120814.fb2 Ancient blood - читать онлайн бесплатно полную версию книги . Страница 16

Ancient blood - читать онлайн бесплатно полную версию книги . Страница 16

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

“The only victors of any battle are the ravens.”

– Peasant saying In the grey light of dawn, Blyseden had chosen a small hillock for his headquarters. It was the only a bit of high ground in this blighted heath, and so it was here, amongst the windswept grass and stunted bushes, that he had planted his army’s standard in the dew-soaked grass. It was no more than a black cross that had been stitched onto a white field, and, although it was a drab thing compared to most battle flags, Blyseden was happy with it. It was simple, it was functional and it served its purpose; all qualities that Blyseden admired.

Behind him, his campaign tent was still being set up over the hastily-buried pay chest, but, although the sun had barely risen, he had already had his cartographer’s table set up and his signal rockets unpacked.

The wood and canvas expanse of the Striganies’ encampment lay about half a mile away. It had spread like a dark stain across the brown expanse of the wasteland, the shacks and wagons even darker than the withered heath. Thin wisps of smoke from morning cooking fires rose straight into the still air, with not even the faintest breeze to stir them, and tiny figures went blithely about their business within the camp.

“They don’t seem to be expecting us,” Vespero gloated. Blyseden had kept the Tilean’s company with him as a private guard, but the honour seemed to have gone to Vespero’s head. He wouldn’t stop talking.

“Don’t be fooled,” Blyseden replied. “If they weren’t expecting us, why send the assassin? Anyway, they must have noticed the loss of their pickets by now.”

Vespero shrugged.

“I don’t know if that man was an assassin. Northerners are a weak-minded lot, and they have a tendency to crack up. I’ve seen it before.”

Blyseden said nothing. It really didn’t matter what the Tilean thought, just so long as he and his company stayed close. He would have preferred to keep the ogres for his personal guard, but he had other plans for them.

“Tubs, pass me the telescope,” he snapped. His clerk handed him the instrument, and then knelt down, so that his master could rest its long, brass tube on his shoulder.

Blyseden peered through the miraculous arrangement of lenses, and the distance between him and his companies disappeared. He had gathered over three thousand mercenaries on his way to this miserable place. His ragtag army contained soldiers from many provinces and many races. It contained every variety of fool, cutthroat and hero. Even so, despite their differences, his men were all dogs of war, and each of them had been trained, armed, hardened and sharpened by a lifetime of battle. Compared to them, the bands of miserable-looking militiamen that Averland had pressed into service were a poor sight. Where the mercenaries’ strode, they skulked, and where the mercenaries waited, they huddled.

Well, never mind, Blyseden thought. At least their captains are competent. They might not be as good as the mercenaries, leaders with the brains and the balls to hold their villainous crews together with little more than force of will, but at least there were no feudal wranglings either. Blyseden had let the militias elect their own leaders, and they were stronger because of it.

Blyseden congratulated himself on the tactic as he watched them struggling through the heath towards their positions. He was pleased to see that not a single one of them was out of place.

This won’t be a battle, he thought, it will be a slaughter. He thought back to other massacres, and a slow, satisfied smile crept across his face.

“Where are the giants?” Vespero asked, and Blyseden fought back the urge to tell him to shut up. The Tilean was not a man to be offended at the best of times, let alone when the strongest barrier between him and the paymaster’s chest was his sense of honour.

“Our friends are being held in reserve,” Blyseden said.

“You should have sent them in with the main attack,” Vespero said. “Their shock value must not be underestimated. Even I found them quite imposing, and I am not impressed by much.”

Blyseden sucked his teeth before replying. “Their shock value will be used when and where it is most effective,” he said.

“As you say,” Vespero said. “As you know, I and my fellows would have liked to be sent in with the first wave. We itch for action, and are ever at the forefront of every battle.”

“I need men of honour to guard my headquarters,” Blyseden said, and the Tilean’s chest swelled.

