The Cry of the Icemark

27



The noise was dreadful. Wounded soldiers were screaming, and witches shouting to one another so that they could be heard. But worse still was the smell: blood and body parts not meant to be exposed to the light of day, and over even that, urine and feces as soldiers lost control of their functions in the face of unimaginable pain and fear. Oskan helped one of the healers to stop a severed artery in a soldier’s leg from spurting its precious contents all over the floor. Nearby, a young drummer boy with a dreadful stomach wound, inflicted by a spear, managed to smile as the poppy mixture one of the witches had given him started to work. Later, Oskan helped her to mix enough to keep him unconscious until he died.

There were wounded leopards and werewolves, too, their huge bodies needing many new calculations for drug and potion doses as the healers stitched and cleaned their wounds or helped them to the Goddess’s peace.

Wenlock Witchmother stood in the middle of the stable ward watching all around her, giving strength to her people as they fought to save as many lives as they could. Meanwhile, out in the smaller side wards where the surgeons worked, impossibly damaged limbs were amputated with incredible speed as the rough morphine of poppy kept the pain and shock at bay. Blood was everywhere, swimming across the floors, spurting over the walls and even the ceilings in bright crimson swathes. Yet in all this chaos, lives were being saved, and those beyond treatment were helped to peace with the herbs and drugs the witches had prepared.

For more than ten hours the witches, warlocks, and the few doctors considered skilled enough to help labored to reconstruct the bodies and lives that had been shattered by their first engagement with the Polypontians. But at last all that could be done was finished, and a peace descended on the wards. The wounded lay on clean mattresses along the walls, under the watchful eyes of healers who walked quietly around, while out in the treatment areas, teams of cleaners started to scrub away the blood and filth in readiness for those who would inevitably follow.

Finally Oskan left, taking his leave from a quiet Wenlock, who merely nodded when he said good-bye and told her he’d be back the next day. He almost ran from the converted stable block that was the infirmary and out across the yard of the citadel.

Outside, the area was full of jubilant housecarls, leopards, and other soldiers who were busy celebrating the victory. Campfires were dotted at regular intervals across the cobblestones, and Oskan had to dodge from one group to the next, all of whom wanted to tell him about the battle. But at last he reached the doors of the Great Hall and was admitted by the housecarl guards. Oskan already knew that Thirrin and Tharaman were safe, but he still wanted to see them and talk with them, so he hurried across the wide flagstones of the hall and quickly dodged around the throne and through the door into the royal private rooms. Inside, Thirrin was sitting quietly with Primplepuss on her lap, while Tharaman lay sprawled in front of the fire like a huge lumpy hearthrug. Maggiore Totus was busily scribbling away at his notes, adding more to his history of the war and straining to make himself heard as he tried to question Thirrin over the cavernous snores and grunts of the sleeping Tharaman.

Thirrin stood up when she saw Oskan, depositing an annoyed Primplepuss into the deep fur of the Snow Leopard King. “Where have you been?” she snapped. “I’ve been waiting here for hours and not even a message.”

“I’m sorry,” Oskan replied quietly. “But when a soldier’s work is finished, a healer’s is often only just beginning. Those who could be saved are resting now, and those who couldn’t have been helped gently on their way.”

“Oh,”Thirrin said. “I’m sorry, Oskan, I forgot. Selfish of me.”

“No. You’re just tired, like everyone else. Perhaps we should join Tharaman by the fire.”

She smiled gently. “No room, I’m afraid.”

Primplepuss started to struggle her way out of the Snow Leopard’s thick fur, and he awoke with an enormous snort.

“Ah! Oskan, how are my wounded warriors?”

“Fine, most of them. Just deep flesh wounds, really. They should be back on duty within a week. Only one has died. Another is giving us real worries. Turadon, he said his name was, before we managed to put him under with some poppy. He has a punctured lung and broken ribs, but I think we’ll get him back from the brink.”

“Good! Good!” the Thar boomed, stretching luxuriously and filling the room with his massive bulk.

“Tharaman, now that you’re awake, I’d like your perspective on the battle,” said Maggiore earnestly, his stylus poised over the wax-covered boards he used for his notes.

