The morning air was damp/humid laced with the metallic scent of oil and musk of damp earth. On the horizon, Baldome's army could be seen marching towards us and on the opposite side, clusters of dark cloud were arriving at a disturbing pace. It seemed like I was blessed by the Gods. It was going to rain and a pouring rain at that. We naturally benefited from it since we were on high ground and the soil was going to be damp hence rendering Baldome's cavalry useless and hampering the movement of his infantry.
A thousand of us stood in the pass. A thousand mismatched helmets, a thousand hands that had wielded plows more than pikes. We had spikes hidden beneath the frozen mud, pits set like traps along the narrowing road, ash and oil for the parched throat of a marching army. We had my father's two dozen knights, Commander Halric's grim veterans, a handful of veterans from border skirmishes—and the rest were farmers, fishermen, men who had never known war beyond rumour.
Baron Elias moved like a man who had swallowed iron. His face was pinched, but his voice kept calm as he passed orders. "Do not give them ground," he said. "Hold the line. If the pass is lost, the Prince falls. If the Prince falls, we may all be hanged for treason."
He said treason quietly, as if it might be contagious. Around him, men readied themselves. Jaren rattled his sword hilt as if that could sharpen courage. Halric checked the archers on the southern ridge, muttering something that sounded like a prayer.
I had been silent through the council. They called me the boy who read maps for amusement, the scholar who spoke of formations at the table. I had learned to let them murmur; when the drums sounded and the first plumes of smoke rose from the enemy camp, murmurs were as useless as soft bread in a storm. I bent instead to the land. Every contour of the ridge, every outcrop of rock, every scrap of scrub where a bowman might hide, all these were language to me. I read them. I saw where a man could stand and make five thousand act like a line of tinder.
"Arrows ready!" I called, waiting until the vanguard crested the lower ridge. The sky darkened, and a thousand strings sang in unison. Baldome's men pressed forward, shields linked, heads bowed to the shield-wall. The first ranks took the rain of arrows like a rope takes rain: soaked but continuing. Still, the volley tore gaps. A horse stumbled and went down; men slipped in the blood and mud.
They moved with confidence—too confident. Baldome expected to run us down with weight and numbers. He had not watched the night work of our men: caltrops hidden in the rutted mud, pits camouflaged beneath rushes, stakes sharpened and set on the narrowest stretch of road. Where the pass squeezed, men would have to come singly or in columns; there our numbers would not feed, and discipline would be costlier than courage.
The first pit went with a sucking crunch. A horse plunged and screamed; a rider's helmet vanished beneath earth and sod. The road snared like a net, and men piled up. The rear ranks pushed, unaware of the dead and dying beneath their feet; the front ranks were wedged together, shield to shield.
"Now!" I breathed.
From the trees our cavalry slid like a grey current—barely a hundred, but fast, furious, and led by men who had something more than fear driving them: purpose. They struck the clogged road, thin as a knife between ribs, and their lances found ribs, knees, haunches. Men tumbled; the oaths of a soldier died on the wind. For a time we had the measure of it. For a time Baldome's trained multitude looked like a disorderly mob.
But Baldome was not a fool. He had left discipline as his armor. His pikes came on in ranks, steady as a tide, spears bristling like a hedge. They met our cavalry and took the blows as a tree takes the sea. Crossbowmen found the ridges and drove bolts into our archers. Men fell behind jagged rocks, shaking off life like ragged cloaks. Their formation stymied our wedge.
We had taken our toll. Bodies lay blackened in the ruts and along the verge. For every yard they took, they paid blood. But five thousand is a number that eats numbers; every dead man was replaced by another pressed from the rear, pushed by someone's greed or oath.
The pass bled. Our lines thinned. Shields splintered. Spears bent. Jaren fought like a thing possessed, face raw and red with exertion and blood; he swung blind despite his arm trembling. Halric's veterans held with a stubbornness that made me proud and sick in equal measure. At my side, men gave me wary looks—boys who had heard I loved strategies but had not burned in this fire. I met their eyes and gave them a small, hard nod. We had plans. Plans do not guarantee life, but they make certain deaths kinder to the living.
And then I saw how Baldome had stretched himself. His center was a massed weight, a fist that would crush the pass given time. But his left flank—pressed against the rock, feeding men into the choke—wavered. He had gambled that numbers and momentum would be enough. Momentum can be stopped by a nail. Discipline becomes brittle when your line is forced into a bottleneck and men press upon men.
"Listen!" I said, riding the line. "Their left is thin. They have fed too many into the center. If we strike their flank with everything we have, we can break their formation and—" I stopped, because the eyes on me told a story of dread. To break the flank we would need men—knights, riders, those willing to risk the iron teeth. We had a hundred cavalry. One hundred could not break five thousand. One hundred, properly led and driven, could break the right man's line.
My father's face hardened with the decision weighed before him. "You would risk our cavalry?" he asked.