Satisfied that his formations were moving into place, Blyseden turned the telescope back to the Strigany camp. Despite the fact that dawn had broken almost two hours ago, not many of them seemed to be up, the lazy swine.

“Of course, it may be just as well that we are not in the first wave,” Vespero prattled on. “Our character is such that we could not countenance combat against women and children, and the Strigany are sure to use them in the battle. No doubt, their harpies would use our chivalry against us.”

“Yes,” Blyseden said, although he had not been listening to a single word. He was too busy wondering why not a single man seemed visible among the wood smoke, and bustle of the camp. Perhaps, he considered, they were all hung over, or just plain idle.

He frowned, and then whacked his clerk across the back of his head to stop him from fidgeting and moving the telescope.

“These northerners make terrible servants,” Vespero commented sympathetically. “In Tilea, our retainers are pillars of strength. My cousin, the Magistrate Teo Polidorente, used to practise his marksmanship with a crossbow by balancing pieces of fruit on top of his servants’ heads. They always show marvellous courage. He gets through about a dozen a year.”

Blyseden grunted, and turned his attention to the stockade that surrounded the Strigany’s camp. A single cordon of interlocked wooden staves sat on top of a continuous earth bank. They would have been enough to break a cavalry charge, he thought, but apart from the squadron of Kislevite lancers, who waited on the road below, he had no cavalry. The ground was too broken for it.

“They don’t have the intelligence to adapt to a new environment,” Blyseden mused. “Strange for such cunning folk.”

“Oh, it wasn’t really their fault,” Vespero said. “Teo wouldn’t let them wear steel helmets. He said the shine of them put him off his aim.”

“What?” Blyseden asked, turning to him.

“The shine of the helmets,” Vespero repeated. “Don’t forget, the sun in Tilea is brighter and more cheerful than this weak-blooded northern one. Ah, how I miss my homeland.”

Blyseden considered asking him what the hell he was babbling on about. Instead, he put his eye back to the telescope, and watched the developing pattern of his encircling troops. They had only left one gap, which would encourage the panicking Strigany within to flee back along the road.

Once there, they would have to face the lancers. The Kislevites were an awesome sight, each of them mounted on a pale stallion, and resplendent in armour and feathers, and sharp, sharp steel. If any of the Strigany managed to get past them, they would really be in trouble.

Blyseden smiled with grim satisfaction. His beasts would eat well tonight. He turned the brass length of the telescope to the patch of swamp to the west, where the ogres were making their way slowly forwards. Most of them were submerged in the filthy waters, and, as they ploughed forwards, their heads rolled like grey boulders above the marsh.

Blyseden twisted a focusing wheel on the telescope, and one of the ogre’s heads sharpened into focus. A cloud of flies and biting insects was swarming around it, although Blyseden had an idea that the ogre’s hide was proof against their attacks. Its smeared features remained as calm as ever, and it made no move to shoo the insects away.

“I wish that I had brought a crossbow,” Vespero said, still lost in the happy memories of his homeland. “Look at the birds, circling above. I’ve never seen such a flock. It would have been fine sport to see how many we could have brought down.”

“Yes,” Blyseden said.

Content with all that he had seen, he stood back up, rubbed his eyes and stretched his back. Everything was going like clockwork. In fact, he was so confident that he was even considering sending the Tileans down, if only to shut up their captain. As far as he could see, nothing could go wrong. Dannie sat CROSS-legged on the ground of the amphitheatre. He had pulled his hood over his eyes, and, in the shade it cast, only the lower part of his face could be seen. His lips moved as he silently repeated the words of the charm that Petru Engel had taught him. Other apprentices sat around him, the hiss of their breath keeping perfect rhythm with his own. Here and there, petrus stood over them, the older men watching them for any errors in their repetition or their cadence.

Flintmar’s petrus and their apprentices had been gathered here since before dawn. The younger members had been given a simple charm to repeat, a small enough conjuration, but, when spoken as part of this terrible choir, a powerful thing, especially when shaped by some of the more expert of the petrus.

