The Cry of the Icemark - By Stuart Hill Page 0,153
Oskan’s odd mixing of adult analysis and schoolroom language. “Yes, but will we be able to hold him off until the allies come?”
For some reason Oskan wouldn’t look at her, and instead gazed out over the plain. “Oh yes. I’m sure of it.”
“Warlock, do you know something I should hear about, something bad?” she barked, assuming her full queenly persona.
“No,” he replied after a moment’s silence. “I know nothing at all. That’s just it, I’ve tried and I can’t see a thing. We’re obviously not meant to know, yet.”
“Great,” she said, her shoulders sagging. “Well, the suspense is literally killing my soldiers.”
A sudden blast of bugles made her snap upright, and she peered over the battlements. Bellorum was sending his daily raid. She was well aware that he was trying to exhaust her troops by keeping them constantly on their toes, while he used a rotation system for his own soldiers that allowed the majority of them to rest. The trouble was, it was working. The defenders were all physically and mentally drained, and they had to keep fighting fresh, well-rested enemy soldiers with every attack.
“I’ve got to go. Have you seen Tharaman?”
“Down at the main gates,” Oskan answered, and hurried off to the infirmary to prepare for the casualties that would soon be flooding in.
Scipio Bellorum watched as his soldiers charged. It was all getting rather routine now. The designated regiments of the day would march off and keep the enemy busy, while the remainder of his army rested and prepared for the final assault in two days’ time.
He almost felt that he could leave this part of the war to his undergenerals — almost, but not quite, because the fighters of the Icemark were never predictable. With a sigh he snapped open his monoculum and stood at the raised wall of his tent, watching progress. As usual, the defenders were proving difficult to crack, and his shield-bearers and pikemen were being beaten back. And then he noticed movement farther along the system of ditch and rampart. Quickly he refocused his monoculum and watched as Thirrin and Tharaman-Thar led out their cavalry. He could clearly see the queenling standing in her stirrups, drawing her sword, and the unnatural giant leopard throwing back its head and sending out that bizarre coughing bark. Then the Queen’s cavalry leaped forward and thundered down on his troops, smashing into their flank.
“General Fortune and Commander Chance are indeed my greatest allies!” Bellorum said, and laughed aloud. Sending for his orderly he gave precise commands, then feverishly watched the struggle on the defenses. Soon a great wave of Imperial troops was sweeping across the plain toward Thirrin and her cavalry.
“I have her! I have her!” Bellorum cried out excitedly as his soldiers took a wide sweeping arc toward the Queen of the Icemark, cutting off her retreat back to the gate in the defenses. “Not even this barbarian woman and her talking leopards can cut their way through one hundred thousand Polypontian men.” He quickly calculated the odds and crowed. “Outnumbered by more than sixteen to one is too much even for her!”
Up on the battlements of Frostmarris, Oskan looked out over the plain. The wounded hadn’t started to arrive in any numbers yet, and he’d taken the chance to go back to the high point and get some air. He watched as the Polypontian soldiers attacked the defenses in the segment close to the forest, then his eye was drawn to Thirrin and her cavalry riding down to the gate in the system of ditches and embankments. They rode through and headed directly for the Empire’s troops. After a few moments he heard the cavalry paean and the barking of the leopards, followed by the sound of onset.
The wounded would soon be arriving in the infirmary, and he was just about to turn from the walls and head back down into the citadel when he noticed movement in the Polypontian camp. In horror he watched as thousands upon thousands of enemy soldiers burst across the plain like a flood. Nobody down on the defenses was high enough to see the danger, and he gripped the stone of the battlements in a rising panic. They were trying to cut off Thirrin and Tharaman! They’d be trapped before anything could be done.
“NO!” he shouted despairingly into the unheeding sky, his small voice lost in the clamor of battle. What could be done? By the time the defenders were given orders and had begun to react, it