He shook her off. 'Sound the drum! Push over the bridge and get onto land! Move! Move!'
Arrows flew. Men staggered. Some fell, and were dragged by their fellows as the companies pressed forward, pushing hard to get off the causeway. One man spun away over the edge of the causeway and tumbled into the shallows, facedown in the muddy water. Behind, Seventh Cohort was retreating, cursed fools; they had three mey of causeway to cover to get back to dry land; they'd be picked off.
'Sergeant!' he called, having lost Giyara in the forward surge. He took a sharp blow to his head. An arrow slid down his body, and he stepped on it, snapping it in half. The hells! He swiped a hand over his helmet, but the arrow hadn't dislodged anything.
He snagged a pair of unbroken arrows. 'Pick up every arrow you can find. Toss them in the wagons. Keep moving!'
The soldiers on the outside had their shields wedged well together to cover legs and torsos. The line inside had lifted shields to cover the heads of the outer rank. They marched in pace with the drum. The wagons rumbled. Arrows thudded into the gravel, or were swept up by a spare hand and tossed into the wagons. A driver grunted as an arrow sprouted in his side, but he kept driving, hunched over. Zubaidit leaped up on the bench and yanked
the reins from the man's hands. Where were those cursed hostages? If they were getting in the way of his troops, he'd slit their throats himself. But they had boxed themselves in between the wagons, hauling their injured. A young woman went down in a fresh shower of deadly arrows. He felt the kiss of death brushing past, but nothing hit him; instead, he stepped over a limp body, a young soldier shot in the eye. Dead instantly, no doubt. Unfortunate. He grabbed the fellow's sword and kept moving. Looking back, he saw one of the hostages — an older woman with her hair tightly wrapped in a scarf — wrench the shield from the soldier's slack hand.
The gravel of the causeway surface gave way to wood planking, the crunch of his footsteps turning to a scrape as he moved over the bridge in the midst of his personal staff. The current in the channel ran swiftly beneath, a purling sound so loud it muffled the roar of confusion coming from up ahead where First Cohort was fighting a foe of unknown size, ferocity, and skill.
The bridge went on and on, as arrows rained down, but although one man and then a second and then a third slumped against the railings, the drummer did not cease her steady beat, the wagons rolled, the men held. The Toskalan hostages grabbed wounded men and slung them on the backs of wagons.
They marched out onto dry ground where he got a quick impression of plenty of dangerous open space and scattered abandoned carts and wagons and hitching gear plus boats drawn up and overturned by the river wall. There were warehouses, trees in planted rows, low brick walls surrounding several conjoined garden plots, a long brick row house with porch and multiple doors, many left open, the place clearly deserted in haste. The island was small, with a lane piercing straight through to a distant bridge, where a mob of fighting churned and boiled, dust thick in the air.
He pushed forward to find the vanguard setting up a quick and dirty perimeter using a pair of storehouses as their cornerstone.
'We're not stopping. We push up to support First Cohort-'
A massive crack made everyone flinch. Out of the chaos ahead, men screamed; shouts rang as the enemy cried aloud in triumph. Arras ran out beyond the perimeter: the distant clot of First Cohort's rearguard was falling back in confusion, completely out of order. Smoke billowed from the vicinity of the bridge and the unseen ground beyond it. Flames licked, running high. A horrible
screaming yammer — maybe no more than ten men — caught in those flames on the bridge, but their agony stabbed panic into the rest. Arras had seen men break and run. He knew what would happen next; he'd witnessed the death of his comrades before, because once you are routed, you are easy prey.
'Heya! New orders!' The rain of arrows had abated now that they were on the island, but he knew their enemy out in the mire was merely taking this chance to regroup, or was pursuing Seventh Cohort down the causeway. 'We're fixing a perimeter on this island. Move to those garden walls.'
'There's good cover, Captain, in these warehouses-' cried one of his vanguard sergeants.
'Neh. They'll burn us out of wooden structures. That thatch will go up in a heartbeat. Set up an outer perimeter along the warehouse line. Everyone else back to the brick walls. Sergeant Giyara!'
'Captain!'
'I want sweep teams through every abandoned building while we're free of archery fire. Strip any provisions, supplies, everything. I'll need another cadre to drag in all the wagons and boats. We'll break them up and build shelters, arrow breaks, barriers. If we can manage it in staggered units, break down that row house for bricks to strengthen our perimeter. We'll make the three walled garden plots our main defensive hold, build it up as we can, and I want to include that mulberry orchard, too, so we have range of motion and some protection from that direction. We'll need forward outposts, and banners torn up to form signal flags. Cadre sergeants-'
'I'll assign them, Captain,' said Giyara, as he'd known she would.
'Captain!' Subcaptain Orli's runner came panting up, face streaked with mud. 'There's trouble on the first bridge. Burning arrows, Captain.'
'Get back to Subcaptain Orli. I want everyone over and the main central planks pulled out. We must control access to the bridge, stop their reinforcements from marching up over the causeway.'
'They can still land boats, Captain-'
'One thing at a time! Get those men over and close down that bridge.'
His soldiers fell to their tasks with the discipline he'd drilled
into them, but as he scanned the shape of the island — too big a slab of ground to encompass easily but not so large that it offered a range of environment — remnants of First Cohort came fleeing down the road with shields slamming on their backs in rhythm to their pounding steps. Their faces were tight with bewilderment and unthinking fear.
He grabbed a company banner ripped by arrow shot and placed himself in the center of the road with the pole held horizontal to block their headlong flight.
'Halt, you gods-rotted cowards!'
He'd trained all his youth with an ordinand's staff; of all weapons, a strong staff still felt most comfortable in his hands. He lashed out now, thumping the men in the front with a flurry of blows that knocked them back or sent them to their knees.
'Halt!'
The second rank slowed, men responding to his voice in the shaken manner of people coming awake abruptly. The soldiers behind them had to stutter step to avoid smashing into those before them, and this shift altered the entire momentum of their collapse.
'Get in your cadres! Form up!'
Folk who feel helpless desire order just as the starving desire food, or the falling man grasps at any object that will stop his fall.
'You!' He grabbed a soldier who was moving too slowly and backhanded him. Others skipped into ranks, startled by the blow.
The young man he had hit reeled sideways, then caught himself and snapped upright. 'Captain?' he squeaked.
'Where's your sergeant?' Arras roared
Men looked around, seeking sergeants. 'Captain! I don't know, Captain!'
'Move your group off the road. Stay in formation!' The mass began to seethe as the press behind them thickened. 'You there!' He pointed at another man. 'Where's your sergeant? Eiya! Move your group off the road, to the other side. Stay in formation!' He whistled, and one of his runners jumped up beside him. 'I need Subcaptain Piri and his company.'
By the time Piri arrived, Arras had two cadres sorted out.
'Captain!'
'Piri, take your company to the forward bridge. Make sure it's blocked, then hold the perimeter. I'm sending these two cadres with you.'