Battle was joined in earnest, but its progress was glacially slow.

  Shields were held up and locked together as they inched across the sand-choked ground towards the foe. Arrows clattered upon shields, forming a curious melody. It was ruined by the heavier thump of the javelins, which created a harsh staccato beat, discordant with the rest of the symphony. Regardless, most bounced harmlessly away, discipline and patience reaping their rewards.

  House Krie had seen them coming; it would have been impossible not to. Arrayed in full battledress with shields polished to a perfect gleam, they gave Krie all the time they could have ever needed to raise their banners. They formed lines outside their camp on the plateau, lines of pikes two men deep, supported by a full host of archers.

  Aiur moved at a half-crouch within the shadow of the shield wall’s centre, as it inexorably inched forward in practiced lockstep. Casting his gaze around him, he was disappointed by their own return from the flanks, paltry at best. Volley after volley from the foe was testing their defences far more than expected. Even their own archers were forced to shelter behind the protection of the shield wall.

  The wall stood three shields high and stretched back a further two, overlapping one another like the scaled flank of some grand beast. It was spread wide in a single line, coiling across the plateau around the edges of the enemy formation as it advanced, constricting them with every step. With their own camp inching closer to their backs, the foe had no room to run.

  Aiur felt a turn in the battle was nigh, though he could not see it. The wall afforded no view of the landscape beyond, lest any opening be filled with arrows. He knew, however, that the shifting proportions of arrows and javelins hammering against them meant that the enemy’s skirmish line had run out of space and were likely attempting to push through their own defensive line. The marks in the sand from booted feet revealed they had moved past their foe’s initial position.

  “There is nowhere left to run,” Aiur called out, as much for his enemies' ears as his allies. “They have already lost this day, all that remains is for us to seize it!”

  Daiss was hunched at his side, glaive held in both hands, pointed out in front of him towards the enemy’s retreating lines. His fingers drummed on the haft of his weapon. He could hear the enemy, he could practically smell the enemy, but he could not see them, and he could not fight them. All he had done was rock from side to side on the balls of his feet while inching across sand-soaked rock at an infuriating pace... It was drawing out the stress that anticipated any fight to a ridiculous, and increasingly uncomfortable, degree.

  Cleonar was further down the line, obscured by the braced bodies ahead of her. Her location was only marked out by the house standard, which she held high. It bobbed and swayed in time with her exaggerated, lumbering stride, her own display of annoyance at the pace of battle. Other, smaller unit standards fluttered across the lines, braving the arrows to assert their house pride.

  Aiur ruminated on the situation. They needed to reach the damn line and strike while the enemy were hemmed against the camp. If they waited too long they could filter through. A running battle like that could be won, he was sure, but it would take hours and be unnecessarily bloody work. They needed to push through the pike wall, and fast. The archers had, through the understandable fault of not desiring death under a rain of arrows, failed to provide an opening, so they needed a new way in.

  A charge at their centre would break them, though at far too high a cost. A last resort. Repositioning the archers now would simply get them killed. If they could slip a hand-picked group into the camp behind them, however…that might just work…

  Aiur rolled his khopesh in his hand, a feral grin slowly spreading across his face.

  ***

  Rexis skulked between shadows and tents as quietly as possible. He’d removed his boots, letting his feet sink slowly into the sand with each step to muffle his movements. He could hear the ‘battle’ not far off, though it was not the standard clash of metal and shouts of the dying. Instead, little could be heard over the constant snap of bowstrings. He wondered why there was so little action yet.

  The Legionaries he’d brought with him were surprisingly capable, perhaps even comparable in talent to his own scouts, who made up the bulk of this flanking retinue. He’d be making some recommendations when this was over.

  They slithered, one by one, between tents and around the few cooks and servants not cowering away somewhere amidst the sea of cloth. They had swung wide around from the east, moving through quartermaster’s stores, makeshift kitchens and finally through empty billet tents. Now, they were coming directly in behind the battle line.

  Rexis could see them now, lightly armoured in green and red, armed with a mix of javelins and bows. They were inching their way back towards a small gap in the stake barrier that enclosed their camp.

