Crusade Page 26

  Adjusting his coif of mail, the king wiped the sweat from his forehead. The hill itself will help the archers, too, he concluded silently. The field’s long slope will almost certainly slow the Tuigan charge enough for the bowmen to whittle their numbers down a little before the first sally.

  “Your Highness!” a messenger shouted and dropped to his knees behind the king.

  Azoun spun around to see a dirty, panting youth. “What is it, boy?”

  “The barbarians, Your Highness. I seen ’em coming when I was on scout,” the youth reported between gasps. “I raced here as fast as my horse’d carry me.”

  Flipping back a mailed glove, Azoun arched his hand over his eyes and looked to the east. The morning sun was low enough in the sky to be blinding to someone scanning the horizon, and the glare prevented the king from seeing any movement in the distance. Only mile after mile of rolling wild grain, intersected by the dark scar of the trade road, met his anxious eyes. Still, the king didn’t doubt the report, and he immediately told the standard-bearer waiting nearby to signal the army to form battle lines.

  Azoun patted the scout on the head and sent him to his place at the rear of the army, where he’d be ready as a messenger if the need arose. Trailing the standard-bearer and a few knights behind him, the king walked to the rear of the lines himself. With the help of a wooden ramp, Azoun mounted his fully barded horse. The white destrier pranced nervously, then trotted to the front lines under the king’s guidance.

  As Azoun watched, a few soldiers scattered caltrops over the field far in front of the Alliance’s lines. These spiked metal balls, like the wooden barricades that also littered the field, were meant to slow a cavalry charge. All along the first line, the men tightened the straps on their leather armor or shifted under the weight of their hauberks of chain mail. Spear points and pike blades glinted in the morning sunlight as the weapons sat on the ground near their owners, who also rested in anticipation of the conflict. Wineskins passed surreptitiously from man to man as the waiting began.

  The experienced campaigners knew that a period of tense expectation, when the lines were formed but the enemy had yet to charge, would be part of the battle that day. They took the delay in stride. Many listened to the sergeants and captains barking orders or tossing encouragement to the men. Others heard the murmur of hushed, worried conversations, and, closing their eyes, dreamed that they were in a tavern far from this particular battlefield. Whatever they did, the soldiers who had seen a large battle before tried their best not to look for the Tuigan on the horizon.

  They knew that the enemy would come soon enough.

  In fact, it was only one half-hour after the king had signaled the lines to form that the dust from the Tuigan advance became visible, even against the bright morning sun. The signal to prepare for assault rippled through the standards, and the men got slowly to their feet. Last gulps of wine were swallowed, and prayers were quickly murmured. The more hardened mercenaries placed final bets on the number of men they might kill or how many hours the fight might take. Most of the soldiers simply stood and stared at the dark line growing across the horizon.

  “Can you see how they’re arrayed?” Azoun asked the armored horseman to his right.

  As infantry commander, Farl’s position for the start of the battle was near the king, to the rear of the first line. He squinted at the enemy troops rushing toward them and, after a moment, shook his head. “I can’t tell from this distance.” Farl’s horse shifted nervously beneath him, and he steadied it with a pat on the flank. “If there are as many warriors as you said, their front isn’t long enough for them to be riding in less than two, perhaps three lines.”

  Fear knotted Azoun’s stomach, and he suddenly knew why the men had been so quiet, so tense in the hours before the battle. The king’s work had kept his mind occupied with hundreds of details, and his position had called on him to make a myriad of decisions, all of which drew his attention away from the reality of the conflict. As Azoun sat on his destrier, watching the Tuigan advance, he knew with horrible certainty the battle that might end his life was charging toward him at a fast gallop.

  Azoun glanced at the helmet in his hands. The basinet was ovoid, with a high point at the summit that tapered to the ornate gold rim of the Cormyrian war crown. “In a battle against Zhentil Keep this crown might guarantee my safety,” he said vaguely as he slid the helmet over his coif of mail. “But the khahan has expressed a wish to make my skull into a cup, so I suppose this makes me stand out more than a full purse at a thieves’ guild meeting.”

