Yet it was clear they could hardly let us go. Already the ranks ahead were drawing together, tightening like the neck of a drawstring bag. Behind, Panchessa had disappeared from view, shielded from our tiny band by row upon row of protectors. Ahead, the Suburbs seemed infinitely more distant than they had a minute before. Alvantes was still leading us forward, but his steps were halting. What would happen when someone finally tried to stop him?
There came a noise from behind me: a silvery chime that turned straight away into a metallic rasp, and ended viscous and wet. Any sound would have been shocking just then, but there was something particularly awful about this one.
The sight was worse. I turned to see one of Kalyxis’s bodyguards flailing his enormous scimitar, sending Pasaedans tumbling aside; it would have been alarming enough even without the great gash in his side, which had all but opened him entirely. He had no right to be standing, let alone moving — and as I watched, he realised as much himself. Still swinging, he pitched forward. He chopped at chest height, at thighs and then at ankles, and managed one savage stroke towards the churned muck of the ground before the last strength left him.
Who had struck first? Had someone moved upon Kalyxis, or had her protector simply lost his fragile calm? I’d never know, and nobody else seemed certain either. Even as the barbarian twitched out the dregs of his life in the mud, a vestige of our tenuous peace held: a moment’s sizing up of opponents, of calculating odds, considering positions.
This time it was Alvantes who broke the stillness — and for all that I thought I’d grown used to his unorthodox strategies, his command was still the last thing I expected. “Charge!” he roared.
I doubted the Pasaedans had seen it coming either. When Alvantes flung himself forward, a few even struggled to get out of the way. Immediately Mounteban was there to fill the briefly opened gap — and as he pressed forward, sword sweeping, I saw him draw something from his belt. When he put it to his lips, I recognised it for a horn, hardly bigger than his hand. The note it produced was shrill, improbably loud. Mounteban gave two more quick blasts and then let it slip from his fingers, as he dodged to counter a blow aimed at his off side. Even as he swept the opposing blade away, Alvantes had lashed to cut down the man wielding it.
“Push back! Keep close!” someone called to my right, and glancing back I recognised Gueverro, one of Alvantes’s sub-captains. He had taken command of our small entourage, forming them into a tight-clustered oval.
Whatever outcome Alvantes had hoped for, he’d planned for the worst. Probably only half of those under Gueverro’s command were guardsmen, but I could tell that the remainder had been carefully chosen. Men who until recently had been on opposite sides of Altapasaedan law covered each others’ backs like seasoned soldiers, keeping pace despite the fact that most were moving sideways or even backwards.
They’d drawn bucklers from under their cloaks, and were already fending off a hail of blows. The small shields were worthless against arrows, but just then our enemies’ numbers were working more to our benefit than theirs. Disorganised, fighting without order or instruction, the Pasaedans were pressing too close; any archer fool enough to fire was as likely to skewer one of his own side.
The clamour was deafening. I felt as if I was at the centre of the fiercest of storms, fenced in by lightning and hammered by thunder. Panic was rising in my gullet, and I had no argument to talk it down. The Pasaedans were so close; everywhere I looked, hard faces glowered back. It was impossible to imagine that our thin line of Altapasaedans could be holding them back.
I went for my knives, realised that in the excitement I’d forgotten to recover them from outside Panchessa’s tent. Well, maybe it was for the best; I couldn’t have hoped to defend against a sword, so why attract attention? Then again, there were fifty of us, hundreds of them. Attention was going to find me soon, whether I was armed or not.
Even as I thought it, someone stumbled hard against me. I caught a fragmentary look at his face, streaked in red, saw enough of his uniform to recognise him for one of ours, before he landed in a tangle at my feet. Backing up, I jarred the man behind, heard him curse revoltingly. Ahead, our line had already clenched to fill the gap — but only in time for another Altapasaedan to be cut down, this one with blood coursing prodigiously from his stomach.
I danced aside as well as I could, desperate to keep up with Alvantes and our advancing front. Only now, we weren’t advancing; our momentum was lost, and not even Alvantes could regain it. It was all he could do to hold the ground he’d already made. In fact, it was probably all he could do to stay alive, for I’d never seen him fight so desperately. Alone, even that might not have been enough, but I was astonished to note how Mounteban was risking himself to shield Alvantes’s left side, compensating for his old enemy’s one-handedness.
Meanwhile, despite both their efforts to keep her back, Estrada had joined the front line. At that moment, she was fencing expertly with a soldier fully a head taller than her. Close by, Kalyxis had her peculiar long knife in hand. As I watched, she stepped to where her surviving bodyguard was clashing with three Pasaedans and dug it halfway to the hilt in the nearest man’s side. He hardly had time to look at her with wide-eyed horror before her bodyguard had sheared his head from his body, sending his corpse tottering into the other two.
Was I the only one not fighting? But the question had hardly crossed my mind before a colossal Pasaedan smashed with a roar past the men ahead and charged straight for me. Giants aside, I’d never seen such a monster; his neck alone was wide as my waist. My only thought was to get out of the way. I ducked, drove my weight left, felt my ankle catch on something I only recognised for a corpse as I stumbled over it. The bullish Pasaedan struck my leg with such force that I thought he’d take it with him. What little balance I had vanished and I went flying, as he plunged on, to crash into his own side with another bellow and the force of an avalanche.
I was halfway back to my feet when a sword whistled close over my head. Giving up standing for a bad idea, I tried instead to roll into a ball, but someone’s heel smashed hard into my ribs and I flopped with a sob onto my back. I had a moment’s dizzying, inverted view of the battle raging: swords whirling and men clashing and everywhere very much blood, with the sky an incredible, untainted blue above.
Then a Pasaedan fell towards me, using both hands and his last breath to try to hold his own guts in place, and that was enough to get me back on my feet. However, there was little enough room left to stand in; I couldn’t so much as edge in any direction without meeting someone’s back. Our small circle was shrinking fast.
“Hold! Hold the line!” cried Gueverro, at once swiping his sword towards a Pasaedan and dashing first one strike and then another aside with his buckler. Then he jerked hard to the left, as though someone had yanked him by the hair. He just barely kept his balance and tried to look round, seemed puzzled that he couldn’t.
I hadn’t seen where the arrow had come from; only a lunatic would have fired in the midst of that dense combat. Yet there it was, jutting from Gueverro’s neck, half of its length sunk inside him. I thought he was trying to say something, but of course there was no way he could. Understanding dawned in his eyes, as terrible a sight as I’d seen. Then Gueverro hurled himself forward, thrashing his sword about as though trying to beat out a fire. The Pasaedan lines opened for him, closed, and he was gone.
I’d already watched many strangers die that day, but Gueverro had been the first whose name I’d known. I’d spoken to him; in so much as I’d considered it, I’d liked him. And there came over me then something deeper than fear. It might have been resignation, or merely understanding. What it told me was that I was going to end up face down here, bleeding my life out in the mud. We weren’t moving, we were being cut down, and the Suburbs were far too far away.