Arrows whizzed past. The flank of the peasant army contracted, flinched back. When the Wickans struck, it was into a solidly packed mass of humanity. Yet, at the last moment, the Crow Clan riders wheeled towards the river and rode alongside the flank. Not a knife plunge. A sabre slash.
Peasants died. Others fell in their frantic retreat and were trampled by the frenzied horses. The entire flank bloomed red as the savage Wickan blades travelled its length.
The peasants holding the ford's landing were crumpling beneath the Weasel Clan's counterattack. Then the lead riders of the Crow Clan struck the north edge.
The peasant line seemed to melt away before Duiker's eyes. He now rode with the Crow Clan, horse shoulders hammering his legs to either side. Blood rained from raised weapons, spattering his face and hands. Ahead, the Weasel Clan's riders parted, covering their kin's wild charge straight into the clouds of dust.
Now the mayhem truly begins. For all the glory of Coltaine's charge, ahead lay the river. Wounded soldiers, refugees and Hood knew what else.
The historian snatched what he felt would be his last breath a moment before plunging into the sunlit dust.
His mare splashed water, yet barely slowed. The way before him stretched clear, a swirling, strangely choppy sweep of muddy water. Other riders were barely visible farther ahead, their horses at full gallop. Duiker could feel the unyielding, solid impact his mare's hooves made as they rode on. There was not four and a half feet of river beneath them, but half that. And the hooves struck stone, not mud. He did not understand.
Corporal List appeared alongside the historian, as well as a straggling squad of Crow horsewarriors. One of the Wickans grinned. 'Coltaine's road – his warriors fly like ghosts across the river!'
Various comments the night before returned to Duiker. Tumlit – that nobleman's observations. Reinforced wagons apparently overloaded with wounded. Stone cutters and Engineers. The wagons crossing first and taking most of the night to do so. The wounded were laid atop the stone blocks. The damned Engineers had built a road!
It still seemed impossible, yet the evidence was there beneath him as he rode. Poles had been raised to either side, strung with rope made from Tithansi hair to mark the edges. A little over ten feet wide – what was surrendered in width was made up for with the relative swiftness of crossing the more than four hundred paces to the other side. The ford's depth was no more than two and a third feet now, and had clearly proved manageable for both livestock and refugees.
The dust thinned ahead and the historian realized they were approaching the river's west side. The thunder of sorcery reached him. This battle's far from over. We've temporarily outrun one army, only to charge headlong into another. All this, just to get crushed between two rocks?
They reached the shallows and a moment later rode upslope twenty strides, emerging from the last drifting shrouds of dust.
Duiker shouted in alarm, he and his companions frantically sawing their reins. Directly in front of them was a squad of soldiers – Engineers – who had been running at full speed towards the ford's landing. The sappers now scattered with foul curses, ducking and dodging around the stumbling, skidding horses. One, a solid, mountainous man with a sun-burnished, smooth-shaven, flat face, flung his battered helm off, revealing a bald pate, and threw the iron skullcap at the nearest Wickan rider – missing the warrior's head by scant inches. 'Clear out, you flyblown piles of gizzards! We got work to do!'
'Yeah!' another growled, limping in circles after a hoof had landed full on a foot. 'Go fight or something! We got a plug to pull!'
Ignoring their demands, Duiker spun the mare around to face the ford. Whatever sorcery had held the dust over the water was now gone. The clouds had already drifted fifty paces downstream. And Coltaine's Road was a mass of armed, screaming peasants.
The second sapper who'd spoken now scrambled to a shallow pit overlooking the muddy landing.
'Hold off there, Cuttle!' the big man commanded, his eyes on the surging thousands – the lead elements now in the middle of the crossing. The man anchored his huge hands on his hips, glowering and seemingly unaware of the rapt attention his squad held on him, as well as that from Duiker, List and the half-dozen Wickan horsemen. 'Got to maximize,' the man rumbled. 'Bastard Wickans ain't the only ones who know about timing.'
The horde's vanguard, glittering with weapons, looking like the iron-fanged maw of a giant snake, was three-quarters across. The historian could make out individual faces, the expressions of fear and murderous intent that make up the faces of battle. A glance behind him showed rising columns of smoke and the flash of sorcery, concentrated on the right flank of the Seventh's defensive positions. The faint screeching Semk war cry drifted from that flank, a sound like claws scraping taut skin. A fierce melee was underway at the first earthworks.
