the noise of it, the smell of it. There was no resisting its pull any more than a floating cork resists a wave.
Mess came at him blurred from the murk, sharpened under his feet, drifted into the smears behind him. Broken weapons, broken armour, broken bodies. Even the earth was wounded. Muddy ground so ripped and scarred it looked fresh-ploughed. Injured men clawed through their clothes to see how bad their wounds were. Clawed at the ground. Clawed for the rear. One was so coated in filth that even close up Broad couldn’t tell which side he was on. Without his lenses there were hardly sides at all.
The cavalry had thundered through and torn the lines apart. Ripped them into shreds of bitter fighting, tattered struggles to the death, writhing in the smoke. Broad saw the blobbed shapes of three men shaken loose. King’s men, he thought. Deserters, maybe. That was his best guess. In a battle, a guess is all you can afford. Time to let go, finally, and he felt the smile twist his face.
The first never saw him coming. Got his helmet staved in from the side with the warhammer.
The second turned to look. A flash of his scared eyes in his blurred face before Broad’s dagger thudded into the side of his neck.
The third turned to run, got one step when Broad hooked his legs out from under him with the pick-end and brought him down. He rolled over, trembling arms held up. Before he got a word out, Broad smashed him three times with the hammer, broke his arm, caved his ribs in, caught him in the side of his face and sent teeth flying, jaw half-ripped from his head.
He squirmed in the dirt, back arched, and Broad stepped over him, looking for more, snorting breath steam-hot, teeth locked vice-tight, muscles coiled-spring tense.
Shapes rushed from the gloom and he raised his hammer. Horses, clattering past. Riderless, maddened, reins flapping, eyes rolling. One with blood streaking its flanks, another with a loose boot still caught bouncing in a stirrup.
A weak barricade across the street. Left weak on purpose. An invitation. One Brock hadn’t been able to refuse. Broad was no better. He slunk through, keeping low, lips curled back, the low growl sawing at his throat.
A soldier knelt, pointing a broken spear.
“Get back!” he shouted.
Broad took one step and smashed his head open with the hammer. He’d seen men keep fighting with wounds in the body you wouldn’t believe. Make the skull a very different shape, that’s the best way to be sure. Flatten it, shatter it, punch holes right through it.
A window cracked, flames licking up the outside of a building. Broad coughed on smoke, prickled with sweat. Eyebrows slick with it. Blurred shapes loomed up. Pillars. What had been a covered market, its roof ripped away, slates and scorched timbers and chunks of masonry scattered.
There were dead men everywhere. Broad could hardly move without stepping on ’em. Dead men and dead horses, tangled and torn apart. Even the stonework was scarred and pockmarked. Cannons’ work, he reckoned. Cannons filled with smiths’ oddments. A storm of hot metal no armour, no shield and for damn sure no courage could stop. The place stank of smoke and blood, of broken men and smashed-open horses and everything they hold.
Mad fighting here. He saw a man laying about him from horseback. Another dragged from his saddle, hacked on the ground. Two men wrestled over a knife. Black figures against the fires. Devils in hell.
Broad charged into the very midst of it, caught a man full in the side with his shoulder and dumped him sprawling, sword bouncing from his hand. He reeled into someone else, spear clattering against Broad’s back as he swung, too close for the hammer and Broad stabbed with his knife, overhand. It scraped on a breastplate, scratched down an armplate, found the joint between the two and punched deep into flesh. The man tried to twist away, fumbling at Broad’s shoulder, and Broad rammed the dagger through the slot in his helmet, left it stuck there to the hilt as he toppled back.
The first man was scrambling for his fallen sword and Broad caught his clutching hand with a swing of the hammer. Turned it to a shapeless red glove. The man took a breath to scream, bent over and Broad kicked him so hard under the jaw his helmet flew right off and went skittering across the gouged cobbles. Kicked him again, and