Dozens of riders were charging past. Only a few had been taken down by spear-thrusts and sword cuts to the legs. Hundreds of Agarathi lay trampled and maimed about them, moaning and dying. Men slowed on their horses, thrusting down with their lances to finish them off, or letting their horses crush them. Others dismounted to slash open throats and drive cold steel down into their hearts.
The light of dawn was spreading through the trees, dappling the forest floor, thick with bodies and blood. Amron rode onward, making for the heart of the camp. He found Sir Taegon there with the Ironfoot, riding from tent to tent, slashing them open to see if anyone was hiding inside. Horses reared and kicked out at canvas walls. Lord Gavron’s men dismounted to search, their black and grey cloaks emblazoned with the godsteel scythe of House Grave. It was an apt sigil for such a day, Amron thought. He looked around. The north rang to the sound of battle. He could see his six thousand men afoot out there, swarming upon the enemy as they came boiling from the trees.
But it all looked wrong. Felt wrong.
He knew why. “They’re not all here,” he said.
Sir Harold Conwyn was still with him, and Rogen Strand as well, all in black and grey. His horse was black to match him. “My lord?” said Conwyn.
“Look around.” There were pockets of fighting, but they were far too few. There was noise, but not enough. Amron had been in battles great and small and this was a small one. Hardly more than a skirmish. “We outnumber them,” he said. “There can’t be more than a few thousand Agarathi here.” He was getting a horrible feeling in the pit of his stomach. “Did you get it wrong, Sir Harold? The numbers of Agarathi. At Green Harbour.”
The stocky knight shook his head. “No, my lord. No, there were twenty thousand at least, maybe more.” His eyes roamed the vale, looking concerned and confused. “Perhaps this is their rearguard camp? They may have set their main one up ahead… somewhere safer?”
It was a possibility. The cold fist in Amron’s gut was suggesting something more disturbing, however. “I fear we have been tricked,” he said, the truth of it dawning. His voice was thick. He looked around, jaw tightening. “This is no army, Sir Harold. It’s bait.”
Some of the others were starting to come to the same realisation. Lord Gavron rode over from the trampled tents, Ironhoof snorting fog from his nostrils. “There are no captains here,” the lord growled. “No dragonknights. I know dragonsteel when I see it, Amron, and these black spears they’re carrying aren’t it.”
“They’re water men,” thundered the voice of Sir Taegon nearby. He had dismounted The Hammerhorse to fight afoot. A half dozen bodies were decapitated and dismembered about him. He kicked a torso aside, entrails tumbling from its open gut in a gory red splash. “Weakest men I ever fought. Not one of them can fight worth a damn. And half of them are boys.”
Amron had only just noticed that. Many of the dead faces looking up at him were young, green as summer grass. He felt sick all of a sudden. They left their worst behind…their least experienced. The rest…His eyes moved west through the open vale to where the woods thickened anew, knotted and gnarled, dense with oak and ash. “Rogen, gather up your trackers and scout west at once. I need to know how far they’ve gone.”
“Gone?” rumbled Cargill, as Whitebeard kicked his spurs and rode away.
“To the Twinfort,” Amron said. “This host was left here to slow us, delay us, confuse us.” He gave a bitter shake of the head. “It’s all been a ruse, Taegon.”
The Giant was starting to pull it all together. He ripped off his greathelm, crested with a warhammer crushing the head of a dragon, and threw it on the ground in a rage. “Treacherous bastards! I’ll kill them. Kill them all!” He kicked out at his helm with a great clang of steel, sending it flying into a tree where it got lodged in the bark with a crack. “Cowards!” he thundered. “They left these water boys behind and ran.”
“Fool,” the Ironfoot said to that, snorting the insult out. “They didn’t run, Cargill, they went off laughing.” He looked about, snarled, then spat. “The Twinfort’s only a day and night’s march from here, Joyce says. How long have we been chasing ghosts, Amron?”
It wasn’t a question he wanted to confront. For days Taegon and his men had been raiding the enemy rear, killing dozens of men each night, but they were nothing but lambs to the slaughter. As this smaller host kept a slow pace, leading them on this merry chase, the rest might have stormed ahead at speed, making for the rear of the Twinfort. Quick as that, victory had turned to bitter defeat. It was not a taste Amron Daecar much liked.
Sir Quinn Sharp rode over to join them, puffing and panting. “This is all wrong, my lords. We outnumber them two to one. Where are the rest of their men?”
“Where do you think? We’ve been tricked, Sharp.” Taegon Cargill marched over to collect his helm, ripping it from the tree. “The dragonfolk have gone and conned us.”
“The Twinfort?” Sir Quinn said. “How far ahead are they?”
