overwhelm Company B’s line. Will saw Sven fall on his left, and the enemy began to push forward, overwhelming Dave and the men farther down.
In seconds, Will knew their defensive line would break, and the fight would turn into a chaotic melee. Dropping his spear, Will did the only thing he could think of, casting the one spell he knew. A second later, a green line connected with one of the enemies and he pushed a generous amount of his turyn into the man before dismissing the spell. He repeated the spell as quickly as he could, and one after another the Darrowans nearest him began to collapse, vomiting onto the ground. Five, six, seven, Will kept going, though his head was beginning to spin. The first rank of Company B had collapsed, falling back while the second rank moved forward to take their place.
Will’s knees started to buckle, but a strong hand caught him. Tiny pulled him up and braced him. “Don’t stop,” said the big man.
Rather than pushing turyn out, Will drained the next enemy he caught with his spell. His energy returned, along with a brief wave of nausea. Once he had recovered from that, he began repeating his previous actions, injecting his personal turyn into every Darrowan that came within fifteen feet of him.
Eventually he exhausted himself again, and this time he stumbled before Tiny could catch him. Will tried to rise, but a pain in his side made it difficult to get his feet back under him.
“Relax,” said Tiny. “You’re hurt. The others are coming up from behind them now. It’s almost over.”
Looking down, Will saw blood soaking the right side of his gambeson, though he couldn’t find a hole in his mail. How did that happen? he wondered. Tired beyond belief, he sat down, and the next thing he knew he was opening his eyes to stare up into a blue sky. Somehow, he had wound up on his back.
Tiny was sitting next to him, so Will asked, “Did we win?”
The big man nodded. “We did. We took some losses, but fewer than they expected, given how many we faced.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. You had a lot to do with that,” said Tiny.
“I couldn’t do much.”
Tiny chuckled. “You took the wind out of their charge. I think you must have put at least twenty of them out of the fight.” He glanced to one side, then back again. “Shhh, Sergeant Nash is coming.”
“Is he dying?” asked Nash when he was close enough.
“I don’t think so,” said Tiny. “Something narrow went through his mail, but it wasn’t deep. He’s lost some blood. Where’s the doctor?”
Sergeant Nash’s face appeared above Will, blocking out the sun. “I’d love to know how you spotted their fires last night.”
“Why?” asked Will, doing his best to concentrate on the sergeant’s words.
“Because I heard from the companies that smoked them out that the Darrowans apparently kept a cold camp. There was no sign of campfires,” said the sergeant, studying him suspiciously.
“Maybe they had a patrol with lanterns,” said Will. “I definitely saw something.”
“They’d have to be incredibly stupid to do something like that,” said the sergeant before turning away. “I guess we should be grateful that the enemy is so inept.”
Chapter 48
Will’s wound was even less serious than Tiny had first thought. The puncture in his side was fairly small, though it had bled a lot. He never discovered what had actually given him the wound, but the prevailing theory was that it had been a crossbow bolt with a bodkin point, since quite a few of them were found on the field after the battle, and several other men had been wounded by them.
The tips of such quarrels had a square cross-section that tapered to a long, slender point. Fired from close enough range, they sometimes split rings and went completely through mail, but Will had been more fortunate. His mail had held, and only the tip of the point had gone through far enough to pierce him. It had been pure dumb luck that it had nicked a small vein and caused him to bleed so much.
Sven admitted to some jealously. While Will’s injury wasn’t enough to get him sent back, it did free him from duty for the next couple of days. Will wasn’t quite as enthusiastic, since Dave was also lightly injured and the two of them would be spending their time resting in close proximity. The ex-thief had fallen down when their line started to collapse, and he the