The Belly of the Bow (57 page)

An arrow hit the man standing one step back to his left, passing through the man’s right arm between the bicep and the bone. Affem watched him wince without crying out or moving; he knew better than to leave formation in the face of the enemy, as a good soldier should. Affem felt proud, but also ridiculous; what possible excuse was there for standing still, like the straw target-bosses at a fair, while the rebel archers praised and jeered at their neighbours’ technique, made helpful comments about footwork and follow-through. It was ludicrous . . .

‘Sergeant,’ he said, ‘take the front three ranks and get rid of those hooligans.’

The men charged well. They kept exactly in step, so that the points of their levelled halberds made a precise straight line of steel. After a desultory shot or two (though two men went down and stayed down; inevitable at this range), the rebel line simply melted away, the archers scattering down both sides of the ridge, running as fast as they could go. Naturally, the sergeant didn’t pursue; he called a halt, turned about and brought the detachment back to rejoin the main column.

‘Well done, sergeant,’ Affem said. ‘Get the wounded seen to as quickly as possible, we’re wasting time here.’

Half an hour later, the same thing happened.

This time, the rebels only had time for one shot before the charge dispersed them; but four more halberdiers went down, three killed outright, one shot in the knee and unable to move. Bol Affem swore under his breath and pictured what he’d like to do to the cowards, as and when he had an opportunity.

Half an hour later, again. And again, forty minutes after that. And again; this time, as soon as the pursuit party broke off and turned, a dozen or so archers popped back over the ridge and shot at them, hitting two men in the back. The rest of the party turned and charged again; as the sergeant called them back from the pursuit, an archer materialised only a few yards away from him and shot him through the groin; he bled to death before the next attack, which was a mere fifteen minutes later. This time the archers didn’t even drop back down the slopes. They danced out of the way, daring the halberdiers to put distance between themselves and the main column; and, while the advance party were dithering about whether or not to pursue further, another party of archers jumped up quite unnoticed at the rear of the column, killed six men and faded away.

Proportion
, Bol Affem thundered to himself.
These losses are visible and insulting, but trivial in proportion to the size of the army. If we march faster, we’ll reach the village quicker, and either they’ll fight us properly there and we’ll tear them apart, or they can stand by and watch while we kill every living thing in the village. They’ll be sorry they started this by the time I’ve finished it.

Around the middle of the afternoon they did manage to catch one archer, who slipped and fell and didn’t get up again quickly enough; five minutes later, there was hardly enough flesh left on his bones to feed a couple of dogs. But Affem couldn’t help noticing that the number of rebels in the harrying parties was increasing, and where there’d been fifty-odd to begin with, there were now over seventy-five. Trying to increase the pace of the march turned out to be impractical; if he ordered quick march, the rebels stepped up the rate of their attacks to slow him down again. He’d confidently anticipated being off the ridge by nightfall, but it didn’t turn out that way, so he kept going in the dark - a miserable business on the crown of a steep-sided ridge, but he had no choice; the archers couldn’t see to shoot in the darkness, and besides, unless they reached the river by dawn, lack of water would be a serious problem. He ordered the men not to drink except at designated rests, and kept going.

Dawn broke, and still the end of the ridge wasn’t in sight. But as soon as there was light to shoot by, the archers were back; still slouching and unsoldierly, loosing their arrows like men shooting for a goose at a wedding, running like terrified children as soon as he sent his men forward; at the last count he’d lost eighty-two killed and twenty-six too badly injured to walk, including thirty-one sergeants. The army was becoming unmanageable, with no one to order the lines or relay the words of command.

Just before midday, having covered no more than two miles since dawn, he caught sight of a rocky outcrop just under the ridge and led the army down to it. There was just enough cover, providing everyone crouched low and kept perfectly still. It was a hot day, but nobody was prepared to shed helmets or breastplates. The last of the water ran out in the middle of the afternoon. The archers killed another sixteen men and wounded twenty-one more, mostly shot through arms and legs that wouldn’t quite fit behind the rocks. It was heartbreaking to see men huddled up with an arm or a leg exposed, while a half-dozen archers honed their skills and wagered on who would be the first to hit the small, difficult target. Two halberdiers finally lost control and ran out, brandishing their halberds and yelling bloody murder. The second one managed to get ten yards.

