A Sword from Red Ice

Clansmen came at him in hordes, hammers and axes swinging. They had the advantage of high ground and superior maneuverability, but the city men had heavy-gauge plate and four times their numbers. It was hard to remember that in the fray. The sheer relentlessness of the clansmen was something Marafice had not counted on. You wounded a man, he should fall away. Not clansmen though. They smiled grimly and attacked again.

Marafice became a machine. One mailed fist on the reins to drive the stallion forward, the other on his sword hilt to thrust the blade. At his side Tat Mackelroy was fighting two-handed. In his left hand he braced a spear against his horse's flank, protecting his Protector General's right flank, and in his right he wielded the Rive blade. The reins were between his teeth. Marafice had several occasions to be grateful for his chief aide's spear. Sometimes when a hammer came close to his body he could not see it. There were blind spots with his one good eye.

In the center, Garric Hews and Hog Company had fallen back and then rerallied. This might have been the Whitehog's intention, for it had created space for the clansmen to charge into, which Hews slowly began to close off. Jon Burden had disengaged the west flank and was pursuing the clansmen who were pouring from the outbuildings. It was in the east, in Marafice's turf, that the fighting was fiercest. Clansmen were desperate to break through the Eye's line to reach the shore and save the tower men.

Trapped within the birdhelm, Marafice's sweat began to steam. Between gaps in his stallion's armored plates, lather was rising. He no longer had the time or energy to monitor events on the inch. Perhaps the tower men had risked the door. Perhaps they were still inside. One thing was sure: they were not visibly dead, for the look in the clansmen's faces told him they still hoped to rescue their men.

The day darkened as the battle wore on. Bodies piled up on the field. A man's severed head was rolling between the horses like a kick-ball. The machinists were still launching missiles at the Crab Gate and the outbuildings, cracking stone walls and flattening the odd clansmen. The bowmen had been charged with targeting the lines of clansmen leaving the outbuildings, but the mass exit had ceased and now the bowmen were still. In any other battle they'd be assigned to pick off runaways. But these were clansmen…and clansmen didn't run away.

Marafice's armor was black with blood. The pain in his sword arm was so intensely ingrained that it actually hurt more when he rested it than it did when he just kept thrusting. So he kept thrusting. His voice was hoarse, but he barely knew what he'd been screaming. His line still held, so he imagined he'd been screaming something right. At some point during the long hours of fighting, he realized that the battle had turned in their favor. Hews had successfully drawn out and cut off their center, Jon Burden had killed their side guard, and Marafice's men had held the water margin. All that remained was to finish off. Down the ranks, the foot soldiers and mercenaries already knew this and began a serious push for the Crab Gate.

With the luxury of more time the machinists actually managed to align one of the scorpions perfectly with the double doors, and launched a stone that bowled down the left door. Fossil dust shot up in a great cloud and although Marafice didn't much fancy breathing in those old and freakish remains he knew he didn't really have a choice. He wasn't the only one to spit a lot after that, he noticed.

With the door gone there was no chance of retreat for the clansmen, and the part of Marafice that respected honest fighting men felt for them. It did not prevent him joining the final charge.

As he kicked his horse forward two things happened that seemed strange. The first was the sight of a lone horseman, freshly mounted and lightly armored, galloping along the river and up through the ranks. A Spireman, no doubt about it, and from the looks of his kit some sort of messenger. The army hadn't received word from Spire Vanis in several weeks, and Marafice wondered at the wisdom of a messenger riding onto the battlefield. If the news had waited that long, a couple hours more would make no difference.