The Spirit Stone - Katharine Kerr [168]
‘We bested Ridvar over your grandson. It’s the honour of the thing that won’t let him drop it. Eventually the prince and his councillor will talk some sense into him.’
‘So we may hope. Cursed if I know how I’m going to get through the next few years with him as my sworn overlord.’ Cadryc paused to chew on the ragged ends of his moustache. ‘Be that as it may, lad, there was a blasted lot more shouting than sense at that council. It boils down to this. If we insist on riding to battle, the dragons can’t join in. How can they spook the Horsekin mounts without doing the same to ours, eh?’
‘We’d best fight on foot, then.’
‘Just so, but some of the lords cursed near shat at the very idea. Gwivyr was the worst, prattling about the honour of trueborn noblemen and how only peasants walk and suchlike.’
‘Did you see the falcata?’
‘I did.’ Cadryc turned grim. ‘That was the one point in Gwivyr’s favour. If we’re unhorsed, and the dragons can’t disrupt the Horsekin cavalry, well then! We’ll all be eating at the Lord of Hell’s table, eh? If we’re not carved up as the main dish.’
‘Most likely. So what do we do, your grace? Wait for them, or go to meet them?’
‘Both. In the morning, we move the camp a few miles south, fortify it with ditches and the wagons, then draw up our lines beyond it and wait. We’ll have the horses in reserve, the banadar tells us. His men know how to bring them up to the front lines in a hurry.’
The camp woke with the dawn and made a short and hurried march south. While the Mountain Folk and the servants did the hard work of assembling what fortifications they could between the wagon train and the approaching army, Prince Voran and Gwerbret Ridvar walked through the Deverry camp, telling those who would fight where they would be in the line of march and where they would stand. Prince Dar and Calonderiel did the same for the Westfolk.
Gerran saw many a noble lord shaking his sceptical head once the commanders had turned their backs. In the end, Tieryn Gwivyr got something of his way; he would lead a mounted squadron held in reserve. Either it would swoop in at the end of the battle to cut down any Horsekin stragglers, or else it would guard the Deverry retreat. Although Gwivyr grumbled about missing most of the fight, even he had to admit that he’d talked himself into his position.
The black dragon returned around noon with evil news. The Horsekin had made a forced march late into the yesternight. Now they’d drawn up their ranks much closer than anyone had expected.
‘Not more than two miles away, Arzosah tells us,’ Cadryc said. ‘Ready or not, lads, the fight’s on.’
None of the Deverry men in the army had ever walked to war before, nor had the Westfolk swordsmen. When the time came to leave camp, they formed up in pairs in a more or less straight line, but by the time they came within sight of the Horsekin, they had bunched up into a straggling mob. The dwarven axemen, far more disciplined, marched in good order behind them, while the Westfolk archers ambled along to either side of the main body in no particular formation. Gwivyr’s mounted squadron brought up the rear from a good quarter of a mile back. With him rode the two princes, Warleader Brel, and Gwerbret Ridvar, but Gerran noticed Banadar Calonderiel walking with his swordsmen.
On a slight rise of rocky ground the enemy waited, their ranks formed into a narrow front between the river on the Gel da’ Thae right and the scrubby woodland to their left. Front and centre stood lines of spearmen, arranged so that the oval shield each man carried on his left arm provided some protection for the right side of the man next to him. They held their spears at a slight angle, a glittering hedge of death. At a quick estimate Gerran guessed that there were about five hundred of them, mostly human