Gathering like some taloned storm cloud, the birds wheeled above the clearing. They had been arriving ever since dawn, and it was amazing how many had been gathered from this wilderness. Their breeds and plumage were as varied as the mercenaries’, which were, even now, closing in below. Ravens, black as night; herons, ghostly grey against a greyer sky; sharp-winged hawks and wheeling buzzards, were all there. There were even vultures, their feathers as black as an undertaker’s smock, and their heads bald.

Despite their differences, the flock moved with a perfect, wheeling harmony. They soared around Flintmar in a wide, lazy circle that made an umbrella above the ragged township. Only the centre of the circle remained empty so that the sky above the petrus was as clear as that at the centre of a hurricane.

Dannie couldn’t see this huge, gathering flock, his eyes remaining closed as he chanted, but he could feel it. Petru Engel had taught him the way to shape his thoughts, as he shaped his words, and he felt himself slipping into the blizzard of consciousness above him. He knew that the birds were impatient to begin, hungry for the spoils.

For a brief moment, he saw the ground below them, and felt the bright hunger of the carrion bird whose eyes he was sharing.

Dannie shuddered, and with a rush of vertigo, found himself back in his body, fumbling over the words of the charm. One of the petrus, a lean old weasel of a man with a goatee beard, saw his distraction, and whacked him on the back with a laundry stick.

“Concentrate,” the elder snarled.

Recovering, the apprentice continued to chant. “Those birds are really quite something,” Vespero said. “Maybe I will send back to the main camp for my hunting bow.”

Blyseden ignored him. He was squinting through the telescope again, this time at the last of the ogres. It emerged from the dank embrace of the swamp, and joined its comrades on the somewhat drier ground of the heath beyond.

Most of the other units had found their positions. They waited, hunched down in an effort to keep out of sight. Blyseden had never dared to hope that his deployment would remain unnoticed for so long, but he was glad that he had ordered his men to make the attempt. Against all the odds, their stealth actually seemed to be working.

He checked the different units, and then looked back at the Strigany encampment. There was a group of women, weaving what looked like a tapestry, completely unaware that, not a hundred yards from them, a company of Marienburgers was ready to pounce.

“Can you see the Kislevites yet?” Blyseden asked his clerk, without looking up.

“Not yet, commander,” Tubs said, unhappily. He had joined his elector count’s court as a scribe, because he had wanted a quiet life indoors.

“Never mind,” Blyseden decided. “I’m sure that they’ve already sealed the road further down.”

“We would be honoured to make up for their error, my lord,” Vespero said with a small bow.

“Yes,” said Blyseden, pursing his lips, his attention already turning back to the encircled settlement below. Once the order to attack was given, there would be no going back. The die would be cast.

He sighed and, dismissing a sudden sense of trepidation, he gave the signal.

Two of his assistants, who had been looking forward to this moment all week, lit their tapers from the brazier, and hurried over to light the fuses on the rockets. There was an angry hiss as they caught light, a sputtering of sparks and smoke, and then a sudden whoosh, as the fireworks shot up into the sky. All eyes followed their grey tails, and watched them explode in thunderclaps of smoke.

Even before the clouds of smoke had dispersed, the companies below had raised and unfurled their banners. They bloomed like the flowers of some terrible spring, and, with war cries in a dozen different dialects echoing in their throats, the companies closed in on Flintmar.

Blyseden watched the rush of a company of Estalians through the telescope. They were stocky men, most of whom were armed with matching cutlasses and leather armour. Blyseden remembered that they always seemed to smell of cloves, and, through the miraculous mechanism of his telescope, he could see that their leader was chewing. He was a big man, black-bearded, and strong enough to wield his weapons as though they were no more than switches. He bounded towards the Striganies’ stockade, like a dog that has spotted a hare, his men following him eagerly.

Blyseden snatched a quick glance at the encampment, and swore. The women and children he had been watching, just seconds ago, all seemed to be armed with crude weapons. Daggers had been fastened onto the ends of broomsticks, and irons hung at the end of ropes. One woman held two butcher’s knives, one in each hand, and, behind her, a gaggle of grubby children were already twirling their slings.

