Surrender to the Will of the Night - By Glen Cook Page 0,205

or drunken soldiers kept pushing closer despite inspired work by Rhuk and Prosek. Hecht guessed five thousand dead and dying men littered the meadow. More lay scattered right up to and past his own position. The nearby dead included half of Prince Onofrio’s treacherous levy.

The attackers treated Onofrio’s men as they did the Righteous. They would hear no claims of friendship. Hecht thought they might not hear at all.

Vircondelet and Consent launched the attacks Hecht had ordered, uncoordinated, like mosquitoes assaulting an elephant.

They hit the gathering mass Hecht had anticipated, doing much more damage than their numbers promised. The Patriarchals were slow to respond. Their focus was straight ahead.

Titus Consent hit first, from the north. He was in full flight when Rivademar Vircondelet struck from the south.

The spoiling raid delayed the third wave just when the fighting above the meadow had most of the Righteous engaged hand-to-hand.

Hecht personally fended off two attackers. One he thought he remembered from the fighting against the Calziran pirates. The man did not recognize him. He, his companion, and the rest of the attackers moved slowly, as though part of some army of the dead.

Hecht had seen, smelled, and fought exactly that at al-Khazen. This did bear the stamp of the Night but was not the same.

Deeper analysis would have to wait.

Only a score of falcons still barked regularly. Twice in rapid succession, then a third time, Hecht heard weapons explode. Heard falcon crews scream. Caught whiffs of burnt flesh. And thought Krulik and Sneigon might not be totally clever after all.

The lessened rate of fire was more than matched by a lessened flow of attackers. The assault finally high-watered, then receded.

Titus Consent arrived, so far out of breath that he could do nothing but suck air for half a minute.

Once he had breath enough to dare, he puked. Done with that, he gasped, “They’re trying to come around our flanks, now, boss. They’re like the undead, or something. I can’t stop them all.”

A falcon exploded just twenty yards away. Iron shrapnel took the feather off Consent’s helmet. “God just busted me back to the ranks.”

“No. He just showed you He loves you enough to make that miss. Here we go again.”

Another cloud climbed the air over the enemy camp, way down at the bottom of the slope. “Think that’s Clej?”

“About time.”

Could not be Sedlakova, though. He and his horsemen were barely strong enough to mount a harassment. There was no evidence that they had done any harassing. Nor had they taken explosives with them.

A half minute later something changed.

Hecht watched it come, a wave racing its way through those Patriarchals he could see. He felt it himself but the impact was slight and without personal meaning.

It meant everything to the attackers.

The assault collapsed instantly.

Serenity’s troops stood around stupidly gathering their thoughts. But the falcons continued to talk.

Serenity’s men ran.

Hecht told Consent, “Get back to your men. See if this helped.”

“Right.” Titus looked abidingly suspicious, like he thought Hecht had orchestrated everything by sheer wishful thinking.

* * *

The world grew still. The smoke cleared away. Between long periods of restful inactivity the surviving Righteous positioned their surviving falcons to greet another assault. Damaged and suspicious weapons left the line.

Time passed. No attack came. The enemy seemed interested in nothing but recovering his casualties. Hecht did not interfere. His officers began to feel comfortable enough to come report. They found their commander overwhelmed by his success.

So far.

He was sure another wave would come. He concealed his confidence that it would be successful.

The reports were good. And they were bad.

The good news was that friendly casualties were implausibly light. Initially, Hecht heard about forty-three killed and wounded, the majority victims of exploding falcons. According to Rhuk and Prosek, those casualties could not be laid at the feet of Krulik and Sneigon. Falcons exploded when panicky crews got into too much of a hurry. They failed to properly clear a weapon’s bore of sparks before trying to reload. Or they shoved in multiple loads before remembering to apply the match. Or they measured their firepowder wrong. Or they decided to double charge. All of which happened more often as men grew tired and the acid of fear gnawed at reason.

“Falls into the realm of lessons learned, Kait. Drago. Work on it when we have time. Measure the powder ahead of time. Come up with a work song with a rhythm that reminds them to follow the proper steps in proper order. Something like that. Oh. And find a