Empire of Ashes

Chapter LV - Shield Wall

Oh man I forgot how much I love writing battle scenes

I would admit that I froze, because I didn't have the slightest idea where I was supposed to go. There were people everywhere, all of them moving in different directions, and my ears were still ringing. No familiar faces, no indication of which way to walk. Beside me, Tommas too remained still, equally clueless.

Then a hand clouted me across the back. I barely felt it through the chainmail, but it was designed to make me move, and it worked. I stumbled along across the scree, and Anlai trudged behind me, playing the veteran because he was twenty-four and battles like these were no longer a novelty.

We had lost Tommas. He had been left in the crowd somewhere to find his own way. He could use a longbow better than many men — but we only had one of those, and it was Eirac's. The only alternative was sword or spear, neither of which he had trained with, so I reckoned he would avoid the front ranks.

Temris was stood, for the moment, out of the line, but the Iyrak were keeping a space for him between them. Beside Colloe were the two corps members, and Anlai directed me into line beside Fendur. I found time to slip into my helmet and fasten it while they made space for us.

There was something amiss here because the better warriors, the northerners, were supposed to be scattered throughout the line to stop us buckling at the first charge. And here were our six best swordsmen standing side by side. The Iyrak I understood. It was everyone else who seemed out of place. But now was not the time to ask — I was sure their reasons went beyond comradery.

I threaded my arm through the leather strap and squeezed the wooden handle — rough and strangely cold — in the palm of my hand. The right side of my shield went in front of Fendur's, and the left side went behind Anlai's.

"A little higher," Fendur advised me, half-shouting to be heard over the ruckus, and when I lugged the thing up to my chest, he added, "Good. Trust the man behind you to guard your head. He knows his work."

I twisted around to nod at the man in question, who was a head and a half taller and looked northern. In fact, all of the second row near us looked northern. It wasn't the headstrong youths but rather the older, grizzled veterans, the ones who had been slowed by age and weeks in the mines. They were there to lend us their weight when push came to shove and catch the higher blows. Ronan would have fitted well amongst them, but he was nowhere to be seen. Too proud to stand anywhere besides the front row, I reckoned.

Without anything to do but wait, my arms growing heavy, I tried not to look at Temris, his golden hair standing out like a beacon in the line of helmets. We had hardly spoken in days, and I had not yet forgotten that he had tried to stop me looking for Emri. The distance between us hadn't grown impassably far, but it was an awkward space, filled with ridges and sinkholes which I wasn't sure I had the strength to traverse.

Anlai jostled me to get my attention, and I was only too happy to give it. He might have looked like his cousin, but his personality was so startlingly different that I could forget about the argument.

"Aim for the legs and groin. You're too short for much else," he said shortly. "And don't count on Fen to watch your right" —here, Fendur shrugged apologetically— "because he has to look after Tem, understand?"

I managed to nod. I had been taught the basics of the shield wall, but the reality was an altogether different affair, and Melia was not the most accurate representation of the enemy we faced today. In full armour, I was already sweating buckets. My shield felt like a leaden weight on my arm.

Across the plain, the Anglians were edging closer. They were marching in tight ranks, three rows deep and eighty men across. Shorter than our shield wall, and skinnier too, since we were eight ranks deep and growing as the outlying hills folded into our ranks. The loose edges could curl around, cutting into the exposed Anglian flanks.