The Wine of Dreams (38 page)

As soon as any enemy did, Reinmar was ready, the point of his sword licking
out with confidence as well as alacrity, aiming for the throat if he could and
the belly if he could not. His adversaries thrust back, of course, but the squat
builds that had been to their advantage while they hoisted the rams were not
nearly so useful in this kind of a fight, and even the one that thrust at him
with a spear was too slow and too clumsy.

Reinmar twisted to let the head of the weapon pass his chest without cutting
the cloth of his jerkin, and by the time the spearman tried to ram the shaft
sideways into his ribs Reinmar’s sword had run right through his adversary’s eye
into his brain. It would have been a bad stroke in a more open fight, because it
took him several seconds to wrench the blade free again and bring it back into
play, but with the blades of the half-pikes hovering nearby there was no chance
that any enemy could take advantage of his pause.

By the time Reinmar had freed his blade he had to take a great stride
forward, for the line was in motion. The battering rams lay still now, and even
those “spearmen” who had only pitchforks had seen how things were working out,
and where they were required. The enemy was being harassed in the street as well
as in the storehouse, and their numbers were being cut back too quickly; the
fury of their assault had won them ground but it had cost too dear, and the
townsmen were far better deployed to reinforce their compromised position.

Reinmar had expected the ugly folk to fight like wild things, but he
remembered now that even the beastmen he had fought in the little wood had shown
a certain tactical acumen. These squat subhumans were by no means undisciplined,
and they understood strategy well enough to know that there was no point
pressing forward once a cause was hopeless. It was their turn to make a solid
formation as they fell back to the doorways, and they did it with almost as much
efficiency as might have been expected of Vaedecker’s infantrymen.

Are they soldiers after all, Reinmar wondered? Are they mercenaries, who know
fighting as a business rather than a mania? Perhaps they are—and perhaps we
shall see far worse very soon, when all the strategy has been worked out and the
fight turns to madness. He did not cease thrusting with his sword while he took
leave to wonder, but the bloody blade cleaved nothing but air now as the brutes
fell back and exercised due wariness. The creatures blocked the thrusts of the half-pikes quite
comfortably now that Vaedecker’s men had aching arms.

Had the townsmen in the street managed to form up on the outside of the
doorways they could have cut the retreating half-men to ribbons, but the battle
in the street was still raging and the last dozen of the invaders slipped out
easily. One of Vaedecker’s corporals immediately began shouting to his men to
secure the doorways and not to let anyone in or out. The corporal began grabbing
townsmen one by one, thrusting them either in the direction of the doorways or
back towards the unloading-platforms, where support was still required.

Reinmar moved towards the river without waiting for selection, intending to
take back his position beside Sigurd.

Sigurd was busy now and could not keep Reinmar from looking out on to the
river’s foaming surface.

The first boom had been breached, so the crowded company of boats had moved
forty yards downriver, but its vanguard had been caught and held by the second
barrier. The men and beastmen in the boats were able to shoot and thrust at the
townsfolk defending the storehouses to either side of them, but by virtue of
being trapped in crossfire—and directly beneath the crossbows positioned in
the upper storeys—they were taking very heavy casualties indeed.

Reinmar immediately saw, and fully understood, that beast-men were in the
majority here, and that this was no measured move of a kind that mercenaries
might have calculated and executed. The creatures on the boats were hurling
missiles in every direction, howling insanely as they did so, leaping at the
ledges like mad dogs—but these were far less like dogs than the wolflike
beastmen surprised by Godrich’s runaway wagon. These were even more nightmarish
than the bodies that had been laid out in the marketplace, with horny heads and
blazing eyes, and claws instead of hands.

The contrast between this fight and the one that Reinmar had just helped to
win was so striking that a lump rose in his throat, making it impossible for him
to swallow. There was nothing useful he could do, as yet, because the
long-handled pikes were still doing more than adequate damage in the hands of
men who had the strength and skill to wield them—and Sigurd was doing as much
damage as any of Vaedecker’s veterans, by virtue of his reach and power.

