Prince of Dogs

Page 229

“My lord Alain.” A soldier gripped his arm and bent with concern over him. “My lord! Here, here! Water for our lord!”
They swarmed around him and for once the hounds sat quiet and allowed the soldiers to bring Alain water, to slide his helm off and wipe his face in cool liquid.
“I never saw a man fight so fiercely!” cried one of his soldiers.
“Aye, we would have been dead if not for you, my lord. You shone with the battle lust, you did!”
He winced and thrust himself up.
“A victory!” they cried, celebrating around him with their cheers. Alain squinted, but most of the fighting was now out of his view. The Eika were routed.
And the Lady of Battles had vanished.
“Come,” he said to the hounds. He began the hike to the top.
“Victory!” sang his soldiers as the horns sounded distantly to announce the king’s arrival on the field.
Eika corpses littered the hillside, but for every Eika who lay dead, one of his own men did, too.
Some few lived, some stirred, groaning, and some few would be dead soon enough, not having been granted the mercy of a quick passage out of life. His hounds pressed round him, Sorrow, Rage, Terror, Steadfast, Ardent, Bliss, and Fear; battered and bloody, they yet lived when so many others had perished, including poor Good Cheer.
He gained the height of the hill at last to find the camp in utter carnage, tents torn down and ripped by the passage of feet and the swell and ebb of uncaring battle, chests burst open, bags whose contents lay strewn across corpses and churned-up ground alike. Nothing remained of Lavastine’s pavilion. Of the rough wooden observing platform, constructed so hastily yesterday, only a few logs still stood. Alain clambered up on them.
From this vantage place at the top of the hill, Alain could see the banners of Henry’s armies, but none from among those which had marched out beside Lavastine at dawn.
“I pray you, come down from there, my lord!” called one of the soldiers. “There are still Eika lurking, and they have bows.”
As Alain jumped down he stumbled on a spear haft. He caught himself, grabbed for purchase and gripped the cloth of a tabard. A dead man rolled limply into view. It was Lavastine’s captain. The Lavas standard lay trampled by his side.
Alain pried it out of the dirt and hoisted it high into the air, but as his men cheered around him, he could only weep.
3
THEY rode like demons, but the vanguard commanded by Duchess Liutgard stayed ahead of them and thus had the honor of thundering onto the battlefield first.
But Princess Sapientia was not to be deterred from her fair share of the glory. After their first awful pass through the battlefield when it seemed that every Eika fell beneath their horses’ hooves with no resistance, Sapientia reined her horse around and for a mercy took an instant to catch her breath and survey the chaos.
For chaos was all that met Hanna’s eyes. She had never seen so many people in one place at one time, nor heard such a din of screaming and howling melded together with the clash of weapons. Sticking tight to Sapientia’s side, she could at least consider herself well protected. Father Hugh as well as certain oath-bound retainers kept close to the princess’ side in a ring meant to protect her from death.
Hanna was not sure at that moment whether it was worse to witness the gruesome work of a battle from afar or to be thrown into its swirling, deadly currents. She would have gladly forgone both and risked another avalanche in the Alfar Mountains instead.
“The ships!” cried Sapientia suddenly and with a sudden gloating triumph in her voice. “To the ships! We shall stop them there!”
And off they went, pounding across the battlefield again. Distant banners marked the line of other units, some faltering, some pressing forward, but Sapientia paid no heed to the rest of the battle. She wanted to stop the Eika from reaching their ships. And, indeed, as they came up alongside the river, they waited well out of the main fighting, which flurried round a distant hill and the flat stretch of plain beyond it, and had only isolated groups of fleeing Eika to contend with. These they slaughtered easily.
Ships lay beached on both the eastern and western shore, but it was the western shore—the one they guarded—which concerned them now. Eight ships were already launched into the water, steadying for the flight downstream. A half dozen bodies floated downstream in their wake.
“Send men to burn any ships they can reach!” ordered the princess, gesturing toward one of her captains.
“Your Highness!” shouted Father Hugh. “Is it wise to break up our formation? And we must not let the horses get pinned up against the river. We’ll lose our mobility.”