Chapter 58: Blood in the Narrows

The levy spilled into the chokepoint, hundreds of men trying to squeeze through a narrow passage that had never been meant for more than some dozens.

Only the first few ranks could reach the platoon’s line at all. Everyone behind them was packed three or four deep, unable to see what was waiting ahead and unable to stop regardless. The militia at their backs pushed them forward, and those soldiers were pushed by the soldiers behind them.

It was a very effective trap, provided one didn’t mind being crushed.

Then the two armies met, and for the soldiers in that first rank, none of the numbers mattered anymore.

Shields slammed together with a noise like a wave breaking on stone, wood and iron jolting through arms and shoulders as men were crushed chest to chest, and Domenego stood in the middle of it instead of safely behind, right in the front rank where the ground narrowed hardest and where the worst of the fighting would arrive first.

"Hold!"

His voice cut through the noise, flat and hard. There was nothing left in it of the man who had been discussing a stranger’s boots that morning.

"Shields locked! Don’t give them the ground!"

One spearman came at him through the crush, his weapon aimed low at Domenego’s gut. The lieutenant caught the shaft against the rim of his shield and knocked it wide.

Then he stepped inside the spear’s reach, close enough to smell the man’s breath, and drove his blade up beneath the raised arm, where boiled leather ended and a linen sleeve began. The blade punched through flesh, and hot blood spilled over Domenego’s hand.

The steel found the opportunity it had been made to find.

The spearman’s knees faltered, and he disappeared beneath the boots of the men around him, his body kicked and trampled deeper into the press, forgotten.

"Fill it!"

Domenego turned, shield raised, ready to meet the next enemy who shoved into the space the first had left.

This one had a woodsman’s axe instead of a weapon, and he swung it with all the hesitation of a civilian brought to battle.

Domenego let the blow crash harmlessly against his shield, the impact jarring his arm to the shoulder, then answered with a short, ugly thrust into the man’s throat, just above the collar of his jerkin. The blade tore through his throat, and blood burst across the front of his jerkin and washed down over the axe as it slipped from dead fingers.

The lieutenant shoved the body backward into the men behind it, buying himself half a breath. It was more than enough time to spend none of it.

The rest of the frontline fell into much the same miserable rhythm, thrust, recover, shield, answer.

Every man in the front rank was doing the brutal, thankless work, blades punching into whatever flesh they could reach, shields taking blows meant for ribs and skulls, one gap after another and trying not to become the gap himself.

Three men down the line, Ruggiero was holding his ground too, his sword moving in short strokes, until a spear slipped beneath his guard and caught him in the thick of the thigh. The blade tore through mail and flesh together, biting deep enough to fill the torn rings with blood, and the shaft snapped off against the bodies packed around him.

He dropped hard onto one knee with a cry that had nothing dark or amusing in it anymore. The soldier behind him seized him by the collar of his hauberk and dragged him backward.

Another footmen stepped into the position, his shield slamming into the gap before the enemy could exploit it, locking his shield against the soldier beside him as neatly as if nothing had happened.

"You’re not dying here, you ugly bastard," the soldier dragging him muttered.

He seemed to be saying it mostly for his benefit, since Ruggiero had nothing left just then with which to argue.

The earth beneath both ranks had turned dark and slick by then, mud and blood churned together until neither army’s boots could find much of a grip.

Still, neither line broke.

From the rise, Vito watched the whole business without taking part in it. His crossbowmen kept loosing steady, disciplined volleys past the melee instead of into it. They aimed deep into the packed mass behind the fighting, at whatever was left of the enemy’s broken skirmish screen now mixed in with the levy itself.

One man fell here, another there. A bolt struck a face, another vanished beneath a raised shield, another buried itself in a throat. Each bolt took a man out of the press, thinning the force feeding the chokepoint one body at a time.

Then Vito’s eye found a rider sitting his horse just behind the worst of the crush. His surcoat bore bold colors he didn’t recognize, worn over his mail.

He had his sword raised while shouting down at the men ahead of him, driving them forward with his voice, useful when the men’s legs had plainly begun considering retirement.

"That one."

Vito raised a hand and pointed.

"All of you, on him. Now."

Six strings released together. The rider’s shout stopped halfway through the word as bolts punched through his mail and into the horse beneath him, one through his chest, one more high in the shoulder. The rest struck the horse, burying themselves in flesh.

Rider and animal went down together in a heap and blood splashed across the men nearest them as the horse collapsed, its legs folding beneath the rider.

For a few heartbeats, the levy nearest that crush simply stopped. The soldiers looked toward the place where their officer had disappeared, until the weight of the men behind them forced them to move again.

The battle went on after that, grinding forward without actually going anywhere.

The ugly work repeated itself along the chokepoint, and neither side pushed the other back, both paying for every foot of ground that refused to change hands. The soldiers slipped in the blood beneath their boots, recovered their footing, and went back to killing.

At one point, the line nearest Domenego staggered badly enough for a real breach to open. Two levy spearmen forced themselves half a step through it before Domenego hurled himself into the passage, shield first.

He drove his shoulder into them with all the fury he had left, smashing one man back into the press hard enough to knock the breath from him and forcing the other sideways, while the soldiers beside him closed around him again.

"Hold, damn you, hold!"

The next man was already coming, and Domenego was there to meet him. Their shields collided, the impact ringing up Domenego’s arm, and he drove his sword forward again.

Vito watched from above as the whole company held the frontline.

It was about time for him to move.

He turned toward the nearest sergeant on the rise, a man whose name he had intended to learn and had never gotten around to remembering.

"Hold the rise and keep firing. Don’t stop for anything."

Then Vito went down from the rise at a hard, low run, cutting behind the company’s position rather than near the frontline. He kept himself away of the enemy’s eyes as he crossed the ground behind his men.

Ahead, beyond the chokepoint, the streambed waited. Fifteen picchieri waited there too, and not one of them had yet been asked to do a thing all day.

Behind him, the melee raged on exactly as it had, entirely unaware that Vitale Barozzi had just walked out of it.