“Um … perhaps later, Maggie. At the moment I’m so hungry I could eat a whole herd of caribou.” He turned to Thirrin. “Shall we see if dinner’s ready?”

“I don’t think it will be, but we can go out into the hall and hurry things along a little.”

“Good idea,” he said eagerly, and led the way.

As they emerged from the royal quarters they could see the servants setting up the trestle tables that would seat the housecarls and leopards who were not on duty at the defenses. Everything was noise and bustle, but around the central hearth two figures sat quietly, seemingly unaware of the activities around them. As Thirrin and her party approached they could see that it was Elemnestra and Olememnon sitting next to each other on a simple bench. They were quiet, and the Basilea was leaning against her consort, while he rested his huge hand on her knee.

Maggie coughed diplomatically, and Elemnestra sat bolt upright and removed Olememnon’s hand. “I’m sorry, Your Majesty, we were a little tired.”

“There’s no need to apologize, Aunt. We’re all tired,” Thirrin answered quietly.

“Got your notes with you, I see, Maggie,” Olememnon said, and grinned hugely. “Who’s for a grilling next?”

“Well, you, if you’re amenable.”

“Hungry work, talking to you. After dinner, perhaps.”

“Oh, very well.” The little scholar sighed and sat next to him on the bench.

“Don’t keep him up too late, Maggiore Totus,” said Elemnestra. “He’s got a battle to fight tomorrow, no doubt, and you’ll have me to answer to if he’s made slow through lack of sleep.”

“Rather than risk your displeasure, Madam, I will allow your consort a night of peace,” Maggie replied with a deep bow.

Elemnestra looked at him, trying to decide whether or not he was being sarcastic, but in the end she decided he was beneath her dignity and she ignored him.

“The wine’s good, Maggie,” said Olememnon, raising a flask that had stood by his feet. “Here, have some. You, too, Tharaman, find a bowl.”

A servant brought an extra cup and a bowl and soon all three were drinking deeply. “Not too much,” Elemnestra said, placing her hand over her consort’s. “You must have a clear head tomorrow, I want no … injuries because you’re wine-fuddled.”

He smiled at her affectionately and, despite her protests, kissed her cheek. “I’ll be fine, we’re eating soon, and I intend to scoff enough to soak up a barrel of booze.”

By the time the food arrived, the hall had filled up with warriors of all three races, though the numbers were noticeably fewer as most of the army was on guard, patrolling the barricades down on the plain. As promised, Olememnon ate an enormous amount, beaten only by Tharaman-Thar, who ate an entire ox, bones and all. He sat with a hugely distended belly, groaning slightly, but still found enough room to lap up another three bowls of wine, after which he started to purr loudly.

“Such a pity that grape bushes won’t grow in the snows,” he said sadly. “I’d be more than happy to set up a wine yard on the Icesheets.”

“Vines, Tharaman, grape bushes are called vines,” said Maggie in his best teacher’s voice.

“Vines, then. Are you sure there’s no hardy variety that could stand the cold?”

“Certain.”

“You’ll have to set up an importing company, Maggie,” said Oskan. “You’d make a comfortable living out of Tharaman alone.”

“Perhaps I will. My fortune would soon be made.”

“Not from Olememnon, it wouldn’t,” said Elemnestra. “He’s had more than enough and he’s about to go to bed.”

“Is he?” asked Olememnon in surprise.

“Yes,” his wife answered and, taking his hand, she bowed to Thirrin and Tharaman, ignored Maggie and Oskan, and walked from the hall. Olememnon waved and smiled as he was led off, and Tharaman muttered into his bowl as he lapped his wine.

“What was that?” Thirrin asked him.

“I said, that woman’s about as much fun as a toothache. And she treats Olememnon like a servant.”

“Oh, I don’t think he minds too much. In fact, I think he’s as happy as any man in the land,” she answered.

“I can’t imagine why,” said Tharaman, licking the last drops from his bowl.

“Can’t you? I’d have thought it was pretty obvious. They love each other.”

“Oh, that! Yes, well, I dare say they do, but that’s no reason to treat him like he can’t think for himself.”

