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This time the Talicians were better prepared, responding with hard crossbow fire that slammed into horses and riders as they raced back towards their archers and their shields.

Elo heard a yell as one of his own warriors fell, then the heave and shriek as a horse collapsed with bolts in its flank, sending up a volley of grass and dust. The poor beast rolling over, mad with pain and fear.

The Middrenites spread thin and wide, racing back between their own shielded archers, and the crossbows soon tailed off.

The invaders were running low on bows and bolts.

Estefin the krka had told them the crossbows were bought, not made, and they lacked the knowledge to fletch new arrows to fit well.

So, they would soon run out.

Their Irisians, however, had plenty. As Elo and his riders passed their shields, they returned a rain of arrows towards the enemy line, who screamed even before they struck.

But there were still so many more coming.

Elo was hot, so hot in the warming morning.

The mail over his arm had been torn, some blood was leaking through, though he had not felt the strike that had pierced his flesh.

He still could not. Sweat dripped into his eyes, down his neck.

He wanted to tear his helm from his head, relieve the press on his braids and skin, but he knew better.

The Talician force was close now. They had narrowed their attack to an arrowhead formation, pushing long weapons to the outside more easily to defend against the next charge, which came again from Graiis, as the enemy reached and passed the blackened streak of burned straw that had struck a line across the field of play.

Elo winced as they lost several riders and two more horses while he gathered his own force, Perin and Elseber still at his side, breathing heavily.

Their only luck was that one stallion charged straight into the oncoming force in a panic, ploughing a swathe through them before it was taken down.

Still, Elo led their horseback sweep once more into the pikes and crossbows ordered forward by the warrior priests. The storm had reached the skies above them, churning across the sun like a fist, rays gleaming around it, before the light was blotted out in an eclipse of black.

Rain met them as they charged again, a veil of cooling grey turning the ground slippery and flattening the last of the smoke. The Talicians could see their numbers clearly now as they crashed into their formation, trying to take down at least three foot soldiers for every horse they lost to a pike.

It was a losing game. The enemy knew what they were defending against now. Their brief advantage was lost. A volley of arrows came up from the red ranks, sparser this time, but better aimed. Two knights fell, then a third.

‘Scatter!’ Elo cried, ducking and turning his horse away to present a smaller target of its leather-covered haunches, giving one last strike beside him to a running boy who thought he would get lucky with a knife. Two arrows hit his saddle, but didn’t strike flesh.

His knights ran in all directions on horseback, or foot, if they had fallen, throwing off the aim of the Talicians and coming back to the line of shields and archers for shelter as the enemy force made chase.

The krka had been right about another thing: they were vastly outnumbered. Even without the full force of Talicia’s northern regiments, even supplemented by the Irisians, the amassed number of the invaders was greater than anything Elo had seen.

And his cavalry had now lost the element of surprise.

‘Sound the retreat!’ yelled Elo.

Elseber put the horn to her lips and made the call for escape, all of them turning back from their aborted charge and rushing for the safety of the shields. But the archers there also began to pick up and run, the squires carrying the shields onto their backs and speeding into a downpour of rain.

The Talicians and Restish made chase on hoof and foot, their ranks loosening as they drove on, tasting victory.

Elo looked back, seeing the faces of the army that had come to destroy them, and he saw their triumph, heard the screams of their jubilation as they ran in ragged clumps, set on chasing down the horses that had harried them and turning the clash into a rout.

Fools. They had learned nothing since Gefyrton.

‘Turn!’ cried Elo.

The mounted archers, those Elo and the Houses had selected carefully and scattered along the two cavalry lines, gripped with their thighs and twisted on their mounts, facing back.

This was no true retreat.

‘Loose!’

They fired, surprising their pursuers, who had mounted no defence. The Pinethian shot. A faked rout, a turn, a strike that ruptured the over-committed Talician and Restish forces. For they had arrows in plenty.

Elo’s command continued for the valley as the Irisian ground archers and the Middrenite squires dived down the slopes, rushing to their designated shelters.

The horses reached the tipping point of the crest and spilled over its edge, but not before turning once more and taking down another row of the Talicians.

Forcing them to give chase.