Age of War

Chapter 49

With the help of a burly pair of her soldiers, Hadrin had been helped up into the saddle of a new horse. Her ankle still throbbed, and she was starting to worry it might be broken. No time to give it any more thought than that: it was the least of her problems. She guided the unfamiliar horse across the wreckage of the battlefield; the churned mud, the broken bodies, the shattered swords and shields. The army was forming up anew, giving a good account of themselves, but even from here she could see the battering her forces had taken. The low walls of the city were empty now, and no arrows fell from the sky, but still she remained uneasy. They’d arrived at Atlas with almost a hundred-thousand soldiers. She estimated they had less than half that now. Oh, they weren’t all dead: many were injured or incoherent, a liability to their comrades now. There were a fair few deserters too. The levies, despite their oaths to the lords who had raised them from the fields for this campaign, had in some cases turned tail en masse, throwing down their weapons and fleeing into the countryside, most likely never to return. Conscripts, in Hadrin’s estimation, were always more trouble than they were worth and she’d have sooner left them back in Chronus. But they weren’t the only ones who’d apparently been dismayed by the sudden swings of fortune in this conflict: their allies from other Provinces, those drawn here by Saffrey’s promises of revolution, had slipped away when the fires went up, or so her fellow commanders told her. They were little better than mercenaries and, like any sellswords, they’d weigh up their chances of coming out on top with every minute that passed. Eventually, it was just too much of a gamble for them. Worse than all that though, Hadrin thought as she cast her eyes across the ranks, were those units who had been decimated in the fires or by Rykall’s unexpected charge. Whole command structures had been annihilated, leaving broken companies without officers, and officers without companies. Units were being amalgamated, reorganised, hammered into some sort of fighting shape, like a blade snapped in two. But like that blade, they’d never be as strong as when they were newly-forged. A body of troops was effective only as long as they were familiar with one another, and with the tactics their leader favoured. This wasn’t an army now: it was simply a horde, a rabble. It would have to be enough.

There was a commotion further down the road, and Hadrin wheeled around to watch the approach of Saffrey and his retinue. As she’d predicted earlier, his horse was adorned with gilded tack, and there wasn’t a speck of dirt on his fine, expensive clothes. A faint smile hovered on his face, and she noted well how his eyes slid over the many corpses that littered the ground. He trotted towards her. His horse was very fine, and Hadrin felt a renewed pang of grief for her slain mount. There was something perverse about how that had affected her more than all the people who had lost their lives in this desperate assault. Saffrey’s cold eyes met hers. “Report, commander,” he said calmly.

Where to begin? She looked around. “The walls are ours, whenever you wish to take them, lord.”

He frowned up at the battlements. “The defenders?”

“They’ve retreated.”

“Good.” He scanned the city, and she sidled her horse towards his and followed his gaze. She could see, through the smoke and the rain, lines of soldiers making their way up the hills through the zig-zagging streets, up towards the Enclave. “We have them on the run.”

“We should. We paid a high enough price.”

“For Atlantis itself, no price is too great.”

She wanted to snap off a sardonic reply. Maybe suggest he tell that to the families’ of those men and women who were now lying unburied in the mud, or beneath blackened timbers out in the shanty town somewhere, or on the walls with a sword or an arrow through the chest. Saffrey wasn’t the one paying any price, was he? He’d been safe outside the city. But she didn’t say any of that. She just nodded. It was far, far too late to question her decision to join this madness now. And besides, she was fairly sure Saffrey would only smile and reply with something awfully clever that would make her feel like a child. Hadrin realised, perhaps for the first time, how intensely she disliked this arrogant lord.