Shadow's Edge - Brent Weeks [200]
“You forget our mission, Childe Jaedan,” Lord Lucius said. “We haven’t been sent to fight in anyone’s war. The Khalidorans aren’t a threat to us—”
“The Khalidorans are a threat to everyone!” Jaedan protested.
“SILENCE!”
Jaedan cut off, but the defiance on his face didn’t alter a whit. The Cenarian line began moving at a slow jog, allowing the army, like an enormous beast, to gain momentum.
Caedan twitched. “Did—did any of you feel that?” he asked.
“What?” Wervel asked.
“I don’t know. Just—I don’t know. Like an explosion? May I go see what the Ceurans are doing, Lord Lucius?”
“We need your eyes on the battle. Watch and learn, childe. We have a rare opportunity to see how the Khalidorans fight. You, too, Jaedan.”
The Khalidoran army was formed in loose ranks, with space beside every warrior for an archer. The archers readied themselves now, each putting arrows in the ground where they could be grabbed quickly. In the front of everyone, the two-man teams of meisters sat on horseback. To the Seers, they glowed.
“What will they do, Caedan?” Lord Lucius asked.
“Fire, sir? And lightning second?”
“And why?”
“Because it will scare the shit of the Cenarians? I mean, uh, the effects on morale, sir,” Caedan said.
The Cenarian line was still jogging forward. They were four hundred paces away now. The group under General Agon had advanced to the fore and split. But they didn’t just split into one or two or even three groups. His few horsemen, and his foot soldiers, formed a fragmented line as long as the Cenarian front.
“What the hell is he doing?” one of the Alitaerans asked.
For a long moment, no one answered. He couldn’t hope to break the Khalidoran line with such a ragged line of his own. His move also left a gap in the Cenarian center. But even as the men watched, another of the Cenarian generals, Duke Wesseros, ordered his men into the gap.
“It’s genius. He’s minimizing his losses,” Wervel said.
for a moment no one asked. If there was one thing magi hated more than not understanding something, it was not understanding something after someone had understood it first and had given them a hint.
“What?” Jaedan asked.
“Think like a meister, childe. You’d have enough vir for what, five? ten? fireballs before you’re spent. Usually, you’ll kill two to five men with each fireball. With the line this thin, you’ll kill one. You might even miss completely. Agon knows he’s gambling. If the main line comes to support his line too late, his first line will be slaughtered, but if they hit within five or ten seconds, he’ll have saved hundreds and nullified the, uh, effects on morale. It looks like we’ve found a general who knows how to fight meisters. There might be hope for Cenaria after all.”
At two hundred paces, the line picked up speed.
The archers in the Khalidoran lines loosed their first volley, and a flock of two thousand black-feathered arrows took flight. For a long second, they darkened an already bleak sky, casting the shadow of death across the dawn. When they dove back to earth, they buried their barbed beaks in earth and armor and the flesh of men and horses.
Again, the dispersed ranks saved hundreds, but up and down the Cenarian line, men flopped over onto the stubbly fields, going from a full sprint to the rest of death in an instant. Others fell, injured, legs or arms pierced, and were trampled by their friends and countrymen a moment later. Horses lost riders and continued the charge merely because the horses to their right and left still charged. Riders lost horses and pitched to the earth at great speed, sometimes flying free of the saddle and rising to run with their earthbound comrades, sometimes getting caught in the saddle and crushed beneath their horse’s body.
The Khalidoran army performed as only veterans can. The archers loosed as many arrows as they could in a few seconds, then, as a flag went up, each grabbed his remaining arrows and retreated. There were perfect lines in the ranks