“It’s just her way of showing she cares,” said Thirrin. “Oskan, you should get some sleep now. It’s going to be a very long day tomorrow.”

Scipio Bellorum again followed the progress of the battle through his telescopic monoculum. As usual, his army was following his orders to the letter and was attacking the defenses at three different points over a two-mile front. They’d been fighting for more than an hour now, and he thought he could detect a weakening of the central assault just as he had instructed. He smiled and turned his monoculum to the left and then to the right wing of the attack, and noted with pleasure that their fighting rate had increased.

For the next two hours the central assault continued to weaken, while the left and right wings gradually increased the pressure on the defenders and, as Bellorum had hoped, Thirrin sent more and more of her best troops from the center to the wings in an attempt to strengthen them.

“There’s my good little tactician,” he murmured as he watched the housecarls and Hypolitan infantry hurrying to the threatened sections of the defenses. “Commanders Anthonius and Hadrian, prepare your troops and wait for my orders!” he snapped crisply to the group of staff officers who clustered nearby. The two men saluted and hurried off.

“Now, where is that devil-woman and her mounted archers? I’m waiting for you, my dear. Everything is ready.”

The battle raged on, more and more Polypontian troops pouring in to maintain the pressure on the wings, and more and more of the allies’ best fighters in the center being drawn off to help.

Just three units of housecarls remained at the point where the Empire’s attack was apparently failing, along with ten thousand inexperienced soldiers of the fyrd. More than enough to hold off the Polypontian assault, which seemed to be fading with every passing minute. But the old housecarl commander was uncomfortable about the situation. He was beginning to think there was something suspicious about the way the regiments of pike and musketeers seething around the slope of the defenses before him were unable to push forward. He gave orders for his soldiers to hold their position and not be drawn out. Then he sent his second in command with some of his best housecarls to shore up his right, where there were mainly fyrd soldiers. Gunhilda was the best second he’d ever had. She’d once held off an attack by more than five hundred werewolves with only half as many housecarls and brought most of her command back alive. But that was in the bad old days, and this time, it looked as though the Empire’s troops were getting ready to run.

“Hold your positions,” the commander shouted, but his words were drowned as the Polypontian troops before him turned and fled. With a wild yell the soldiers of the fyrd broke ranks and chased after them, leaving only the thousand housecarls maintaining their shield-wall.

Cursing loudly, the commander ordered his few remaining troops to spread out in an attempt to plug the gap in the line, then he sent an urgent message to Thirrin.

Bellorum was pleased. So far everything was going according to plan; now he needed help from good luck and chance, a general’s two best friends. “Captain Aeneas, prepare your teams and await orders.” He turned in his saddle and calmly beckoned to two riders who were waiting nearby. They galloped away with their messages, and soon two encircling arms of the Imperial troops started to advance onto the plain, while in the center, the soldiers of the fyrd continued to chase the retreating Polypontian army straight into the trap.

“Come along, my dear, react as you should, there’s a good little Queen,” muttered Bellorum as he scanned the Icemark’s defensive positions before him. “Your soldiers are in danger, they’ll need to be rescued by something fast and deadly — like mounted archers.”

The shrill squeal of fife and the metallic rattle of drums leading both encircling arms of the pincer movement were intended to signal the position of the advancing soldiers, just in case Thirrin and her army hadn’t noticed them. Bellorum was wondering ironically if he needed to add a firework display, when a movement drew his monoculum to the earthworks of the defenses.

“Aha! There she is, right on cue and, if I’m not mistaken, she’s with that oaf of a consort of hers,” Bellorum said happily as the Basilea led out her mounted archers and the Hypolitan infantry on their rescue mission. “Now, which wing will she take?” Suddenly the archers galloped away, and Olememnon led his infantry at a swift trot in the opposite direction. Bellorum nodded. “The right! Captain Aeneas, you will lead your teams to the right!”

Out on the plain, Elemnestra sent a rider to warn the fyrd troops of their danger and led the rest of her archers to intercept the advancing right wing of the enemy. She would engage them before Olememnon and his infantry even reached the left arm of the pincer movement. Then if she wiped out her target quickly, she could gallop back across the plain to his aid.

