More Tricks

The sun had to be up somewhere but you’d never have known it. The angry clouds had thickened and the light was still poor. Positively beggarly, in fact. As far as Corporal Tunny could tell, and somewhat to his surprise, no one had moved. The helmets and spears still showed above the stretch of wall that he could see, shifting a little from time to time but going nowhere fast. Mitterick’s attack was well underway. That much they could hear. But on this forgotten far end of the battle, the Northmen waited.

‘Are they still there?’ asked Worth. Waiting for action like this got most men shitting themselves. Worth was unique, in that it seemed it was the one thing that could stop him.

‘They’re still there.’

‘Not moving?’ squeaked Yolk.

‘If they were moving we’d be moving, wouldn’t we?’ Tunny peered through his eyeglass once again. ‘No. They’re not moving.’

‘Is that fighting I can hear?’ muttered Worth, as a gust of wind brought the echoing of angry men, horses and metal across the stream.

‘It’s that or it’s a serious disagreement in a stable. Do you think it’s a disagreement in a stable?’

‘No, Corporal Tunny.’

‘No. Neither do I.’

‘Then what’s going on?’ asked Yolk. A riderless horse appeared from over the rise, stirrups flapping at its flanks, trotted down towards the water, stopped and started nibbling at the grass.

Tunny lowered his eyeglass. ‘Honestly, I’m not sure.’ All around them, rain tapped at the leaves.

The trampled barley was scattered with dead and dying horses, dead and dying men. In front of Calder and his stolen standards they were heaped up in a bloody tangle. Only a few strides away, three Carls were arguing with each other as they tried to free their spears, all impaled in the same Union rider. A few boys had been sent scurrying out to gather spent arrows. A couple more had been unable to resist clambering into the third pit to get an early start at picking over the bodies there, and White-Eye was roaring at them to get back into line.

The Union cavalry were all done. A brave effort, but a stupid one. It seemed to Calder the two often went together. To make matters worse, having failed once they’d insisted on giving it another try, still more doomed. Three score or so had jumped the third pit on the right, managed to get over Clail’s Wall and kill a few archers before they were shot or speared themselves. All pointless as mopping a beach. That was the trouble with pride, and courage, and all those clench-jawed virtues bards love to harp on. The more you have, the more likely you are to end up bottom in a pile of dead men. All the Union’s bravest had achieved was to give Calder’s men the biggest boost to their spirits they’d had since Bethod was King of the Northmen.

They were letting the Union know it, now, as the survivors rode, or limped, or crawled back towards their lines. They danced about, and clapped and whooped into the drizzle. They shook each others’ hands, and thumped each other’s backs, and clashed their shields together. They chanted Bethod’s name, and Scale’s, and even quite frequently Calder’s, which was gratifying. The comradeship of warriors, who would’ve thought? He grinned around as men cheered and brandished their weapons at him, held up his sword and gave it a wave in return. He wondered whether it was too late to smear a bit of blood on the blade, since he hadn’t quite got around to swinging it. There was plenty of blood about and he doubted its previous owners would miss it now.

‘Chief?’

‘Eh?’

Pale-as-Snow was pointing off to the south. ‘Might want to pull ’em back into position.’

The rain was getting weightier, fat drops leaving the earth spattered with dark spots, pinging from the armour of the living and the dead. It had drawn a misty haze across the battlefield to the south, but beyond the riderless horses aimlessly wandering, and the horseless riders stumbling back towards the Old Bridge, Calder thought he could see shapes moving in the barley.

He shielded his eyes with one hand. More and more emerged from the rain, turning from ghosts to flesh and metal. Union foot. Vast blocks of them, trampling forward in carefully measured, well-ordered, dreadfully purposeful ranks, pole-arms held high, flags struck limp by the wet.

Calder’s men had seen them too, and their triumphant jeering was already a memory. The barking voices of Named Men rang through the rain, bringing them grimly back to their places behind the third pit. White-Eye was marshalling some of the lightly wounded to fight as a reserve and plug any holes. Calder wondered if they’d be plugging holes in him before the day was out. It looked a good bet.

‘Don’t suppose you’ve got any more tricks?’ asked Pale-as-Snow.

‘Not really.’ Unless you counted running like hell. ‘You?’

‘Just the one.’ And the old warrior carefully wiped the blood from his sword with a rag and held it up.

‘Oh.’ Calder looked down at his own clean blade, glistening with beads of water. ‘That.’