The ground rumbled beneath them as they charged out of the mists in the west, blue banners flying, the dawn’s eastern sun catching their polished armour. Eight hundred horsemen rode in three waves, with Sir Amik at the head of the first.
Following him in the second wave were three hundred knights, including Master Troughton, the former master-at-arms.
Behind those, in the final wave, were the city guards, the lightest of Falador’s cavalry.
A packed column of goblin archers stood directly before them, a thousand strong, caught totally by surprise. They shouted angrily amongst themselves, aware that their infantry battalions to the north and south were too far away to defend them, while to the east a steep ditch they themselves had dug cut off any escape.
The archers had nowhere to run. They were trapped.
They only had time to loose four volleys of hastily fired arrows, without any organisation. Of those, very few reached the oncoming cavalry, and those that did were not powerful enough to pierce the heavy armour of Sir Amik’s foremost line.
When the bright line of knights clad in heavy white armour ploughed into the panicking goblins, there was nothing that could prevent the onslaught. Sir Amik hacked to his right and his left, cutting through the resistance as his sword bit deep into green mottled flesh. He drove his horse onward, trampling those who were caught beneath the heavy hooves of his trained steed.
Panic overtook the goblins as each individual jostled his way over his comrades in an effort to escape. Their short daggers were of no consequence to the armoured enemy. They fled east into the steep ditch, or to the north and the south in a desperate bid to reach the infantry.
But to the north the goblin battalion lost its nerve. Upon witnessing the savagery of the knights, the nearest ranks turned and pushed back against those that stood behind. Amongst them were the five hundred goblins who had sacked Taverley, and that effort had totally exhausted them. They did not have the strength to fight such a battle.
Cutting down the last goblin archer who stood between him and the ditch, Sir Amik looked to the south, sensing victory in his heart. Sure enough, his second wave of cavalry had reached the southern goblin infantry, spreading chaos. He looked back to the north where the fleeing enemy was pursued by the city guards of Falador.
The goblins had fallen as easily as he had expected.
But where were the Kinshra?
With a roar, Sir Amik stood up in his saddle, beckoning his men south to deal the final blow against the goblin horde.
“The goblins have been defeated quicker than I could have imagined,” Sulla noted bitterly. “And the city guard are loose on the field.” He sat on his horse behind the ditch, watching the rout. The three cavalry lines of his enemy had spread themselves out to deal with the three goblin battalions. To the north a hundred guardsmen of Falador were driving over a thousand goblins before them. He hadn’t expected them to split up.
Still, it is the knights who are the real enemy. The city guardwill make the mistake of all ill-trained cavalry: they will pursue an enemy from the field and abandon the true battle.
“Send the first signal!” he ordered, watching the second line of Sir Amik’s cavalry cut their way deep into the southern goblin infantry.
A second voice repeated the command and a burning fuse was lowered. The cannon crashed backward, sending a roar across the field. Sulla turned to the northwest, toward the outlying woods less than half a mile behind Sir Amik’s cavalry.
Out of the forest shadows they came-the Kinshra cavalry. Four hundred strong, they were armed with lances that would give them a greater reach than the swords of their enemies. He watched as the black-armoured warriors rode forward, gaining speed as they closed the gap.
But still his plan wasn’t complete.
“Send the second signal!” he shouted.
Again a voice repeated his words, and a second and a third and a fourth cannon roared in quick succession, the sounds echoing off the white walls of Falador.
Sulla looked north to an area of ground just beyond his encampment. There he had positioned half of his infantry, each man concealing himself by lying down. At once the men rose up and ran to the west. Their route would move them into a position just north of where the goblin infantry had stood, and once there, they would form a line.
To the south the other half of Sulla’s infantry cut across a small bridge of land that had been left between the two defensive ditches. They raced to form a line south of the goblin infantry which currently occupied Sir Amik’s first and second waves.
Within minutes Kinshra were assembled to the north and the south. With terrifying precision, they moved to close the gap between them.
Sir Amik and his army were trapped.
