Win or die

Raina had barely slept all night. The camp was already bustling with activity. The men were crossing the river in barges. They seemed to have been at it for some time.

The men on the opposite bank had already fortified their position with trenches. The Reendeni were not far, a quarter day's march away and closing in fast.

Willy was supervising the crossing. Raina hadn't seen him since the previous night when he left to fend off the Reendeni attack. It hadn't been a large attack. Just a hundred men who thought they could sneak into their camp and assassinate their leaders.

Half the attackers were dead. The surviving half knelt in chains by the riverbank, watching the army cross with swollen faces.

Although this was the last sunrise some of the men would see, they were upbeat, cracking jokes and throwing taunts as they packed themselves, their weapons, armor, and horses onto barges. Raina had over two hundred of those built over the winter. Her own small river fleet.

"Did you sleep well?" Willy asked when she joined him.

"Not really," Raina said.

"That's not good," Willy said. "It's crucial to sleep before battle."

"You slept?" Raina asked.

Willy smiled. "Of course. No sleep is as sweet. You need your rest before a hard day of killing." Then he turned his attention to some men attempting to fit six horses onto a single barge. "Make two trips. And hurry up. The Reendeni are less than an hour away. If they find us this disorganized, we're dead."

The army finished crossing in just over an hour, which was good because scouts reported the Reendeni were only a mile away as the last of the men crossed and lined up.

Raina went last, with Willy and the other commanders, despite her husband's exhortations to stay on the opposite bank. She had never been to a battle and was determined to see one.

Willy had the men line up with their backs to the river and the sun behind them. Only a small contingent of archers was left on the opposite bank. Once the men had lined up, Willy had all the barges pulled out of the water, piled up, and burned. He lit the torch himself.

"Why would you do that? The river is too deep to ford. Why would you burn the barges?" a furious Raina asked as soon as they were back in Willy's command tent. She had moved the sky to get those barges built. Seeing them all go up in smoke had been indescribably painful.

Willy tapped her shoulder with one arm. "In battle, there can only be two options: win or die. If you give your men a third option, many will take it."

"But your men are trapped here," Raina argued.

Willy nodded. "That's the point." Then he sat down and his squires began putting on his armor. Raina glared at him. He did have a point. But her barges… They had cost a small fortune to build. She had such great plans for them… Now they were all ash and smoke.

Trumpets blew outside. The Reendeni had been sighted. Raina was filled with concern. Willy's squires, his nephew— Little Brarmyrl— and the boy king Caedmyr XIII, hurried with fastening his armor.

"There are two or three barges on the opposite bank," Willy said after he was fully adorned for battle. "I can have one fetch you and ferry you across. You don't need to be here. Battlefields aren't pretty."

Raina shook her head. "No. I will not run." She tried to squeeze his hand but he was wearing a gauntlet. Cold steel. It hurt. "Don't get killed," she whispered.

Willy smiled. "I'll try," he promised.

Outside, the Reendeni were lining up on the opposite side of the wide floodplain. There were so many. Willy's men stood still in disciplined lines. On the Reendeni side of the battlefield, all Raina saw were banners and the glint of spears.

Willy had the Reendeni who had snuck into camp the previous night marched to the front of his lines. Raina thought he was going to execute them. Instead, he had their chains struck and sent them across the field back to their lines.

"Why?" Raina whispered.

"Mind games," Willy said. "I'm giving the Reendeni options. The captives are to deliver a message. March back home and live."

"They won't march home, will they?" Raina asked.

"No," Willy said. "But it will shake their confidence in their cause. An army lives and dies by its morale. A battle is as much a contest of wills as it is a contest of arms."

Raina watched the captives until they joined their compatriots. While both armies were formed up by now, no one was in any hurry to engage.

A couple of hundred yards separated both forces. The men on Raina's side stared hard across the field but Raina couldn't see the facial expressions of any of the men on the opposite side so she didn't know what good that did. "You have to get back behind the lines now," Willy told her.

Raina galloped back and took a position on a small rise behind the army where her uncle, Sylar Reesbhurg, commanded the reserves.

There was a handful of non-combatants there but not many. Two priests marched to the front of the gathered army. They wore the fiery red and yellow robes of Aemlilon: God of fire. God of the sun. God of war. Acolytes led a red bull behind the priests.

As the priests built an altar and slaughtered the bull, Willy galloped back and forth in front of his lines. "All men are born to die!" he proclaimed. Heralds picked up his words and repeated them to those who were farther away.

"When you were born, Aephyr wrote down two dates in stone: the date you're born, and the date you die. What you do between those two dates is what determines whether you feast with the gods for eternity, or return to earth to suffer."

The men banged their spears against their shields in agreement. Willy continued, "You cannot avoid death, just as you cannot refuse to be born. Some of you were fated to die today. It doesn't matter what you do. By sunset, death will find you.

