strand of frenzied, hacking, skirmishers spreading out before the recovering Orthlundyn like a ripple presaging the arrival of a great wave.
The rumbling above continued to fade but, as it did, so the Orthlundyn filled the incipient silence with their own thunder as once again they began their relentless advance.
Hawklan and the Helyadin retreated through the phalanx and remounted.
‘We’ll not re-form the cavalry,’ Dacu said anxiously. ‘There’s hardly anyone mounted and the horses are scattered everywhere.’
Hawklan did not answer immediately, but glanced quickly upwards. Through the residual rumbling, he thought he heard a thin, flesh-crawling screeching high above, but it disappeared under the mounting pande-monium of the battlefield and he dismissed it.
He turned back to Dacu and his concerns. ‘Most of them have still got their bows,’ he said. ‘Get them guarding this flank, and skirmishing. Then do what you can with the horses; we need them.’
As the Helyadin dispersed to execute this command, Hawklan turned and rode back towards Andawyr. On the way he passed the sled that the Riddin boy had driven by him so apparently recklessly but minutes ago. It had overturned and the horse was struggling white-eyed and foaming in its harness. Hawklan drew his sword and cut the animal free. Serian backed away as, with much kicking and stumbling, the terrified horse stood up.
‘Calm it, Serian,’ Hawklan said.
‘Tend your own, Hawklan,’ the horse replied with an inclination of his head towards the far side of the sled.
Hawklan looked where Serian indicated and saw a small form lying in the snow. He dismounted quickly and ran to the boy, but even as he bent over him, he knew that the child was beyond any aid he could offer. From the impressions in the snow, it seemed that the sled had rolled over him when it overturned.
A surge of memories swept through him. Memories of the children of Pedhavin, shouting, running, silently watching, as they played their eternally secret games about the winding sunlit streets of the village, and around the courtyards and halls of Anderras Darion. And somewhere was the glow from his own golden childhood in another age.
He let the vision unfold without restraint until he found his vision blurring, then colder, adult needs made him lay it aside; though gently.
The freed horse came and stood beside him. It low-ered its head and touched the boy.
‘Not your fault,’ Hawklan said, stroking it. Then, to the boy, he whispered, ‘I’m sorry,’ very softly. ‘Fear no more.’
Remounting Serian, he turned again towards the Cadwanwr. As Hawklan approached, Andawyr moved slightly as if he had been struck, and Hawklan felt again the choking warmth rising up inside him that had marked Creost’s entry into the fray. He turned and looked over the battlefield.
The right wing of the Morlider was being routed as its bewildered and shocked fighters struggled to escape the renewed advance of the Orthlundyn pikes. The left wing, disarrayed to some extent by the Helyadin’s quiet but savage assault, had stopped its advance and was faltering in some confusion. Dacu and the Helyadin were rallying the broken cavalry to protect the Orthlundyn’s vulnerable flank on foot.
Hawklan felt both the exhilaration of the Orthlundyn and the terror of the fleeing Morlider. If the attack could be sustained, the Morlider would soon break utterly.
Creost was acting now not to destroy his enemy, but to save his army! From somewhere, the Uhriel had found the resource to beat back the opposition that the two Cadwanwr had offered him. For a chilling moment, it occurred to Hawklan that perhaps this foul agent of Sumeral had only been toying with these irksome creatures that scuttled irritatingly about its feet.
But the moment passed. The seizure of Riddin must surely be vital to Sumeral’s strategy and while the fate of the Morlider army as men doubtless meant little to Creost, as a tool for implementing the will of Sumeral, it was well wrought and powerful, the work of many years; it would not lightly be broken and destroyed if it fell within its creator’s remit to prevent it.
‘He would have destroyed half his army to destroy us!’ Atelon’s shocked words came back to Hawklan vividly. Had there been any doubt in his mind about that first assault by Creost, there was none now. Better to lose half the army than all of it.
Hawklan urged Serian forward. He knew nothing of the ways of the Old Power, but he knew that he was the chosen of the sword of Ethriss and that both he and the sword now belonged to the battle against Creost.
The cloying warmth ebbed and flowed as he gal-loped through the snow to bring this aid to the struggling Cadwanwr.
A quick glance showed him that the Helyadin body-guard had recovered, but all, save two, had lost their horses. He jumped down from Serian and, drawing the black sword, stepped forward to join Andawyr and Atelon.
Looking out over the battlefield, he saw the figure of the Uhriel, now more disturbing than ever in the aura that surrounded it. Should he place the sword in Andawyr’s hand as he had in Atelon’s? Should he hold it in front of himself as he had when Oklar had stood revealed before him? No instinct guided him, though something drew his gaze down to the sword itself. As he looked at it, he saw the twining strands in the black depths of the hilt shining and flickering triumphantly as they wound their way through countless brilliant stars into some unknown, unimaginable, distance.