Chapter Thirty-One

Sigurd was busy now and could not keep Reinmar from looking out on to the river’s foaming surface.

The first boom had been breached, so the crowded company of boats had moved forty yards downriver, but its vanguard had been caught and held by the second barrier. The men and beastmen in the boats were able to shoot and thrust at the townsfolk defending the storehouses to either side of them, but by virtue of being trapped in crossfire—and directly beneath the crossbows positioned in the upper storeys—they were taking very heavy casualties indeed.

Reinmar immediately saw, and fully understood, that beast-men were in the majority here, and that this was no measured move of a kind that mercenaries might have calculated and executed. The creatures on the boats were hurling missiles in every direction, howling insanely as they did so, leaping at the ledges like mad dogs—but these were far less like dogs than the wolflike beastmen surprised by Godrich’s runaway wagon. These were even more nightmarish than the bodies that had been laid out in the marketplace, with horny heads and blazing eyes, and claws instead of hands.

The contrast between this fight and the one that Reinmar had just helped to win was so striking that a lump rose in his throat, making it impossible for him to swallow. There was nothing useful he could do, as yet, because the long-handled pikes were still doing more than adequate damage in the hands of men who had the strength and skill to wield them—and Sigurd was doing as much damage as any of Vaedecker’s veterans, by virtue of his reach and power.

The crossbowmen had done the bulk of their work and they were now conserving their bolts, although they remained ready to pick off selected targets. Most of the pikemen, Reinmar saw, were using their weapons as much to push as to cut, tumbling the beastmen into the water rather than striking deep into their skulls and torsos. Sigurd was the only one who was using the blade of his pike almost as if it were an elongated battle-axe, slashing at faces and limbs.

Reinmar presumed that the regulars knew what they were doing, but he could not help feeling direly anxious when he saw that in spite of their crazy anatomy the beastmen were able to swim. Those which had been thrust into the water were in considerable danger of being crushed by the jostling boats, but those which could avoid being caught were able to tread water well enough. They were waiting impatiently, but they were waiting nevertheless for an opportunity to rejoin the fight to some effect, and in the meantime others of their kind were working away at the second barrier.

Reinmar could see that the nets had already been sliced up by the beastmen’s curiously dextrous claws, and he judged that the boom could not last more than a few minutes. He gripped his sword tightly, in anticipation of its further employment.

“Ready, lad?” Sigurd shouted above the din, audible only because Reinmar was fast by his side.

By way of answer Reinmar raised the bloodstained tip of his sword. He was ready—and he knew that he had to be, because the fight was about to become much fiercer. Once the enemy was able to use the river as a way into the heart of the town another incursion like the one that had battered down the warehouse doors would not be as easily turned back, because there would be no reinforcements ready to rush forward. Once the river was open, every man in the town would be in the thick of the action. Then, and only then, would the relative strength of the two companies become clear. Then, and only then, would the defenders discover exactly what kind of monsters the enemy would employ to take advantage of the inroads made by its shock troops.

Reinmar rested the tip of his sword on the ground, conserving the muscles of his arm. He could see that even Sigurd’s arms were beginning to falter now. Pikes were most useful when their hind ends could be embedded in soil and their heads directed forward like a wall of giant thorns at charging cavalry. They were not meant to be wielded like glorified spears, and Sigurd was paying the price of his unorthodoxy. Reinmar could not see another pikeman who did not have the butt of his weapon grounded, nor could he see a single one whose brow was not covered by the sweat of extended effort. Even so, the beastmen were fighting at closer quarters than they had been a few moments before. They were dying in considerable numbers, but they were still coming recklessly for more. Not only were they coming, but they were beginning to make good headway.

Two in three pikes had now been grasped by clawed arms stronger than the tired limbs of their owners. Beastmen were actually using the weapons deployed against them as levers and ladders. There were defenders in the water now as well as attackers, and the attackers had the advantage there—whether the swimmers were townsfolk or Vaedecker’s regulars they had no expertise at all in fighting on the water, and the sheer animal fury of their adversaries would have been decisive even if they had not been so heavily outnumbered.

More and more beastmen were scrabbling at the ledges of the unloading-bays now, and there were too few blades available to thrust them all back. Sigurd was the last man to drop his pike, but drop it he did, then turned to snatch up his staff—the weapon to which he was most accustomed. “Now! Now! Now!” he was shouting, at Reinmar and everyone else around him, although none of them could have been in the least doubt that the utmost effort was called for, and that the battle for the storehouse would be won or lost within a quarter of an hour.

Then the second boom broke, and the third almost immediately afterwards. Reinmar knew that the greater battle for the fate of Eilhart passed into its second and deadlier phase—but so had the lesser conflict which was his part in it. From now on, there would be no letup until the battle was decided.