The crossbowmen had done the bulk of their work and they were now conserving
their bolts, although they remained ready to pick off selected targets. Most of
the pikemen, Reinmar saw, were using their weapons as much to push as to cut,
tumbling the beastmen into the water rather than striking deep into their skulls
and torsos. Sigurd was the only one who was using the blade of his pike almost
as if it were an elongated battle-axe, slashing at faces and limbs.

Reinmar presumed that the regulars knew what they were doing, but he could
not help feeling direly anxious when he saw that in spite of their crazy anatomy
the beastmen were able to swim. Those which had been thrust into the water were
in considerable danger of being crushed by the jostling boats, but those which
could avoid being caught were able to tread water well enough. They were waiting
impatiently, but they were waiting nevertheless for an opportunity to rejoin the
fight to some effect, and in the meantime others of their kind were working away
at the second barrier.

Reinmar could see that the nets had already been sliced up by the beastmen’s
curiously dextrous claws, and he judged that the boom could not last more than a
few minutes. He gripped his sword tightly, in anticipation of its further
employment.

“Ready, lad?” Sigurd shouted above the din, audible only because Reinmar was
fast by his side.

By way of answer Reinmar raised the bloodstained tip of his sword. He was
ready—and he knew that he had to be, because the fight was about to become
much fiercer. Once the enemy was able to use the river as a way into the heart
of the town another incursion like the one that had battered down the warehouse
doors would not be as easily turned back, because there would be no
reinforcements ready to rush forward. Once the river was open, every man in the
town would be in the thick of the action. Then, and only then, would the
relative strength of the two companies become clear. Then, and only then, would the defenders
discover exactly what kind of monsters the enemy would employ to take advantage
of the inroads made by its shock troops.

Reinmar rested the tip of his sword on the ground, conserving the muscles of
his arm. He could see that even Sigurd’s arms were beginning to falter now.
Pikes were most useful when their hind ends could be embedded in soil and their
heads directed forward like a wall of giant thorns at charging cavalry. They
were not meant to be wielded like glorified spears, and Sigurd was paying the
price of his unorthodoxy. Reinmar could not see another pikeman who did not have
the butt of his weapon grounded, nor could he see a single one whose brow was
not covered by the sweat of extended effort. Even so, the beastmen were fighting
at closer quarters than they had been a few moments before. They were dying in
considerable numbers, but they were still coming recklessly for more. Not only
were they coming, but they were beginning to make good headway.

Two in three pikes had now been grasped by clawed arms stronger than the
tired limbs of their owners. Beastmen were actually using the weapons deployed
against them as levers and ladders. There were defenders in the water now as
well as attackers, and the attackers had the advantage there—whether the
swimmers were townsfolk or Vaedecker’s regulars they had no expertise at all in
fighting on the water, and the sheer animal fury of their adversaries would have
been decisive even if they had not been so heavily outnumbered.

More and more beastmen were scrabbling at the ledges of the unloading-bays
now, and there were too few blades available to thrust them all back. Sigurd was
the last man to drop his pike, but drop it he did, then turned to snatch up his
staff—the weapon to which he was most accustomed. “Now! Now! Now!” he was
shouting, at Reinmar and everyone else around him, although none of them could
have been in the least doubt that the utmost effort was called for, and that the
battle for the storehouse would be won or lost within a quarter of an hour.

Then the second boom broke, and the third almost immediately afterwards.
Reinmar knew that the greater battle for the fate of Eilhart passed into its
second and deadlier phase—but so had the lesser conflict which was his part in
it. From now on, there would be no letup until the battle was decided.

Reinmar had to focus absolutely on the matter of survival.

Vaedecker’s infantrymen were already trying to form a defensive line so that
the enemy might be confronted with an uninterrupted series of blades, but they
had taken casualties and some of their number were still out of place, having
been sent to defend the doors on the other side of the building.

