Empire of Ashes

Chapter LVI - Come and Fight

Dedication to @natulez for always taking the time to drop me a comment <3

I stood on my tiptoes and saw a streak of gold peeking through the helmets, and I could hear him swearing in furious Cambrian. Alive, for the time being. And if Temris was alive ... who wasn't? There were twenty paces between the two armies by then, but it was not enough distance to risk breaking ranks. I had to stand and listen and wait.

"Look at me," Temris was saying. "Keep your eyes open — and that's an order."

The Anglians had stopped retreating. There were faint sounds of retching coming from the back of the army, but it could only have been a dozen men, certainly not reason enough to order a retreat. A mixture of nerves and fear and the spirits men used to borrow courage could often cause such a thing.

At some point, Eirac's arrows had stopped. I didn't like to think about what that might mean, since he had brought enough to feather the entire Anglian army. But the Anglian crossbow assault had slowed, too. They hadn't launched a volley since the retreat for fear of provoking a charge.

A groan of pain and the sound of ragged breathing snapped my attention back to our own shield wall. If Fendur had been even a few inches shorter, I might have been able to see over his shoulder, but as it was, I was as good as blind.

"What the hell is going on?" Anlai demanded. He'd taken a knock to the head at some point in the chaos, and there was blood coating the left side of his face. It didn't look too serious.

Tem simply shook his head at his cousin, and there was something icy in the blue of his eyes which sent a chill running through me.

"Colloe took a spear to the gut," Fendur muttered. "The tip split the boards of his shield."

Oh, for gods' sakes. Of all the people I had expecting to get injured in this battle, Colloe had not been one of them. He had decades of experience but hadn't yet reached the age when he would start to slow — the perfect warrior.

Anlai went unnaturally still beside me. "How bad?"

"Bad," Fendur said quietly. "And the Ragnyr took a wound trying to drag him back into the wall."

"What sort of wound?" I asked.

"Don't know — he's a little busy holding Col's guts in at the moment."

Men were moving in the second rank of the wall, some crouching to help with Colloe. I couldn't glimpse much more than blood and a pale, drawn face disfigured by agony.

"Careful," the old Iyrak murmured. "Forget me, watch ... them."

"The bastards are up to something," Anlai insisted, nodding towards the Anglians. After only a single glance, I agreed wholeheartedly. The retreat was too calm, too composed. "Get him back behind the lines before they decide to attack."

"Aye, cousin, you have the right of it."

It took three men to carry the Iyrak away from the front lines. One for his legs, one for his shoulder, and one to press on the long, jagged tear in his abdomen. It was easy to see where the spear point had gone in — a wider, deeper section just below his ribcage, and from there it had ripped downwards, shredding mail and flesh along the way. An awful wound. A fatal wound.

He clasped hands with Fendur and Tem on his way past, but he didn't manage a smile for either of them, even when there was a good chance he would die before he saw them again. Anlai stood in eerie silence beside me. Honestly, I wasn't entirely sure if they were closer to friends or rivals.

One of the veterans from the second row stepped into Colloe's place and lifted his shield, and the wall closed once again. But Tem's shield was hanging below his waist, and he was fumbling to get a grip on his sword hilt as if there was something amiss — his fingers weren't closing as they should be.