  Having been in many battles before, though none nearly as monumental as the one that faced him now, Farl Bloodaxe recognized the fear in the king’s voice. That’s good, he thought. Fear keeps men alive in war.

  He didn’t tell that to Azoun. Instead, the infantry commander leaned close and said, “Thom once told me a story of an ancient Cormyrian king who fought a glorious battle against an enemy who outnumbered him twelve-to-one.”

  Frowning, Azoun slid his visor closed. “I’ve heard that story, too, Farl. The king and all his knights but one die in the conflict. Hardly a tale to lighten our moods.”

  “Our odds are far better, Your Highness,” Farl said, closing the visor on his own helmet. “We’re only outnumbered three-to-one. At least a dozen of us should make it back to Cormyr.” With a flourish he drew his sword and bowed it in salute to the king.

  Beneath his helmet, Azoun chuckled. He meant to return a witty retort to his friend’s dark humor, but when he glanced at the Tuigan line, it was closer than he had expected. The signal went out again to prepare for first assault. Pikes and spears bristled from the Alliance’s first rank, and the tension in the air made the whole army grow as tight as the string on a longbow.

  The formation of the Tuigan charge was clear now, but the sun at the enemy’s back and the high, waving grain sometimes hid the horsewarriors from Azoun’s sight. As Farl had guessed, the khahan had organized his men into three rough lines, each about three men deep. Azoun was amazed that the barbarians managed to maintain a straight, orderly charge as they raced across the plain. If Lord Harcourt can see the precision with which the Tuigan are advancing, the king decided, he’s probably modified his opinion of them considerably.

  At a few hundred yards, the bulk of the enemy reined in their horses and stopped. A group about half the size of the Army of the Alliance, perhaps fifteen thousand men, raced forward. A steady rumble of drums accompanied the heavy thunder of their horses’ hooves pounding the ground.

  “They’re going to test the line!” Farl shouted, waving his sword in the air. The first line gripped their shields a little tighter and braced their polearms for the impact. In the second rank, captains bellowed orders to the archers, who tested the pull of their bowstrings one last time.

  Azoun shifted in the saddle to get a better look at the four groups of archers, then drew his sword. The king could see Brunthar Elventree’s standard—the mace, spear, and chain symbol of Battledale in gold upon red cloth—at the rear of the closest formation of bowmen. Like all the groups of archers, the dalesman’s was fortified with dozens of long, sharpened stakes. The palisade formed a wall of spikes that tilted down the hill, ready to repulse an enemy charge.

  The king gave the signal for the archers to fire when ready, and Brunthar’s standard wavered in the light wind crossing the field. Six thousand archers drew their bows as one and leaned back, seemingly to point their arrows at the low-hanging sun.

  Just as Azoun turned to the battlefield again, the archers fired. Six thousand arrows sliced through the air, and the thunder of the Tuigan advance was momentarily drowned out by the hollow whistle of the deadly missiles. After arcing up into the sky the arrows seemed to hang at the zenith of their flight, then, in an instant, they dropped onto the charging barbarians.

  The black curtain reached the Tuigan charge about one hundred yards from the Alliance’s front rank. Hundreds of horses tumbled into the grass, screaming in pain, t
ossing their riders under the hooves of other charging steeds. Some arrows struck the riders themselves, often killing their targets instantly. In all, the first volley dropped almost one tenth of the entire charge. This heavy toll might have been a surprise, had not the barbarians’ orderly advance made them easy targets for the skilled western longbowmen.

  The attack seemed to surprise the charging horsewarriors, for some of them faltered momentarily. The majority of the Tuigan line galloped on, however, leaping their horses over the dead and wounded on the battlefield. And as the charge picked up speed, another sound rang out over the field: a shrill war cry. The Tuigan screeched their rage at the Alliance as they hurtled forward, brandishing their bows over their heads in defiance.

