Kellanved's Reach

‘Didn’t see any fancy bird plumes on his helmet.’

The young corporal almost blushed. ‘No. Not him. He’s one of the real warhorses. Him’n’the king of Rath, they go way back. Hret of Bloor is young, but he’s the third. Some say there’s a fourth as well – of the Crimson Guard.’

‘The Guard?’ Haraj asked, from Gregar’s side. ‘Really?’

Leah looked surprised. ‘Of course. Duke Courian of the Avorean line. They were kings of the north of these lands, long ago.’

‘Quiet in the ranks!’ Teigan bellowed. ‘Form line, dammit!’

Gregar returned his attention to the field; he alternately blew on his hands to warm them and stamped his feet. Far across the churned field the scrum of mounted combatants still surged about, parting sometimes as one portion pursued the other. Wounded knights wandered out, or sagged on aimless mounts, while fresh ones charged in from far quarters. To Gregar it looked like little more than a glorified bar-brawl of chaos and blind flailing about.

Eventually, numbers told as the far smaller contingent of the Grisians and their allied city states gave ground, then broke off entirely, separating into individual groups and withdrawing. Gregar’s Fourth sent up a great cheer at that but quickly choked it off as one of the troops, some twenty knights, came storming up the gentle slope directly for them.

‘Contain them!’ Teigan yelled. ‘Don’t let them through!’

Gregar didn’t know how a thin line of Lights could possibly throw back a determined charge, but levelled his pike in any case.

The knights charged straight for the Fourth. Gregar firmed up his grip on the pike and sent a prayer to Fener. But at the last instant the cavalry veered aside, knocking spearheads aslant as they passed along the line. Then, near the centre – and Gregar – they yanked their mounts inward, stamping and kicking into the ranks to break the line and flailing to either side with their axes and war-picks. The Yellows infantry, completely unarmoured, flinched like an animal from these assailants.

Gregar, however, charged in. He took a horse in the neck with his pike. It threw its head in agony, ripping the weapon from his grip. Its rider kicked free of the falling animal, rolling, then drawing a longsword. Gregar met the knight with drawn twinned fighting sticks.

He parried a flurry of blows, giving ground, then struck, numbing an arm and backhanding the man across his neck, bringing him down. A mounted knight attempted to trample him but he shifted aside, giving the woman a solid blow to her kidney and unhorsing her in passing.

The Yellows infantry surged in around him then and he saw Haraj in the middle of the churning chaos, dodging and weaving, as yet unarmed. He wanted to take the fellow by the neck and shake some sense into him, but even as he watched the lad flicked out a hand and did something to a passing knight and the man flew off his mount, his saddle having somehow become completely uncinched.

Another knight attempted to push past Gregar but he took hold of the man’s arm as he threw an awkward mace swing and yanked him from his horse. As he fell, however, the knight returned the favour and gripped Gregar’s arm to drag him in a tumbling roll. The knight rose first and drew a killing dagger, a misericord, which he raised over Gregar’s chest.

Something impacted the man’s head with a meaty crack and he slumped. Gregar pushed the heavy dead-weight aside to see Sergeant Teigan standing over him, a war-hammer in each hand.

‘Raise the company colours, soldier,’ Teigan told him.

Lying flat, almost in a daze, Gregar saluted. ‘Aye, aye, sergeant.’

He found the pike and raised the bloodied colours to wave it back and forth. The surviving Fourth, having pushed back the charge, set up a great cheer, shaking their spears and taunting the remaining Grisians, who were quitting the field.

Teigan moved from trooper to trooper, alternately cuffing and squeezing shoulders, congratulating every single man and woman.

Leah came limping up to Gregar – she’d taken a blow to her left arm and cradled it as she offered him a rueful grin. ‘Well done. Our best showing yet. I think you took down three all by yourself.’

He just shrugged. ‘Bastards got my blood up.’

Haraj appeared then, nodding to Gregar, who looked the lad up and down – he hadn’t been touched in all that chaotic confusion of kicking warhorses and swinging weapons. ‘There’s not a mark on you, man,’ he observed, almost resentfully.

‘No one can hit me,’ the lad answered, and he offered a weak smile as if in apology.

Gregar gaped at him. ‘Did you say no one can hit you?’

The skinny youth nodded. ‘That’s right.’

‘Ever?’

‘Not if I don’t want them to.’

Gregar took a fist-hold of the lad’s shirt. ‘Do you mean that all this time I was worried sick that you were gonna be—’ Cutting himself off, he pushed the youth away. ‘I don’t fucking believe it. Burn take it, you’re safer out here than me!’

Leah looked between them both. ‘I don’t understand. What does he mean, Gregar?’

He waved a hand at Haraj. ‘He means he’s a mage.’