Chapter 4 Jackals

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They marched elbow to elbow, knowing that only unity would give anyone a chance to leave this field alive. The formation had been thoroughly shaken by a series of heavy cavalry attacks, and the men stood in strange ranks and rows. The remnants of the regiment lost strict order, but the infantry did not turn into a miserable herd. Training and discipline, gentlemen! It takes little more than a dozen attacks by cowardly riders in tin armor to destroy it without a trace. One or two more, maybe three. Fuck fear. The line's still standing!

The rectangle, which had become an irregularly shaped oval, was bristling with peaks. Many of them are broken. The drummers, already without any command - the Kapellmeister had long been deader than dead - pounded on the stretched leather with heavy mallets, setting the rhythm. All the flute players died in the fifth, most furious onslaught of the knights. Two dozen armored lobes broke through the formation and reached almost all the way to the banner. There, they were all put down, of course. Some with spades, some with daggers, and some with their bare hands. No, they weren't avenging the flute players. It just happened! So the flutes were silent, but the drums sounded even more impressive and even more terrible, churning out a deadly beat.

Left! Left! Left!

"Sleagh air a ghualainn!" yelled the colonel. "Tha a'cheum!"

The commander's throat was torn from hours of battlefield management, and his voice sounded like the shrieks of a saw through the fibers of a damp pine deck. The colonel growled, mingling words of different dialects. And he was answered by the same roar of the exhausted, wounded, and exhausted soldiers.

In the morning, the "Hog Dogs" tertia, numbering nearly two thousand soldiers, took the field. By day's end, no more than five hundred were left on their feet. Five hundred warriors, the toughest, ready to fight to their last breath. All the rest mostly remained there, in the meadow where the tertia had taken the first battle and on the long road of retreat as the battalion marched heavily toward the river, snapping at crossbows, fleeing small units, taking on halberds and surviving pikes heavy cavalry.

Yes, it was a day of comfort for Pantocrator in his capacity as the Father of War. And the night promised a feast for wolves, corpse-eaters, and marauders. The regiment, having knocked down another barrier, was slowly marching towards the crossing. The spades on their shoulders swayed over their heads, clashing and rattling the strained steel, drowning out the groans of the wounded. They were being carried. Not all of them. Those who could still survive.

The enemy commander changed horses for the fifth time. The previous ones were a meal for crows. And once again, he rallied the cavalrymen to attack. To strike, to smash, to tear to shreds, and to chase them down, killing them in their defenseless backs and backs of their heads! The warlord's armor had shone in the morning with polished steel and abundant gilding. Now dust, dirt, and blood clung to the metal like a viscous putty. Fresh dents in the armor were formed into fanciful pictographs, indicating how many times in the past hours death had passed by, only to be touched by a shroud.

The horsemen were again gathering under the banner of the "soldier's duke" [1], a standard with four empty fields on a gray, unpainted cloth. They were built in the likeness of lances [2] - weak, unsteady, and yet capable of striking. Everyone was tired. And men, and horses, and the iron itself.....

The colonel stopped the burliest soldier from the banner guard and climbed on his shoulders. He almost collapsed from weakness, but he held on. Someone set up a spade. The officer took hold of the broken spearhead for greater support and looked in the direction of the gathering cavalry. Yes, the Duke had enough strength for one more attack. Exactly one, in which the forces and horses would be completely finished, like a beer barrel on the table of drunken soldiers. They will not be able to repeat it, even if the Lord himself descends from heaven, waving a flaming sword and blowing thunder from the divine ass. But this last onslaught must still be withstood.

The colonel glanced in the other direction, wondering if the regiment could move faster to reach the crossing before the knights struck. From all indications, there was a chance. Only to do so would require the abandonment of the badly wounded. Then, rushing light, it was possible to pass to the bridge, and this, in fact, is already a salvation.

He jumped heavily, nearly twisting his leg. The cuirass and helmet bent to the ground, and his bones ached. The commander allowed himself the luxury of a few moments of reflection...

"Regiment, halt!" shouted the colonel. There were so few soldiers left that the command did not have to be repeated by any of the lieutenants. And there were only three lieutenants left. "U-turn! Wall of spades!"

The infantrymen carried out the order hard, slowly, getting out of the rhythm of the drumbeat. Preparing for the last battle of the day and most likely of their lives. Preparing to live through the finest hour of the armored infantry or to lie down forever in the trampled, bloody grass. However, many could do both. With the right kind of bad luck, of course.

