And all the while, the two parties of shooters on the flanks of the army continued to single out individual Wargals in the attack force and kill them.
“More arrows!” Halt shouted. He’d emptied his quiver in the first few minutes. An orderly ran forward with a canvas bag full of shafts. He placed it against a wooden stand by Halt’s side and flipped the cover aside. Instantly, Halt began selecting arrows, nocking, drawing and shooting.
And more Wargals fell before the vicious onslaught.
He heard several other Rangers call for arrows. In the heat and confusion of battle, there was no time for tailor-made shafts. Everyone shot standard-length arrows and adjusted their aiming point as well as they could. From the rear, he heard the whooshing rush as Wearne’s men released another plunging barrage.
And still the Wargals came on, lurching and chanting, into the storm of arrows that greeted them. There may have been only twenty Rangers shooting, but their ability to shoot rapidly seemed to magnify their numbers. The Wargals had never faced such a deadly arrow storm before. As they had raided across the southwest of Araluen, they had encountered a few archers. But their discipline and rate of shooting was nothing like this. These grim-faced, gray-cloaked figures kept up a nonstop, accurate barrage.
But still the Wargals came on, not knowing what else to do.
And therein lay the weakness of Morgarath’s Wargal force. It took the Black Lord some time to outline their targets for them and to set them on a course toward the enemy. They would fight doggedly to attain the goals he set. But they were inflexible in the face of the unexpected. Their minds were blanked by the fury of the battle, and it was difficult for him to penetrate their brutish consciousness with new or revised objectives. Once engaged, they would blindly follow his initial orders and respond only to the simplest changes.
He could set them on a path—order them to attack or to retreat. But he couldn’t change the direction or the nature of their attack. He couldn’t direct them in intricate tactical maneuvers or give them conditional orders—if Plan A doesn’t work, go to Plan B. They were a blunt weapon, and their basic technique was the frontal attack. Once he ordered them forward, they would continue, in spite of the fact that Halt, Crowley and the other Rangers were ripping huge holes in their ranks. The Wargals had been ordered to attack the center of the Araluen line and they would continue to do so until there were none of them left.
They didn’t even have the initiative to direct some of their numbers to the flanks where the Rangers were situated. They continued forward, intent only on breaking the Araluen line and killing the King.
Morgarath watched, appalled, as twenty Rangers shot his attack to pieces. Already, he had lost at least a hundred and twenty troops in this attack, and they hadn’t yet closed with the main army.
He had no sense of compassion for the Wargals who had died for him. They were nothing more than a tool for him to use. But he knew he couldn’t continue to lose troops at this rate for much longer. Already, more than ten percent of his army lay sprawled, dead or dying, on the slope. The grass ran red with their blood.
Another commander might have called them back, ordered them to retreat. But Morgarath watched them advance and die with a pitiless eye. They had less than twenty meters to go before they reached the Araluen defenses. And there were still a hundred of them in the line. Given any luck, they might just break through the palisade and kill Duncan and his senior officers.
He closed his eyes, concentrated fiercely and sent out a mental command to them.
Kill. Kill. And kill again.
As his order reached them, the Wargals surged forward with a new determination, clambering down into the ditch, then up the other side, shouldering their way past the sharpened spikes set to slow them down. They could see the enemy now, and their minds were filled with their commander’s order. Some of them lost all sense of the discipline and fighting methods that Morgarath had instilled into them in the past months. They reverted to wild, primitive beasts, casting aside their shields and weapons, and lunged for the defenders, seeking to kill them with their savage claws and massive yellow fangs.
They were met by an impregnable hedge of steel-pointed spears, thrusting at them, tearing into them, then withdrawing to thrust again.
Those who did manage to get past the spears found themselves facing shields and swords and axes as the defenders met them, their blades glittering in the sunshine, then suddenly turning red as they struck home.
But now the fighting wasn’t so one-sided. The Wargals might have had no answer to the withering arrow storm that tore their numbers apart as they mounted the hill. But they were fearsome hand-to-hand fighters. And they knew no fear. They struck out at their enemies even as they were dying, knowing only one thing—they were ordered to kill and keep killing.
There were fewer than eighty left from the two hundred who had set out from the base of the hill. But now they were making their presence felt as the soldiers of Araluen were forced back and battered to the ground. The snarls of the massive beasts filled the air. In a one-on-one contest, they were stronger than most of the soldiers they faced, and what they lacked in skill they made up in brute force.
They were in behind the hedge of sharpened stakes now, and slowly the line facing them began to buckle as they struck and snarled and bit and slashed with swords and claws in a frenzy of savagery and hatred.
Arald saw it first. Saw the line of defenders weakening, saw the uncertainty growing as the Wargals simply refused to give way, refused to die. Many of them had blood streaming from what should have been mortal wounds. But they continued to surge forward, snarling, snapping, striking.
Arald, Duncan and David had been observing the battle from a raised mound just behind the lines, directing reinforcements to points where the integrity of the defenses was threatened. Now Arald realized there was no time to order anyone else forward. He drew his sword, set his shield on his arm and lowered his visor. Then he plunged down from the mound and raced into the milling mass of enemy troops.
