Rictus raised his fist. “Hold!” Behind him, his men came to a ragged halt. Javelins were still being thrown over his shoulder. He stopped, eyes wide, and looked around his portion of the battlefield.
Too late. The cavalry had made it to the top of the hill, and had crashed into the rear of the Macht spearmen. Thousands of horsemen. The left-hand portion of the Macht line seemed to simply disappear, engulfed.
Whistler came up beside him, panting. “Oh, Phobos,” he groaned.
Lower down the hillside, Aristos’s mora were embroiled in a bloody, futile contest with perhaps two thousand Asurians. The cavalry had surrounded them. The riders hacked with great courage at the heavily armoured spearmen, whilst underneath them their mounts were slaughtered by the keen aichmes. But Aristos had missed the main body. He was entangled now; he would be fighting there for precious time to come.
“Throw away your javelins,” Rictus said. “We use the spear today.”
“Last time we took on cavalry we got our arses fucked,” one of the men said.
“This time it’s we who take them up the arse. Brothers, they’re killing us up on that hill. That’s Jason’s mora there on the left, and they’re destroying it. I’ll walk up there alone if I have to.”
“My arse, alone,” Whistler said, and tossed his bundled javelins aside. There was a clatter all around as scores, hundreds of men did the same.
“Lead us, Rictus,” someone called out.
They started up the slope at a swift run, short spears in their right hands, peltas on their left arms, fear and hatred blazing out of their eyes.
Gratus had gone down, and so Gasca was now in the second rank, with Astianos in front of him. His spear had snapped in half, the fore part of it lost in some screaming Kufr’s head, so he had reversed it and was now stabbing out with the sauroter, the splintered end of the shaft slicing out slivers of his palm as he thrust it into the faces of the Kufr in the enemy line before him. Under his feet, Gratus had crawled back from the forefront of the fighting, one eye stabbed out from his head so that it flopped on his cheek. He had made it back a little, the spearmen straddling him, protecting him, but then had died. Less spectacularly he had been pierced through the thigh as well, and had bled to death with his comrades fighting around him. Now they were standing on his corpse, their feet shunting it back and forth as they struggled to keep the line intact. His was not the only corpse the Macht spearmen were standing upon, but he had been well-liked, and his death had infuriated his comrades. Before them, the Kufr marched up the hill only to be cut down. Now they were climbing over mounds of their own dead, their heels set in the flesh of their comrades.
There was a shudder from behind, and Gasca was jolted off balance. He fought to stay upright, and before him Astianos was shoved forward. He beat back a Kufr with the bowl of his shield, head-butted another, and stabbed out blindly with his spear. “Easy—easy!” he yelled as he and Astianos fell back into the line.
A horse screamed, right in Gasca’s ear it seemed. He half-turned, and as he did the files of men around him broke up, shouting. The whole mass of the formation, which had seemed so locked together a few moments before, was smashed open. The light of the westering sun was cut off by a mass of horsemen careering into the back of the spearmen, knocking them down, hacking at their backs, stabbing them through their napes.
“Rear ranks, face about!” a voice was thundering. It was Buridan, his russet beard trailing below his helm. “Stand fast brothers!”
He had dropped his shield and now hauled a Kufr horseman off his mount. The animal collapsed on him as one of his comrades speared it through the skull. Buridan went down, smashed between the horse and the unforgiving stones. The Macht around him set up a great shout. The Asurians’ horses careered and stamped and reared, butting the line into pieces, bowling men off their feet. In the press it was hard to turn round and face this new assault, harder still to bring the long spears into play. The Macht line was splintered into chaos, and dozens of the heavy spearmen were hacked down before they could even bring their weapons to bear.
“Gasca!” Astianos was down. He had turned to see what was afoot behind him and a Kufr spear had taken him in the armpit. He toppled. At once Gasca moved forward, set his shield over the fallen man and jabbed out with the sauroter spike, his head snapping back and forth, trying to see what was going on beyond the confines of the helm-slot. The line was broken, in front as well as rear. He could not see what was happening.
“Astianos!” but Astianos had already been subbed through and through, and as Gasca en mi lied there a trio of snarling Kufr thrust their spears at him. He beat off the first, killed the second with a thrust to the throat, but the third caught hint in the instant before he could recover, spearing him right through his father’s cuirass, the point breaking off in his flesh. He fell sideways, baffled at the turn of things, his feet scrabbling in the stones. Two more spears came down, transfixing him, fastening him to the earth, he squirmed there, his helm coming off, the upland air cooling his face. Confused, he thought for a moment that he was back with his brothers again, up in the high pastures, and they had bested him at some game. Then the last spearhead came down and, feeling the blow, he remembered where he was.