Crusade - James Lowder [119]
With a twinge of guilt, Alusair found herself admiring Torg again. The ironlord was thoughtless and perhaps even cruel, but he knew the battlefield well. "May Clanggedin and all the other dwarven gods prove the rest of your plan as successful, Your Highness," the princess said. She glanced at the horsewarriors and added, "For we will test it very soon."
With a loud and trilling war cry, the Tuigan charged again.
As the double line of riders drew nearer, Alusair could see that they wielded lances and silver curved swords instead of bows. It was clear that they were going to push for hand-to-hand combat.
Showing little anxiety, even though the barbarians were barreling down on his troops, Torg bade the standard-bearer signal again. Deftly the soldiers hung their crossbows from hooks on their brichettes and picked up their pikes.
The Tuigan were less than forty yards away when the dwarven lines broke.
Their bows clanging softly against their armored hips and legs, Torg's troops formed their battle squares.
It was obvious that the Tuigan had never encountered this tactic before.
Their commander, riding next to his standard, halted his charge and attempted to slow his men, but the barbarians rushed to engulf the four squares of dwarves. Capturing so compact and easily surrounded an enemy looked simple at first. The horsewarriors soon discovered otherwise.
"To the right! Crush them between the squares!" Torg bellowed and waved his sword from the center of one group. The dwarves pushed to the right as commanded, driving the horses and riders into the pikes bristling from the next square.
Alusair, in the center of a different square, watched as the Tuigan tried to press the attack. The horsemen found themselves spitted on pikes or knocked from their mounts. The latter often provided worse then a quick death by blade, as the rest of the barbarian attack crushed the hapless victims under horses' hooves. And as more riders rushed to the battle, those caught in front against the immovable wall of well-armored, well-armed dwarves were slain with greater ease.
The bodies of the Tuigan dead were piled high around the squares.
Wounded horses thrashed at the dwarves' feet and became a fleshy wall bracing Torg's troops from close assault, but not really hindering the reach of their long-handled pikes. The carrion crows had begun to circle around this bloody battlefield, too, though Alusair found the birds' noisy, insistent cawing less disturbing than the dwarves' disciplined silence. Even when faced with the Tuigan charge, the soldiers from Earthfast leaned silently into their grisly work, occasionally grunting as a pike struck home.
Finally, over the screams of the wounded humans and the clash of metal upon metal, the princess heard the steady beating of drums. Slowly at first, the Tuigan broke off. The dwarves took the enemy's retreat as ample opportunity to slay some of the humans from behind. As Torg could have predicted, not a single dwarf broke rank.
The ironlord bellowed his laughter over the humans' screams and the birds' cries. He raised his beautifully crafted, blood-soaked sword high over his head and shouted his triumph. Without pause, the rest of the army from Earthfast joined in. The dwarves' victory shout was very different from the Tuigan's shrill, trilling war cry. It sounded like it came from deep within the earth itself, rolling and rumbling from the dwarves as if they echoed the noise of stone grating against stone deep within the mines they dug.
The cry chilled Alusair, but she'd heard it before. Perhaps it was the moans and screams the princess noticed behind the victory shout that made her shudder, or the blood she saw splattered across the pikes as the soldiers thrust them into the air. Perhaps it was the knowledge that a long afternoon of fighting lay ahead before her father would be safe. Whatever the cause of her discomfort, Alusair realized that now was not the time for celebrations.
"Ironlord," she cried as she pushed through her square. "We must move quickly if we are to help the Alliance."
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