Days of Air and Darkness - Katharine Kerr [133]
The human soldiers spoke a form of Deverrian, oddly archaic, oddly pronounced, a survival among the slave community of the days before the Horsekin had taken their ancestors prisoner, but they could understand Tren, especially since he was talking in platitudes. I have faith in you, men, we’ll redeem your regiment’s honor, we’ll show them how we men can fight—that sort of thing, and some at least responded, smiling a little, risking a few words back to this human lord whom Rakzan Hir-li favored so highly. Most merely stared numbly and answered not at all. Just the day past, they’d been forced to watch friends of a lifetime die slowly, screaming.
“My lord?” a squad leader said at last. “The raven priestess, she be due back, bain’t?”
“So she is.” Startled, Tren glanced up slantwise at the sun, which hung directly overhead. “She should have been back before this.”
Tren turned to consider the Horsekin officers, who had sat down, by then, in the shade of the pines. In the heat, the forest stood quiet, except for the buzz of flies, too quiet. He glanced up again—not a bird in the sky, whether common or magical.
“Somewhat’s wrong,” Tren said abruptly. “Get the men on guard. All of you—squads on alert!”
In a clatter of breastplates and shields, the spearmen got to their feet, reaching for weapons. The Horsekin officers yelled taunts Tren’s way, then slowly got up, so slowly that they were the first to die when the dwarves burst out of their cover and charged down the slope. In a silence more grim than any war cries, the axmen at the point swung and chopped them down like trees, legs first, then quick blows to the head. A couple of squads raced past, trying to plant and brace their spears against the swing of axes, against the rush of a downhill charge of dwarven warriors bent on vengeance for slaughtered kin. Useless sword in hand, Tren ran this way and that, trying to get his men arrayed.
No chance, no chance at all—a spearman’s battle line has to be properly formed, with each man’s shield overlapping the man on his left to make a tight wall; it must be organized and set before it can hold. The men of the First were milling and yelling, stabbing futilely as they tried to form a line, dropping their shields to grab their spears two-handed as the great-axes swung low, slashing men to the ground, shattering the wooden hafts. Tren began yelling for a retreat into the road and flat ground before the battle had barely begun, but suddenly screaming broke out behind him. He swirled round and saw another pack of dwarves racing into the roadway, then turning to charge up the slope.
Only the forest cover saved any of the men. On the broken ground, among the trees, the dwarven axmen were prevented from forming a tight line in their turn, which would have mowed the mob down like a scythe. As it was, the entire battle broke into a disorganized brawl—and a lethal one—as here and there a few spearmen managed to set their backs together and make a fight of it. More tried to flee, and side by side stabbed and thrust a way clear for themselves through the enemy line. Others ran for the trees and got free before the dwarves could stop them. Tren tried to make a stand, yelling at the top of his lungs, then tried to organize a proper retreat, then simply tried to find a horse—but the few they’d brought with them on the dweomer road had all fled or been downed by the relentless slash and swing of the great-axes.
“My lord, my lord! Run!”
One of the men he’d befriended was screaming at him over the general melee. Tren had just time to glance round. When he saw that the dwarven pincer movement