“So they were expecting us,” he muttered. “I knew it.”

“It’s not your fault,” Vespero told him patronisingly. “After all, look at the men you had to work with. A good workman always blames his tools.”

Blyseden ignored the misquote, and turned back to watch the Estalians’ advance accelerate into a charge. They burst from the last of the heath to rush across the flattened mud and refuse that separated the heath from the stockade.

They were less than a dozen feet from it, and some of them were already lining their cutlasses to chop through the knots that held the stockade together, when the ground beneath them collapsed.

Even at this distance, Blyseden could hear the collective howl as their front ranks were swallowed up by the earth. He leapt away from his telescope as if it had bitten him, and stared out to where the remaining Estalians had staggered to a halt. He watched the first of them step gingerly down into the pit. Whether it was to help a fallen comrade, or to advance through it, Blyseden never found out. He was already watching, as another regiment crashed into a hidden pit.

Meanwhile, behind the stockade, slings began to blur, and bows to twang. As the mercenaries stalled beneath the treacherous barricades, the first of them were already falling beneath the Striganies’ arrows and stones. Their screams joined the chorus from the victims who already lay writhing at the bottom of the pit traps.

“Archers!” Blyseden yelled, turning to Tubs, and bellowing the command into his face. The clerk seized the red signal flag from a rack, and started waving furiously, the cloth snapping despite the lack of any breeze.

Below him, the archers stood up from their hides, stretched, and drew their bows. There were hundreds of them concentrated on each flank, and the arcs of their weapons bent back, like a field of wheat stalks beneath a strong wind.

When they fired, none of the archers bothered to find individual targets. There were enough of them to fill the air with a barbed storm that was thick enough to cast its own shadow. The arrows hissed as they fell, goose-feathered and razor-tipped, into the Strigany camp. Then the sound of their flight was lost beneath the screams of their victims, which could be heard even at this distance.

Blyseden grabbed at his telescope to watch as the deadly rain fell upon Flintmar. He saw a woman, who had been holding a scythe, hit in the back, the arrow punching through her ribs to bury itself in her heart. She fell, dead before she knew it. Beside her a child of about ten stooped to help her up, and was in turn skewered.

This time, fate was not so merciful. The arrow lodged in the bones of his shoulder, and he was still conscious as he fell forward onto the corpse of his mother.

He was not alone in his cry of horror and of pain. All around him, dozens of his people had been cut down, and dozens more wounded.

Blyseden felt relief coursing through him. As the archer companies prepared to loose another volley, he turned to watch the mercenaries, who were struggling over the pit traps to the stockade. He watched one group, who had reached the barricade, start to chop down on the cords that held them together. On the other side, the Strigany hacked at them, their makeshift weapons jabbing through the stockade.

“I don’t understand why there are so few men,” Blyseden mused, as he watched one rare example loosing and reloading his steel crossbow with a mechanical efficiency.

“They’ve probably all run off,” Vespero said. “Typical Strigany.”

“Bastards,” Blyseden said with feeling. The thought of so much bounty slipping through his fingers made him clench his fists, and, when the clerk started pulling at his sleeve, he lashed out, suddenly enough to catch the damn fool a blow to the side of the head.

“Actually,” Vespero said, as the clerk stumbled away, “I think you had better look at this.” Long before the signal rockets had gone up, Lumpen Croop had given his orders. He didn’t need to repeat them. His company’s breakfast of cold pies and cured mutton had been all very well, but a morning like this really called for porridge.

Hot and honeyed, the halfling thought as he watched his two best men get the fire beneath their cauldron going, with lashings of cream.

The rest of his company watched the cauldron in between watching the advance of the infantry towards the Striganies’ encampment. Soon the fire had grown strong enough to bring the water to the boil. Croop slung his bow over his shoulder, and went to oversee this most vital of operations. One of the cooks was standing on the small stepladder beside the cauldron, and, whilst his mate held it, he poured in an entire sack of oats.