The riders finally managed to gather into some semblance of formation. No wedges or other shock formations, just a rectangle, as conventional as the square of infantry in front of it. The horses were no longer neighing but wheezing, dropping wisps of foam from their bloody lips. The Duke took the standard from the standard-bearer and rode out in front of his sparse horde. Behind the mounted formation could be seen the uncertain-looking infantry, who were no longer good for anything but moral support and encouragement with wishes for every success. The tertia, which was holding the heavy cavalry strike, was able to stomp the usual colleagues in the craft

in passing.

"First rank, kneel!" shouted the colonel. "Crossbows to the second line!"

There were very few marksmen left on either side, and the losses from plinking death were, scientifically speaking, a statistical error in the total losses. But those who fell on the hot, overheated ground or sagged helplessly on the high "ram" saddle" were not relieved by the fact that they were killed by bare statistics.

The riders approached at a measured pace, conserving the strength of the exhausted animals. And a general uncertainty pervaded the gray evening air. The hooves still clattered on the ground, chugging as the horseshoes stepped into the pool of blood, but the clatter was becoming less and less regular. The colonel realized this and felt it with the instinct of a born warrior, soldier, deserter, and officer. Hope scorched his soul like a ladle of healing, herb-infused boiling water in a bath.

Shall we live longer?

"Crossbows, fall back! Close ranks!"

The Duke, too, realized that his final attack was choking before it began. Half a minute, a minute - and that's it, no force in the world could move the cavalry mass forward. Maybe it was for the best... The commander had already lost everything that was due to him for this battle. Now, the battle was a net loss. Four slain horses - real destriers, not "economic" coursers - amounted to the annual income of a good estate with all the rents and vineyard. Oh, and the fifth and final beast of war was also staggering from fatigue and blood loss. And at least a third of the knights were lying on the wet red grass or in the infirmary. That's not counting sergeants, squires, and other support.

A third! Unthinkable, unimaginable losses worthy of the crushing battles of the Old Empire. It was time to retreat. To count the losses, to think how to justify to the ruling families the massacre of highborn relatives. Even harder to think how it happened that the ordinary continental infantry, mercenary rabble that is lower than the most despicable, fought like the best pikiners of the mountain princes and tukhums. And what to do with it next time.

It was reasonable, it was right. And the duke...

The colonel saw the horseman throw the standard to the standard-bearer and spurred his horse. He rode along the cavalry line, shouting something. And then he turned the unfortunate animal, exhausted under the weight of armor, and gave spurs. A moment's hesitation, interminable as all the time in the world, and the whole cavalry moved after him, step by step, with evident indecision. The riders were now pushed forward only by their fear of being the first to be recognized as the first to abandon their leader and leave the glorious battlefield. Such "glory" could not be washed away by their grandchildren.

"Spades in hand! Stand firm!" barked the colonel, realizing that the "soldier" had gone to the bank, bet everything, including his own life, on a decisive attack.

The Duke spurring his coal-black stallion, rode straight at the pikey hedgehog, accelerating like a ramming log. The warlord's lance was lost or broken. His saddle sword was still in its sheath. The rider gripped the reins tightly, concentrating on controlling the destrier. The knight was ready to sacrifice his horse and, very likely, his own life, punching through the infantry formation with the inertia of dead bodies encased in steel. Seeing this insane, suicidal bravery worthy of real ballads, the small mounted army rushed after the leader. Forward to glorious victory or no less glorious death, which centuries later will be remembered by descendants, defending the privileges of families. Straight at the cursed, hateful black and white banner that towered above the line of pikemen.

"Stand firm! Raise the banner!"

The colonel snatched a halberd from someone and, pushing the soldiers aside, spun into the front rank, right up to the demon rushing at the infantry. He pressed the iron-plated shaft into the ground, pressed it with his boot, and took hold of it with both hands, aiming the steel feather at the horse's muzzle. From the front, the rider seemed a very small target, covered by the steel armor of the horse. The crossbow arrows did not harm the Duke. His armor was too good.

"Stand to the end!"

He was answered by a ragged chorus of infantry that grew and grew as the soldiers shouted louder and louder in encouragement:

"Stand to the end!!! Stand to the death!!!"

"The Rule of the Law!" roared the colonel, and the infantry answered him:

"The Rule of the Law!!! The Power of the Law!!! The Power of the Empire!!!"

