CHAPTER 19

THE armies met in the first clash of battle, and once again General Col was surprised by the turn of events. As he drove his conscripts down to meet the enemy, a number of them bolted into the woodlands bordering the battlefield. Enemy troops made no attempt to pursue them, and soon conscripts at each edge of his formation were streaming into the woods. Col lost a couple of hundred before he sent his own soldiers hurrying down to cut them off. Later, in the midst of heated fighting—and few though they were, he had to acknowledge that he faced trained, tough-minded men—empty corridors would mysteriously appear in the defense, allowing the conscripts to penetrate unhindered deep into enemy lines. But the untrained and unmotivated conscripts did not take advantage of their position. They simply pushed right through and ran away. In this way at least five hundred conscripts were wasted.

The second surprise involved the archers, who were hidden in the very woods into which the conscripts had escaped. They held their fire through the first advance, saving their arrows for the trained soldiers who came in the second wave. Even the elite, heavily armored soldiers, if they were close to the archers’ ranks, were often pierced by the heavy shafts, which were deadly to the less protected soldiers throughout the field. When Col tried to charge these archers, they melted back into the woods faster than his men, in their heavy suits, could follow.

As the afternoon wore on, hand-to-hand fighting raged over the field. Col’s regular army was fully engaged now, and while the enemy was showing fatigue from dealing with the first wave of conscripts, his own men were unsettled by the rain of arrows through which they had been forced to advance. Then too the Basin men’s style of fighting was so very different from their own that it was difficult to tell who had the advantage. Col’s men were far better protected (though many of the enemy did wear light chain mail), but they could not match the speed and agility of their foes. So while the enemy was hard-pressed to injure the Greffaires, so were the Greffaires, especially once they became tired themselves, hard-pressed to strike the Basin soldiers.

Dark came early and with it a violent storm that turned the battlefield into a black chaos. The horns to retreat sounded almost simultaneously from the two sides, and both armies made camp, to take some uneasy rest and await the dawn.

Col ate his cold supper stonily. This day had displeased him. On the morrow his force of numbers must prevail, but there had been too many losses. Too many surprises. These men of the Basin—they had known of his coming. Would such armies await him all the way to the sea? He sighed, and then, tired though he was, rose to tally losses and review the next day’s plans with his regiment commanders. His only son, Derkh, was in Fourth Regiment, and Col’s last act of the night was to check that he was unharmed. Finally, the feared commander returned to his tent, stripped off his wet clothes and slept.

GABRIELLE DID NOT sleep; nor did her bonemenders, save in short, exhausted snatches. All that long afternoon the dying and wounded had filled the clinic tents; then as the fighting stopped and rescue efforts began in earnest, the river of patients became a flood. The bonemenders worked at fever pitch as the air filled with the groans and cries of injured men, all now soaked and chilled from the flash storm. Gabrielle could use her healing power only for the most desperate of cases; while she bent in her trance over one man, three more might die waiting. As for her precious mandragora mixture, it was used mostly to ease the pain of those doomed to die and for surgery; its safe use required such careful monitoring that they simply couldn’t spare the time.

Tristan’s sudden appearance was the only bright spot in that terrible night. He was muddy, visibly tired and nearly as bloodstained as Gabrielle herself, but his irrepressible spirits seemed untouched. She had never been so relieved to see anyone.

“Did you see any of the battle, Gabi?” he asked.

“No, Tristan.” Gabrielle tried to keep the impatience out of her voice. “I wasn’t able to get away.”

“I didn’t mean it would be fun to watch,” he protested. “I just meant that you would have been so proud of our men. It’s one thing to practice fighting, you know, and another when it’s the real thing. Our men proved their worth today.”

“I hear your men would face the Dark One himself for you, Tris,” said Gabrielle.

“Well,” he said modestly. “It wasn’t just us. But we did devise a way to get past those tin suits. You have to do it with two men. One engages the enemy head-on and keeps him busy, while the other circles around and darts in, slicing at the straps and stabbing through the little joint-openings. A whole bunch of other units picked up that little trick from us.”

A horn sounded, two long notes and two short. “I have to go,” said Tristan. “Be careful tomorrow, Gabi. There’s talk of a retreat. Be ready to get out of here fast.”

Late that night word came that the injured were to be moved out. Despite the brave day’s battle, Fortin knew that the Greffaire force was too large to be defeated without help. Unless reinforcements arrived, he would call a retreat on the morrow. All who could walk or be moved on a cart were to head south now toward Gaudette, accompanied by some of the bonemenders. With any luck, they would get far enough away to avoid a Greffaire pursuit.

Wearily, Gabrielle assigned five bonemenders to make the journey and helped move the patients to the crude carts. The trip would be exhausting and painful for all of them but preferable no doubt to being overrun by the enemy. She wondered grimly how many would die on the road.

“Why don’t you go along with them, Lady Gabrielle?” It was Manon, a bonemender from Ratigouche. “You’ve done so much already, and you might keep some of these poor souls alive.”

How she would love to. She had seen enough suffering and death this day to last her a lifetime: she could barely force herself to return to the clinic tent with its thick stench of blood and fear and pain.

But she had to. Whatever she had come here for, it hadn’t happened yet.

THE HORNS SOUNDED at dawn, and by mid-morning General Fortin had made his decision. The tide was turning against them. The men were becoming exhausted and exhaustion benefited the armored Greffaires. It was time for a retreat. Somewhere to the south, they would join up with the Maronnais army and find a new place to make a stand.

Cook tents and supply wagons had been sent down the road early that morning. Now horns all over the field sent the troops after them—all but a mounted rear guard who would try to hold the Greffaires at bay while the bulk of the army made as much distance as possible.

It was an orderly process, as retreats go, but to the bonemenders it looked like utter confusion, with men streaming by from all directions. A commander pounded by on horseback. “Get going!” he shouted at them. “It’s a retreat! Grab your gear and get out of here!”

Shaken out of her bemusement, Gabrielle shoved precious medical supplies into packs. She shouted at the bonemenders to get the bigger crates and the remaining patients into the last carts lumbering by. One young man was dying, but she could not bring herself to leave him behind. She and the bonemenders grabbed their cloaks and hurried toward the road.

Swept into the anxious mass of men fleeing south, Gabrielle stiffened. Panic froze her features. She turned and began struggling back against the relentless tide of men. She had to get to the battlefield. She had to. Someone she loved was hurt.