The Humbled (The Lost Words: Volume 4) (52 page)

Not for long, it seemed.

The marshy banks burst. But instead of ducks and other angry birds, a flock of enemy troops poured out, dashing onto the dry ground, joining the convoy troops, merging, edging the sharp ends of their spears forward. In unison, they closed ranks and advanced. The haphazardly arranged wagons became excellent defense points.

“It is an ambush, all right,” Mali admitted.

Alexa nodded once, slowly. There was nothing they could do now. They had to win the battle and cross the river. At least the far bank looked empty. There did not seem to be any enemy units there, but some might be hiding in the tall grass, or in the small village that dipped its fingers in the murky water.

Arrows took flight from behind the loaded carts. Early shots, gauging the distance.

“Spread about! Shields up!” Mali cursed under her breath as she uncinched her large oval wooden shield from the side of the saddle. Holding that thing while riding was a challenge.

Still more troops, all clad in shades of white and light gray, were coming out of their hiding places, by the river, from behind small clumps of low, sagging trees, the seemingly abandoned fishing communities, everywhere. A squad here and there, a gang of spearmen joining the press, but it grew like an avalanche, collecting debris, growing fatter and more menacing with each second.

Groans and screams rippled through her ranks. A few women sagged or knelt down, weighted down by the iron rain, pierced through shoulder or calf. Walking under an arrow shower was a chilling affair. She had always hated it. There was nothing you could do but silently count and thank your luck.

With bad visibility, she could not see the whole front line. The bridge was there, still looking intact and yet somehow brittle and wounded. Maybe it could not be crossed. Maybe she would have to fight for the barges, but how could she hope to load her girls onto those fidgety rafts under fire?

She had wondered about the enemy. Well, it had responded finally. With force, precision, and determination. All her illusions were gone.

Then she remembered something.

“Major Donal!” she shouted, pushing sideways through the thick press. Arrows clattered all around her.

The Elfast officer was leading his own regiment on the right flank. He slowed down. His aide raised a small red flag, and the snail behind him bunched and halted.

“Commander!” His voice came shrill, crisp with terror.

“Please send a company back. I want them to bring the northerner called Bjaras here. Shield him well. But get him here quick.”

He saluted, and a handful of his light riders detached and headed back, away from the killing. The noncombat troops, the supply units, and her prisoners waited less than half a mile behind the main force, with their own small protection. Now that she thought about it, the enemy might even try to strike from a third direction, but that was unlikely. Mali had scouts patrolling the area for several miles north and west. They would have warned her.

Taking a deep breath, she headed back into the mayhem. The arrows kept raining, coming like hail in quick, deadly waves. They didn’t kill many, but they did not need to. It was enough to cause morale to plummet and make everyone’s guts tighten into a hard, cold knot. Soon enough, the line was wavering just as the two nations collided.

She tried to direct the combat as best as she could, but the fifty paces of distance between her and the bloodshed was like an infinite chasm. Her throat was sore, and she was shouting and waving, but the battle just took its own random course. It was now up to the training and instincts of her subordinates.

Now and then, she flicked her eyes left, trying to see how Finley was coping. But it was too hard to see. Damn, she had fallen into this trap like an amateur. The enemy had waited for so long before retaliating. Well, they could afford all their losses, it seemed, so they didn’t need to fight back when she wanted them to.

The Eracians seemed to be doing well, because she found herself nudging her horse over a sprawl of bodies, the human carpet red and muddy. The enemy wagons were right there, bristling with arrows, caked in blood, decorated with unmoving human dolls.

The soft ground sucked on the hooves and feet, making people and animals struggle. The din was unbearable, one long cough of metal and meat and squishy wetness that was part autumn, part pure, sweaty pain.

“We need to get to the bridge!” she swore.

Soldiers pressed against her, keeping her safe, and she crabbed forward, into the enemy mass. The white men fought well, and whatever they lacked in skill, they compensated for in numbers.

Like Dwick again
, she thought. But back then, they had all been green or rusty, or both. Now, she was fighting for her life when she could have just admired the enemy efforts from afar, timing her attack more carefully. Desperation and cockiness would do that to you.

