Chapter 72 #5
To her left, she watches a bunch of lads rush forwards, shields out and clubs hurling. Trying to get around the sides of that big block. Stupid, stupid.
She shouts a warning, watches hopelessly as Thell’s formation shudders, the front rank dropping to their knees and raising shields, as those behind sprint up that tilted metal, arcing down onto the charging Astic lads.
Screams, the crush of bodies and spear-points driven down like the beaks of seabirds.
Then the entire phalanx charges. Those overeager lads and lasses are crushed against shields from above and in front, as spears lick out with terrifying speed.
It’s over in seconds. Twenty brave boys dead, and the rest crumble and run.
Sandsinger’s stomach turns, but she forces herself to run a weather eye over the rhythm of it all.
It’s deadly, but the more she watches, the more she sees the flow of Thell’s formation pulling their soldiers forwards into the barrows.
She glances at the woman next to her, raises an eyebrow.
‘We could string ’em like we practiced.’
The woman grins, spits out a loose tooth. ‘We could.’
Sandsinger taps her shoulder. ‘Signal the others. Tell them we’re raising ratlines.’
The woman nods, ducks behind a shield and pulls out a ship’s whistle. Three short blasts over the field, piercing as a fishwife’s call.
‘Sounds just enough like a retreat,’ Slickwalker had said with a smile, when they’d drilled it out a few days ago. ‘They don’t know us. They’ll expect us to run.’
As Sandsinger’s poor battered boys hear the signal they break and run. A beat later, the rest of Astic’s line follows, haring back to the barrows like they’re done with dying.
Sandsinger runs with them, the lightning at her back, muttering under her breath with every red-lit step. ‘Charge, you fuckers, charge.’
For the first time since the gods died, her prayers are answered.
She hears the roar of Thell’s bloodletters rise behind her, oscillating up to an eagle’s shriek, the earth suddenly shaking with the thunder of their charging feet, loud enough that her old bellweather of a heart nearly stops in her chest.
Above the terror though, a glee she’s not felt in years. ‘Fell for it, you rock-sucking twits.’
She grabs the signaller’s wrist. ‘Ratlines up on three.’
Sandsinger can feel Thell’s soldiers behind her, harrying Astic’s front line back into the barrows.
A quick glance over her shoulder and she can see their spear-points reaching out for her back.
Nearly a full third of the force guarding the gate has pelted off after them, hungry for blood like a dog after a rat.
The signaller’s whistle goes up. Three short blasts.
They have about twenty feet on them, just enough.
All along the Astic line, fleet-footed fisherfolk dart back towards the barrow mounds, a couple of men and women from each cadre peeling off and spanning either side of the defiles that thread the cairns, trailing something thin in their hands as they slip low around splintered prayer-flags and outbuildings.
Hands held high, steady, feet braced against the rock and earth.
The rest of Astic’s troops pelt down the cuts between barrows, Thell’s spear throwers a beat behind. As they reach the hump of the cairns, Sandsinger and the rest throw themselves to one side. Then the ratlines are raised.
An Astic ratline is a thin thing, boat-wire, clear as spider-silk, and stronger still. Each strand wound around ten others, thin as baby’s hair. Light enough to trick the eye. Strong enough to string sails against the storm.
Strung at head height, just enough to catch the front line of tattooed warriors across the throat, the chest. It doesn’t do much to them, but they stumble, skidding in the mud.
The lads at their back can’t stop fast enough, ramming into them in a tangle of limbs and curses.
The wire doesn’t give, of course. It’s held up to East Tide gales and West Tide whirlpools.
So, as they struggle, that’s when the other ratline closes in at their backs, dragged forwards by another couple of crafty greycloaks, penning them in, pressing them together with the weight of their own bodies.
All down the line, all those forays jammed into the low defiles between the barrows like crabs in a bucket.
Sandsinger watches, crouched in the mud, her nose half-submerged by the torn body of one of her lads.
She can smell his blood mixed into melting frost water.
These Thell boys are tough. As soon as they see they can’t go forwards or back, they start for the sides of the barrows.
She remembers Slickwalker’s dark little smile, even as she rises.