On her signal, the women of her troop fitted the first arrows to their bowstrings in one fluid movement. Ahead, Elemnestra could clearly see the enemy advancing and hear the fife and drums of their band. As the Hypolitan archers thundered down on them, the enemy soldiers leveled their muskets and waited grimly. Elemnestra swung around to sweep past, and the musketeers fired; several of the saddles were emptied, but now the enemy was vulnerable and the archers shot their arrows. Hundreds fell, and the women fitted their next arrows as they galloped by, then turned, guiding their mounts with their knees. Again they swept by before the musketeers had had time to reload, and again hundreds of the Empire’s soldiers fell, but none fled. Instead they continued to doggedly reload their weapons, following orders to the letter.

Elemnestra suddenly became aware of six heavy covered wagons lumbering into view in the distance. They were enormously long and being pulled by huge draft horses and were obviously a massive weight, but rather than be distracted she turned her attention to the enemy pikemen, thinning their ranks with flight after flight of arrows. But still they marched on, singing the battle hymn of the Empire. The Basilea found herself admiring the bravery of these soldiers who refused to be intimidated by her archers’ arrows.

By the time she focused on the heavy wagons again, they had rolled up the plain and turned parallel to her own sweep, but facing in the opposite direction. She was wary but couldn’t ignore the possible threat, and so attacked. As her women plunged into shooting range the covered sides of the wagons suddenly dropped, revealing cannons. Their firing teams stood at the “ready” position and as Elemnestra and her women raised their bows, an officer in the lead wagon drew his sword and shouted an order. The cannons fired simultaneously, spewing out a broadside of chain shot and broken metal, which ripped into the galloping archers. Three hundred horses fell, disintegrating in a crimson explosion of flailing limbs and riders.

A huge cheer erupted from the Imperial troops. The devil-women were no more.

Up on the defensive earthworks, Thirrin screamed in horror as she watched the slaughter of the archers. She turned and ran, calling for her cavalry as she went. Beside her ran Tharaman-Thar and Taradan, each roaring out a summons to their warriors. The horses of the cavalry were quickly assembled, their troopers mounted, and the leopards in position. In a blazing fury, Thirrin led the cavalry of the Icemark and the Icesheets out onto the plain. Tharaman-Thar kept perfect pace beside her stallion as his leopards let out the strange coughing bark of their war cry.

Aware of their approach, the enemy stood quietly, their cannons reloaded with chain shot. Theirs would be the greatest prize of all; they would kill the warrior-queen of the Icemark and her tame fighting leopards. The soldiers sang as Thirrin and her cavalry thundered toward them, certain this action would signal the end of the hard-fought war.

But among the scattered and broken bodies of the fallen Hypolitan archers, Elemnestra eased her badly wounded frame to lean against the corpse of her horse. She barked orders to the thirty or so women of the three hundred who were still able to shoot, and encouraged them to hurry. She knew she must destroy the cannons before Thirrin and Tharaman-Thar were in range. Her women quickly tied rags to their arrows and set them alight, laying them carefully among the flattened mat of bloodied wildflowers at their feet. Then, as Elemnestra struggled to her knees, they raised their bows, and on her orders shot their first flight. Thirty burning arrows rained down among the gunpowder barrels of the cannons. The Polypontian officer shouted orders to his musketeers, and they raised their weapons. With Thirrin’s six-thousand-strong cavalry bearing down on them, he couldn’t waste any more cannon shot on the fallen archers; he just wouldn’t have time to reload and fire again before they were hacked to pieces by sabers and claws. But by now the second and third flight of flaming arrows had already fallen among the barrels. With desperate speed the gun teams snatched the burning rags away and stamped on them, but more fell, faster than they could move.

At last the muskets fired, but the women had dived for cover and now stood ready again to shoot their deadly rain. With a desperate scream a young soldier tried to smother a burning barrel with his body, but then a vicious screaming crack erupted into the air and the wagon was blown apart. Almost simultaneously the remaining five wagons burst skyward on a blooming forest of flame. Broken cannon and shot burst outward in a deadly driving hail, killing and wounding hundreds of the soldiers who stood nearby. The survivors of Elemnestra’s mounted archers were also blown aside by a killing hand of fire that finally ended the elite regiment of the Hypolitan.

