Sovereign

As before, Lynan led the charge of the Red Hands. His sabre was red to the hilt with gore and the enemy reeled back from him, terrified of him. One soldier managed to stick a spear into his horse before being ridden down, and the mare sank to the ground. Lynan loosed his feet from the stirrups and jumped off. Within seconds Red Hands had surrounded him, one offering him her horse. He mounted and charged into the enemy again, his sabre whistling through the air. It took the Red Hands a long time to hack their way from one of the columns to the other. No one asked for mercy, and no mercy was given. Eventually Lynan had to stop, overtaken by exhaustion. His sword arm refused to lift any more and his borrowed horse could go no further. He slid out of the saddle, put the point of his sabre in the ground and rested on the hilt. A short while later he was joined by Gudon and Ager. The three embraced quickly. Before them the Chett horse archers were still sending their short black shafts into the enemy, but then had to dismount and scrounge among the dead for more arrows. To the west the sun was only a hand's breadth from the horizon, making the whole world look as bloody as the battlefield.

They were joined by Korigan.

'What remains of the enemy is mainly heavy infantry,' she told them. 'They have gathered together and formed a square, showing little except their shields and helmets. Our arrows find a mark occasionally, but we are running out and the enemy is not inclined to return them, and Terin's lancers cannot charge their wall of spears. Should we let them go? Wait until they drop from thirst and hunger? Or ask them to surrender?'

Lynan shook his head. 'We can't spare the time to wait for thirst and hunger to do our work for us. Who looks after them if they surrender? And if we let them go, they will reinforce Kendra.'

'Then what can we do?' Korigan asked.

Lynan and Ager exchanged weary glances. 'Only one thing to do,' Ager said.

'And there are only two banners who can do it. Your clan and my Red Hands.'

Korigan looked at them, puzzled. 'What are you planning?'

Lynan stood straight, leaving his sabre in the ground, and drew his short sword from its sheath. 'Find Terin for me.'

'What now?' one officer asked, voicing the question in everyone else's head. There were three of them in the centre of the square, the last officers left alive. 'We can't stay here. They'll just surround us, continue to pepper us with arrows, and wait until we are dying of thirst.'

'We can try moving,' another officer said. 'If we do it slowly we should be able to maintain the square.'

'And go where?'

The officer shrugged. 'Well, Kendra.'

'It'd take us a year!'

'There's only one thing for it,' the third said. 'We wait for nightfall and make a run for it.'

'They'll be waiting for that.'

'Didn't say they wouldn't be, but there ain't nothing else to do, and some of us will make it.'

'Something's happening to the north,' someone from the square said.

All three officers looked that way.

'I don't believe it. I thought Chetts never fought on foot.'

'And what's that they're holding?'

'Fuck, they're carrying short swords. Who'd have thought, eh?'

'What are we gonna do now?' asked the first officer, his voice rising with panic.

'Stay calm, first off.'

'Charge them?' suggested the second officer.

'Look west, against the sun,' the third officer said. 'There's the bloody Chett lancers. We deploy to charge their foot, they attack our flank and roll us up all the way to the Sea Between.'

'There must be something we can do.'

'Fight and die,' the third officer said, leaving to join his company. 'Fight and die.'

Lynan let Ager plan and lead the attack. He deployed his clan and the Red Hands into troops, and set the troops along an oblique line. When he was happy with the deployment he raised and lowered his sword. The line started to move. At first they kept good formation, but unused to walking for any distance, let alone marching, the line soon became ragged, but the oblique angle largely remained. Ager was in the lead troop, Lynan in the middle one and Gudon in the last, and their commands and firmness helped stop the attack from degenerating into a wild charge. When he was only thirty paces from the enemy square, Ager raised his sword again and picked up the pace. It was impossible for him with his crookback to actually run, but by the time his troop was ten paces from the enemy he could let them go and they slammed into the shield wall, ducking under spears, tearing away shields and jabbing at faces with their short swords. The second line of spearmen jabbed at the Chetts, finding unprotected heads and necks, but not quickly enough to stop the wall from shuddering under the assault. More spearmen joined the press, too far back to use their weapons effectively, but able to lend their actual weight to the line in front.

Then the second troop of Chetts hit. As with the first troop, the wall actually seemed to ripple with the impact and started to give way, but extra spearmen rushed to give their support and the square held.

Then the third troop threw themselves against the enemy, and the fourth and the fifth. The wall was starting to buckle, and the Chetts were clambering over the dead, grabbing spears by their shafts, pulling them out of the hands of the enemy and stabbing and cutting with their swords. Spearmen fell back moaning, hands over their faces, blinded, mutilated, bloody and dying. More Chetts hit the square, and then it was Lynan's turn with the first troop of Red Hands. They rent the air with the war cry of the White Wolf and leaped between the spears of the enemy, falling on the shields that blocked their way. Lynan thrust at any face under a helmet, and used his free hand to grab at spear shafts and shields. The swaying line of heavy infantry would start to buckle and then straighten as fresh soldiers joined the ranks.

A spearman jabbed at Lynan's face. Lynan ducked and stabbed in return but hit only air. The spearman jabbed again and Lynan automatically ducked a second time; but the spearman let the spear slide through his hand so it became unbalanced; the spear's head dipped and the soldier tightened his grip and thrust down with all his strength.

Lynan screamed with sudden pain as the spear top lanced through his right side just above his hip. Two

Red Hands grabbed him by his arms and pulled him out of the way. Warriors rushed around him to fill the gap, but many stopped fighting to watch Lynan; they had never seen their invincible leader bleed.

He shifted his sword to his left hand and with his right covered the wound. He stepped back into the line. 'It is nothing!' he shouted. 'Are the Red Hands afraid of a little blood?'

The Red Hands grinned at one another. Lynan was alright. Victory would still be theirs.

The spearmen forming the other three sides of the square, who could not clearly see what was happening but could hear the terrible sounds of battle and the screams of the dying and wounded, involuntarily started to pull closer together. The square started to fall apart, and then the inevitable. One of the last troops to attack found a gap and charged through to assault the spearmen from inside their own formation.

Lynan knew the moment the square collapsed. It happened so quickly, so unexpectedly, that one moment he seemed to be surrounded by enemies, and the next he was standing alone, surrounded by nothing but discarded shields and spears. He told himself to join the pursuit, but he knew Korigan and Terin had been waiting for this moment, and he could feel through the ground the lancers and horse archers moving in for the final kill. He told his feet to move, but his body rebelled. The wound in his side was throbbing and blood had trickled down his leg and into his right boot so his toes squelched in the stuff. He was too exhausted to do anything, even sit. All around him rang the cries of the victorious Chetts and the wailing of the enemy who knew they were about to die.