The Kinshra horses went from a trot to a gallop, careening into the knights’ unprotected rear. The long steel lance tips pierced the armour of their enemies, causing the rear ranks to crush in upon those in front.
Gaius shouted, throwing his bloodied lance to the ground and drawing his sword. He understood Sulla’s plan-all he had to do was keep the knights from escaping so that the two lines of pikemen could get close enough to finish the work.
A man screamed below him. Gaius looked down to see a Knight of Falador stagger against the flank of his horse, a lance point protruding through his chest. Even in death the knight raised his sword. But Gaius was quicker, and with a savage hack the edge of his blade cut deeply into the man’s exposed face. As the knight dropped his sword, Gaius struck him again.
Now the Kinshra cavalry and the knights fought at close quarters, exchanging sword blows, while goblins ducked and assailed the knights wherever they could.
Sir Amik leant forward to decapitate a foe, and his outstretched hand was seized. Another goblin leapt onto his horse behind him, a curved dagger glancing off the knight’s visor in a desperate stab at his throat. Sir Amik heaved his sword arm back and then unexpectedly lunged forward, his blade stabbing goblin flesh. The grip on his arm slackened.
The goblin behind him cut the leather saddle, his blade biting into the horse’s flesh beneath. As the horse reared up the saddle loosened, and both goblin and knight fell to the ground.
“Sir Amik is down!” Sir Vyvin cried. At once, the knights nearby hacked their way to their leader and surrounded him in a protective circle.
“We are surrounded-we are trapped!” Master Troughton called. His old body bore the signs of several wounds. “The Kinshra cavalry have closed in behind us and there are hundreds of pikemen sandwiching us in.”
The words cut through Sir Amik’s daze and one thought above all pounded in his mind.
The Kinshra were prepared for this attack. We have been betrayed!
He could see the full extent of Sulla’s grim tactics, how the goblins had been left deliberately exposed in order to draw out the knights while the pikemen took up their positions.
And then the pike bearers began their butchery. Each line of Sulla’s pikemen was five deep, and each man was armed with a ten-foot pike. It seemed as if two walls were being pushed closer together, each lined with deadly spikes. And the knights were trapped in the middle.
Sir Amik knew it was unlikely that any of them would emerge alive from Sulla’s jaws of death.
Captain Ingrew had never ridden into battle before, but he found the experience exhilarating. The goblin infantry had broken and fled before the city guards had even reached them, and now that they were running, unarmed and scattered, they were easy prey. He had already slain fourteen of them using the same tactic, riding swiftly past them as he delivered a sweeping cut.
If the knights were doing as well as he, the captain thought, then the goblin presence was as good as removed from the enemy’s battle line.
Suddenly a call drew his attention, and he turned to see his fellow guardsmen mustering a hundred yards to the south. He cantered forward quickly, and as soon as he was within range he noted the horror-stricken expressions on the faces of his comrades.
“We have to go back” Colonel Payne insisted. “If we do not, the knights will all be killed! There should be enough of us to break through to Sir Amik’s standard. Then we can withdraw from the field.”
Captain Ingrew glanced again to the south. As far as he had been aware they had been winning. But one look was all it took to banish that illusion.
“We’re running away?” a young officer cried in disbelief.
“We are extracting Sir Amik from that butchery, and whoever else may still be alive. We will withdraw back to Falador through the swamp.”
With that, the colonel goaded his horse southward, and his men followed his example.
Hundreds of knights fell to Sulla’s pikes. Even the goblin infantry succumbed. Knights and goblins had given up fighting one another in an effort to escape the deadly trap.
Sulla looked on approvingly. The knights could do nothing.
“Send in the berserkers!” he ordered. “Let us have some sport with our enemy.”
Behind the lines of pikes, several ladders had been erected, and climbing them were savage humans. The berserkers were a chaos-worshipping people who lived in The Wilderness, practising cannibalism on any traveller who strayed into their clutches. They filed their teeth and their nails to a deadly sharpness and rarely used any weapons, for their savagery was weapon enough.