  When the horsewarriors were a little more than fifty yards away, Brunthar Elventree signaled the archers to fire again. Another swarm of arrows sliced through the air, the sound of their passing contending with the war cry in the ears of the western troops. At this relatively short range, the longbows did even more damage to the massed Tuigan troops. Thousands of horses and soldiers sprouted brightly fletched arrows. Their shouts of shock and pain wavered under the shrill war cry.

  “Ready for assault,” Azoun said, and the signal was passed. At the right and left flanks, the armored noblemen who made up the majority of the cavalry readied their weapons and anxiously held their horses in place. In the second rank, Brunthar gave the signal to fire at will, and arrows sailed over Azoun’s head in squalls.

  The Tuigan reined in their horses and fired their strong short bows. Thousands of arrows bit into the western lines. Azoun reflexively threw his shield up, and he heard two arrows strike it with surprising force. Luckily, the Tuigan seemed to take aim at the front ranks, where many of the men had shields, too. Still, what sounded like a single pained groan went up around Azoun as some of the missiles found their mark.

  “Signal the mages!” Farl cried at Azoun’s side.

  The king lowered his shield and looked to the Tuigan lines. If the infantry commander had been able to see Azoun’s face, he would have seen a look of shock; the horsewarriors were wheeling their swift little horses about and fleeing. “We should save the wizards for when we really need them,” the king shouted. He pointed at the retreating enemy. “What’s going on?” The Tuigan fired over their shoulders occasionally, but it seemed as if they were running away.

  Farl flipped back his visor. His face, too, was a mask of surprise. “That had to be a test,” he ventured. “Maybe they didn’t know the range of our bows or what kind of battle magic we had.”

  A hearty cry went up from the Army of the Alliance. The king signaled the archers to cease fire and watched as a much-weakened group of riders rejoined the khahan’s army. “Losses?” Azoun asked as he lifted his own visor.

  After scanning the field for a moment, Farl said, “They lost four, perhaps even five thousand. We wounded more than that.” He shook his head. “The khahan must care very little for his men to condone that kind of carnage for a test.”

  “Or his men think highly enough of him to go to it willingly,” Azoun corrected. “Save for an instant when our first volley hit them, they didn’t pause. This was a familiar drill for them.” He looked across his own first rank. “Have the captains tally our losses. We may just frighten them off.”

  The dead were counted as they were dragged out of line, and the king was relieved to find that only about three hundred had been killed in the first assault. The thought of any men dying under his command troubled Azoun, but he pushed those guilty thoughts aside.

  The wounded were far more numerous, but many of the arrow wounds required only simple dressings or minor healing spells. Most of the wounded bragged about their new badges of honor or invited their neighbors in the ranks to see where the Tuigan arrows had pierced their shields or split their leather jerkins. The sergeants let this nervous bravado continue as the minutes of waiting for a new assault wore into an hour, and the sun rose high over the field.

  By midday, crows began to flock to the battlefield. The corpses of the Tuigan horses and soldiers slain in the first assault lay in the field, growing cold in the sunlight. Many of the less-traveled soldiers in the Alliance were shocked to find the birds gathered so quickly. Some even spoke of the dark-winged scavengers as a bad omen or the result of evil sorcery. The experienced mercenaries knew the crows were neither of these things. The large black birds, so common in fields throughout Faerun, were like any other animal; food attracted them, and a battle always proved to be a seemingly endless source of carrion for their greedy beaks.

  Still, the crows’ steady cawing unnerved some of the troops. Brunthar had to discipline a few archers for wasting arrows by shooting at the birds, and Farl found himself yelling at a member of the king’s guard for betting on which Tuigan body the birds would land on next.

  At last someone shouted, “Here they come again!” A murmur of odd relief ran through the western lines.

  “By Torm’s mailed fist,” Farl said, “they’re scouting us again!” He slammed his visor down and raised his shield on his arm.

  The crows quickly leaped in to the air, out of the path of the galloping horses. Azoun attempted to ignore the coarse squawking as he gazed out upon the advancing Tuigan line. There were perhaps twice as many riders charging toward the Alliance as last time. The odds were now even.

