Reaper's Gate & Toll the Hounds - By Steven Erikson Page 0,191

been deeply wounded – not yet mortal, even so – 'Advance the medium and the two heavies across the valley – order to engage that line on the ridge. Wedge formations!' Those skirmishers are too thinly arrayed to hold.

'Atri-Preda!' called an aide. 'Movement to the north side!'

She cantered her horse to the very edge of the rise and scanned the scene below and to her left. 'Report!'

'Bluerose lancers in retreat, Atri-Preda – the valley floor beyond the chokepoint is theirs—'

'What? How many damned horse-archers does he have?'

The officer shook her head. 'Wardogs, sir. Close on two thousand of the damned things – moving through the high grasses in the basin – they were on the lancers before they knew it. The horses went wild, sir—'

'Shit! ' Then, upon seeing the messenger's widening eyes, she steeled herself. 'Very well. Move the reserve medium to the north flank of the knoll.' Seven hundred and fifty, Merchants' Battalion – I doubt they'd try sending dogs against that. I can still advance them to retake the chokepoint's debouch, when the time comes.

As she thought this, she was scanning the array before her. Directly opposite, the thousand Harridict skirmishers had crossed the riverbed, even as the Crimson Rampant sawtooth advance moved onto level ground.

And Redmask's five wedges of warriors were marching to meet them. Excellent. We'll lock that engagement – with ballistae enfilade to weaken their north flank – then down come the Crimson Rampant medium, to wheel into their flank.

Surprisingly the Awl wedges more or less held to their formations, although they were each maintaining considerable distance from their flanking neighbours – once the space drew tighter, she suspected, the wedges would start mixing, edges pulled ragged. Marching in time was the most difficult battlefield manoeuvre, after all. Between each of them, then, could be found the weak points. Perhaps enough to push through with the saw's teeth and begin isolating each wedge.

'Wardogs on the knoll!'

She spun at the cry. 'Errant's kick!' Frenzied barking, shrieks from the weapon crews – 'Second reserve legion – the Artisan! Advance on the double – butcher those damned things!'

Obscurely, she suddenly recalled a scene months ago – wounded but alive, less than a handful of the beasts on a hill overlooking an Awl camp, watching the Letherii slaughtering the last of their masters. And she wondered, with a shiver of superstitious fear, if those beasts were now exacting ferocious vengeance. Dammit, Bivatt – never mind all that.

The Awl spear-heads were not drawing together, she saw – nor was there need to, now that she'd temporarily lost her ballistae. Indeed, the two northernmost of those wedges were now angling to challenge her Crimson Rampant medium. But this would be old-style fighting, she knew – and the Awl did not possess the discipline nor the training for this kind of steeled butchery.

Yet, Redmask is not waging this battle in the Awl fashion, is he? No, this is something else. He's treating this like a plains engagement in miniature – the way those horse-archers wheeled, reformed, then reformed again – a hit and run tactic, all on a compacted scale.

I see now – but it will not work for much longer.

Once his warriors locked with her mailed fist.

The Awl spear-heads were now nearing the flat of the riverbed – the two sides would engage on the hard-packed sand of the bed itself. No advantage of slope to either side – until the tide shifts. One way or the other – no, do not think—

A new reverberation trembled through the ground now.

Deeper, rolling, ominous.

From the dust, between the Awl wedges, huge shapes loomed, rumbled forward.

Wagons. Awl wagons, the six-wheeled bastards – not drawn, but pushed. Their beds were crowded with half-naked warriors, spears bristling. The entire front end of each rocking, pitching wagon was a horizontal forest of oversized spears. Round-shields overlapped to form a half-turtleshell that encased the forward section.

They now thundered through the broad gaps between the wedges – twenty, fifty, a hundred – lumbering yet rolling so swiftly after the long descent into the valley that the masses of burly warriors who had been pushing them now trailed in their wake, sprinting to catch up.

The wagons plunged straight into the face of the Crimson Rampant heavy infantry.

Armoured bodies cartwheeled above the press as the entire saw-tooth formation was torn apart – and now the bare-chested fanatics riding those wagons launched themselves out to all sides, screaming like demons.

The three wedges facing the heavy infantry then thrust into the chaotic