I won’t get to see my son
, she lamented, ducking as splinters of hacked wood flew above her head. Mali was suddenly
panicking. Why was she fighting this war? To defend Eracia? Well, she had left her realm long behind. She had defeated the Namsue. Why keep killing? Maybe because she missed this sorry thing called war. Maybe because that was what she was meant to do, rather than waste her life pretending to be a scribe in some shithole, keeping her regrets and mistakes well hidden. This was better. Right?

A snarling male face stepped into her view. She took a splinter of a second figuring out who it belonged to. Not one of her troops, or Finley’s. She slashed, and the face split in two.

The fighting wouldn’t end. Now and then, Mali looked up and tried to figure out where the sun might be. It was still behind a gray blanket, but she knew it was afternoon already. Not a good time to still be fighting a desperate battle.

But her troops held formation and pushed and pushed, slicing into the enemy ranks with efficiency, and the enemy was yielding. All those months of fighting the nomads were paying off, it seemed. She was tired, but there was still fire in her muscles, and she could still swing the blade. The northern force edged away, melting along the riverbank, but not across the span of wooden road laid above the Hebane.

Air. It was cold and refreshing, and suddenly, there was so much of it. Mali found herself staring at the leaden river surface. From afar, it had looked like a sheet of beaten glass, but up close, it was oily, with silt and vegetation bobbing on the surface. The scattering of dead men drifting south did little to improve the sight. The fighting had killed all the cattails, and the earth was pocked with thousands of footprints. An old willow was watching the battle, swaying, bodies heaped around it as if resting in the shade.

The bridge was maybe a stone’s throw away. Silent, free of any souls.

One of the barges had lost its mooring and was drifting away. A handful of soldiers were standing on it, still fighting. The wiser ones jumped into the Hebane and swam back to the shore. Others just kept trying to kill one another, and soon their grunts and shrieks were lost.

“Commander! Commander!”

Mali spun around. Dolan’s aide was waving a small light-blue flag. It meant soldiers returning from a mission. She liked the man’s methods. Half a dozen riders pushed through the weary lot of panting men and women and joined her side. Bjaras was holding dearly to one of the armored horsemen, his eyes wide.

She slid off her saddle. Her troops helped the curly carpenter dismount. He was hunched low, and he looked afraid. He kept looking around him, trying to figure out what was happening.

“Bjaras! You need to help me. You need to understand me!”

Of course he did not. He was still a silly, handsome enemy man, and she did not know what lurked inside his head. But she needed his perspective on the combat. She needed to hope he might be able to tell her something, anything.

“Bjaras, if you see something important, tell me.” She saw Alexa approaching, two junior officers in tow behind her.

A messenger trotted over, kicking mud. So young, she was barely a woman. “Sir, Corpsman Lydia wants to know if it’s safe to retrieve the wounded.”

Mali was annoyed by the distraction. “Does it look safe? No. We ought to cross the river. We should.”
Should we?
“Bjaras, talk to me. Why aren’t your countrymen fleeing there?” Too easy. It was too easy. She held the west bank now, and it seemed most of her battalion and its auxiliaries were there,
intact. Her enemy had lost maybe half its troops, and the rest were beating a slow retreat into the soggy fields.

Way too easy.

The girl nodded and dashed away. Alexa rushed to replace her. “Well, it seems like we’ve beaten this lot. We help Finley now?”

The Third Division was still fighting the enemy cavalry some distance to the north. Smartly, the colonel had deployed some of his units to the rear so the bridge contingent could not circle behind him. His main body held good formation, and it did not seem in distress, but it seemed like he would be busy for a while. The evening was gently creeping in, and she did not want to be fighting—or worse, crossing the bridge—at nightfall.

Mali looked back at the bridge, to the other side.
Why didn’t the northerners flee over? It makes sense. They could hold the other side with a token force
. No sign of enemy troops there yet. But maybe she was due some luck after all. Maybe the enemy had not timed all its moves perfectly, and maybe a third force had been delayed, and she had the crossing.

Or maybe they were smarter than she believed.