  He spied the target stood by his banner; the bellowing, black wrought Drakkar skull atop verdant green of Krie, symbolising the monstrous dragon-kin cavalry they could no longer afford. At the fore of the enemy’s formation and just out of their reach, Consul Mavan stood with his back to them, guiding their volleys with broad arm gestures. Loose, load, step. Loose, load, step.

  They were slipping into the gap, slowly funnelling their lines down the small passage. It was a careful and measured move, one that might have even worked.

  With a few rapid hand gestures of his own, Rexis’ hand-picked team moved on. Slipping out from within tents, behind supply crates and a myriad of other hiding spots. Their sudden movement gave them away, chainmail rattling and long blades flashing as they rushed forward.

  Two dropped as a wave of arrows whistled through them. There was no time for a second volley, and squeezed five abreast, Rexis’ team smashed into the archers and cut off their escape.

  Rexis was at the front, laying into the near-defenceless archers with his blade, The first held his bow up in a two-handed brace, hoping it would save him, but Rexis’ first overhand blow cracked the wood and carried the bow down with its force, the second cracked the man’s skull and stuck fast. It took two pulls to be wrenched free, leaving rivulets of blood bubbling across scales. His heart pounded as he took a moment to breathe. All around him the scene was being repeated, spears plunged into the foe, blades slashed and twirled. He saw an arm pirouette through the air, trailing fine arcs of gore in its wake.

  Another came at him with a short-bladed dagger, forcing him back and jostling against those behind him, to avoid a downward stab aimed at his collarbone. He countered with a high arc that cut down his foe’s neck and left him choking on his own vital fluids. Pandemonium was setting in, though mercifully few could reach them at once, The crush of bodies pressing in to kill them was overwhelming.

  However, the barrage of arrows had become little more than a pitiful trickle that posed no threat at all.

  ***

  The beat died away, only scattered, occasional notes played now. Aiur rose to his full height and breathed deeply. “One step back, draw and loose!” he barked, pausing to let the centurions echo his words. A combined thud of massed footsteps followed, and then the aching groan of two hundred bowstrings being drawn.

  He listened for a moment, picking out the orders repeated by Arian and Melico. The snap of loosed arrows filled the air, he rolled his shoulders and flexed his digits. “Forward! Break them! Break them!” he bellowed, thrusting his khopesh forward.

  A collective roar rose up around him, three hundred reptilian voices echoing his cry as the unity of the shield wall dissolved into its individual elements. They broke into a charge, descending on the foe as the first volley scattered into the Krie lines. Aiur ran with his troops, watching for his opening to end this. He could hear Daiss and Cleonar break into an armoured sprint behind him, heavy armour snapping and groaning as they struggled to keep pace with their master.

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  More defenders fell as the second volley landed, pierced and broken, left dead or dying in the sand. Obvious gaps were growing in their line now, and he was at the forefront of the wave crashing in to exploit them.

  A sudden pike thrust, arrested his momentum and forced him to parry. Deflecting with his blade, he gripped the haft of the pike and attempted to use it to drag himself in close, and stop the killing end being useful. It half-worked. The broad-shouldered, mauve scaled man on the other end realised his intent, dropping his pike in favour of a dagger strapped to his thigh.

  Before he could pull it free, Aiur quickly rolled his khopesh from his right hand to his left and jammed the blade into the wrist going for the dagger. The soldier’s shout of pain was drowned out by the clamour of battle around them, and promptly silenced when Aiur’s armoured fist connected with his jaw.

  Aiur tossed his khopesh back to his dominant hand, ready at a half-crouch as another moved in, clutching a crescent-bladed axe. In a flash of steel over his left shoulder, his would-be foe’s body froze for a moment as his head rolled lazily from his shoulders. A moment later it fell into a heap with the rest of his corpse.

  Daiss loomed over him, blood dripping from his glaive. “Forward!” he roared triumphantly. The words had barely left his maw before he whirled around, slicing upwards to neatly open a man’s ribcage, cleaving his pike in two in the same blow.

