The vanguard was dead before Random could close his mouth. Six men gone in a breath.
Old Bob had a light lance, and he lowered the point – one of the monsters turned, almost falling as it skidded to a stop, feeling the vibration of the charging horse. It braced itself, head low, horn-clad feet still churning at the earth, and Random could see the great plate of stone that protected its skull.
And then Old Bob’s horse was by and his lance, thrown, not couched, went into the beast’s side – struck deep between two stone plates, and the meaty sound of the heavy spearhead going home in the flesh carried across the distance.
A dozen bolts hit the creature.
Gawin had the rearguard up, forming to the right and left, with companies of guildsmen coming up next to the wagons on either side – not the smoothest, and their faces were as white as snow, and their hands shook, but they were coming.
‘Halt!’ Gawin shouted, and Guilbert came from the other side of the wagons with another five of the wagon guards.
Guilbert took command with one glance. ‘Pick a target!’ he called.
The woods were surprisingly silent.
Old Bob had his horse around, but he never saw the dozen boglins coming. One of them put a spear into his horse effortlessly, like a dancer, the squat thing pirouetting as its spear skewered the beast, and the horse stopped its turn and gave a shrill scream as the wounded troll attacked. Its first blow ripped Old Bob’s lower jaw off his face under the brim of his open-faced helmet – then it crushed his breastplate so that a fountain of blood blew out of his open throat.
The wounded troll slumped. The second one stopped and bent down to feed off both of them, its visor opening and a set of fangs showing sharp against the black of its mouth.
The wave of boglins charged the line of bowmen and soldiers, and this time his men broke and ran.
Random watched them with complete understanding, terrified and virtually unable to move his limbs too, and the sight of the old knight being ripped asunder by the troll seemed to have numbed his mind. He tried to speak. He watched as the guildsmen shuffled, cursed, and turned too. The guards had horses, and they put their spurs to their mounts.
‘Stand!’ Guilbert shouted. ‘Stand or you are all dead men!’
They ignored him.
And then Ser Gawin laughed.
The sound of his laughter didn’t stop the horrified men from running. It didn’t stop the mounted men from raking their spurs into their panicked mounts . . . but it did make many men turn their heads.
His visor fell over his face with a click.
His destrier took its first steps, already moving quickly, as any horse trained to the joust knows to do.
His lance, erect in his hand, dipped, the pennon fluttering, and then he was moving like a streak of steel lightning across the ground between the wagons and the boglins. They, in turn, froze like animals hearing a hunter’s call.
The feeding troll raised its head.
The chief of the boglins raised a horn and it blew a long, sweet note. Other horns echoed, and Random was suddenly freed from the vice of fear that ground against his heart. He got his sword clear of its scabbard.
‘Hear me, Saint Christopher,’ he vowed,’ if I live through this, I will build a church to you.’
Gawin Murien settled the lance in its rest. The boglin chief was standing on the dead troll’s chest, the one the crossbowmen had killed, and the knight’s heavy lance passed through him so quickly that for a heartbeat Random thought the knight had missed, until the small monster was lifted from its feet, all limbs writhing in a horrible parody of an impaled insect, and a thin scream lifting from its throat, and then it was crushed against the stone wall of the remaining troll’s head with a wet sound like a melon breaking, and the stone troll staggered under the imapact.
It roared – a long belling sound that made the woods ring.
Gawin thundered away to the right. He kept his lance, passed through a thicket and emerged to the far right of the wagons. His horse was moving at a slow canter.
Guildsmen and soldiers began to gather again, their rout forgotten, and the boglins began to reach them in ones and twos, their desultory chase become a desperate melee in the turn of a card. A dozen guildsmen were cut down, but instead of spurring the others to run, the deaths of their comrades pulled more and more of the townsmen back to their duty.
Or perhaps it was Gawin’s repeated war cry that did it, ringing as loud as the monsters roar. ‘God and Saint George!’ he shouted, and even the wagons trembled.
The troll dipped its antlers, and spat something. Great clods of moss flew up, and a smell filled the air – a bitter reek of musk. Then it lifted its armoured head and charged, shoulders bunched from its first massive leap forward.
Random swung his sword, his right arm seeming to function independently of his mind, and smashed a boglin with the blow. He backed a step, suddenly aware of a dozen of the things around him, and he got his sword up, point in line, left hand gripping it halfway down the blade.
He charged them. He had the example of the knight before his eyes, and he only had faint a notion that there was more to a charge than bluster. He felt the pain of the first wound and the pressure of the blows on his shoulders and backplate, he also had the time to kill one boglin with the point, break a second with his pommel so that it seemed to burst, and then sweep the legs from a third in as many heartbeats. They had armour – whether it was their own chitinous skin or something made of leather and bone, he had no time to tell – but his heavy sword penetrated it with every thrust, and when it did, they died.
Light flashed, as if lightning had pulsed from the sky.
In a single heartbeat all of his opponents fell, and as they fell they turned to sand. His sword actually passed through one, and beyond his suddenly evaporated opponents, Ser Gawin rode directly at the troll. A horse length from collision his destrier danced to the right – and Ser Gawin’s lance passed under its stone visor to strike it hard in the fanged mouth, plunging his lance the length of a man’s arm into the thing’s throat and crossing the massive monster’s centre-line so that it snapped the lance and tripped the beast, which fell, unbalanced, its armoured head digging a massive furrow in the earth as Ser Gawin and his destrier danced clear.
Lightning pulsed again, and two dozen more boglins spattered to the ground.
‘Rally!’ Guilbert demanded.
The guildsmen were winning.
And every boglin they broke, skewered, or sliced reinforced their growing belief that they might win this battle.
Men were still falling.
But they were going to hold.
. . . until the horses and the oxen panicked, and shredded their column in ten breaths of a terrified man. A wagon plunged through the largest block of guildsmen, scattering them, and the boglins who had stopped, or slowed their charge, or simply balked at entering weapons range, suddenly surged forward. A dozen more guildsmen died at their hands, and the wall of wagons protecting the right of the column was gone.
Random got his back to Guilbert’s. ‘Stand fast!’ he yelled. ‘Stand fast!’
A few feet away, Harmodius pulled a riding whip from his belt.
‘Fiat lux!’ he commanded, and fire raged over the boglins. A guildsman in the process of having his throat ripped out was incinerated in the strike, but the sweet horns were sounding all around them.
Random estimated that the little knot he was with had perhaps twenty men, and at least one of them was on his knees, begging for mercy.
Harmodius drew his sword. He raised an eyebrow.
‘Damn,’ Random said.
Harmodius nodded.
Guilbert shook his head. ‘Wagons punched us a hole,’ he said. ‘The mounted men are that way.’ He pointed back along the track. Back the way they’d come.
Random spat. I’m going to lose everything, he thought.