“Not too many at once,” Croop told him, quite unnecessarily, “and don’t forget to stir in the honey after it’s stopped boiling.”

“Right you are, Lumpen,” the cook said.

By the time the oats had boiled into a rich, creamy mess, the first companies of advancing mercenaries had discovered the Striganies’ pit traps. The air was filled with their shouts of surprise and screams of agony. Not that the sounds held the halflings’ attention for long. After all, the air was also filled with the smell of boiling porridge, and, suddenly, the rich smell of warm honey.

“That’s right,” Croop said, licking his lips in approval, as, with a practiced flourish, the cook upended a huge pot of honey over the cauldron.

The cook needed no encouragement as he twisted the jar to ease out the last ripple of honey. Then, he handed the pot down and started stirring. Not a single halfling in the company had eyes for anything other than the fire-blackened cauldron, and the cook who stood above it. As he stirred the honey into the porridge, he looked like a priest gazing into the oracle of some primitive religion.

“How does it look?” Croop asked the cook, who, with an artist’s flare for timing, made his comrades wait for a while before tapping the side of the cauldron with his ladle.

“Looks ready to me,” he said. “Anybody hungry?”

In the rush to the cauldron, Croop only maintained his position as first amongst equals by the judicious use of his elbows and knees. His weapons were quite forgotten, replaced by the bowl that he carried on his belt.

“There you go, captain,” the cook said, ladling out a great dollop of the porridge. It smelt perfect, Croop thought, as he worked his way out of the scrum. Somehow, the hint of wood smoke combined with the honey to add something special to the taste of camp porridge.

It was only after he had licked his bowl clean that he noticed the red flag, which was supposed to be the archers’ signal, waving from the top of the hill. Then he heard the hiss of the other companies’ arrows, and realised that they were supposed to be firing too.

He cursed and looked around. His lads were busily wolfing down their breakfasts. Apart from the sound of spoons scraping bowls, and polite belches, the company was silent. It was certainly inactive.

Croop watched the cloud of arrows disappear into the Striganies’ stockade, and listened to the screams that floated back out. With a last regretful look at the cauldron, he slung his bowl back on his belt, shoved his spoon into his boot and unlimbered his bow.

“Right then, lads,” he called out, nocking an arrow to the string, “time to start earning our bacon.”

“There’s bacon, too?” one of them asked hopefully. Croop glared at him, but the cook just shook his head.

“No bacon,” he said, “but look at all those birds. Be lucky if some of our arrows found their way into them, wouldn’t it?”

As one, the three dozen halflings looked up at the wheeling flock of birds above. Their martial spirit flared into life, and, all of a sudden, their bows were drawn, and their eyes were beady as they aimed up into the sky.

Croop was proud of their common sense.

“We’ll fire with the next volley,” he decided. “Might as well make it look good. Ready? Then-”

Croop stopped, although his mouth remained open. In a single moment, the mighty flock above him had disintegrated, its formation lost in a sudden downward swoop of a thousand feathered bodies. The birds plummeted towards the mercenaries, their bodies thick as fog as they homed in on the companies of archers below.

Unnerved by the bizarre behaviour, Croop remained paralysed for another second. Then he shrugged. Whatever the reason, the birds’ suicidal behaviour ultimately meant just one thing: more meat for the pot.

“Fire!” he called, sweeping his hat down. All around him, his lads’ bowstrings strummed and skewered birds started to fall, thumping onto the ground like grisly apples from some bloody tree.

Even though the halflings’ arrows flew true, there were more birds than marksmen. Before they could manage even one more volley, the birds were upon them, pecking and scratching, and clawing at eyes and arteries with a murderously effective instinct.

Without wasting time to wonder how this could be happening, Croop grabbed at one of his attackers, a raven with talons as big as an eagle’s, and wrung its neck. The vertebrae snapped, and, fighting the urge to stow the bird safely in his satchel, Croop twisted away from a flurry of pecks that would have blinded him. He lashed out, his fist thwacking into a ball of feathers, and, using his forearm to defend his face, he drew his short sword and started laying about him.