Sir Amik raised his banner at the centre of the trap, calling his men to gather around him in a last effort to break out. Then the first berserker leapt into their midst over the tops of the pikes. Others followed, leaping directly onto the horses of their enemies and dragging both man and beast down into the crimson mud.
Sir Amik turned to face one of the cannibals and was shocked to see that it was a woman. He saw a green flash leap at him from his right, and instinctively he swung his sword up, parrying the goblin’s thrust. But he could not protect himself from the frenzied woman who stepped in toward him with her teeth bared.
As he staggered back, a battle cry reached him through the confusion of the melee. It was Sir Vyvin, fighting at his side. Sir Vyvin hesitated before the berserker, and she took the initiative, leaping at him, her teeth finding his face, biting at him like a rabid animal. With a cry he stabbed her, finishing her off with a swift backhand swipe that cut her throat. Then he groped his way toward Sir Amik in their ever-shrinking space, his hand pressed over a wounded left eye.
The enemy’s drumbeats quickened. As they did so, the Kinshra infantry moved in with a terrible haste, pinning back individual knights with several pikes at a time.
“Gather to me, men!” Sir Amik roared. “Under my banner we shall make a stand that will inspire a hundred generations of men!” His eyes were tearful as he drove his standard into an earth made soft not by rain but by the blood of men and goblins.
With a great shout his host charged the northern flank, hacking and slashing and dying on the impenetrable pikes, cutting down any berserker that landed amongst them.
Master Troughton, one of the most skilled of all the knights, was slain as he ducked in under the pikes, cutting down three of the Kinshra warriors before falling.
Nicholas Sharpe died also, saving Sir Amik from being impaled in an area where the two Kinshra lines had come close enough for the end of one pike to touch the end of its opposite number. And it was here that the real slaughter began.
The knights had thinned out as they had been squeezed, and now each man fought desperately to keep the pikes from stabbing at his front and his back. It was a battle that could only end in one brutal way. The men could only hope to delay their deaths.
Sir Amik was stabbed viciously in the side, and as he staggered another pike rammed into his calf. He dropped his sword in agony and seized his banner for support, and he knew the end could not be far away.
He looked at the men he had led to their deaths. With a feeling of pride he noted that none of them begged, that no one cursed him for his leadership. They were true Knights of Falador. They would die as they had lived.
Yet suddenly a panic seized the northern line of Kinshra infantry. Sir Amik watched as Colonel Payne and his sixty guardsmen crashed in upon the rear, forcing the pikemen to scatter across a wide front.
“Sir Amik Varze! Knights of Falador! To me! To me!” The colonel rode amongst the pikemen, mercilessly cutting them down as he perceived the carnage that they had wrought. Such was the ferocity that he and his men exhibited, Sir Amik was able to rally his troops.
“Knights of Falador, we must retreat!” he called. “Back to the city! Back to Falador!” Every man that could, took to the nearest horse, some even seizing steeds of fallen Kinshra warriors.
“Here, Sir Amik, take my horse,” a young squire shouted, helping him up.
“Run, boy!” Sir Amik cried faintly. “Save yourself-and our banner!”
But the squire seemed not to listen. As the Kinshra cavalry pushed their way through their panicked infantry to finish the last few knights left, he gave a savage slap to the horse’s flank that sent Sir Amik on his way to life and freedom.
The youth had no time to run as a steel blade swept down on him in a deadly arc.
“Hold them off!” Colonel Payne cried, riding at full speed into the Kinshra cavalry, preventing them from pursuing the fleeing knights.
But his luck had run out. The Kinshra soldiers surrounded him, hacking at him from all directions. He fell from his horse into the soft earth.
“Shall we pursue them?” Gaius called to Sulla.
“No. Let them go” Sulla replied. “Let the people of Falador see their beloved protectors run. Let them know there is no one who can save them.”
He turned to look at the city walls, visualising the weeping of men, women, and young children.
He imagined their fear. And he revelled in it.