His long sword was a glittering circle of light as he swung and hacked and stabbed at the Wargals, cutting them down like a scythe cuts through chaff. Some of them turned to face him. But, fierce and heavily muscled as they were, they were no match for him. He was a champion warrior. He was strong and powerfully built and he was trained to use his weight and strength to best advantage. He plowed into them, hacking and shoving. He used his shield as a weapon, striking with its steel edge at their faces and necks and arms. When they got inside the shield and the long sword, he used his helmet, head-butting them and sending them reeling. And all the time, that dreadful sword continued to rise and fall and dart forward.
For a few seconds, he fought alone, surrounded by the black beasts. Then he felt a movement beside him and Sir David was there, wielding a terrible two-handed battleax that smashed and hammered through the Wargals, beating down their defenses, shattering bones and severing limbs.
The two knights fought shoulder to shoulder, hacking their way through the Wargal ranks. Then they were joined by a third juggernaut as King Duncan thrust forward beside them, his sword never seeming to pause as he slashed and thrust at Morgarath’s troops, cutting them down.
As the soldiers of Araluen saw the three nobles smash into the Wargal ranks, they found new heart. And when they realized one of the new attackers was the King himself, a veteran corporal bellowed an order.
“To the King! The King! Help the King!”
And twenty men surged forward, striking the Wargals from an oblique angle.
The fur-covered, apelike creatures fell and died, struck by the twin onslaught. But true to their kind, they never gave in. They never gave way to fear. Morgarath had given them no such option. Intent on the chance that they might reach Duncan and kill him, the Lord of Rain and Night kept them fighting to the last Wargal.
Literally.
The last one fell, fittingly, to a savage thrust from Arald’s sword. As the creature crumpled and fell to one side, the Baron of Redmont stepped back, swaying wearily, and raised his visor. Around him, the soldiers cheered. They had watched in awe as he fought his way single-handed through the Wargals. He leaned on his sword and scanned the battlefield. Around him, the ground was littered with Wargal bodies. Many of the men of the Araluen army had paid the price as well.
But the losses to Morgarath’s forces were horrifying. In one engagement, he had risked—and lost—twenty percent of his forces.
The Baron of Redmont met the King’s eye. Arald’s face and arms and clothes were covered in the blood of the beasts he’d killed. He smiled weakly, looking round at the carnage that surrounded them.
“I think Morgarath’s going to have to change his tactics,” he said.
30
AS THE DEFENDERS REGAINED THEIR BREATH AND TENDED TO the wounded and dying, a deathly hush fell over the body-strewn battlefield.
The Wargals were simple-minded creatures and they had been molded by Morgarath’s superior intellect to respond without question to his orders. In battle, they were seized by a red rage. They fought without mercy and without regard for their own losses. As Halt had remarked, they would clamber over the bodies of their fallen comrades to reach their enemies. They fought with one overarching idea—to kill the enemies Morgarath directed them against.
In years to come, Morgarath would refine and perfect his mental control over the arcane creatures. But at this time, his dominance over them was clumsy and without subtlety. As long as battle was joined, they would respond to his simple, direct commands—basically, go forward or retreat, and kill or be killed.
But once the rage of battle had died, their traditional attitudes and values reasserted themselves. They were an ancient race, with strong tribal bonds. They had existed and developed far from the sight of man—and from his interference—for thousands of years.
Now hundreds of them had been killed in the space of a few hours. Their simple minds were unable to articulate the fact, but they felt the loss—and felt it deeply.
The close-knit clans and families within their ranks had all lost members during the terrible advance up Ashdown Cut. They sensed the loss—sensed it at the most primitive level. And with that loss they began to feel a distrust for the Black Lord who commanded them. It would take him hours to reassert his control over them. In the meantime, the Wargals shambled about their campsite in a haze of grief. They pushed and prodded at the bedrolls in the empty tents where their companions had been. They asserted their grief in low, deep-throated moans.
Unsure of their intentions, or what their reactions might be to the disaster that had befallen them, Morgarath’s human soldiers gave them a wide berth. Early on, several of his subordinate commanders had attempted to shove them into a formation. They were met with snarls and bared fangs and hastily backed off.
Morgarath eyed his bestial troops with suspicion. He sensed he would have to leave them time to overcome their feelings of grief, and their mistrust of him as a commander. He ordered his men to withdraw from the Wargals’ tent lines and to wait until their disturbed minds had settled down. Bitterly, he realized that he would have to change tactics in their next attack. He couldn’t afford to lose troops at this rate. And if he persisted with his frontal attacks, he risked losing control of his army altogether. Better to wait, let them grieve, let them come to terms with their losses, then reassert his dominance over them. He would start with kindness and understanding, then gradually move to rebuilding a fierce, mindless hatred for the Araluen leadership—in particular, the King.
It would take time, he knew, and he cursed the fact. But it was unavoidable.
And besides, that time would give him the opportunity he needed to plan a new method of attack—one that would nullify the deadly hail of arrows that the Rangers had used to lash his troops.
