He saw an armoured rider lying next to its white zel.
It was Sasheen, sprawled in the muck with her life-blood pumping from her neck. Her bodyguards were gathering where she lay, holding their shields aloft to protect her, their movements as jerky as frightened boys’.
He cried out as though robbed of a prize rightly his, struggling to his feet with his sword hanging like a thing forgotten.
She was dead or dying. That was all that mattered, he consoled himself.
Ash barely noticed the mounted bodyguard circling around him. From the corner of his eye, he spotted the guard raising his sword.His gaze remained fixed on the motionless bundle that was the Holy Matriarch of Mann.
Ash was stillness.
The sword came down.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
A Fighting Retreat
Ché stuffed the pistol into his belt and fought his way through the jostling infantry towards Sasheen. He caught a glimpse of her body lying unmoving in the mud. Someone had removed her mask. A wound in her neck pumped profusely.
Not far from the scene, a lone Acolyte lay sprawled on the ground. His cloak was splayed open to reveal a pair of leather leggings. Ché tore the mask from the man’s face. He gasped and stood back in surprise.
Ash! he thought as he took in the black skin of the old farlander. One of the Rōshun, here, of all places.
Ché reeled with his thoughts asunder. Blood was coursing from a swollen lump in the man’s head. He was still alive, then.
Ché looked about him for a moment, at the masks and the stark faces of strangers.
He knelt and slapped the farlander’s face. Ash’s eyes fluttered open, then closed again. He seemed to weigh nothing but skin and bones as Ché lifted him and threw him over his shoulder. He grabbed the reins of a loose zel, threw the old man over the saddle. The animal tried to skitter away as he bent to reach for the fallen sword. He pulled it back towards him, then mounted behind Ash.
He kicked the animal into a trot.
For a moment the battle hung in the balance.
Perhaps if the imperial army had learned nothing from the previous fifty years of land war – or if Sparus’s own five hundred Acolytes hadn’t positioned themselves in the direct path of the Khosian advance and stood firm – or if one more man in the ordinary ranks had yelled in fear for his life – then the First Expeditionary Force might have broken.
But it didn’t. Instead it rallied gamely and began to fight back. And in the way of these things, the collective shame of its near-defeat lent an impetus to the army’s efforts, and they fell upon the Khosian flanks like a flood.
The Khosians reeled.
‘She fell, sir, I saw it with my own eyes.’
The Red Guard captain stood with a slight stoop as he spoke. He held a bloody hand across his stomach.
‘Very well,’ said General Creed. ‘Now go and find yourself a medico.’
The officer gritted his teeth – perhaps it was an attempt at a smile – and hoisted his charta before returning to the lines of the right flank. They were disintegrating now, much like the rest of the formation.
Bahn paid little attention to the news of the Matriarch’s possible death, or even to the destruction of the army taking place all about him. He was in something of a daze as he stood fighting down his nausea, the blood leaking from an ear he could no longer hear from.
‘That’s four sightings, Bahn!’ barked General Creed by his side, pulling him from his scattered thoughts.
Bahn blinked dumbly in reply.
The general stood with hands behind his back, taking in the imperial onslaught on all sides. ‘They rallied well, don’t you think?’
Creed examined his lieutenant. The flesh around the general’s eyes was swollen from exhaustion.‘We’ve accomplished all we can here. I think it’s time that we left, don’t you?’
‘General?’
‘You’d rather we stay here a while longer?’
He tried to shake his head, but it only caused more sickness to wash through him.
‘Not – for a single moment,’ he said.
Creed turned to one of his bodyguards. ‘Have a runner sent to fetch General Reveres.’
‘Reveres is dead, sir,’ replied the bodyguard.
‘What? When?’
‘I’m not certain, sir.’
‘Nidemes, then!’
It was some minutes before General Nidemes limped towards them through the darkness. His helm was missing and his greying hair was matted to his head in the semblance of a bird’s nest.
‘Nidemes, we’re leaving as of now. We’ll perform a