His whisper in her head. ‘After the ratlines, the nets.’
A croaked order brings all her good lads and lasses, all of them not hauling with gristle and gut on the ratlines, rising up the side of the barrows and throwing the shoal nets.
Dark things, thick and heavy as a wet wool cloak, weighted with sharp shore rock.
Back home, they used them to trap creelbreakers, but they’ve got a different catch today.
The nets settle over upraised spears, heads and arms, tangling everything, pulling inexorably down.
Spears can’t swing, shields can’t raise, all snared up like sprats in a jar.
As they realise their predicament, some of the Thell boys start to scream.
Sandsinger steels her heart and gives the order. ‘Clubs out, my brave ones.’
Astic’s troops swarm the trapped soldiers, covered and camouflaged bodies rising up from the hillside like cormorants.
Blackwood clubs smash through the tangled mess of net and rope, crushing bones and snapping fingers.
Boathooks come in under the mess, taking out calves and tendons in ragged, howling strokes.
Sandsinger swings again and again, dodging blades that flash by her eyes.
They’re not all so lucky. Overconfident, some of them, eager for payback.
A few get caught on spear-points, pulled back into the whole screaming mess.
She grits her teeth, spits the blood of strangers out of her mouth and keeps swinging.
Slowly, each trapped phalanx is battered to the ground, collapsing in on itself.
Deaths by the score, and the punch of broken bone echoing over the Barrowlands.
All along the line, Sandsinger watches the people of Astic take their revenge, Thell’s charge foundering in a mess of snares.
A full third of the gate guard are down in the mud, dragging themselves helplessly from clubs that fall like wet rocks.
The storm doesn’t tell friend from foe either.
Lightning hammers into the middle of each struggling clot, sending bodies sprawling, filling the air with the stench of cooked meat.
On the battlements, and at the gate, Kinghammer and his generals see what’s happening to their army. There’s only one way it can go after this. A low, sonorous bell tolls out, and the hail of spears from above stops.
High on his perch, Slickwalker mutters a curse, and darts for the gates. On the ground below, Sandsinger wipes off her club, and turns wearily towards the mountain. ‘Shit.’
From outside the gates of Thell, the remaining guards charge. Another two hundred warriors fanning out into a precise line, shields locked, spears levelled. No rash moves this time. They’ve learnt their lesson. A steady advance, and Sandsinger sees only death at the end of it.
She looks for Crowkisser, spying her for a moment, standing tall atop a barrow, staring fixedly at something on the battlements high above – that ragged, ribboned bastard from before.
Then she’s not got time for anything but meeting the charge.
Dragging her lads and lasses back into formation, straightening shields and propping them up as best she can.
Between her group and the others, they form as solid a wall as half a hundred tired fisherfolk can manage, blocking the low ground between the barrows, keeping the raised mounds of the buried dead to their left and right, plugging the gaps in their line.
Sandsinger counts in her head as Thell’s soldiers charge closer.
Maybe a hundred of them headed her way, and she makes just fifty of her greycloaks.
A few bright slashes as the reserves from Sedge and Fallow come up, and what’s left of their second line comes forwards, but that’s it.
They’re near enough evenly matched, which is bad.
Slickwalker’s stopped firing, so he must be getting ready to blow the gate, but there’s a lot of murderous bastards between them and the mountain.
Fifty feet. The drum of their steps against the plain. She can feel it in her chest.
Forty feet. Their war cries high and bright as eagles. She wants to be anywhere but here.
Thirty feet. She can see their faces. The eyes behind their shields, their tattooed skin.
She calls out, ‘Steady!’ and she’s amazed there’s still strength in her voice.
Thell’s warriors break into a run, and Sandsinger falls quiet, except for a low murmur she keeps at the back of her lips. ‘Not today.’ She grips her club tight, hanging in a moment of wood-sweat breath, before the lines meet with a crash that echoes over the mountain.
Bodies are driven into the grass. A shudder goes through their shield wall like a wounded animal.
A fisherboy with barely seventeen summers under his belt finds himself staggering backwards, pinned to the mossy side of a barrow.
He doesn’t even know why until he looks down and sees the spear shining red in his chest.