"You cannot outrun death. You cannot hide from death. And you CAN NOT cheat death. If you escape Reendeni arrows, death will wear a wolf's skin and hunt you down. Death will hide in the water and drown you. Death will possess the sky and incinerate you with a thunderbolt. So, do not shame yourself. Face death bravely and bring a heathen's head as a gift."

The men cheered lustily. Willy waited for them to stop before he continued, "But many more of you were fated to die on other days. Perhaps you will grow old and die in your bed. Or the husband of the woman you're bedding will bury his axe in your skull. Or you'll drink until you burst.

"It does not matter. If you're not fated to die today, you will not die. It matters not whether a thousand Reendeni swarm you. You will live. It doesn't matter how many arrows or spears strike you. You will live. Because it's not your day yet. Go forth and claim your glory!" Willy pointed at the sun. "Let AEMLILON see how brave you are!"

The cheers were deafening. They went on for what felt like half an hour. "It's not my day yet! It's not my day yet! It's not my day yet!" the men chanted. Only a gesture from the priests got them to quiet down.

"The omens are good," one of the priests proclaimed. "Aemlilon is pleased. We shall prevail!"

Across the field, the Reendeni were making sacrifices of their own. They didn't worship Aephyr or his children. Their principal god was Olehr N'Grour, a name that was reportedly so sacred that uttering it outside of prayer would invoke a curse.

Olehr N'Grour had the body of a man and the head of a boar. Rhexians called him the Boar God when they wanted to be respectful, which was rare. Normally, the preferred term was "that pig-headed demon."

Raina turned her attention from Reendeni sacrificing to her own people's. Willy and his officers partook in the sacrificial meat, then summoned some four dozen men to partake as well. These were members of the Greybeards' Brigade, the most venerable of all Rhexian military orders.

It was the only military order to which a man could not be conscripted or forced to stay. Men joined and left at will. The order was composed entirely of old men seeking a battlefield death— the most glorious of all deaths.

There were only two requirements for joining the Greybeards' Brigade: have no children younger than sixteen and have at least one grown-up grandson.

After some rites from the priests, the greybeards drew straws. The losers cursed with disappointment. The winner jumped up and down with joy. The old man stripped naked while his companions were sent to the right wing.

Naked as the day he was born and with a spear in one hand, the old man jogged across the battlefield towards the Reendeni lines.

Raina expected him to be filled with arrows but the Reendeni archers didn't shoot. The Greybeard reached the Reendeni lines and they formed a shield wall, blocking his passage but none dared attack him.

The old man stabbed the leg of a spearman and when the poor man raised his face above his shield, put the spear through his face.

None of the other Reendeni attacked. The old man kept at it, cursing them for cowardice and even urinating on their shields.

They kept hiding and he kept stabbing their feet and faces while his fellow greybeards cheered. After nearly half an hour of abuse and ten casualties, the Reendeni shield wall opened, swallowed the old man, and closed again.

The other greybeards on the right wing roared and charged. These were mercifully clothed and armored but their charge was more of a brisk jog.

Behind them, Raina's cousin Leytyrn charged at the head of a thousand mounted archers and overtook the old men easily. Willy's brother Ronnar charged with a similar number of mounted archers on the left wing.

The horse archers advanced in three lines, peppering the Reendeni with arrows from horseback. The Reendeni sheltered behind their shields and responded with arrow and javelin volleys that were pitifully inadequate.

When the first line of horse archers got within fifty yards of the Reendeni lines, they retreated and the second line advanced, shooting their bows until they too were within fifty yards before retreating while the third line advanced.

It was an insanely well-choreographed maneuver. While one line was retreating, another was advancing, and a third was in reserve. The three lines constantly switched places so that there was always a line shooting arrows at the Reendeni.

Even while arrows pelted them like rain, the Reendeni opened their shield wall to absorb the forty-seven greybeards on the Rhexian right who crashed into their left wing. "Why aren't they fighting the greybeards?" Raina asked the men around her.

"Superstitious heathens," a priest said. "Who knows how their minds work?"

The ceaseless punishment continued. Without mounted archers of their own, the Reendeni were reduced to cowering behind their shields as the Rhexian light horse whittled down their front lines.

A small army of mules running from the stores in the rear to the lines of the horse archers kept them stocked with an endless supply of arrows.

"I want five million arrows," Willy had said. Raina had fletched ten million. She had never felt prouder. If the Reendeni were waiting for them to run out of arrows, they would be waiting for a very long time.

Squires ran back and forth as well, swapping out the wounded or tired horses of their masters with fresh ones. The punishment continued. Up in the sky, the sun was drifting. Raina judged that two hours had passed since the battle began.

She wondered how the Reendeni were feeling. Huddling behind their shields while arrows thrummed into them and pierced any exposed body parts.

Most of the archers aimed at feet, the most vulnerable part in a shield wall. The Reendeni shield wall wobbled with every volley as wounded men left the shield wall but it remained intact. Every wounded man was a man that couldn't fight, and that gave Raina hope.