“Get some engineers to inspect the bridge. I want to make sure it’s safe to cross!”

“What about Finley!” Alexa pressed.

Mali blew snot on the ground, inhaled sharply. “No. We go across, and he follows. Relay the order. We disengage, and if needs be, we will fight the enemy cavalry on the
other
side, with our spears lowered at the bridge, not the other way around.”

Alexa pointed. “You know what will happen if another force turns out to be there!”

Mali pushed a thumb into her jaw joint, trying to ease the thumping of blood in her ears. “Yes, I know. But I suspect if we
stay here, they will soon turn up and block the crossing, and then we will be really buggered. Get Finley to begin his retreat toward the bridge. Order Gordon to move the supplies here. Now.”

She could not describe the frustration she felt for leaving the Third Division to fight its own battle, but there was no other way. Her girls had to be ready to dash to the far side of the Hebane if they spotted any sign of another ambush force.

Sappers streamed past and stepped onto the bridge. Like little monkeys, they spread, some going forward, some lowering themselves on ropes to inspect the columns and supports. A small body of crossbowmen hurried forward. Nothing happened, and they crossed to the far side safely.

One of the engineers whistled and waved. “Get a cart over. We need to test the weight,” their lieutenant translated. He was a short, stocky man, with a huge chunk of hair missing from the side of his skull.

“What about all these carts?” Alexa asked, still winded.

Mali sighed. “We leave them here. We have our own wagons.” Shame, but she had not calculated this battle that well.

Lumbering like a sloth, the rear guard was inching toward the battlefield. Gordon’s men guarded the flanks, weapons drawn. It was such a slow, agonizing procession. The horses and wheels got bogged down, and men had to help free them. Lydia’s women rushed ahead, bearing stretchers, and they started rescuing wounded soldiers from the miry fields, loading them onto the already heavy, bulging carts.

“It will take them at least an hour to get here, another hour to cross,” Alexa estimated.

“As long as it takes,” Mali hissed. At her side, Bjaras was frowning toward the bridge, mouthing silent words in his
own, foreign tongue. Her skin pricked. “What do you see, handsome?”

A horn sounded. Finley was starting to retreat. Then, three short notes.

Enemy sighted.

She could see the crossbowmen on the far side waving urgently. She did her best to see what was happening. The willows obscured the view somewhat, but the fields of Athesia and the road to Bassac looked empty. Still deserted.

Bjaras muttered something loudly and moved forward. One of the soldiers tried to stop him, but he shrugged her off and loped toward the bridge. The engineers were still busy checking the massive construction and had reached the second half. From the north, the first companies of Finley’s Third started arriving, clogging the wet, busy crossing ever more. They looked tired and bloody, and they dragged limping brothers-in-arms behind them.

“Where the fuck is that new enemy?”

Then, just as she had expected, she saw movement on the far bank. No white uniforms this time. Gray and muddy uniforms, as men started rising from their hiding places up and down the riverside. They had spent the better part of the day half submerged in the cold muck, obscured by the wild green growth.

Mali raked her hair. What now? She needed her soldiers on the other side. If she stayed here, she’d never cross. But if she waited for Finley to fully regroup, the enemy would fortify its positions on the east side, and it would be dark. Bjaras was walking up the bridge, waving his hands urgently. The Eracian sappers were watching him with distrust, some hanging from their ropes over the sides.

The rear convoy was still a good half hour away. Damn. She had no options.

“Lieutenant Cody, what do your men say?”

The engineer whistled sharply, making her skull tingle. The sappers waved back. “Safe to cross. No more than five hundred at any one time. No more than twenty carts.”

She took a few deep breaths to steady her nerves. “Girls, get ready. We are crossing over.”

Alexa spat again. “That’s not a smart idea.”

“Do you have a better suggestion? Meagan, take your riders first. Go!”

“Yes, sir!” The noblewoman spurred her mount, and the cavalry rushed onto the narrow span, the iron-shod hooves hammering against the planks in a hollow, painful cadence. The engineers moved to the side to let them pass. One of the men lost his footing, slipped, and fell into the river. He began a slow swim downstream.