With her, Alain retreated, but only to form up the line around him—around her. Where the shields parted, where the line buckled or men’s spirits wavered, he had only to go, the shadow to her light, and she would go there as well. In her wake men’s spirits lifted, and they fought with renewed ferocity, shouting his name: “Lord Alain! Lord Alain!”
For where she stood, where Alain was, no charge could succeed. But even the Lady of Battles could not succeed against the thousands, the endless onslaught of savage Eika and their ravening dogs.
The Eika surged forward. Drums pounded until he could hear nothing above them, not even the clash of shield and sword, not even the screams of the wounded or the howling of dogs. He could not be everywhere at once, and where he was not, the line gave way.
The Eika came on and on up the hill from all sides, and soon all sides were hard-pressed. The drums boomed. With a sudden shift of rhythm, the force of their reverberation deafened him, and the very hill beneath trembled as the shield wall failed in a dozen places and the battle no longer had order.
It became a melee as men clumped together fighting desperately just to stay alive. Eika flowed in from all sides. Fear clutched at Alain’s throat as he realized how few were still afoot—and those who fell had no chance against the dogs.
Even the Lady stilled, staring. The hounds boiled up to him then, yipping. Sorrow took his tattered tabard in his teeth and dragged him westward and in this way, with the Lady at the point and Alain right behind her, they drove westward step by agonizing step down the hill toward the distant shelter of the western forest. Men fell in beside him and behind him, seeking shelter, seeking safety in what numbers they had left to them, a wedge of men thrusting through the Eika onslaught. With each step they struggled as Eika raged forward. They had no choice but to escape to the woods, for their hill and their camp—and the day—was lost.
All was lost.
He could no longer see the plain, only the horde of Eika surrounding them.
At the point of their wedge, the Lady cut a path westward until they were at the west “gate,” its wagons smashed and dead bodies littering the gap. The drumbeat increased, and with each beat the determination of the Eika to stop them from retreat grew. There, at the ruined gate, their wedge ground to a halt. The sun beat down with the hammer blow of heat.
With a great breath, like a beast so immense that its voice was that of a thousand and more mouths, the Eika shifted, steadied, and howled until the roar of it drove men to their knees under the merciless bright eye of the sun.
Only the Lady blazed bright in answer. And only Alain could see her as, behind her, he lifted his sword in desperation.
“Hold fast!” he cried. “God is with us!”
But no one could hear him.
6
SHE did not count the stairs, only cursed each clank and rustle and whisper from the men behind her. But no Eika waited for them where the stone steps curved upward and opened into the crypt. She stumbled on a gravestone and fell to one knee as the rest came up behind her, emerging one by one into black silence.
Erkanwulf helped her up.
Each least movement or murmured comment fell heavily, weighted by the dampening earth and magnified by the stillness of the waiting dead.
“Hush,” said Lavastine. “Listen.”
They listened but heard nothing but their own breathing.
“Now.” He did not need to speak loudly. In the dim light afforded by torches, ears became keen of hearing. “We must open the gates of Gent. And we must kill Bloodheart, if we are able. My experience of the Eika tells me that they follow a war chief and will fight like dogs among themselves if that leader is dead.”
The tombs lay in dense silence around them. Torchlight made a haze of the air. In the curve of shadow beyond the smoky glow Liath saw a glint of white, recognizable but indistinct.
“Captain Ulric, you will take fifteen men. I will take fifteen men. We must take separate routes for the western gates of Gent. Eagle.” She nodded. “These seven men I leave under your command. As the old stories say: Send a mage to kill a mage.”
“My lord count—!” she protested.
He lifted a hand to silence her. “It is your job to hunt down and kill Bloodheart.”
“Yes, my lord count,” she said obediently. At that instant a torchbearer turned and the glow of the torch spread wings and illuminated the far doorway of this vaulted corner.
Bones. Not safely interred in the sanctity of a tomb but scattered like leaves on the forest floor, the bones littered the far vaults of the crypt, all tumbled together. As she moved cautiously into the next chamber, she knew they were the bones of Dragons. The smell of lime stung her nostrils. The Eika knew to cast lime over the remains. Little putrefaction remained because of clay soil and moisture … and because it had been over a year since the fall of Gent. Skulls grinned at her; open eyes bled pools of blackness. Ribs showed white under tattered tabards and padded gambesons chewed to pieces by rats. Skeleton fingers clutched at her boots and a thighbone rolled under her so she slipped and almost fell.