  Without another word, the huge praetorian waded deeper into the fray. His size belied the speed with which he could whirl and arc his weapon, liberating heads, limbs and lives from their owners. He killed with almost disturbing enthusiasm, clearing a neat path of gore-streaked sand for his master to advance past the front line.

  Aiur nodded to his friend and protector, bolting up his crimson path, clear of the anarchy the enemy’s front line had descended into. Free of the press of bodies and stabbing pikes, he had time to note his foe shouting orders and attempting to organise his men.

  For a Saszrukai, Mavan presented a squat figure. Broad in the shoulders and torso, he had long, almost gangly, arms covered in scales of moss-green. His face was flat-featured, and knots of scales protruded from his lower jaw to create ridges and spikes, while twin razor-thin curls of crimson rolled lazily around his eyes to form his caste-marks. He was wrapped in a loose shirt of chainmail and bore no helm, waving a khopesh around like a conductor’s baton, though from the grimace on his face, his symphony was a mess.

  Aiur moved low, wary of those clustered around the Consul. The two most concerning figures were near identical; tall, lean and heavily armoured with ornate masks that depicted leering Drakkar skulls, their bestial, yet proud, lizard-steeds rendered in motionless steel. Each held a two-handed blade as long as they were tall across their chests, flanking Mavan on either side.

  They could only be his praetorians. Aiur was impressed by how quickly the last ones had been replaced, but that would not stay his hand.

  Mavan turned as Aiur approached, his manner casual as though this were some formal affair Aiur had been invited to. His khopesh lowered, and his face even bore a slight smile. This geniality took Aiur aback and provided Mavan an opportunity to speak. “Ah, I’m glad to see it’s you they sent.” His pronunciation of every syllable was crisp and full. He moved his left hand behind his back and bowed. “Shall we prove you are not without some modicum of honour, at least?”

  Aiur eyed his counterpart warily and took in the battle around them. By now it was clearly a one-sided affair. The Krie lines were rapidly becoming nothing more than scattered pockets of resistance, and many of their men and women were already throwing down their arms. He smiled and bowed formally in return. It wouldn’t hurt to give Mavan what he wanted.

  Mavan’s masked praetorians swept up their blades and moved forward, initially appearing to move in on Aiur with murderous intent glittering on their masked faces. Halfway between Mavan and Aiur, they abruptly stopped, turned to face the fray around them.

  Aiur shifted, watching them with naked suspicion. Mavan chuckled at Aiur’s discomfort. “Please forgive them, they’re…overzealous creatures.”

  Mavan slowly shifted into a duelling stance. His left hand remained behind his back as he stood perpendicular to Aiur, presenting the slimmest profile, his blade held low. “Now, whenever you are ready, we can begin.”

  Aiur nodded, taking a moment to breath and focus. While this was certainly the oddest circumstances he’d duelled under, he would not let that distract him. He lowered himself into a half crouch, right foot forward and body fully facing Mavan. He gripped his khopesh in his right hand, his left hand out to his side, palm down and open.

  Mavan was nimble in his simple attire, a dust-choked jacket that concealed a protective vest of chainmail. He looked confident and, by his stance, intended on using a traditionalist fighting style. The slim profile he presented certainly lent itself to a patient defence.

  Aiur was comparatively heavily armoured. Injuring him would be difficult at first, but he’d tire faster, and begin to make mistakes. His fighting style was newer and more personal, he had a few favoured tricks, and he hoped the pitted scars and messy scratches on his metal vambraces wouldn’t give too much away.

  They inched closer, each glancing warily at the other’s footwork, at the slightest movement of their arms, and at every twitch of their blade. They each began to probe the other’s defence, flicking blows low and high to note how the other reacted. The praetorians standing to either side of them did not so much as twitch through the repeated, teeth-clenching scrape of metal on metal as they moved back and forth in the opening exchanges.

