Sunset Mantle Read Online Free Page B

were to be followed, and they were not yet at grips. Law and custom were as clear on that as anything. But they were the wrong damn orders. Try to get back across that streambed, and they’d be clawing at the bank like stranded turtles while the tribesmen skewered them from behind. It might have made sense to Radan—the bed would make a fine ditch between them and the tribes—but the tribesmen would blood them and fade away, and they were three days from the Reach.
    The horns blew again. Cete shook his head, and charged on, and his men followed. Even if he was violating the chain of command, they, at least, knew to obey it. His sin was not theirs. Three more heartbeats, and they were in among the tribesmen, and no law or custom allowed a commander to call off a troop once they had come to grips.
    If nothing else, he’d secured a retreat for those with better discipline. Then all thoughts of strategy, all thoughts of right and wrong vanished, and there was nothing but sword and axe and knife and blood, the push of line against line.
    The first wave of tribesmen went down. They had courage, but lacked the discipline of the cities—each tribesman fought to prove himself, to win acclaim and honor, but Cete’s troops fought because that was what they had learned, because they had been trained to do nothing other than fight when the blood began to flow.
    First wave down, second wave coming. Not the heroes of the first line, not young men trying to prove themselves, but the fighting men of a northern tribe, beards and hair tied back, mail shirts and brass embossed shields. Man for man, the Reach army was their better, but there were too many of them. Step by step by step, Cete and his men were forced back to the riverbank. Before them, a mass of fighting men, hundreds of tribal warriors, with goat-skin standards and red-painted shields. Behind them, a drop almost as tall as a man, and bleached stones beneath.
    Damn Radan! The boy had looked fine, and they had been right to march out to meet this threat, but if he was to be a field general, he had to see that circumstances had changed. Now was the time to call for the slingers and ladders, now was the time for a counterattack. The surprise was gone, and Cete had a beachhead for him. Cete had disobeyed, but he had been right, and Radan had to take the advantage that Cete’s fifty had earned.
    It had not just been his fifty who had remained on the weak side of the streambed. Others had not heard the call to retreat, or had come to grips before it was blown, or had not chosen to obey. But there were less than eighty of the Reach men, and they were falling fast. Cete ducked underneath a spear, which skidded across his shoulder. He pushed up, axe in one hand, knife in the other, and found the weak point in his opponent’s mail shirt. The knife cut in at the armpit, and the tribesman pulled back, howling in pain.
    Two more came in, and went down, but all along the riverbank his men were dying. Three patches held. Where he stood was the first squad, and remnants of the fourth; he could not tell who was left alive. He could hear the soft sounds of a ready army behind him, amidst all the thunder and shouting of the melee. If Cete had kept his horn, he’d have blown the charge himself, and to hell with the consequence, but that was long gone, trampled with his tent or taken as a trophy.
    There was a pause in the assault, just an instant, and Cete looked back over the dry riverbed. There was Radan, his face white beneath his helmet, horn to hand. He was young enough that this might have been his first real battle.
    Cete took a spear in the center of his chest. It dropped him to one knee, but it didn’t cut his armor, or knock him back into the streambed. The roar came up from inside him, forced out from his chest, loud enough to hurt his throat. He was on his feet, his foe was gone, and he was holding a fistful of hair. He had no recollection of what had happened; his vision was going