The man looked at the huge blond man before him, as lancers raced through the gate behind the Hadati hillmen whose whirling blades were inflicting terrible injury on any who closed on them. With a look of disgust, he threw down his blade.
A band of horsemen rode up from behind the line and were charged by Krondorian lancers as the second unit of cavalry swept in. A scaling ladder slammed against the wall near Erik and he realized that Greylock had hedged his bet by getting men close under cover of darkness. He glanced to his right and saw footmen racing across the open ground ahead.
Erik leaned out over the edge of the wall and almost got his head split open as thanks. “Hey!” he shouted down to a Kingdom soldier halfway up the ladder who had just swung his sword at Erik. “Slow down! You might fall off and hurt yourself!”
It was not what the soldier expected. He stopped, and the man behind him on the ladder shouted, “Keep moving.”
Erik said, “You can climb back down and walk through the gate.”
The man on the top of the ladder shouted, “Sorry, Captain von Darkmoor.”
Erik looked to the left and saw mercenaries throwing down their swords and backing away as a line of lancers slowly advanced on them, the points of their heavy weapons pointed at chest height.
Erik saw the light cavalry entering behind the lancers and recognized Jadow and Duga. He signaled to get their attention. Jadow rode closer and Erik shouted, “Get things organized, and send word back to Greylock to move up. Quickly.”
Jadow signaled that he understood and turned to carry word to Owen himself. Duga jumped down from his horse and boldly walked past the line of lancers, and started separating mercenaries from their weapons. Erik glanced at the rear of the enemy camp where a running fight had erupted between the lancers and the invaders’ cavalry units, and realized the enemy didn’t know they’d lost yet. Given what he knew of enemy horsemen, he knew a few heads would be broken before word reached them if he didn’t intervene. He shouted for messengers to carry the word to the fight, before men died needlessly.
Erik jumped off the wall as the first Kingdom foot soldiers entered the gate. He pushed through the press of prisoners, and sought out the senior lieutenant of the light cavalry. “Go give the lancers a hand with that lot at the rear, then I want a sweep of the woods on both sides of the road for the next five miles. If anyone’s cut and running north to tell Fadawah this position is fallen, I want them overtaken.”
The rider saluted, gave orders, and rode off, then Erik sought out Akee. “How are your men?”
“I have some injuries, but no one dead,” said the leader of the hillmen. “Had they a few more minutes to get organized, I think we would have seen otherwise.”
“I think you are correct,” said Erik.
He left the hillmen and turned as Jadow and Owen rode through the gate, and as he approached, he turned to a passing soldier and said, “Find a Captain among the prisoners, a man named Rastav, and bring him here.”
Owen looked around and said, “Another illusion?”
Erik said, “Almost. If we hadn’t gotten the gate open, we would have bled, but not as badly as we thought.”
Owen glanced northward, as if to see over the horizon. “What is he doing?”
Erik said, “I wish I knew.”
Erik looked to the south. “And I wish I knew what was going on down there, too.”
Owen said, “That’s Duko and Patrick’s problem, not ours. Now, let’s get things here under control, then start moving north again.”
Erik saluted, then turned and began organizing the chaos behind the barricade.
Dash could barely contain his rage. A dozen of his constables were standing around the room, looking from one to another, a few openly frightened.
Two of his men lay dead before him. Sometime during the night they had been waylaid and killed, their throats cut and their bodies deposited before the door of the New Market Jail.
Whispering, Dash said, “Someone’s going to bleed for this.”
The men were two recent recruits, Nolan and Riggs, and they had just finished their training. The last month had been difficult for Dash, but as order returned to Krondor, he found that larger portions of the city were slowly getting back to a rhythm not unlike that known before the war.
The Prince had authorized the purchase of a building just off the Market Square, and the cells had just been installed by an iron monger. A near riot down near the docks the night before had taken the jail to its limit and Dash had been busy dragging malefactors off to the city court, established by the Prince the week before; two eastern nobles were serving as judges, and a lot of drunks were finding themselves sentenced to the labor gangs in a hurry. Most got a year, but a few were pulling five-and ten-year sentences, and the citizens of the more unruly areas of the city were loudly protesting. So far the protest had been vocal, with insults hurled at watchmen as they made their rounds. Until last night.