Around him, his company was in confusion. Beneath the avian assault, it was every halfling for himself. Only the fact that they fought with the abandon of natural poultrymen saved them. Soon, the air was filled with bloody feathers and the ground was littered with the twitching bodies of crippled birds.

As suddenly as the attack had come, Croop realised that it had ended. The carnage had been terrible. Feathered carcasses lay broken and fluttering all around. A few of his lads were cut, and one, wailing as he clutched his face, hadn’t been quick enough to save his eye.

Croop staggered around, taking in the scene, and peering after the surviving birds. Whatever madness had driven them into the attack seemed to have been broken, although, not two hundred feet distant, he could see that another company of archers was still lost beneath a chaotic blizzard of squawking birds, their talons red with victory.

Beyond them, Croop could see that a militia company had broken. The men were fleeing into the blasted heath of this cursed place, their attackers still chasing them, and descending upon any who fell.

“What in the Gardens of the Moot was that?” the cook asked, wiping blood from his forehead, and coming to stand beside his captain. Croop just shook his head.

“I don’t know,” he said, “but we might as well get plucking. Wings for a stew and breasts for pies, do you think?”

“Yes, captain,” the cook replied, and, impressed as always by the martial genius of his leader, he began to organise the butchery. “That’s it. All of you, that is enough. We have finished with the flock. We can do no more with it.”

Dannie heard the voice through the fog of his trance. It had come over him gradually as he had chanted, this trance, blotting out the feeling of the ground beneath his crossed legs, and replacing it with the feeling or air beneath his wings.

“Open your eyes. Wake up.”

He obeyed, blinking open his eyes. He half expecting to see the wide panorama of the heath spread out beneath him and his flock, or, maybe, the pale, upturned targets of the egg stealers’ faces. As it was, all he saw was the muddy ground of the amphitheatre, and the gathering of petrus and other apprentices.

He waited for the feeling of vertigo to pass, and then flexed his wings… his arms. He opened his mouth, and a squawk came out. He tried again. He felt horribly detached from his body, as though it were an ill-fitting suit of clothes that had been made for somebody else.

“Petru Engel?” he called, coughing to clear his throat.

“He’s already gone,” a woman said. Dannie turned to find an old woman sitting behind him. Her face was as wrinkled as an elephant’s hide, although her eyes were as clear as ice. She was familiar, although his head was still too full of the flutter of wings and the clenching of talons to place her.

“I know you,” he said, his voice sounding strange in his ears.

The crone smiled, wide enough to reveal her remaining teeth.

“You know my darling Chera,” she corrected. “Me, you just glanced at.”

“Chera.” Dannie said the name as if it were part of some charm. In a way, he supposed, it was. “Where is she?”

“She’s fighting on the perimeter.”

For the first time, Dannie heard the noises of the battle beyond: the screams, the cries, and the thunk of steel in flesh, wood and bone.

He leapt to his feet, and then staggered to one side in a fit of dizziness. The crone grabbed his elbow with surprisingly strong fingers.

“Don’t worry,” she said, wining. “Chera’s a good girl. She’ll make it back. Now, help an old woman to the inner stockade. I may be of some small help when the killing starts.”

She smiled up at Dannie with a cold ferocity that reminded him of the Old Father. He shuddered, and then, he helped her to help him towards the ramparts of the inner stockade. As they arrived, some of the children rushed past them from the abandoned ramparts of the outer stockade.

“Are they through?” Dannie asked one, grabbing him by the scruff of the neck. The youngster, who was perhaps eight years old, nodded. His clothes were bloodstained, and his teeth were chattering with nerves, but there was a fierce pride in his eyes.

“Yes, petru, they’re through. Wait until my dad gets to them, though. Then they’ll be sorry.”

Dannie nodded, and, letting the child go, made his way to a post behind the barricades of the inner stockade.

