The pirates had set the houses alight before leaving. Whether they meant to delay pursuit or had simply wanted to cause more suffering, the result was the same. People stumbled between the burning buildings, dragging out possessions and injured relatives.
Roderic's face hardened. He called a sword-and-shield man to him.
“Take thirty of the levies. Stay and help. Everyone else, with me.”
The older and weaker men remained in Beambridge. The veterans and the younger levies went after the pirates. Half an hour wasn't much of a lead, especially for men carrying plunder they refused to abandon. Stragglers were caught and killed along the way.
Roderic's horsemen reached the main force on a wooded hillside. The pirates had formed up and were waiting. He stayed out of range rather than risk discovering their archers by being shot, then fell back to his own men. When the infantry caught up, he gave the order.
“Form ranks!”
The veterans assembled in three lines. Nine archers stood forward, with more than ten shield-bearing swordsmen behind them. The spearmen took the rear, resting their shafts over the swordsmen's shoulders toward the enemy. Off to one side, the farmers gathered in a noisy clump, brandishing tools and whatever weapons they had brought.
Oliver looked at the line. It was orderly enough, but thin.
He kept that thought to himself. He had never stood in a formation like this on a real battlefield. What he knew was theory, and arriving uninvited to tell Roderic how to command his own men seemed a poor way to improve matters. He drew Kellan aside and took a place between the levies and the veterans.
Roderic glanced at them, made no comment, and turned back to the front.
“Archers. Ready.”
Bows came up. Arrows were drawn and set to the strings.
“Loose!”
The first flight hissed across the grass. Then a second. Most of the shafts that Oliver could see struck shields in the pirates' front rank. Whether any had found men behind them was impossible to tell.
The enemy kept coming.
A little over fifty remained, packed into a formation narrower and deeper than the militia's. The men in front carried axes and broad shields. As they closed, they used the shields to knock spearpoints aside. Behind them, men with great two-handed axes pushed forward and began hacking at the veterans' shields.
The impacts sounded like chopping timber. Roderic's line began to give.
More than a dozen lightly equipped pirates broke from the rear of their own formation and charged the levies. Forty-odd farmers scattered before them. The attackers drove them aside as easily as frightened animals.
If those men were routed, the pirates could turn into the veterans' flank and rear. The thin line would collapse. Roderic might escape to ask his lord for more troops, but by the time another force reached the coast, how many more villages would look like the one Oliver had buried?
He gripped his spear halfway along the shaft.
“Stay with me, Kellan.”
Until then, the pirates had left him largely alone. His equipment suggested importance, but he had no horse, and they seemed uncertain what to make of him. As he advanced, men detached themselves from both the main fight and the group chasing the levies.
The first wore a plain iron cap and mail, with sword and shield ready. Oliver drove his spear toward the man's head. The shield came up. The pirate continued forward, preparing to turn the point aside and close inside its reach.
Oliver's spear struck the shield.
If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
Kellan's went beneath it, through the mail into the man's belly. He twisted the shaft, and the pirate folded. Oliver and Kellan ran past him, shouting for one another to press on.
They used the same cooperation against the next men: one drew the defense, the other struck through the opening. Sword, hammer, great axe; the weapon mattered less than the mistake of facing two spearpoints as though there were only one. The remaining pirates drew together, shields forward and axes behind, and slowed their advance.
Seven or eight levies had not run far. Hearing Oliver's calls, they picked up their weapons and came back.
“With me!” he shouted. “One each and we've earned our keep. Two and we're in profit!”
It sounded ridiculous even as he said it. He charged anyway.
His armor gave him confidence in a close fight. What frightened him was losing the battle and finding himself alone, surrounded by men with time to work out how to pry him out of it. Without a horse, there would be no convenient escape. Having committed, he had to keep fighting.
Behind the lines, Harrick rode among the fleeing levies with his sword drawn. Three or four fell beneath his blows.
“Back! Get back into the fight! Run and I'll kill you!”
