Over and through all the massive trees grew ivies and vines, further binding the trees together and clogging the spaces between them, but their leaves also gave the defenders perfect cover. An archer would part the leaves, take a shot through the makeshift murder hole, and then disappear, leaving not so much as a target.
The impression of the whole was of a green cataract as far as the eye could see, cascading in every direction as if it were the old gods’ own verdant fountain. Flowers even sprouted everywhere, not deigning to accept the mortals’ war going on beneath them.
In some places, the ivies had been burnt or pulled down in previous sallies, but it had done little. In fact, against the mammoth height of the tree wall, the tiny scars only made the efforts of man seem paltry and impotent.
“Time,” Ferkudi said.
In their months fighting together, Ben-hadad had fashioned clocks with deliberately weird intervals for each Nightbringer captain’s superviolet drafter. Kip didn’t need a clock to count out the six-minute-and-thirty-seven-second interval they were using today. Ferkudi counted it in his head. All the time. Without apparent distraction or even effort.
Sometimes Kip wanted to kiss the big dope.
He threw up a superviolet flare in the predawn gloom.
For a long time, nothing seemed to happen. Then Kip saw the answering superviolet flare. The night mares were in place in the woods.
“Time,” Ferkudi said.
Around him, Kip saw men and women silently making the sign of the seven, preparing their immortal souls and hoping they wouldn’t find out if they had immortal souls today. Here we go.
Kip gestured, and they released the fire birds. It had taken the will-casters and pyroturges a long time to figure out how to set birds on fire without actually burning them. But the Ghosts absolutely refused to intentionally harm the animals they partnered with. It was war, harm happened, but they did absolutely everything they could to avoid it. The fire birds went up in a broad fan in front of Kip and his lines, perfectly spaced. Their charges burnt for ten seconds, and then winked out.
Before they were all gone, four thousand throats roared, and fires went up all along Kip’s lines. Narrow trenches filled with pyrejelly had been cut between each of the widely spaced lines and they lit with a satisfying whoosh in long deep streaks as if a dragon had clawed the forest itself with talons of fire.
Then each man and woman dipped their torches—two for each—into the flames. Eight thousand torches to make it look as if they had eight thousand soldiers, for Kip had ordered that even the camp followers should march behind the army to appear to be part of it. Everyone could carry a couple of torches.
The Blood Robes’ officers would know the numbers were wrong, were impossible—but the men would see those supposedly impossible numbers with their own eyes.
Once a man is convinced to believe the impossible, it’s impossible to make him disbelieve it.
The pagan army was spread red and black across the floodplain to Kip’s sub-red vision. Only its commanders held torches. General Amrit Kamal, the Lord of the Air who led the enemy, had lined up his people in what had become a standard battle formation for the Blood Robes: centuries—each literally one hundred men—arrayed in lines. Battalions comprised of six centuries were deployed one hundred men wide and six lines deep. Between each two battalions was a century of drafters.
These, being so much more rare, were deployed in four lines of twenty-four men each. But only half of each drafting platoon was made up of drafters. Each drafter was paired with a shield bearer whose main duty was defending his drafter with a massive tower shield that took both hands to hold. Each shield bearer also carried a pistol, a knife, and a bich’hwa or a punch dagger that could be mounted on the wrist without interfering with their grip. The tower shields had a spiked bottom so they could be stabbed into the ground to provide cover.
Sometimes wights led the drafter centuries, blues or superviolets or yellows predominantly. Like the greens, orange and red and sub-red wights were generally uncontrollable and were instead unleashed to fight alone where they willed.
Kip’s army was facing Kamal’s six battalions and six drafter centuries. Probably an elite battalion was being held in reserve back at the camp where the blurriness of sub-red vision couldn’t even make it out against the darkness. So, just as reported, Kamal had more than four thousand men.
Against Kip’s two thousand. But Kip had the Ghosts.
Tallach came out of the woods behind Kip, wearing his special howdah harness. Cruxer floated up into his place with that infuriating grace of his. He’d decided Kip didn’t get to ride into battle alone ever again. Tallach didn’t seem to even notice the additional weight.
Putting on spectacles, Kip looked a question at Tallach—‘You ready?’—and the giant grizzly woofed. He was. Kip mounted the howdah beside Cruxer, and motioned for the bonfires behind him to be lit. Then Tallach stood on his hind legs, lifting Kip and Cruxer high in the air. The bonfire behind them made a huge silhouette for the enemy to see. Then Kip threw fire into the air from his own hands, and his forces advanced.
Kip and Tallach advanced more slowly than the rest. No need to put himself at risk too early. They were supposed to be a distraction. He didn’t want to arrive in musket or bow range before the battle was joined. That was the problem with arriving in battle on the back of a huge-ass bear: you made a huge-ass target.
His own soldiers were deployed in Kip’s modification of General Danavis’s model. The modifications had not been made because Kip thought he was an equal of the legend, but because he had an embarrassment of riches in having so many drafters. Danavis’s armies had maybe one warrior-drafter for every fifty soldiers. Kip had one for every ten, and that wasn’t counting the night mares.
A trumpet blew amid the enemy lines, and Kip saw the back two lines of each of Kamal’s battalions peel off to march to either side of the Blood Robes’ already-wide lines. They meant their wider lines to curl around Kip’s lines and crush them from the sides.
It was a pretty standard maneuver when you had twice as many men as your enemy did.
So the officers hadn’t been fooled. It meant the Blood Robes were sticking with their own battle plan, despite Kip’s gambit with the torches.
If Kip wanted his lines to be as wide as theirs, he’d have to literally stretch his men thin and meet Kamal’s four-man-deep lines with his own lines only two men deep. Their going only four deep was risky. His going two deep would be insanity.
It was a trap, but not the obvious one. No sane commander in his position would try to fight only two men deep.
Instead, a sane commander would try to punch through the Blood Robe lines, hoping to break through the four lines in a sharp move.
What else could he do? He couldn’t match the width of their lines, and couldn’t allow them to turn his flank, so instead he would draw his men in to hit their center hard and try to break their lines fast before the encircling maneuver killed them all.
Not today.
When his Nightbringers reached the appointed places, their commanders bellowed, and they stopped dead, as they’d planned.
Except that not all of Kip’s men stopped as they’d been commanded. Because glory is to young idiots as a mountain of poppy is to the lotus eater.
Ignoring the screams of their commanders, several dozen men tore away from Kip’s lines and ran forward, screaming.
Because war is a fat whore who rolls over on her babies in the night.
“What the hell are those idiots doing?” Cruxer asked.
“Weeding themselves out of my army,” Kip said, furious.
The Turtle-Bear tattoo on his arm lighting up in angry red, Kip hurled out his signals, but now in fire: HOLD. HOLD!
The men who’d broken away ran, heedless, and all Kip could do was pray that they died quickly so that their friends didn’t follow them, trying to save them.
He could sense others on the verge of breaking. Everyone knew that if they didn’t follow those young fools, the fools would die.