"If we do nothing, they will grind us into paste," I said. "If we strike their flank, we may make them pull back to cover and buy time for the Prince. Or we die like lambs on the altar of a duke's ambition." The choice sounded bitter even to my own ears. If I was wrong, I had led the last coherent force into slaughter. If I was right, we would give the Crown Prince a breath to breathe.
He studied the map, the men, my face. Then Elias Deryn, who had always worn caution like an old cloak, made the single motion that would decide us. "Do it," he said.
I felt the surge then—fear braided with furious resolve. I turned to my one hundred riders. They were the best we had: border-raiders converted to cavalry, my father's more trusted squires, a few re-enlisted knights who still had steel left in their eyes.
"With me," I told them.
The words were simple. They were also a command. They were a covenant.
We moved on the flank like a grey wedge. For a heartbeat it felt as if the pass itself held its breath. Baldome's men were busy strangling the center; their flank was a thinning seam. We thundered from cover, hooves throwing dirt and rock, the sound a single body of thunder that swallowed cries.
The enemy's lines buckled under the impact of our wedge. We hit them where they were weak—ribs, knees, the joints of formation—and for a brief, glorious span the world narrowed to steel and speed. Men toppled, shields spun, banners dipped. The road opened like flesh under a careful knife. Baldome's infantry reeled.
I didn't slow. I did not think of my father's face in the hall or Jaren's wild courage. I thought only of the man before whose banner the entire enemy host had swelled—Count Baldome himself—his black standard ringing with the Duke's favor. He sat back from the lines, a stern lord with guards and flunkies who loved rank more than battle. He had not expected a charge that cut like this.
Closer. Closer. The pass blurred into a tunnel of motion. Two men exploded into tree and shield; a sergeant's helm flew like a thrown pebble. We forced a wedge. Men screamed and died under iron-shod hooves. My horse slid, found purchase, surged.
And then, at the mouth of his command, Baldome turned. His eyes met mine. For an instant, as the world narrowed to a pin-prick of intention, there was no army—only the two of us looking across the bloody ranks. His face registered surprise that a minor baron's heir would do more than quarrel in council; mine registered the cold arithmetic that had been my companion since boyhood.
The charge had broken a seam in his host. Around us men bled and fell, but the path to Baldome's position yawned open—dangerous and ragged, but open nonetheless. My throat tasted of iron and winter; my arm hummed with exertion. Behind me, my men held the wedge, the storm I had shaped. Ahead, the count's guards scrambled into a ragged defense, but they were few and slow and surprised.
The battle around the pass continued—steel clashed, men gasped, the smell of smoke and blood rose into the cold air. But above that roar, in the hollow where a final decision would be made, a new sound began: the pounding of a single heart determined to set the course of a war.
I reined in to a halt a dozen paces from Baldome's banner. My sword arm was steady. My visor was up. The drum of battle seemed to recede.
We both knew the rules of this sort of thing: men at arms had a crude code. If an enemy leader rode out and offered himself, the duel would be a point of honor and terror that could decide more than a life—if the lord fell, his host often broke in confusion and grief. If he survived, the enemy might harden and take worse vengeance. Still, men watched. Battles pause for a single blade.
I breathed in the cold, tasted blood and winter. Around us the fighting surged, but all that mattered in that breath was the man before me and the wedge I had driven.
"Count Baldome!" I shouted, my voice made to cut through chaos. "This will end between you and me. I Challenge you to a duel."
The count's gaze flicked to me, then to his men, then back. For a heartbeat he seemed amused, as if the boy with two dozen men and a bluff of bravado had offered him sport. Then he smiled, a cold thing that did not reach his eyes.
"You dare challenge me?" he said, voice carrying across the broken road. "Very well, boy. When the sun fades and the blood dries, we will let steel decide. For now—" He raised a hand, and a horn sounded.
My men leaned forward, breath steaming, swords bright. Behind us, the pass still choked with combat. Ahead, a path had been opened by our charge—bloody, dangerous, but a path to the count himself.
I planted my heels into my horse and looked once at the ridge where my father stood, gaunt and fierce. I swallowed the taste of fear.
This was the turning of a wheel. The charge had done more than tear a hole in Baldome's line. It had announced one thing in a voice loud enough for the whole valley to hear: we were not merely sheep to be shorn.
I gathered the reins. "Hold until I return," I told my men.
They did not answer in words. Their faces were set. Hooves dug and the line pressed on. I could see, in the distance and the close, men falling, shields shattering, the price of the gamble laid bare. But we had achieved something dangerous and necessary: the road to Baldome lay open, and I had made myself the instrument of the challenge.
Behind me, the battle raged. Ahead, the road narrowed. Between, I felt the iron of fate bite.
The sun slipped toward evening. The duel would not be fought now. It would be met with blades in the next hour, or perhaps the next day; but the course was set. Men would speak of this charge in taverns and halls. Some would call it madness; others, genius. I could not tell which, and maybe neither mattered.
For now, I rode forward with the wedge at my back, and Baldome's black banner a breathing thing before me. The pass echoed with the sounds of men dying and living, and the world seemed to tilt on the edge of a single, terrible choice.
To be continued in Chapter 3 — The Duel at the Pass.