Crown of Stars

“Hai! Hai! For Conrad!”



The ground trembled beneath him. Several hundred horse trotted past, with Duke Conrad at their head. They moved twenty abreast, spilling to either side and splitting around Ivar where he stood on the road. He shut his eyes and held his ground and prayed, but they were past him before he finished the psalm. They thundered toward the northeastern flank.



Only a fool would run to the east now. The fighting was fierce all along the line of the valley from north to east to east-southeast. How Wolfhere expected to get up that ramp, even with sorcery, he could not imagine.



“God help me.” He threw down the axes and ran for the west. If he could escape into the woods, then he might hide and crawl and get to Hersford Monastery safely. It was better than dying here.



The western siege works were lightly guarded as men peeled off in twos and threes when called to reinforce the entrenchments under attack. Ivar scrambled under a wagon whose wheels were wedged tight against blocks of wood. He skidded down the loose soil of a ditch and up the other side.



“Hey! You!” A soldier called to him from the pickets.



Ivar got up onto the level ground of fields, put his head down, and ran, expecting an arrow to slug him in the back, but no arrow came. Finally, he was winded and hurting and so ragged with pain that he dropped to his knees. He was well away, out of range, surrounded by shootlings of wheat or oats, he wasn’t sure which because he was breathing hard and his eyes were watering and because anyway these fields had been trampled recently so there wasn’t really much growing here, not as there should be.



His hand throbbed as if he had been stabbed. A shower of cold rain raked him and passed on, blurring the fields and rattling through the fruit lines standing a stone’s toss west of him. A shallow irrigation canal cut away the ground just in front of his knees. He stared at the streaming water until he thought he would drown.



Must go on.



He struggled to his feet. With one long dash, he could reach the forest. Thank God the Eika had not come up along the southwest road yet.



Directly ahead, several score riders emerged from the cover of the woods and swept over the fields toward Varre’s now mostly-unprotected western flank. Horns blared an alert. He turned to look behind. Arconia’s banner swung neatly away from the battle along the southeastern entrenchment and, with several hundred horse, raced to cut off this new threat.



He was trapped between. There was no chance he could outrun them. With a shout, he flung himself into the canal.



After working the flank, Sanglant’s cavalry cleared the entire first line of defense. The Varrens retreated, or cowered in the dirt, or died, while the infantry advanced to the second line of defense built hard up against the base of the road where it ramped up the eastern slope. Here, trenches and barricades met them. Sanglant led the charge through gaps carved by the milites in the stockades. His lance was long since shivered in the corpus of some nameless Varren soldier, but he worked mayhem to either side with his sword. To his right, Liutgard’s cavalry leaped shallow trenches and low pickets but were at once caught in a maelstrom of fighting and could not advance.



A rumble swelled as many hundreds of horsemen rolled down on them from the center of the Varren camp. A red stallion banner waved above the lead rank. Conrad was riding to meet him.



A single line of pickets separated Sanglant’s line from the road, but the Varrens had massed here and were fighting fiercely as Kassel’s milites struggled, numbers thinning. The milites had taken the brunt of the assault, and had been outnumbered to begin with.



Dust rose from the hooves of Conrad’s approaching troops, obscuring the battle joined to the southeast, where Theophanu was trying to break through. Best she hurry. He could no longer see Liutgard’s white tabard among the hundred riders stalled before a low berm off to the right. She—or her captain—was trying to get through to the road some hundreds of strides west, in order to come up behind.



“Give me one more breach!” His hoarse voice rose over the tide of battle. “One more, and the day is ours!”



But a quick survey showed he had only two-score horse still up, and at best several hundred infantry, some joined by riders who had lost their mounts but could still fight.



A shout rose as the milites forced the barricade in three places, throwing down the pickets and fighting in the trench. Sanglant swung around. Fest jumped a trench and got up the berm to the roadbed, where they stood alone with the road open before and behind, fighting clashing all along behind him, and a shallow slope leading south to the open ground before. Many hundreds of riders galloped out of the Varren camp toward Sanglant’s breach.