“The ranger’s gone to find out,” said Lord Gavron. He glowered toward the western edge of the valley. Rogen was hastily gathering up several other men and was dismounting from his black steed to slink away into the trees on foot. “It’s worse in there,” the Ironfoot went on. “Fifteen miles of thick forest, dark as sin. Full of monkey lizards and tree wolves and greatboars big as broadbacks. Hard to navigate, you said that yourself, Amron. How the hell did they outrun us? We’ve got hundreds of Green Harbour men here. These are their lands, and they’ve been outwitted.”
I’ve been outwitted, Amron thought. This was his army, his kingdom, his failure. Could they be wrong? Might the enemy have been scattered by Taegon’s raids? Did they splinter and get separated during the night? He doubted it, but would know for sure. “Sir Quinn. Start asking questions of our southern friends. See what you can find out.”
“Let me,” the Giant of Hammerhall said, hefting his enormous godsteel warhammer. “Sharp’s soft as his mother’s teats. I’ll get them talking.”
Sir Taegon strode off, hunting for a man alive among the legions lying dead. There was still noise enough across the valley to know the battle would go on for a time yet, but it was as good as won already. “We need to get this over quickly,” Amron said. “Sir Quinn, get back out there and make haste. Have our injured gathered; we’re not going to be able to take them with us unless they can fight. Leave what men we can spare to tend them, treat them, and try to get them safely back to Green Harbour.”
Sir Quinn put his heel to his horse and rode off.
Amron closed a fist around the hilt of the Frostblade, squeezing tight. He must have lost his focus; he could feel the deep ache in his left shoulder and right thigh, even with the blade in his grasp. Was he growing immune? He couldn’t think about that now. He concentrated a moment, drinking in the Frostblade’s powers of healing, and his pains dissolved.
Lord Gavron gave a grunt. “It’s their dragons,” he said. “We didn’t count on their dragons, Amron.”
Amron looked at him.
“They’ve been leading them,” the Ironfoot explained. “These woods are thick and hard to pass. We know that. Joyce and his men have all said it. But none of us have counted on their dragons showing them the way. They fly above them and find the right path. Around this hill. Through that valley. Across this gulley. And they’ve been warding off other beasts as well.” He snorted and spat once more. “No wonder they’ve moved so quickly. They’ve had eyes in the skies unlike us.”
He was right, Amron knew. They had not seen dragons during the march, not with the mists and fogs that cloaked the forest, the cold wintry skies, but no doubt they had been out there, guiding and protecting their own. He was starting to fear the worst, fear that the enemy had stretched too big a lead, and if they had…
“There’s smoke in the air,” said a rough voice. Amron turned. Sir Bryce Coddington had come over from the main force, sour-faced and blood-spattered, wearing his old armour and Varin cloak, a warhorn hanging at his hip. His cheeks were flush from battle.
“Where?” Amron asked.
The old knight scowled west. “That way. Far off and unpleasant.”
Amron’s nostrils flared open, drawing in the air in a long, deep breath, eyes closing to focus. Beneath the rotting smell of wet leaves, the earthy tones of mud and bark and branch, the tang of iron and putrid stink of bladders and bowels being emptied…beneath all that was an undertone of smoke, trailing in on a westerly breeze. Coddington was right. It was coming from a long way away, carrying a distinctive, unpleasant scent.
“Brimstone,” the king said. “Dragonfire.”
Sir Harold frowned warily. “Could they be burning the woods? To make it easier for their men to pass?”
Sir Bryce looked at the younger knight like he was a halfwit. “They burn the forest and it’ll only alert Lord Borrington that they’re coming. No, boy, they’ll want to sneak out behind the Twinfort, all silent like. If there’s something burning out there, it’s stone. Towers and walls and men. The Twinfort’s under siege.”
A ripple of worry went through the men.
Amron would not have it
“We don’t know that yet,” he said firmly. He looked up, checking the skies. It was a clear morning, though not often did that last, and shortly after dawn the mists and fogs would descend to reduce visibility. But if they could reach some higher ground before that happened, perhaps they might be able to see across the forest to where the smoke was coming from. He turned to Sir Harold. “Take some men and scale the slopes. Climb trees if you must. Look for smoke rising from the west, Harold. Go. Right now.”
Sir Harold swallowed and bolted off. He was replaced almost at once by Sir Taegon who came marching back over, his gauntleted hand gripping a long black braid. The head to which it was attached swayed freely…without a body. Cargill threw the head down before him. It bounced against Amron’s boot and settled in the mud. “That one laughed at me,” the giant rumbled angrily. “I asked him where the rest were, and I pointed west, and he just laughed. So I’m guessing they went west.”