That night the archers brought up lanterns, but the light wasn’t good enough; they gave up and went away, allowing the army to continue. Just after midnight the ground began to slope sharply downhill, and just before dawn they reached the flat and the river. At first light they were still filling water bottles; the archers had been waiting for them behind rocks and trees, and shot down twenty-one before they could be chased off.

Somehow Bol Affem had assumed that, once he reached the flat, his problems would be over. Of course, this wasn’t the case. The only difference was that instead of jumping up unexpectedly, the archers trailed the army in full view, like wild, mad dogs that follow you down a village street. They came no closer than ninety yards, but there were nearly two hundred of them now, and by noon they’d picked off another twenty men and slowed the march to a crawl. By this point, the army were exhausted, having marched two nights and crouched half a day in the hot sun. Thanks to strict rationing there was enough water; but Affem had banked on reaching the village a whole day earlier, and food was running low. Just before evening, he was shot in the calf of his left leg. The arrow passed through cleanly and without cutting a vein, and he was able to hobble, using his halberd as a crutch, but by midnight he had to lean on a man’s shoulder. Nevertheless, he made himself continue, because he knew that at dawn they would reach the village.

And so they did. It was easy enough to find; for the last hour of darkness, they had a bright orange glow to guide them. The fire was pretty much burnt out by dawn, when the archers attacked again. When Affem finally limped down what had been the village street, swinging between two men with his wounded leg dragging behind him, there was nothing but ash and charred timbers. The well was blocked with the bodies of dead halberdiers, men killed on the first day. There was no food, and no cover. Nothing for it, therefore, but to press on to the next village, which was only four miles away.

 

‘I don’t know about you,’ Gorgas said, his mouth full of cheese, ‘But I’m exhausted. This not fighting certainly takes it out of you.’

Behind him in the distance, a pillar of smoke rose in the still air. He made a point of not looking at it; that was the village of Lambye, burning, and he’d given the order to burn it. The thought that he’d set his men to burn down one of his own villages made him angry, for all that he knew it was the way to win the war. Nevertheless, the act disgusted him. And what Niessa was going to say when she found out, he shuddered to think.

‘How much further is it to the river?’ the sergeant asked. Gorgas glanced down at the map spread across his knees and brushed away a few crumbs that had fallen in the folds.

‘At the rate they’re going, four hours,’ he replied, ‘give or take an hour. I’ll say this for them, they’ve got a hell of a lot more staying power than I’d have given them credit for.’

‘Training,’ the sergeant said. ‘Discipline. It’s what sets your professional soldiers aside from your bandits and hooligans.’

‘I think you’re right,’ Gorgas said, cutting himself another slice of cheese. ‘For a start, it gets them killed.’

 

They saw the smoke rising from the second village almost as soon as they left the first.

‘That’s it, then,’ said the colour-sergeant, stopping and shading his eyes. ‘It’s going to be like this all the way. No food and no cover. We don’t stand a chance.’

‘Then why don’t we charge them?’ growled the young soldier to his left. ‘Go out there and get the bastards? Got nothing to lose by it, have we? If we all charged, the whole lot of us—’

Nobody was listening, and he gave it up. For the last eighteen hours, he’d found it progressively harder not to think about water. Up till then, the other desperate issues of the march had been enough to distract his attention - hunger, exhaustion, the incessant nibbling inroads of the archers. Now he could hardly spare them a thought.
Which is good
, he tried to re-assure himself.
Nothing like being thirsty for taking your mind off your troubles
. He wriggled his shoulders against the hard straps of his pack, which were crushing the rings of his mailshirt through the buckskin jerkin underneath and into his skin. He had a blister on each heel where the backs of his boots nipped against the tendon. He tried not to think about water.

