Behind them, the outer units of Legion cavalry on the back-slope lurched into motion, quickly surging into a canter. Then, pivoting as if one end was fixed to the ground, the troops wheeled to face the slope. The riders leaned forward as their mounts climbed.

He should have ordered this earlier. A hundred heartbeats. Five hundred. Not a single skirmisher will be left.

As if reading her mind, Hunn Raal said, ‘I had a list of malcontents. Soldiers too inclined to question what is necessary to bring peace to the realm. They argued at the campfires. They muttered about desertion.’

Sevegg said nothing. There was no crime in asking questions. The last accusation was absurd. Deserters never talked about it beforehand. Instead, it was the opposite. They went quiet in the days before disappearing. Every soldier knew the signs.

The foremost ranks of the Legion cavalry crested the slope, swept over and then flowed down in a solid mass, arriving on the field of battle beyond the Warden flanks. She saw the first of the enemy riders discover the threat, and confusion take hold, lances lifting to allow the quick about-face. The centre formation, where the bulk of Rend’s force still advanced at the trot, began to bulge.

‘See that,’ Hunn Raal suddenly said. ‘He abandons his flanks to a mauling, and sets eyes only for our pikes.’

‘Those armoured mounts of theirs are surprisingly agile,’ Sevegg said, seeing how the outside ranks were already settling, lances dipping as they rode out to meet the Legion cavalry.

‘Outnumbered,’ Raal said, ‘and on weary beasts.’

The way ahead for Rend’s centre was now clear, with only motionless bodies to ride over as they approached the slope. Three-quarters of the way down the hillside, Raal’s pikes now halted, setting their weapons and anchoring the heels against the unyielding, frozen ground.

In the past war against the Jheleck, the pike had proved its efficacy. But the giant wolves charged without discipline, and proved too foolish and too brave and too stubborn to change their ways. Even so, Sevegg could not see how the Wardens could answer that bristling line of barbed iron points. ‘Rend has lost his mind,’ she said, ‘if he hopes to break our centre.’

Hunn Raal grunted. ‘I admit to some curiosity about that. We’ll see soon enough what he has in mind.’

The Legion cavalry had turned inward, rising to the charge. The Wardens answered. Moments later, the leading edges collided.

* * *

On the crest of her hilltop, Renarr flinched at the distant impact. She saw bodies silently rising as if invisible hands had reached down from the empty sky, snatching them from their saddles. Their limbs flailed, and blooms of red snapped sudden as flags in the midst of the crush. Horses went down, thrashing and kicking. An instant later, the thunder of that collision reached her.

The whores were shouting, while the children now crowded between the men and women along the ridge, silent and watching with wide eyes, some with thumbs in their mouths, others pulling on pipes.