Daken unsheathed his axe and brandished it above his head. ‘First reserve division to me,’ he shouted, heading towards the tree-line and dragging the youth with him.
Five hundred men broke to run after him as their officers bellowed the order, awkwardly forming a shield wall in five uneven ranks no more than thirty yards from the first tree of the forest. Ahead of them walked the white-eye general, into the gloom of the forest. Seeing nothing, he shoved the young watchman forward.
‘Go keep a watch out for ’em,’ he roared.
The youth, still shaking, headed back into the forest to find the enemy, while Daken started barking orders.
He’s enjoying himself, the mystic realised. He’s looking forward to facing axemen as mad as he is. Reckon he’s the only one.
‘Damn you, Cetarn,’ King Emin hissed, ‘what in the name of the Dark Place are you waiting for?’
The Menin were marching ever closer, hunkered down behind their shields under a barrage of arrows and ballistae bolts. Their own archers were massed in loose order ahead of the infantry, doing their best to limit the effectiveness of the Narkang bowmen. The main front line was made up of alternating Menin heavy infantry and troops from the Chetse élite Ten Thousand.
Doranei looked back at the central tower where Endine was standing with Fei Ebarn and the scowling mercenary, Wentersorn, the two battle-mages who’d been part of the assault on the Ruby Tower. Camba Firnin, the illusionist, was down by one of the catapults, filling the bowl with something horrific. Doranei waved madly until Endine noticed him, but the scrawny mage just gestured for them to wait.
The main line of Menin was a hundred yards away now. Doranei drew his sword and felt a rush of power tingle up his arm as Aracnan’s weapon seemed to drink in the summer sunlight. It was most likely even more ancient than Doranei’s vampire lover, and there was something about it he disliked, but it was worth its weight in battle: it was frighteningly swift, and could cleave both an enemy’s weapon and his helm in one stroke.
Under Hambalay Osh’s tuition Doranei had been learning a new style of fighting, one more akin to the ritualistic combat used by warrior-monks. Mystics of Karkarn and the like eschewed armour, concentrating instead on technique and clean, controlled strikes rather than the fury required on a battlefield, where blows had to batter through a man’s defences.
‘Now we’ll see something,’ Veil commented as Ebarn stepped back from the catapult. The crew wasted no time in firing the weapon and half a dozen clay balls the size of baby’s heads were hurled over the wall. Doranei kept one eye on Ebarn, having seen her magic work before; the mage was standing perfectly still, her eyes closed. The balls spread unevenly in the air and had barely started to drop by the time they reached the front rank.
When they were still at least twenty yards off the ground Ebarn clapped her hands together once, then made as she were flinging the contents before her, and Doranei heard the crump of igniting flames. A sheet of fire tore through the air above the Menin and flopped down on top of them, sloping down off their raised shields onto the men below. Screams echoed across the moor, followed by cheers from the fort, but the Menin faltered only a moment, and a roar of defiance was their response when a ballista bolt tore deeper into the blackened ranks. They were ten legions of élite troops; it would take more than one mage to turn them back.
When the Menin were eighty yards away Doranei felt a tremor run through the earth rampart of the fort. Behind them he could just make out the oversized shape of Cetarn on the circular earthen platform they had built. The air above him was shuddering as though it were being assailed and the iron chains running from the mound into the ground lifted, taking the slack as cracking loops of energy ran through them.
‘Piss and daemons,’ Doranei breathed, watching the tortured air crackling. With a final flourish Cetarn dropped to one knee and slammed both hands to the ground and a great crash reverberated as a burst of energy surged towards the enemy lines and into a Chetse legion.
Half of the first rank were thrown from their feet, but they were the lucky ones. A boom like distant thunder rumbled out, and the rear ranks on one