The clatter of hooves and boots rang loudly from the stones on either side of the track. Gird kept his head down, trusting his carefully placed archers to choose their targets wisely. He heard the twang of one bowstring, then another, then shouts from below. So it began, again, and he squeezed his own hands hard an instant, fighting down that last-moment fear that caught him every time. He stood, and waved his arm.
In that first scrambling rush downslope, Gird could see that his archers had done their work well; many of the lords’ archers were down. Arrows flicked by, close overhead. A few of those below had found cover, and returned a ragged flight. Someone beside him staggered and went down, hands clutched to chest. Ahead of him, the front line of yeomen, with the best weapons, had engaged the mounted soldiers, unseating many of them and killing horses. The slope and sunrise gave them advantage, and Gird’s archers continued to pick their targets wisely.
“Get the lords!” he bellowed, reminding them.
But the attack lost momentum, foundered. No arrows found the lords on their tall horses; Gird could have sworn he saw arrows slide aside, as if refusing to menace the magelords. The lords themselves drew no weapons he could see—not then—but their soldiers regrouped with amazing speed. They paid no attention to the wounded and fallen among them, striding over bodies as if they were merely more rocks. Gird had called for all his bartons to attack when he thought he saw the enemy crumbling, but now he had no unseen reserves, and the ground no longer favored him. Either his people were spread out along the road, outnumbered at each point, or he could call them to clump on the road itself, and try a frontal attack—exactly what he had not wanted to do with the weapons he had available.
Furious with himself, and with the gnomes who had advised this battle plan, Gird watched his ambush degenerate into a lengthy slaughter. Now that they were sure the rocky slopes held no more surprises, the lords and their soldiers pushed forward strongly on the road itself. Already they were beyond the range of Gird’s archers, who would have to come out of cover to find targets. The yeoman marshals were looking over their shoulders now, expecting Gird to come up with something—some plan—and he could not think of anything. Could he hold them together? Would a rout be worse than this? Why had he ever thought the gnomes could design a battle plan for humans? He had to try something. He called them all in, trying to slow the enemy advance along the road. That might give someone a chance to escape.
It had been a mistake. It had been a disaster, and now the end would come. Gird held the retreat together, as foot by foot they were forced back through the village into the maw of the mine. He had been so sure that taking out their archers would be enough. It might have been, without the lords themselves there, with their wicked magicks. Their troops, who might have broken and fled—would have, Gird was sure—still moved forward, as if they had no thought at all, as if they could suffer no wound or fall to no death. Yet they fell, and died, and were trampled by their own. The faces he could see did not change expression even in death. Too far behind for any of Gird’s weapons to reach, the lords sat veiled on their tall horses, watching, performing whatever magicks they could.
Here was still more evidence that some of the lords still had potent powers to call on. Rocks split, air hummed and thickened in his throat, unnatural light rippled over the battle, making it hard to see. And so he was going to die under a mountain of rock, because he had believed the wrong story. There wasn’t any way out of this, but if he did live, he was going to have a few choice words for Arranha, if ever he caught up with him again.
He shifted to one side as the mine closed around them.
“Go on!” bawled the Blackbone yeoman marshal in his ear. “Let us take this.”
“It was my bad idea.” Gird smashed his club into a shoulder, and ducked aside from a pike. “I should be last—”
They fought side by side for a few moments, as the soldiers charged again. Then the momentum of that charge dissipated, and they could retreat further into the dark shaft without immediate risk. The soldiers were cursing the darkness, stumbling over loose rocks and the fallen.
“Hurry up,” the yeoman marshal said. “Afore the lords get in, and make they magical lights—”
“But we should make a stand,” Gird said. “I’ll do it—a few others—”
“Never mind!” The yeoman marshal yanked Gird’s arm hard. “Leave them to it; they’ll find out—”
“What?” He couldn’t see, in the dimness, anything but a flash of teeth.
“It’s in the charm,” said the man, almost gleefully. “Come with me.” What charm was that, Gird wondered. It was that or be left in darkness, and Gird came. Dying inside a cursed mountain wasn’t his idea of the way to die, but what choices did he have? None, like the rest of them. All around, in the darkness, he heard the rasp of feet on stone, the groans of the wounded, the heavy breathing. Deeper into the blackness, and deeper, twisting and turning through passages that were sometimes tight for a single man, and other times so wide that three or four abreast must reach out with hands to feel the walls. Gird clamped his fear within him, and tried to think, without success.
When the dim bluish light of a gnomish lamp blossomed nearby, he could not believe it. All around were faces equally surprised, mouths open. A firm, cool hand gripped Gird’s, and he looked down to see the warmaster who had set this battle’s plan.
“It is for you to command,” the warmaster said. “No human noise!”
“Silence!” Gird bellowed and no one spoke. He bent to the warmaster, full of his own questions and complaints, but the warmaster’s expression stopped him.
“It is that they are within, the outland lords?”
“Yes.”
“You marshal your humans, follow my orders.”
“Yes.” There was nothing more to say. Whatever the gnomes demanded, he would have to perform, both by his contract and by the logic of the situation.
“Then go. Follow that one—” the warmaster pointed. “Go far and swift.”
“You don’t need our help?”
The warmaster’s face conveyed secret amusement. “Human help for rockwar? Go.”
Gird waved, and the others formed up to follow him, as he followed his guide. It occurred to him, as they plunged once more into a narrow dark passage, that the gnomes might have planned all this just to lure a few lords underground—though he hated to think that.
All he could hear behind, though he strained his ears, was the noise of his own people shuffling along. His guide carried a lantern, so he himself could see where to put his feet, but the others stumbled in darkness. At last, a dim shape of light ahead, that widened and brightened to daylight. He squinted against the light, and then as he came out, stopped short. They faced a gloomy sunset, a few rays of somber light escaping beneath heavy clouds. And that meant—he shook his head, to clear it. They had walked through Blackbone Hill? He peered up and over his shoulder. There it was, that gaunt, misshapen spine arched slightly away from them.
Ahead the gnome set off downhill, in that measured but tireless tread, and Gird waved the foremost of his people on. He would stay to see the last of them out, and silence questions.
By dark they were far below the hill, coming into marshy ground. The blackwater bogs, Gird thought. The gnome stopped suddenly, and Gird nearly ran into him.