  As before, the longbows rained arrows on the Tuigan charge twice before the horsewarriors stopped. Azoun then ordered Brunthar to have the archers attack in unison again as the barbarians turned to fire. This third sheet of arrows, launched just as the khahan’s men were readying to fire themselves, had a terrible impact. Not only did the attack take a toll in Tuigan lives, it spoiled many of the mounted archers’ shots. But this wasn’t the only surprise the king had prepared for the second Tuigan charge.

  As the horsewarriors reined in their mounts fifty yards from the Alliance’s front rank and the longbowmen launched their own counterattack, the wizards entered the war.

  With a crackling hiss, over two hundred flaring balls of fire leaped from the rear of the western army’s ranks and struck the Tuigan charge. Like liquid, the fireballs splashed against the horsewarriors, killing hundreds and horribly burning many more. Had the field not been dampened by recent rains, a massive wildfire would have spread from the attack. As it was, blazes broke out all around the barbarians’ line, sending thick black smoke coiling across the field.

  Unaccustomed to such an awesome use of magic, many of the Tuigan faltered. Panicked horsemen wheeled their steeds about for a retreat or tried to fire their bows as ordered. The Alliance’s archers loosed another volley, and a few of the wizards behind them completed a more complicated incantation begun a few moments earlier.

  In twenty-eight spots along the Tuigan charge, the ground burst up, showering the horsewarriors with earth and uprooted grass. In each of those ravaged places, a massive creature of stone climbed out of the ground, swinging huge fists of rock and dirt. The stone creatures had cold, expressionless faces and eyes made of sparkling gems that reflected the fires still growing around the enemy.

  Azoun sat motionless as the earth elementals lumbered into the Tuigan line, scattering horses and soldiers. From ten to fifteen feet tall, the creatures found it easy to dash the troops from their path, and the Tuigan arrows had little effect on their hard, rocky bodies.

  Rays of glittering golden dust and swarms of glowing blue darts accompanied the arrows that rained down on the retreating enemy. The Army of the Alliance shouted out their victory as the Tuigan wheeled in the burning field and tried to escape the shambling monsters and shower of magic that drove them from their horses and crushed them into the earth.

  “They didn’t even have a chance to fire a second time,” the king said to Farl. He raised his sword high into the air and added his voice to the army’s triumphant cry.

  The infantry commander shouted something the king could not hear. After an instant, Farl flipped up his visor a
nd slapped Azoun on the shoulder. “Your Highness, look!”

  Following the general’s outstretched arm, the king saw what so upset Farl. Far to the right, the Alliance’s cavalry was breaking from the flank, sweeping in on the retreating Tuigan line. “By the gods,” the king whispered, the color draining from his face. Lord Harcourt’s banner charged through the ranks of cavalry as they raced toward the fleeing enemy.

  After an instant of hesitation, the king grabbed his own standard and shouted, “Call them back!” to the young knight carrying it. The king’s banner, emblazoned with the purple dragon of Cormyr, ordered a retreat. The signal was to no avail; the nobles continued their charge.

  “What does Harcourt think he’s doing?” Azoun cried bitterly to no one in particular. “Has he gone mad?”

  The cavalry meant to guard the left flank saw its counterpart’s charge and followed suit. In helpless anguish, the king watched the silver dots he knew to be armored knights race across the field and cut off the Tuigan retreat. Some of the fighting was obscured by smoke, but it was clear that the better armored western nobles were having an easy time wiping out what little remained of the broken Tuigan charge.

  A messenger, sweaty from an obviously furious dash through the lines, made his way to the king’s side. “Words from Lord Harcourt,” he said, neither bowing to nor saluting the monarch.

  Azoun shook a mailed fist at the boy. “What’s going on?” he snapped. “Why did he charge?”

  “Th-the nobles, sire. They, uh—”

  Seeing the fear in the messenger’s eyes made Azoun realize what he was doing, and he tried to calm himself. His face still red with anger, the king said, “The message, boy. Don’t be afraid.”