The earlier skirmish had been easily won, but it had taken its toll on the
organisation, deployment and readiness of the trained soldiers. Now the
townspeople had to show what they could do against creatures out of a nightmare.
Reinmar and Sigurd placed themselves in the line, and were immediately engaged
in furious action.

Reinmar stuck very fast to Sigurd’s left-hand side, not merely for his own
protection but because the giant needed a blade to assist the work of his staff.
Because it had no heavy metal head Sigurd’s weapon was less effective than it
might have been at cracking skulls, but the advantage of its relative lightness
meant that the big man could move it with lightning speed.

Tired though his arms were by their exertions with the pike, Sigurd’s
reflexes were unimpaired, and as the monsters clambered up out of the water he
struck them hard, two or even three at a time. Some fell back into the river,
while any that did not sprawled on the stone floor, wide open to the thrusts of
Reinmar’s blade. Reinmar thrust and thrust and thrust again, but the targets
kept re-presenting themselves, and every target had arms and claws, and legs and
claws, and a brutal head with horns that might be as long as a man’s arm.

Swordplay had always seemed reasonably easy to Reinmar while in training,
when thrusts were only intended to demonstrate the possibility of harm. He had
thought then that he had an aptitude for this kind of work, but he realised now
that an “aptitude” was not much use in a real fight, where raw power and
endurance were the most decisive factors. Reinmar had already discovered that
actually doing harm was far more awkward and bruising than merely demonstrating
a capacity, and the beastmen climbing out of the bloody water rammed that lesson
home.

It had been bad enough trying to cut the squat subhumans or the wolfheads,
but the kinds of beastmen that faced Reinmar now were far more difficult to
hurt. Not one of them wore artificial armour, but that was because they did not
seem to need it. Their clawed arms, in particular, were encased in impenetrable shells,
and the horns atop their heads were not merely decorative, always moving this
way and that to parry blows of every sort with stubborn solidity.

Reinmar tried at first to aim for the softer parts of the beast-men—their
bellies and their throats—but such thrusts were too easily turned aside and
ineffectual even when they drew blood. He realised that if he were to strike
disabling blows he had to find a weakness that was more easily exploitable. When
his sword had bounced off clawed limbs three or four times, though, he realised
that there was a disadvantage in the kind of integral armour that the beastmen
had. The limbs of such creatures were not nearly as clever as human limbs,
because they were too rigidly articulated—and the joints were their most
vulnerable points. No fatal wounds could be inflicted by thrusting at what the
beastmen had instead of elbows and wrists, but once their claws became unusable
they became dead weights, worse than useless.

Reinmar shouted this advice at the top of his voice to anyone who might be
listening, but there was no way of knowing whether anyone could hear or
understand him. For his own part, he continued thrusting, left then right, then
left again, as Sigurd’s busy staff set up targets for him and deflected any
weapon aimed at his head or heart. Reinmar had to look out for his own feet, but
he was a great deal nimbler than beastmen of these cumbersome kinds, and he felt
fully entitled to consider himself an aggressor, in command of the manner and
tempo of the fight.

That changed. By slow and gradual degrees their situation was transformed,
and not to their advantage. He and Sigurd were driven back from the water’s
edge, one step at a time. As they were driven back they were parted from the
swordsmen and spearmen who had tried to form a line with them, and who were also
being driven back now that gaps had appeared where men had fallen.

Reinmar knew that he and Sigurd had to delay for as long as possible the
eventuality that would force them to stand back to back, isolated from all other
support and devoid of further choices. If that time came, he knew, their little
fraction of the battle would be all but lost—but in trying to force exactly
that situation, their enemies were taking substantial losses. The beastmen who were lunging at them refused to die, but now they seemed to have
very little, save for their own awful mass, with which to threaten the
defenders. Reinmar, Sigurd and their immediate companions had rendered too many
claws completely useless with heavy blows and pricking wounds, and the bloated
eyes of the foul creatures were becoming very vulnerable as their horns became
less adept.