Quite close... The colonel saw flakes of foam flying through the slit of the horse mask. He saw the observation ports covered by the frequent grating darken. He realized that even if the rider wanted to stop the fearsome beast now, he would not be able to. His fingers closed on the halberd's shaft like stone. The officer realized that now he would probably die. And so would the knight. The only question was whether the slain rider of death would stop on the third or fourth row, bogging down in the corpses, or whether he would break through to the end of the line, opening the way for his fellows who were coming in a final tidal wave.

He really wanted to close his eyes so it wouldn't be so scary.

He wanted very much to stay alive, so that someday he could tell his children how he, a former peasant and a beggar, became a colonel, took command of the best regiment on all four sides of the world, beat the heavy horsemen - the kings of the battlefield - and sent a real duke to hell with his own hand. The commander had no children, at least not known ones, but they could appear in time.

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He wanted...

With a terrifying clang, the knight broke into the steel bristles of the spears.

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Elena was everywhere and in everything. She saw everything and was everything. She became grass under the hooves of horses and the muddy boots of infantry. The life of those who hoped to see the next dawn and the death of those who would not see the sunset. The blood under armor and the pain in stumps from amputations in the marching hospital. And she knew for a fact that all of what was happening hadn't happened yet. It was only destined to happen. Or not. One of the probabilities. The result of a long and unimaginably complex chain of events that would hook like fishing threads, weave together a new future, and make the probable inevitable happen. It will not become "bad" or "good." It will simply be.

But it's decided here. Here and now. And the epiphany of what's to come lies. Elena knew that better than anyone. It had deceived her before by promising the life of the person closest to her.

Fate is not a sentence.

Whose words were those? She didn't remember. She remembered nothing. The vision crumbled like a shattered crystal castle, falling into itself with glittering dust, turning to nothing. An abyss where only endless pain remained. And an equally endless resentment.

She came to her senses and snapped out of the unconsciousness-filled delirium of a battered man. Fast enough, considering the state of a man beaten unconscious.

"Get out."

God, it's so loud... The voice from the void rumbled like a rockfall. She wanted to scream, but there was no air left in her lungs. Her chest filled only with fire and cutting pain. The stick of the 'mentor seemed to have broken a few ribs, maybe all of them. The world around her came into awareness as if piece by piece. Here was the grave coldness of the stone beneath her cheek. The smell of dust and damp mold and something copper ... strangely, the smell mingled with the taste. Probably because her mouth filled with blood. And the sound. The voice of Draftsman, a half-crazed creature, a liar, and a sadist.

"Get out of my house. You've already laid around enough. It's getting towards night. I want to sleep."

Towards night ... it's towards nightfall. So she's been unconscious since noon. A long time.

Elena tried to get up on all fours, but her arm reminded her of itself. The pain ran its claws into every nerve and began to tear them methodically, like a wolf tearing raw meat. The girl couldn't hold back her scream again. Well, that is, the scream tried to escape from her throat, but it was slowed down and faded along the way, bursting out only with an agonizingly long groan.

"Now you're going to taste my stick again .... Tramp. Get out of here."

It was strange and even somewhat funny, but now, despite her deplorable condition, Elena was more interested in the dobl she'd given the "master" in silver, coin for coin. The money seemed the embodiment of her dashed hopes. Еhe symbol of the blackest betrayal. She didn't feel sorry for herself (not yet, anyway, because of the shock Elena didn't really realize how badly she'd been hurt), but more than sorry for the silver.

Charley, you didn't warn me about that...

She managed to get up on all fours first and then settled on wobbling legs. Her arm didn't "almost" hurt unless it was touched, so the girl assumed a strange position, the crippled limb determining the position of the rest of her body like a center of mass. She had to carry the broken arm, wiggling her whole body to disturb it as little as possible.

She stumbled, gritting her teeth in pain. There was nothing to say, nothing to reproach and appeal to conscience. She didn't scream, trying to retain some pride in the face of her evil tormentor. Though Draftsman probably didn't care what a beaten-up little thing, lonely, without help and support, thought.

"Faster."

It was humiliating more than anything. Her whole life, all her plans and hopes gone in an instant. And the sneaky bastard would go to bed having stolen her money. In a week, he probably wouldn't remember her right away, and in six months, he'd forget her altogether.

God, that hurt... How many times she'd seen such beatings on others, how many splints of rags and planks she'd put on while she'd been in Matrice's service. And now, it was time to look at it from the other side.....