‘There’s one thing he haven’t tried,’ somebody muttered in the row behind.

‘Uh? What’s that?’

‘We could always surrender.’

Several men took it as a joke and laughed. ‘He’s got a point there,’ the young soldier said. ‘Why don’t we do that?’

‘Ah, go to hell,’ someone jeered. ‘We can do without that kind of talk.’

The young soldier frowned. ‘What’s your problem?’ he said. ‘Face it. Either we give in or we’re going to die.’

‘Make him shut up, Sarge,’ someone sighed. ‘Put him on a charge or something.’

The colour-sergeant shook his head. ‘We won’t surrender,’ he said. ‘Not while we still outnumber them five to one, or whatever it is now. It’s still overwhelming odds. We can’t surrender, we can’t get near enough to fight, we’re getting slower all the time and in a few hours we’re going to start keeling over without the bastards having to raise a finger. Craziest thing you ever heard of, but they’ve done us. It’ll be the biggest, most spectacular victory in history; they’ll be teaching it in their damned faculties for the next thousand years. Pity we got to be on the wrong side, really.’

Bol Affem was thinking along broadly similar lines, as he stumbled and dragged along between his two supporters.
Amazing innovation
, he thought,
just when you thought every possible tactic had been tried and there couldn’t be anything new. After this, they’ll have to rewrite every textbook and treatise in the library - unless we win the war, of course, in which case we can forget this ever happened and go back to the proper ways of making war, the ones in the syllabus
. He could feel his eyes closing all the time now; such an effort to keep them open, to stay awake, to be bothered. Now that he was being dragged along rather than having to make the effort of walking, he was beginning to feel removed, outside, not involved; it was like being a child again, carried on his father’s shoulders, too small to be any use or any trouble. He didn’t really feel hungry or thirsty; the pain in his leg was still there but even pain didn’t seem to work properly any more. Most of all, he could no longer make the effort to be afraid of Death. Foolish, pointless. It was like the fear he’d felt when he was a little boy, just before he went to a children’s party.
It’ll be all right
, his mother used to say,
you’ll enjoy it once you get there
.

‘Here they come again,’ someone nearby observed in a matter-of-fact voice. Nobody seemed very interested. Affem lifted his head and saw in the middle distance the line of archers walking towards them, not hurrying, moving up like a party of merchants on a long journey. He saw his soldiers wearily closing ranks, like very old monks performing a ritual they’ve long since lost all belief in. He let his head droop.

There had been a point, presumably, where they’d stopped believing in survival, but he couldn’t remember it coming and going. It had been gradual, gentle, the death of hope; the slow realisation and acceptance, made easier by the fact that none of them really cared any more. Water, shade, shelter, food - give them any of those and they’d stop and stay stopped. A future after water or shade or shelter or food wasn’t a realistic aspiration, and besides, where would be the point in it? It had become obvious that this march would never end, that somehow this rocky scrub and moorland stretched away into infinity. Given time, a man might eventually climb the stairs to the moon; but no one could ever reach the edge of this country.

We could surrender
.

Bol Affem laughed. Yes, why not? In another life, perhaps, the next time round, the next army to be caught like this, in a siege without a city, a prison without walls, surrender might be an option. But not while there are still a thousand of us to a couple of hundred of them; because any minute now, we’ll reach the water or the shade or the shelter or the food, and there’ll be fighting, and when there’s fighting we’ll win. Or we could surrender, right now, we could refuse to go on. In theory.

Something was happening.

Affem looked up again, and saw that the men at the head of the column were quickening their pace, walking instead of slouching, breaking into a run. He tried to see what all the fuss was about; not the enemy, surely, they’d given up trying to engage them hours ago. Besides, he could see the archers on either side coming in close, shooting, taking men down in dozens and being ignored.

‘What’s the matter?’ he asked.

‘Don’t know,’ said one of the soldiers. ‘Here,’ he called out, ‘what’s the rush?’

‘Water’, someone shouted back. ‘There’s a bloody river.’