Having had enough of the endless arrow volleys, the infantry on the Reendeni left wing charged the horse archers. An officer screamed impotently at the men but they ignored him.

Cousin Leytyrn retreated with his light horse in the face of the charge while the heavy horse, commanded by Willy himself, countercharged the Reendeni footmen, tearing them to shreds with lances.

Ronnar Karkbhurg and his light horse kept peppering the Reendeni right flank with arrows until the Reendeni heavy horse on that section of the battlefield charged him. He too withdrew while one of his cousins countercharged the Reendeni heavy horse with his own heavy horse. The heavy cavalry on the Reendeni left charged Willy as well.

As two brutal cavalry battles took place on opposite sides of the field, the numerically superior Reendeni infantry in the center charged the Rhexian infantry. Raina's infantrymen countered with arrows but that didn't deter the Reendeni, who kept advancing until they made contact.

The infantry battle was relatively calm from Raina's vantage point. It mostly involved a lot of pushing as the tightly-packed men locked shields, pushed against the enemy, and took advantage of gaps to stab their opponents with spears and pikes.

The cavalry battles were something else. Swords and spears were largely useless against heavily armored men. They charged with lances and clubbed each other to death with war hammers and maces.

Men and horses alike screamed as they were wounded and killed. Horse archers swirled all around this mess, filling the gaps in the armor of Reendeni cavalrymen with arrows and fleeing whenever one charged at them.

Raina's eyes kept flipping from one battle to another. Three battles were happening simultaneously. Her side was doing well in the cavalry battles on both wings but was losing the infantry battle in the center. The men maintained their cohesion but were being pushed farther back with every passing minute.

Raina looked up. The sun was overhead. She was now directly behind her lines. Her uncle had sent nearly all his reserves to reinforce their footmen but they kept losing ground to the enemy. There were just too many Reendeni.

At this rate, we'll be pushed into the river, Raina worried. And so she watched as the Reendeni pushed her people further and further back. Before long, there was no distinction between the soldiers and non-combatants. They were all mixed up, pushing.

Raina pushed forward but the wave kept pushing her back. She was packed in with all the men, as tightly as grains of wheat in a cup. Sweat trickled down their faces and backs, mingling freely from man to man. They were all one person, one organism, straining and grunting together, sweating together, pushing together.

The Reendeni in front of them were just as determined. Sweat trickled down their faces like rainwater as they pushed.

Some unlucky Rhexian in the frontlines would get stabbed with a spear and fall every now and then but a lot of the fighting was just pushing. The Reendeni wanted to push them all into the river.

When Raina's foot touched mud, she realized that being in the rear wasn't as safe a position as she had initially thought. While she was too far to be skewered with a spear like the men on the frontlines, she would be among the first to be dumped into the 200-yard-wide river.

Some men in the rear, seeing the battle was lost, tried swimming for it. Many drowned in their heavy armor and those who had the sense to take it off first got shot full of arrows by the archers Willy had stationed on the opposite bank. Win or die, Raina remembered. So she planted her feet in the mud, roared, and pushed.

Raina grunted and pushed, sweating as much as the men around her. But the pressure was too much. She kept being pushed back, sliding ever closer to the river. The Rhexians pushed but the Reendeni pushed twice as hard.

Raina's muscles strained and her lungs burned. She grunted and farted from the strain. She chanced a look back. The river was less than a foot behind her. The mud under her foot was getting more and more slippery.

Men around her were tumbling into the river with every passing moment. Some drowned and the archers shot the few who swam. The thrum of bowstrings from across the river became as much a part of the soundscape as the grunts and screams of the men around her.

Raina feared the archers on the opposite bank wouldn't recognize her if she fell into the water. The distance was too great for any distinct features to be recognizable. To them, she would just be another coward trying to swim away from the battle and Willy had ordered them to kill such cowards.

Most of the men who fell into the river scrambled back onto the riverbank and got right back to pushing, all thanks to the arrows. Win or die, Raina remembered Willy's mantra. Brutally effective. She pushed as hard as she could.

On the Rhexhian right flank, Willy won his cavalry clash and drove the Reendeni off the field. Raina didn't see that. She was too busy trying to not get tossed in the river. But she felt the pressure lessen as the heavy horse fell on the Reendeni rear while the light horse peppered their flanks with arrows.

Ronnar and Alyrn Karkbhurg won their battle as well and piled on into the Reendeni rear. The Rhexian infantry surged and instead of just pushing, they stabbed.

Attacked from all sides, it wasn't long before the Reendeni footmen broke ranks and ran. But Raina's Rhexians pursued, on foot and horseback, butchering Reendeni as they fled.

Raina looked up from taking a breather to see the battlefield had turned into a slaughterhouse. The men were angry, howling as they slaughtered the fleeing Reendeni.

Raina just wanted to sit down. And sleep. And take a bath. She was covered in mud, blood, and the sweat of a thousand men. She lay down under a tree by the river as the screams of dying men filled the air.