Chapter 31 — Bloodhand Breaks

The first impact drove FireStorm's shield line backward half a step, and axes struck wood. Spears slid over shield rims; men shouted from both sides until the narrow road filled with noise, breath, and the smell of wet leather. The Bloodhand raiders had numbers enough to wrap around a field formation, but North Mountain Pass refused to give them the space.

Wayne dropped his shoulder behind the center and shoved. "Hold the line!"

The guard beside him caught a stone axe on his shield and nearly lost the board when the head buried itself near the rim; a spear from the second rank passed over his shoulder and entered the attacker's chest before the raider could wrench the axe free.

Arlan had already moved beyond the center, and the Bloodhand chief came at him with the spiked club raised in both hands. He was large enough that the men immediately behind him slowed rather than risk entering the swing; that isolation lasted only a moment, but a moment was enough.

Arlan stepped to the outside of the blow; the club struck the ground hard enough to spray dirt and loose stone. Before the chief could lift it again, the hand-and-a-half sword passed through the opening beneath his beard and into the throat, and Arlan turned the blade as he withdrew and moved away before the body fell.

The chief hit the road on his knees first, and the men behind him stopped. Their front rank had been charging behind a man who had promised them an easy victory; now they had to step over him to continue. Wayne saw the hesitation and drove the shield line forward three paces. "Push!"

FireStorm's archers fired over the shoulders of the second rank at men trying to climb the eastern slope, and the angle was poor for a mass rush, and every raider who left the road exposed himself against the trees. Those who remained on the path found their numbers trapped behind one another.

Arlan did not chase into the crowd; he returned to the place where pressure was greatest and used the sword where a shield or spear had already created an opening.

A raider hooked an axe over the top of a shield and dragged it down, and Arlan thrust past the exposed edge into the man's chest. Another tried to force a steel-tipped spear through the gap; Wayne knocked the shaft aside, and a supporting spearman drove a point into the attacker's thigh before finishing him when he fell.

The men Arlan had brought were not all trained soldiers; the newer fighters made mistakes, but the narrow ground prevented those mistakes from being punished by ten enemies at once. A guard could cover a farmer, and a shield could close where another man stumbled. The line survived because nobody treated his own duel as more important than the formation.

Bloodhand did not have the same discipline, and once their chief was dead and the first assault failed, the men farther back began shouting different orders. Some tried to push forward; others turned toward the forest. One group attempted to climb the western stones and brought half the loose slope down under their own feet.

The retreat started at the rear and reached the front as panic.

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Men who had entered the pass shouting now fought each other for room to leave it, and a few tried to throw themselves down the western slope and rolled among loose stones; others abandoned shields and axes to run faster. FireStorm's line did not dissolve after them; Wayne had spent weeks teaching the guards that a broken enemy could still kill a careless pursuer, and the newer fighters were ordered to copy the men beside them rather than invent heroics.

Arlan raised his sword before Wayne could order pursuit. "Hold the pass."

"They're breaking, my lord."

"Let them break. Don't follow into the trees."

The bowmen spent two more volleys on the densest groups before the surviving raiders scattered north; mounted scouts followed only far enough to learn the direction of flight and returned before the forest swallowed them. The pass fell quiet by degrees.

Men who had been braced behind shields for the better part of the fight did not relax at once, and Wayne kept the line formed while scouts checked the tree line, and only after no second group appeared did he allow shields to drop. Water was passed down the ranks before anyone began stripping useful gear from the dead or moving the frightened captives clear of the road.

Wayne counted FireStorm's men twice; no one had died. Three men needed stitches, one had a shoulder that might be broken, and several carried bruises that would make tomorrow unpleasant, and compared with the number of bodies on the road, the cost felt impossible.

The narrow ground had held. Their preparation had outlasted an enemy that expected fear to do half its work.

The search also turned up flour milled too finely for the mountain camps and wine in a stoppered bottle that had come from a proper market rather than a raided wineskin; several steel weapons matched the kind Wayne had seen issued from workshops supplying Nightsong. None of those objects proved the whole scheme alone. Together, and after the chief's shouted promise, they formed a pattern difficult to explain away as ordinary loot. The dead chief carried better provisions than his men and a small worked bronze token inside his furs; Arlan wiped mud from it with his thumb.

House Caron's nightingale. The mark was not the first Caron object recovered from mountain raiders, and after the chief had shouted Elton's promises in front of dozens of witnesses, it was no longer a curious accident.

Wayne crouched beside another corpse. "Steel from Nightsong too. Same forge marks I've seen on their patrol weapons."

"Take samples. Leave the poorest iron if weight becomes a problem."

A pair of captured raiders were dragged forward before the search finished; one spat at Wayne's boots. The other kept looking north as if an escape route might appear by refusing to look at Arlan, and Wayne asked who had armed them.

The first answered with curses in a mountain dialect, and the second used broken Common Tongue.

"Lord Elton give food. Steel. Kill Ashenblade." Then he grinned through blood on his teeth.

"Too late. FireStorm burn now." Arlan's expression changed.

"What did you say?"

The captive laughed. "You here. Your fields there. Men burn." A diversion. The two hundred at the pass had not needed to win. They had needed to keep FireStorm's strongest men north while another party struck the holding; Arlan was already walking toward his horse.

"Five men stay with prisoners and wounded. Wayne, take everyone with a mount. The others follow on foot." The captain did not ask why.

The wounded who could stay in the saddle were sent with them; the rest remained under guard with the prisoners, and Arlan left orders that no captive be killed in anger and no Caron-marked object be stripped for private use. Evidence was now worth more than a few pieces of steel; they rode through the night.

By dawn the southern horizon glowed red; Arlan smelled smoke before FireStorm came into view. The wheat fields beyond the wall were burning, and black smoke rolled above the stone wall in a sheet thick enough to hide part of the dawn. Whatever had happened behind them had been timed to begin while the fighting held Arlan away.