She didn't get a chance to think about it. The door slammed loudly behind her. The lock rattled, and Elena was alone in the dark street. Dark, but not empty. For some reason, that was important. Something had to be taken into consideration, but what was it...? Her head was splitting with pain, and in a complex way, responding to the general exhaustion with her pain because her skull was also hurting. Here, under the moon, well covered with night clouds, Elena realized why she could see so badly. Her face was swollen from the beatings. One eye was completely closed by a hematoma. The other one turned into a narrow slit. One joy - the nose, it seems, remained intact. Well, that's something.

Yeah, she was no Cyrille. Though God knows what will happen to her face when the swelling goes down. Fractures of the facial bones are interesting things, and a neat scar might seem like a blessing... She wanted to swear, as dirty and harsh as possible, from the bottom of her heart, but she didn't have the strength. Elena leaned heavily against the stone wall. A beaten person usually suffers from thirst, and there is no water nearby. It seems up the street there should be a well... And there was still a long way to go. To get to the well, make a cold compress. It'll make her feel a little better.

God, she is such a fool! If she'd taken her time, if she'd rented a corner at an inn not too far from here, she'd have a place to go back to, a place to rest.

Gritting her teeth even harder (though it seemed impossible), the girl literally peeled herself off the wall and stepped forward. A step, another step. She was almost accustomed to the canted walk, in which the broken arm was the alpha and omega, the center of the universe around which every movement was built. And on the fifth or sixth step, the thought that had escaped from her tortured mind returned with painful sharpness.

This street was by no means empty. The rustling seemed to come from everywhere. Perhaps it was the noise in her ears, which had also taken a beating from Figueredo's stick. It was undeniable, however, that Elena was not alone.

Like most streets in the northern part of Milvess, this one was a rather confused system, not something unified and planned, but rather a thoroughfare with numerous branches, dead ends, and parallel paths. Two or three-storied houses, where the first floor was usually a basement raised above the ground and covered with stone, were crowded together in a very conventional order. The space between them was built up with latrines, outhouses, pigsties, barns, poultry houses, and simply fences. The owners were regularly engaged in "squatting" of the street territory proper, extending palisades, wicker fences, and simple vegetable gardens from the house walls. Therefore, the street proper could be called only a certain conventional space, free for the passage of two not-too-wide carts. And on the edges of the street, there was a tree-stone jungle where only a local native could navigate. And now, out there in the darkness, something ominous was happening. A movement of some kind, the nature of which, alas, was not to be doubted.

The jackals of the night city were out hunting. They surrounded Elena unhurriedly and methodically, with patient caution. They moved in the darkness of the chaotic buildings with the skill of experienced predators, skilled in robbing late travelers.

Elena tried to remember the local topography. It was possible to try to go back the same way. There, after a hundred meters or so, the wild building ended, and the actual quarter of fencing fraternities began. But this hundred meters still had to be passed. And if you went down further and lower, you could get to the river, where you could easily find a boatman ready to take anyone from bank to bank at any moment. At least, that's what the travelers said. There was still some money in the purse, so it would be enough to pay for the crossing. However, the closer to the water, the narrower the street became. It would be more difficult to break through.

Damned if one does. And the arm ached again. Or rather, it resumed its brutal attack of cutting pain. One of the corralers appeared, stepped out of the deep shadows, and let himself be seen, assessing the reaction of his victim. Naked to the waist, clearly visible in the moonlight, tattooed according to the criminal fashion of the East. The wind had dispersed the clouds, so in the moonlight, the tattoo was clearly visible in detail.

Southerners used to put tattoos imitating peeled skin with bare muscles. Here, they adhered, in general, to roughly the same canons but with more complex concepts. For example, not just a cut flap, but with lace, like a corset, edges. The man flaunted beautifully rendered images of three parallel wounds full of some kind of spiders and other insectoids. When the man tensed his muscles, the tattoo would move, and the insects would move their legs as if alive as if trying to get out from under the cut skin.

Elena stood there, still hesitating. On the one side, the girl realized she had to act quickly, incredibly quickly, because every second was precious and irreplaceable for her now. On the other... It is good to talk about quick action when you are unharmed, at least moderately healthy and well-fed. But when a person is terribly beaten up and can barely stand on his feet, his worldview changes very much.

Her consciousness was hopelessly bogged down by the weakness that had set in. She wanted more than anything to just lie down, curl up, and forget about her surroundings, if only for a moment. None of it. There was nothing.

A dream, just a dream.