The farmers had been afraid to lead a charge. Following a man who was already driving the enemy back was another matter, especially with their lord's son cutting down those who refused. They gathered behind Oliver and Kellan.
The two of them opened the way. Men Oliver wounded or forced out of position went down beneath the levies rushing after him. Before long, the pirates who had broken off to attack the farmers had been wiped out.
The enemy's main body saw what was happening and redoubled its attack. The veterans' line broke just as Oliver led the levies toward it. More fugitives returned under Harrick's threats, and mounted men began circling the fight, striking where they could.
Armor had saved many of the veterans when their formation collapsed. Men who had fallen got up and joined the struggle again. The ordered ranks were gone. The battle became a melee.
By the time Oliver could judge the situation again, a little over twenty of the larger, stronger pirates still stood. Around him, perhaps ten veterans and twenty-odd levies could be brought together to fight. Both sides were exhausted. The next turn might finish it.
A huge man in a horned helmet came for him with an axe in each hand.
The man's assault broke Oliver's spear shaft. Oliver threw the useless length aside and drew his long saber, the blade shaped like Strike of the Hydra.
His opponent was about two meters tall, larger even than Oliver's new body, and exceptionally strong. The axes came one after the other in a quick, practiced sequence. Oliver gave ground instead of meeting them directly. He used the saber's reach to threaten the man's throat.
An axe knocked the point aside. The giant tried to follow, but Oliver made him take another step and drove the blade at his chest.
It stopped against armor beneath the fur coat.
Oliver felt the shock travel up the steel. The man was protected much as he was, and had apparently chosen two axes for the same reason Oliver had abandoned sword and shield: he wanted to kill quickly.
Men on both sides pulled away as the fight spread across a patch of ground five meters wide. Oliver kept moving, searching for openings. The saber had extraordinary force behind it. Properly driven, it could part a weapon, or cut through horse and rider together. But the axes were fast, and inside the longer blade's reach, the pirate could strike several times before Oliver recovered his distance.
Oliver's skill and movement kept him from being trapped there for long. The giant's strength and relentless attacks kept him under pressure. Each time Oliver found an opening, the pirate's inferior iron armor let another small wound through. Gradually, those wounds began to slow him.
About a hundred and eighty heartbeats into their fight, the giant stepped on a body.
His footing shifted. Before he could recover, Oliver went in.
An axe crashed against his helmet. He accepted the blow and drove the saber down through the man's shoulder armor. The cut carried diagonally through him. The two parts of the body struck the ground.
For a moment, the fighting stopped. Men stared.
Then the pirates threw down their weapons and ran for the woods.
“Don't let them escape!” Roderic shouted, riding after them with his three remaining horsemen.
Oliver did not follow. He sat where he was and leaned on the saber.
Blood spread from the giant's body over the smaller corpse that had upset his footing. Something about its back was familiar. Oliver reached over and turned it enough to see the face.
The head had been badly struck. Beneath the damage, he recognized Edrin.
“I didn't think you'd be the one helping me,” he said quietly.
“Sir?”
Kellan stood beside him, blood on his clothes, one hand holding the opposite shoulder.
“Master,” Oliver corrected. “What happened? Is it bad?”
“A hammer. It isn't broken.”
Oliver patted the ground beside him. “Sit down for a bit.”
Around them, the militia began going through the fallen. Their own wounded were carried aside to men who knew how to treat them. Wounded pirates received a final blow, after which whatever they carried was taken.
Oliver watched someone bend over another body and remembered the bargain.
“Kellan. Find the men we killed and take their heads. Their equipment too, before someone else gets it. Pay for help if there's too much to carry.”
The boy's face tightened. He had already learned what happened when he objected to that order.
“Can I get Edrin to help?”
Oliver pointed.
“He's there.”
Kellan looked at the body. He said nothing more. After a moment, he lowered his head and went to work.
The sun was sinking, reddening the grass and the blood upon it.