• • •
By mid-afternoon, Duncan’s army was ready to withdraw from Ashdown Cut. He was loath to delay their departure, but he had let his men rest in sections, allowing them to snatch several hours’ sleep. Although they had been engaged for only a short period, the strain of combat quickly depletes a man’s physical reserves.
So the men rested, then rose and ate their cold rations. Their company commanders began to form them up behind the defensive ground they had prepared. The slope of the hill flattened out here and the resultant dead ground hid their preparations from the enemy army on the flat land below.
They had won a significant victory here at the Cut. In all probability, Morgarath would not expect them to withdraw from such a strong and successful position. The command team agreed that it was highly unlikely the Black Lord would attempt another frontal assault that same day. His army had been too badly mauled in the first encounter. Even from their position high on the slope, they could see how disorganized the Wargal army was. The beasts seemed to have lost any sense of purpose. They shambled without purpose through the uneven tent lines and the watchers on the hill could hear their tragic keening as they mourned their dead.
“Fire the hillside,” Duncan ordered. Northolt stepped up onto the earth mound behind the palisade of sharpened stakes. At either end of the line, small groups of men were standing by the two large oil barrels. He put his fingers in his mouth and let out a piercing whistle, gaining their attention. Then he made a rolling motion with his arm and the men bent and tipped the heavy barrels on their sides.
Instantly, the thick, glutinous oil began to chug out of the bung holes in the top of each cask. It gurgled down across the packed earth for a meter or so, then found the V-shaped trenches and began to run downhill more rapidly.
As the last few liters ran out, Northolt gave another signal. Two of the men at each post had flint and steel ready. In a matter of seconds, they had a fire burning. They dipped torches into the flames, waited till they caught, then set them into the oil at the top of the diagonal ditches.
The fire flared up, red and angry, with black smoke billowing above it. The flames ran down the hillside from either side of the line, setting the grass beside the ditches alight as it went. It reached the cross ditch, where the first of the Wargals had come to grief, and flared higher as it caught the pooled oil in the base of the ditch. The flames spread from the oil itself to the dried grass and branches that had concealed the ditch, then caught on the grass and bushes on the hillside itself.
Within a few minutes, the breadth of the hill was burning fiercely, and billows of thick, dark-gray smoke rose up as the flames began to eat their way steadily downhill.
“Let’s go,” said Duncan. He smiled grimly. The towering smoke and the vivid flames would hide their departure from the hilltop. By the time the flames had died down, they would be long gone on the road to Hackham Heath, with Morgarath none the wiser.
Northolt caught Duncan’s expression and raised an eyebrow. “Something amusing you, sir?”
Duncan turned to him and urged his horse a little closer so he could speak comfortably to his battle master. “I just had a vision of Morgarath driving his men up the hill again tomorrow, only to find we’re no longer here.”
Northolt frowned as he shared the thought. “Let’s hope he doesn’t find out until tomorrow,” he said. “There’s always the chance that he’ll attack again today.”
“I doubt it,” Duncan said. “His troops are totally demoralized.” He paused, then added, “As well they might be.”
• • •
The twenty Rangers, now riding as a single group, were the last to leave the hilltop at Ashdown Cut. They were to form a rearguard, setting ambushes at suitable locations to delay the pursuing army.
“Let’s make every valley, every hill, every bend in the road a potential killing ground,” Crowley had told them. “We’ll hit and run—five arrows each, all aimed shots. We’ll force Morgarath to deploy into a
defensive formation, then we’ll get out before his men can make contact. That way, they’ll start to be wary of every bend, every grove of trees, every spot along the way where we might be waiting in ambush.”
With their swift and tireless horses, there was little risk that the ambushers would be caught by Morgarath’s forces. They could wait till the last minute, then skip away, rapidly outdistancing any pursuers.
Their first selected spot was a point where the road led through a heavily wooded forest. The trees grew down to within twenty meters of the road, their densely growing branches providing perfect cover for the camouflaged shooters.
They selected shooting positions either side of the road. The Wargals would pass within forty meters of the concealed bowmen. The party on the left would shoot first, driving the Wargals into cover on the right side of the road, where they would be enfiladed by the second party. Each Ranger would shoot five arrows, then mount and gallop away. If any Wargals or any of Morgarath’s human troops followed, the Rangers would wait until they were strung out along the road, then stop and begin shooting again.
“With any luck, we should account for forty or fifty of them,” Crowley said.
In fact, their score was nil. The Wargals didn’t come.
Puzzled, Crowley sent Berwick and Lewin to reconnoiter their back trail. After several hours, the two Rangers returned, their cantering horses covering the ground at a rapid clip.
“They’re still in their camp at Ashdown Cut,” Berwick told a surprised Crowley. “They’re milling about, making that keening noise. They haven’t struck their tents or loaded their baggage train. It’ll be hours before they’re ready to move out after us.”
“What about Morgarath?” Halt asked. “What’s he doing?”
“He’s sitting outside his pavilion with a group of his officers, just waiting,” Lewin told him.
Crowley and Halt exchanged puzzled glances. “Waiting for what?” Halt asked.