The rustling, the whispers multiplied, thickened. The enemies were tightening the ring, hiding much more weakly or, rather, hardly hiding. The girl had nothing. All her possessions had been left in Draftsman's house, even the cloak with the bone hairpin. Even Charley-Vensan's gift - she was only now discovering it was missing - had been left with the thief Draftsman. But the clothes she wore were already paying off the enterprise, not to mention the wearer herself. Rape and slavery appeared at arm's length, like a fatal inevitability. Slavery was somehow forbidden across the continent, but human trafficking seemed to be beyond worlds and times.

Something had happened. A noise came from the river, a company of three or four people approaching. By torchlight or bright lamp, evidently, from the very crossing, Elena was to reach. Men, talking loudly, quite sure of themselves. Seemingly drunk but not wasted. Drunk enough to look at the world in a drunken complacency, yet ready to kick anyone's ass. The shadows of the bandits retreated, and the naked freak with the bug tattoos also took a couple of steps away. Elena staggered toward the noise and light.

There were three of them young men, oddly dressed but not without dignity and luxury. A boy ran ahead with a lamp made of copper strips. The large candle gave a good light, just enough to see where you put your foot. The men seemed disproportionately potbellied until Elena realized that were not huge bellies but girdles tied at the navel in a complicated knot with long dangling ends. Each of them had a short sword like a Landsknecht "Katzbalger," a faceted dagger without a blade, another smaller knife, and a cloth purse tied around the resulting construction for various small things. To the uninitiated, it looked extremely silly and funny, especially in contrast to the tight stockings. However, an experienced man immediately noted that in such a "bag" all valuable property at hand plus a good additional protection for the groin and abdomen. It was also said that such girdles were used to execute criminals and prisoners.

Highlanders, she recognized. The famous Highlanders, something between the Swiss and the Caucasians of her home world. Wild, desperately brave, beggarly, and eternally hungry. Those willing to fight for silver and gold under the rule of princes and free communities of "tukhums." The most vile, badass bandits and the finest mercenaries of the Ecumene. A force that would rule the world if there were something that could unite a hundred or so clans, each fractured into dozens of families united by an endlessly tangled web of territorial-tribal alliances, blood oaths, no less blood feuds, and a million other ties that were completely incomprehensible outside the mountain range in the center of the continent.

"Help ..." whispered the girl, feeling her strength was finally leaving her. She was dizzy, a bloody pall of blood swirling before her eyes. Her arm was not just aching but literally screaming, sending pulses of unbearable torture throughout her body. Elena sank to her knee, unable to stand any longer. Then, the other leg collapsed as well.

"Please ... help..."

They stopped two or three paces away, calm, confident, armed to the teeth. And Elena experienced a nasty, infinitely humiliating sensation when a man's own life no longer belonged to him. It was the second time. The first happened when the girl met with Santeli's brigade. God, how long ago that was...

The mountaineers exchanged a few phrases, speaking in a dialect of their own, but Elena could not understand a word. One grinned with apparent disdain; the other seemed to insist on help. His voice sounded almost compassionate and concerned. Elena imagined what she looked like from the outside - face swollen with a solid hematoma, askew, one arm hanging limply along her side. Eyes-slits, as at the last drunk, all in bruises and tears. And a sniffling nose.

The argument dragged on, the boy with the lamp shuffling his bare feet. The shadows-in-shadows waited in silence. Lena smiled weakly, pitifully through her tears and pain. From the bottom up and without thinking about what she would have to pay for her help. It would all come later.

The Highlander smiled back at her, a very young guy with a funny hairstyle of several braids coming down his face and tied together at the level of his lower jaw, right side up. He smiled and held out his hand to her. Highlanders didn't wear rings, believing the bling interfered with holding a weapon. Instead, they wore on their fingers cunningly knitted "rings" made of valuable fabrics, at worst, embroidered linen. The young mercenary's palm was covered in red silk. A successful warrior.

Elena stretched out her left hand. The Highlander smiled again, unclenched his fingers, and a short knife clattered to the sidewalk, which was crumbling with broken stones. It was an ordinary, palm-length, all-purpose camping blade, with a wooden hilt that had been aged in oil to keep it from rotting from the damp. The mercenaries looked at each other, exchanging incomprehensible phrases again. All seemed to have reached a consensus and were satisfied. Then the eldest nodded, and the trio moved on. The boy with the lantern hurried on, lighting the way.

"You've got to be kidding ..." the girl couldn't think of anything better to say. The hackneyed punchline popped up from her memory all by itself. It all seemed too much like a drawn-out prank.

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