Reinmar had to focus absolutely on the matter of survival.

Vaedecker’s infantrymen were already trying to form a defensive line so that the enemy might be confronted with an uninterrupted series of blades, but they had taken casualties and some of their number were still out of place, having been sent to defend the doors on the other side of the building.

The earlier skirmish had been easily won, but it had taken its toll on the organisation, deployment and readiness of the trained soldiers. Now the townspeople had to show what they could do against creatures out of a nightmare. Reinmar and Sigurd placed themselves in the line, and were immediately engaged in furious action.

Reinmar stuck very fast to Sigurd’s left-hand side, not merely for his own protection but because the giant needed a blade to assist the work of his staff. Because it had no heavy metal head Sigurd’s weapon was less effective than it might have been at cracking skulls, but the advantage of its relative lightness meant that the big man could move it with lightning speed.

Tired though his arms were by their exertions with the pike, Sigurd’s reflexes were unimpaired, and as the monsters clambered up out of the water he struck them hard, two or even three at a time. Some fell back into the river, while any that did not sprawled on the stone floor, wide open to the thrusts of Reinmar’s blade. Reinmar thrust and thrust and thrust again, but the targets kept re-presenting themselves, and every target had arms and claws, and legs and claws, and a brutal head with horns that might be as long as a man’s arm.

Swordplay had always seemed reasonably easy to Reinmar while in training, when thrusts were only intended to demonstrate the possibility of harm. He had thought then that he had an aptitude for this kind of work, but he realised now that an “aptitude” was not much use in a real fight, where raw power and endurance were the most decisive factors. Reinmar had already discovered that actually doing harm was far more awkward and bruising than merely demonstrating a capacity, and the beastmen climbing out of the bloody water rammed that lesson home.

It had been bad enough trying to cut the squat subhumans or the wolfheads, but the kinds of beastmen that faced Reinmar now were far more difficult to hurt. Not one of them wore artificial armour, but that was because they did not seem to need it. Their clawed arms, in particular, were encased in impenetrable shells, and the horns atop their heads were not merely decorative, always moving this way and that to parry blows of every sort with stubborn solidity.

Reinmar tried at first to aim for the softer parts of the beast-men—their bellies and their throats—but such thrusts were too easily turned aside and ineffectual even when they drew blood. He realised that if he were to strike disabling blows he had to find a weakness that was more easily exploitable. When his sword had bounced off clawed limbs three or four times, though, he realised that there was a disadvantage in the kind of integral armour that the beastmen had. The limbs of such creatures were not nearly as clever as human limbs, because they were too rigidly articulated—and the joints were their most vulnerable points. No fatal wounds could be inflicted by thrusting at what the beastmen had instead of elbows and wrists, but once their claws became unusable they became dead weights, worse than useless.

Reinmar shouted this advice at the top of his voice to anyone who might be listening, but there was no way of knowing whether anyone could hear or understand him. For his own part, he continued thrusting, left then right, then left again, as Sigurd’s busy staff set up targets for him and deflected any weapon aimed at his head or heart. Reinmar had to look out for his own feet, but he was a great deal nimbler than beastmen of these cumbersome kinds, and he felt fully entitled to consider himself an aggressor, in command of the manner and tempo of the fight.

That changed. By slow and gradual degrees their situation was transformed, and not to their advantage. He and Sigurd were driven back from the water’s edge, one step at a time. As they were driven back they were parted from the swordsmen and spearmen who had tried to form a line with them, and who were also being driven back now that gaps had appeared where men had fallen.

Reinmar knew that he and Sigurd had to delay for as long as possible the eventuality that would force them to stand back to back, isolated from all other support and devoid of further choices. If that time came, he knew, their little fraction of the battle would be all but lost—but in trying to force exactly that situation, their enemies were taking substantial losses. The beastmen who were lunging at them refused to die, but now they seemed to have very little, save for their own awful mass, with which to threaten the defenders. Reinmar, Sigurd and their immediate companions had rendered too many claws completely useless with heavy blows and pricking wounds, and the bloated eyes of the foul creatures were becoming very vulnerable as their horns became less adept.

Had the bull-horned beastmen been the last wave of the enemy force that was attempting to storm the storehouse, the battle to defend it would probably have been won within a few more minutes—but they were only second-line forces, little more than human battering-rams intended to sow confusion and gain space. It was impossible to read expressions in their unhuman faces and horrid eyes, but they fought more like automata than men, with dour purpose but no real fervour.

The creatures that came after them were very different, far more frightening and vastly more dangerous.