Later, Dannie would wonder if it was just a coincidence that, when he turned around, he found himself next to Chera. Somehow, he doubted it. Apart from anything else, the crone whom he had escorted had been the very picture of smugness as the two had met.

“Hello,” Dannie said, looking at Chera and wishing that he could think of something else to say. In the midst of battle, she looked even lovelier than ever. Her eyes were bright, and her chest was heaving. Dannie watched it heave, and then, tearing his eyes away, he saw that she was watching him with a cautious smile. Even the spattering of blood, bright red on her linen tunic, seemed perfectly placed, the flash of colour a perfect accompaniment to her fair complexion.

“Hello,” Chera said back, her flushed cheeks becoming even rosier as she fiddled with her billhook. “I saw what you did with those birds. It was wonderful. We’d have all been killed by archers if you hadn’t done it.”

Dannie heard the adoration in her voice, and his back straightened. All of a sudden, his head cleared of the last, fluttering uncertainties. He knew exactly who he was, and what he had to do.

“Thank you,” he said, “but what use would I have been if you had not defended the outer stockade?”

“That’s fallen now,” Chera said, lowering her eyes modestly.

“That was the plan,” Dannie said. “I’m glad that you’re here with me.”

“Me too,” Chera said.

The two looked at each other, no longer shy. Then an arrow zipped between them, and they turned to see the rush of mercenaries that were approaching through the abandoned caravans beyond.

They were Estalian, and Dannie saw that there was more of the bull about these swarthy men than just the gold-plated ox skull of their totem. They were stocky, almost as burly as dwarfs beneath their leather armour and black capes, and their heads were lowered as they charged. Even their war cry, a deep, ululating bellow, was bovine, and the twin sabres they carried were held outstretched, the tips as wide apart as those of a bull’s horns.

Dannie glanced across at Chera. She reached over and squeezed his hand. It was the first time that they had touched. Dannie grinned, happy and invincible, and, at that moment, the Estalians hit the barricade. “It’s sorcery,” Vespero decided. His second in command had joined him, and the two Tileans stood, side by side, as they watched the archers fleeing beneath the flocks of birds.

“I don’t remember any mention, of sorcery in the contract, captain,” the second in command said to Vespero, making sure that his voice was loud enough for Blyseden to hear.

Blyseden, however, wasn’t listening.

“No,” Vespero agreed, “there wasn’t any mention at all.”

The Tileans paused and watched one of the archers, tiny with distance, trip over his own feet. Something that might have been a vulture landed on him, and soon it was joined by other birds. Even at this distance, their reddening beaks made the archer’s fate clear.

“Hardly an acceptable way of doing business with professional men like us,” Vespero’s deputy mused, and his captain looked at him, his dark features expressionless.

As one, the two Tileans turned and started to count. They counted how many of their men stood on the hill. They counted how many of their commander’s men, the handful of soldiers he had taken from Aver-land’s keep, remained. Then they smiled.

Vespero decided that the sight of the feasting vulture below was good omen. Defeat held out as many possibilities as victory, and, often, quite a lot more. They would just have to make sure that they kept some of Blyseden’s men alive to dig up the pay chest for them.

“Sigmar curse that filthy Strigany magic,” Blyseden muttered, peering through his telescope, “but those cowards can be damned if they think that I’m paying them after this. They’re only birds, after all.”

Vespero looked at his second-in-command, who tipped a wink to another man. Suddenly, all of the Tileans’ hands seemed to be on their sword hilts, and each of Blyseden’s men seemed to be surrounded.

“Ah, wait. Wait, there it is! We’ve broken the Striganies’ line,” Blyseden exulted. “Look at them run.”

Vespero frowned as he saw the collapse of the Striganies’ stockade. The defenders were in full flight, pursued by victorious mercenaries into the tangled depths of their makeshift city.

He tried to hide his disappointment as he lifted his hand from his sword hilt and contemplated a future in which his company would have to make do with the meagre spoils of victory, rather than the riper consolations of defeat.