  They closed. Aiur’s uncertainty allowed Mavan the first strike. The blow came in a high, curved arc aimed at Aiur’s left shoulder, but he swatted it aside with a harsh parry. He followed up with a low slash aimed at Mavan’s sword-arm, but Mavan hooked their blades together and checked its course. Mavan’s return was an immediate lunge, flicking his blade around the parry and aiming directly for the neck. Aiur’s saving grace was his vambrace, bringing his arm up the blade thudded home there; the pain burned as it sunk deep, making him hiss and groan. Mavan pushed his advantage, forcing Aiur back and only wrenching the blade free the moment Aiur attempted a retributory swipe aimed at his face.

  By now they were both bleeding. Crimson trickled from a slender tear on Aiur’s ruined vambrace, and a gentle sliver of crimson seeped between the scales of Mavan’s lower lip. Both took a breath. Aiur repeatedly clenched and unclenched his fist simply to reassure himself he still could. Mavan brought his left hand from behind his back to daintily wipe his face clean. The wound Aiur had taken was by far the worse of the two; he could not risk taking another.

  “One apiece, but I do hope you don’t intend to sacrifice limbs every time I get close,” Mavan commented with an amused chuckle.

  Aiur did not rise to the bait, rolling his shoulders and remaining poised at a comfortable distance, forcing Mavan to close in again.

  Mavan leapt in with another high arc, which Aiur parried far more efficiently this second time. Aiur’s follow-up swipe at Mavan’s abdomen caused him to dart back to avoid it. Sand rose in small clouds around his feet.

  Mavan moved to lunge back in, blade coming in low. Aiur parried with his wrist, sending hot spears of pain up his arm, but opening Mavan’s defence entirely. The cut was good, but the armour held, links of chainmail skittered into the sand without a single drop of blood. Mavan slid out of range of any follow-up, grinning from ear to ear.

  “Oh wonderful, wonderful! You really have been getting better.” Mavan declared, voice bubbling with pride.

  “And you move far too fast for your age,” Aiur rumbled, unable to stop himself returning the grin.

  Mavan’s lips curled into a smirk. “I’ll take that as a compliment.” He chuckled before springing forth into a new tirade of blows fuelled, with newfound ferocity. Most came in high, and it became rapidly clear to Aiur that this was still his favoured place to strike. That hadn’t changed since their last duel at the tourney.

  He managed to turn most aside with parries or stopped them dead with blocks that sent shuddering vibrations across both fighter’s limbs. But again, and again Aiur’s blade work misjudged a strike or missed a parry by the smallest margin, and he was forced to bring his vambrace up. A molten lance of pain shot up his arm with each juddering impact. His limbs began to burn with the exertion of it, and his clawed fingers became more numb with each blow. But he weathered Mavan’s storm, searching for his chance. Experience may be on his side, but Aiur had speed on his.

  Although he had been desperately waiting for one, when the opportunity came, it nearly took him by surprise. He spied the slightest opening in Mavan’s defence as he swung in. In a moment, it was gone, Aiur forced into another parry to save his own hide. But it appeared again and again, no helpful rhythm to exploit, it came in seemingly random strikes, the tiniest of openings. Aiur flicked the quickest blow he dared towards it when he saw it for the fifth time. He hit chainmail, sending more broken links into the sand, but the blow did not bite. In a moment of instinct, just as his blade slid wide, he dropped it neatly into his left hand. Though pain burned in his wrist as he gripped the blade, it gave him what he needed.

  Just as his blow struck, rending into Mavan’s open wound just under the sword arm, Mavan’s own strike finally landed, smacking him in the face mere inches from his left eye. They both reeled from the other’s attack. Although the blow had struck Aiur hard, the blade’s edge did not bite, the angle ruined by the shock of his injury.

  Mavan was twisted to one side, sword arm outstretched and hand empty. His own new wound oozed blood freely, and his blade sat in the sand a scant few meters from him.

  Aiur took a step forward. He was halted when, with the resonating clang of blade-on-blade, a crossed pair of swords barred his path. The praetorians retained their silent glares as he drew back, never wavering in their duty.

  The sounds of battle began to ebb, and soon, hundreds of eyes were upon them to bear witness as Mavan turned, his hands raised in surrender.