It was an hour after dawn and the vale was strewn with dead and dying. For as far as I could see, the dead men lay in the dewy grass, thickly in the middle of the vale and scattered as far as the line of trees to the north to which the enemy had fled in complete disorder. They had scattered in the dawn, great clouds of gas choking them; many were still on their hands and knees coughing their lungs out helplessly and trying to crawl to a safety that didn't exist. Our men moved unhurriedly about the field in rough lines, putting them out of their misery.
Full of boundless energy, I walked my horse about the field, looking around, looking for an enemy, my mood exulted and fierce. I felt like a god of war. My heart beat slow and hard, lungs working deep and slow. Blood pumped hard and strong through me. The spells in me would probably take a year off my life and I didn't care a bit.
Still looking around the long vale, tense and aware, long gentle slopes to trees to the north and south, long shadows of early morning thrown along the length of the vale, birdsong, the sounds of pain. It all soaked into my awareness in waves. My sword was still in my fist, shield still on my arm. I came to the center of things, our men moving north of us in ragged lines, and here the commanders gathered on horseback to confer. The battle mages were here, calm and distant, the healers tending still the wounds of the injured. I had no idea how many men we had lost but I knew we had won a victory to be proud of, and at little cost.
I looked back the way we had come, the gentle empty slope of grasses crushed by our passing in lines where the dew did not show, the woodland as still as a dream, then to the north, our men strung out in vulnerable lines, and I felt suddenly ill at ease.
“Recall the men,” I told Tulian as I joined the command group.
He looked about. Nothing threatened. The surviving enemy were scattered and gone. Yet he nodded. Maybe there was something in my voice. The horns sounded then, too close and joined by ours as Tulian issued the order to regroup on us. Come to the banners, the horns sounded, and our men came. I was still looking back and forth at the two slopes and may have been first to see my equestes burst from the trees to the south, Sheo at the head, thundering toward us. The north slope, our men hurrying now, moving fast into centuries and at the same time in our direction. The trees behind them were suddenly alive with men. The south slope, Sheo and his equestes moving fast, half way to us. Behind them a hint of movement in the dawn light. North slope, there were thousands. All who had fled and more, bunched in a swathe as far as I cared to look east and west. South slope. Barbarians appearing in dribbles that I knew was about to turn into a flood.
I looked at Tulian and he met my gaze. I almost saw him shrug and I knew he had no ideas.
“The runners met the other war band as they fled,” I told him emotionlessly. “They have been calmed and turned about.” South slope. “And the third warband we heard rumor of have come on us as well.” It was clear as glass to me, our doom. Still I turned my head as I spoke. North slope, our men moving fast our way, looking for direction. Tulian, looking back at me with no idea what to do. South slope, a river of barbarians bursting its bank and Sheo closing on us fast. Tulian; still nothing.
“Triangular formation. Mages and healers in the center with the cavalry holding the points of the triangle,” it wasn't in the books but our battle signals are good, a lot of meaning can be put into the flags and trumpets and the men were trained to react as instructed, not to think and puzzle.
He gave orders, flag-bearers moved to their assigned spots, trumpets blew and the enemy horns and drums blended in. But things started to happen as our men reacted to the signals. I continued to look, turning my horse now, seeing with a clarity I never would have imagined possible. We would be surrounded, there was no way out, there were so many of them, we were going to lose, to die, but none of that mattered. Hurt them, hurt them now and slow them and give us time to form properly and be ready.
“Larner Harrat! Mages, north and south, hurt them, slow them down!”
They moved. They didn't wait. Magic looks like almost invisible sheet lightning, but with a shape and a pattern of varying size and complexity, brief flickers of brightness that catch your attention but are gone before you can focus on them. Fire rolled from their outstretched hands in great tumbling balls of red and yellow and black and struck the enemy leaving charring men still running and men whose clothing burned and whose hair was gone in an instant or who were blinded by suddenly burned eyes. Holes appeared in the teeming hoard, leaving scattered burning men in the gaps and those behind split around them as though they were stones in a river. The earth exploded in a great gout of clods of earth and men, knocking a dozen more to the ground; gods knew what that was, though I was glad of it. It wouldn't be enough but it was enough for us to form the triangle so that when they hit us we were not in disarray.
They kept coming out of the woods, filling the slopes no matter how many the battle mages killed by fire and gas. If we had killed eight thousand and wounded a thousand more there were still as many or more than we had broken in the dark. There were too many of them.
It was a nightmare.