Thirrin cried out in grief and rage when she realized what had happened and, rising out of her saddle, she drew her saber and shouted out the battle paean of the Icemark. The six thousand warriors of her cavalry, human and leopard, answered, their voices ferocious and deadly. They swept down on the disrupted ranks of the Empire’s soldiers, killing and killing in an attempt to avenge the loss of Elemnestra and her archers, and when at last the iron discipline of the Polypontian army was broken, they rode after them, cutting them down as they ran.

When the few hundred who’d survived her attack scrambled to the safety of their lines, Thirrin led her cavalry in a charge across the plain to smash into the Empire’s units, who’d drawn out the fyrd with their sham retreat. By now the soldiers of the Icemark had remembered their training and had formed a shield-wall as they fought an ordered withdrawal back toward the ditches and ramparts of the defenses.

The cavalry sliced through the Polypontian soldiers like a razor through stubble and, bursting through their ranks, they turned to slice back through them again. Soon their resistance had collapsed, too, and this time their retreat was real. After the cavalry had chased the last of the Polypontians from the field, Thirrin returned to the fyrd, now standing at a loss watching the fleeing enemy.

“Go back to your positions and hold them!” Thirrin blazed, her eyes brilliant with fury. “If you’d followed your orders and heeded your training, none of this would have happened. You will stand to until I return! You will not stand down, no matter how long you have to wait. Anyone who disobeys this order will be hanged!”

Turning her stallion, she led a charge across to where Olememnon and his Hypolitan infantry were fighting against the left arm of the enemy’s failed pincer movement. They’d been making good progress, first halting the advance of the Empire’s soldiers and then slowly forcing them back toward their own lines. Now Thirrin and Tharaman-Thar fell upon the flanks of the Empire’s army, driving through their lines as the coughing bark of the Snow Leopards and the paean of the human troopers sounded over the field. The pike regiments tried to make a stand against the fury unleashed upon them, driving the butts of their pikes deep into the ground and holding them at graded angles that should have made them impregnable to cavalry. But Tharaman-Thar and Taradan led their leopards against the long spears, beating them down with their paws, then diving between them to savage the soldiers they were supposed to protect.

Eventually the discipline and courage of the Polypontian soldiers was broken and they fled, many of them dying beneath the sabers and claws of the pursuing cavalry. But Thirrin’s fury was not yet spent, and she galloped to just beyond cannon range at the enemy’s lines and waited, openly challenging the rest of their army to come out and fight.

From behind the lines, Scipio Bellorum had viewed it all, and his original elation at the destruction of Elemnestra and her mounted archers gave way to frustration as he watched Thirrin and her “trained leopards” destroying his Yellow and Orange armies. Only his elite Black Army was totally intact, and with the support of the remnants of the Reds, he hurriedly sent them to hold the front line, come what may, against the barbarian Queen.

He scanned Thirrin and her cavalry, as close to panic as he’d ever come in his long military career, but then breathed a sigh of relief. The young Queen seemed to have slumped in her saddle, and one of the leopards had his face close to hers, for all the world as though he were talking to her — an illusion made all the more believable since she seemed to be holding a conversation with it, listening, then apparently replying as it looked at her.

Bellorum squinted through his monoculum, watching her mouth moving silently, and wishing desperately that there was some way of hearing what was being said. Then she hugged the huge beast and, slipping across from her saddle, she climbed onto its back and they trotted back to Frostmarris. The rest of the cavalry followed, and Bellorum sat back in relief.

The crisis was over, and luckily two of the four reinforcing armies were less than half a day’s march away. Turning to his staff officers, who sat on their horses with carefully expressionless faces, he beckoned to the youngest. “How long do you estimate it would take you to ride back to the pass through the Dancing Maidens?”

“Two days, sir!” the young officer answered stoutly.

“Which means three, at least. I want you to take orders to the reserve armies you’ll find camped just inside the border, and tell them to come here at all speed. The time has come to crush this queenling and her little country. Their arrogance is beginning to annoy me.”