Blood in the Water by Juliet E. McKenna

lose the light.” Evord urged his horse onwards as riders scattered to relay his instructions.
    The army marched on with fresh purpose. The companies taking the lead were already skirting the hillock the Mountain Man had pointed out. Above the pounding of marching feet, Tathrin heard faint shouts and horn calls from the far side. The Tallyman rode close to Tathrin at the rear of Evord’s retinue. Bracken brushed his stirrups as they left the track and began climbing the slope of the hillock themselves.
    Apprehension gathered in the pit of Tathrin’s stomach. They didn’t have the solid ranks of mounted mercenaries behind them any more. Those men were riding a still more distant arc around this rise in the land.
    His horse seemed to pick up his nervousness. It jostled the Tallyman’s mount, which snapped back with long yellow teeth. Shying away, Tathrin’s horse fought him all the way up the hillock. By the time he had it in hand, he was sweating under his heavy armoured jerkin. Flushed with embarrassment as well as exertion, he forced the horse to the edge of the guardsmen gathering around Evord.
    He found he had an excellent view over the open ground the Mountain Man had described. Banners jaunty, Evord’s men were drawing up in three solid regiments where the slope below met a wide grassy chase. Movement snagged the corner of his eye and he saw their mounted mercenaries were mustering far away to their right. Somewhere away to their left, beyond where he could see, the rest of their horse companies would be doing the same.
    He remembered how the horsemen had waited in the darkness outside Sharlac. When Duke Moncan’s men had got the upper hand over the Tallymen, disaster might have followed. Then Evord’s signal brought the mounted reserve into the fight, cutting Duke Moncan’s guard to pieces.
    On the far side of the sward, the ground rose to a ridge thick with trees. Duke Garnot’s army was ready and waiting. Six distinct regiments held the lower ground. Mercenaries held the centre and each flank, their massed banners colourful. The militia companies in their midst looked like clusters of pied crows in Carluse’s black and white livery, the blades of their halberds bright.
    As the ridge curved around, so did the entire Carluse line, threatening Evord’s men with a murderous embrace. Up on the highest ground, just below the trees, mounted mercenaries were massed behind the militia. In their centre, Tathrin could see Duke Garnot’s black and white flag. One of those men beneath the boar’s head standard must be the duke himself.
    Desultory arrows were already coming from the Carluse archers. Why weren’t Evord’s men retaliating? Then Tathrin saw the Carluse missiles falling short. So their bowmen had no chance of striking Evord’s retinue, he realised with guilty relief.
    But the rebellion’s mercenaries would be stuck full of arrows as they crossed that open ground. After that, they’d be toiling uphill, the enemy coming at them from all sides. How could they possibly prevail?

Chapter Seven
     
    Tathrin
    The Battle of Carluse Woods,
    Autumn Equinox Festival, Fifth and Final Day, Afternoon
     
    “Don’t fret.” The Tallyman grinned. “The captain-general knows what he’s doing.” He pointed to the left end of their own battle line.
    Tathrin craned his neck to see a mercenary standard of a black topboot on a light blue ground. A second standard hung beneath it, soiled white. A gust of wind smoothed it out to show a red horse’s head, nailed to the pole upside down.
    “That’s Wynald’s Warband’s standard!”
    “In the hands of the Longshanks.” The Tallyman chuckled. “See how the Red Hounds like that.”
    Tathrin could hear anger curdling the shouts from men under the mastiff banner in Duke Garnot’s line opposite. The Longshanks repaid them with their own coin.
    “Mangy curs deserve a kicking!”
    “Feel our boots up your arses!”
    “That’s how they like it!”
    “Got arseholes