For a minute there was nearly silence, only the odd shout of a sergeant or the snort of a horse from the five hundred cavalry behind the right flank of the Redeemers.
In front of the Laconics there was movement as eight men with two flags each ran out and to each side in front of their still loosely grouped army.
Once they had dispersed they raised the flags and began to signal. Like a lazy horse midstream convulsed by the touch of a shocking eel, the army of Laconics flexed to life – six flabby squares hardened to edges sharp as a builder’s float. A flash again of flags and then they began to march towards the Redeemers, nearly a mile below; perfect in step and rhyme like any dance troupe or crew of mimes.
Then again the flags. The six squares stopped as one. A beat and then the flags again. A shout, one voice, eight thousand men. Then a great clash of sword on shields, the inward face then quickly turned to their enemies. A vast great flash of colour, yellow and red. Each line headed in turn to left and right so each square became a line spreading across the field, moving from thirty deep to ten. Another wave of the flags and with another shout, another turning in and out of the shields, the six lines moved together into a wall a thousand yards across and six men deep. From Van Owen’s watch on the Golan Heights the trumpets bellowed and a cry went up from every priest.
‘DEATH! JUDGEMENT! HEAVEN! HELL!
THE LAST FOUR THINGS ON WHICH WE DWELL!’
Even from the safety of their bluff and wrapped in the neutral malice that Cale and Vague Henri bore both sides an unpleasant thrill of fear ran from the nape of their necks and down their spines. Vague Henri defied the power of this hideous prayer by singing softly to Cale under his breath:
‘I’d rather dwell on Marie the whore
And what she does with a cucumbore!’
The great army of the Redeemers lurched forward like a bull freeing itself at last from a riverbank of mud. Then astonishment from Cale and Vague Henri. The Laconic mercenaries began to run towards their enemy as if desperate and overjoyed to die. This was no jog or trot but a burst of speed that must be fatal to the order and power of their massy wall that relied on thousands acting together as a single will.
As the two great armies spread towards each other like a stain the small animals of the Machair were squeezed into the space between. First and only to escape are the pheasants, stupid almost to the last, they flap and cackle into the air just as the Laconic line is about to trample them. The hares now run for the cover they will never find darting backwards and forwards between the Laconic rush and the dead still patience of the Redeemers. The fox that was hunting them also makes a run for it, first one way then the other, terrified, and then is swallowed up, engulfed like the animals outside the ark in Noah’s flood.
This sudden Laconic rush threw the centenars of the Redeemer archers on the left and right. Already the sudden burst of speed down the slight incline to the Redeemer line had caught them out. Seconds of delay made their confusion worse – the steady advance was all they had ever seen. By the time the centenars had heard the order for the release from a furious Van Owen, the chance for two flights of arrows had been lost. Then they recovered, shot, and the two boys watched as the dreadful sharps poured through the air towards the charging men in red. But speed like this had brought the Laconics through the arc so that only those in the rear were hit and many arrows fell uselessly behind.
Now so close the Redeemer archers were forced to shoot flat onto the advancing Laconics and straight into the protection of their shields. Another shock: the mercenaries had themselves hired men to do their fighting for them. Poor archers themselves and having disdained for too long the effeminacy of fighting at a distance, they had brought four hundred hired archers from Little Italy lagging just behind the Laconics on the right, who had taken the brunt of the arrows that had missed the bulk of advancing Laconics. A hundred and fifty were already dead, the others stalled – but now as the Redeemer archers were let loose to fire at will the Italians were ignored and now given time to set themselves up, they poured their fire at the Redeemer archers in their turn.
Havoc. Not expecting archers and little used to taking what they were used to handing out, the Redeemer bowmen were thrown into confusion by a lashing of arrows that landed almost one for one into their massed ranks. The centenars and sergeants shouting above the screams of the wounded and the dying. ‘HEAD DOWN! HEAD DOWN! HEAD DOWN! HEAD DOWN!’ ‘Take care!’ cries out another. ‘Look out! OVER THERE! OVER THERE!’ One Redeemer takes an arrow in the chest but it’s the living man next to him who flinches like a horse that’s felt an unexpected lash. Men duck and bend away at nothing – others just stand and take an arrow in the stomach or the face as if they had been taken completely by surprise. The archers who had so devastated the Materazzi cavalry less than a year before were reduced to lookers-on as the Laconics, barely touched by their arrows, slammed as if with a stepping punch into the ranks of the Black Cordelias. The noise of bigger on smaller shields was more of an ugly clattering bang than a majestic crash. But only the Redeemers in all the world could have taken such armoured strength at such a speed and held. Some gave way along the line, Redeemer and Laconic rolling on top of each other in a clumsy pile, bad for the mercenaries who expected them either to hold or fall as one and getting through instead were slaughtered on the ground by waiting Norbetines. Then the pushing and the shoving began, the shouts and rhythmic calls from either side like the bellowing in a tug-of-war at a carnival. The men at the back throwing their weight behind the men in front who did the same to the men in front of them, shoulders to their upper backs, grunting and heaving the battle into shape all the way to the first line. From so far away on the hill the dark red of the Laconic capes and the many colours of the Redeemer Sodalities seemed like oil and water spilt on a tabletop. But here and there along the dividing line a tiny burst of colour mixed, stayed, and then the intruders were slaughtered or gave way and were absorbed back into their lines.
Then came the second shock: knowing they were facing men who, like themselves, did nothing but fight and learn to fight the Laconics had stolen another trick from their many wars. Out came their new swords taken from the Strouds, nearly forty inches long and steeply curving at the end. It allowed them to cut down easily over the shields of Redeemers and do so with a dreadful force onto the helmet of the men in front of them. Helmets designed to take only a blow or cut were split apart by the force of something like a hammer and a spike. The terrible injuries inflicted with each crushing stroke trembled the lines of the Black Cordelias. Then the final twist of the bezel as the dreadful practised grace of the Laconics came into play. To the Laconic right, packed with the strongest men in any case, the middle line of Laconics at the rear – once they knew the line in the centre would not give – shifted their weight and made it stronger still. While the Redeemer centre and the Redeemer right moved slowly back as the Black Cordelias fell to the curved blades and were replaced by weaker or even less well-armoured men, there was a crushing collapse on their left as the curved swords, the strongest Laconics, and the swift and sudden reinforcement became too much. ‘IS THAT IT? WHAT? WAIT! STAND THERE! STAND THERE!’ The confusion and the collapse and the shouts – most on either side had no idea if they were about to win or die.