Vaelin glanced behind him once more, seeing no sign of reinforcements cresting the dunes. I might kill Lord Al Hestian if I live through this. Drawing his sword he scanned the field once more, seeing a tall pennant waving in the centre of the Alpiran throng, blue silk emblazoned with a silver wheel. He waved to get Frentis’s attention and pointed his sword at the pennant. Frentis nodded and drew his own sword, barking a command at his men to follow suit.

“Stay close,” Vaelin told Janril then spurred Spit into a gallop, Frentis and his scout troop following. He led them around Brother Inish’s wavering company, keeping a good distance from the fight so as not to be drawn in too soon, then turned sharply towards the naked Alpiran flank. Fifty horse against two thousand. Still, an adder can kill an ox if it finds the right vein.

The first Alpiran he killed was a well-built man with ebony-dark skin and a neatly groomed beard showing beneath the chin-guard of his helm. He was an excellent rider and a fine swordsman, nimbly bringing his mount around and raising his sabre in an impeccable parry as Vaelin closed. The star-silver blade took his arm off above the elbow. Spit reared and bit at the Alpiran’s mount, trampling the rider as he slipped from the saddle, dark blood jetting from the stump of his arm. Vaelin spurred on, cutting down a second rider, slashing through his leg then hacking at his face until he fell, his jaw hanging loose from his skull, his scream a silent gush of blood. A third rider came for him at the gallop, lance levelled, face livid with rage and bloodlust. Vaelin reined Spit to a halt, twisted in the saddle to let the lance-point miss him by inches, bringing his sword up and down to cleave into the neck of the charging horse. The animal went down in a welter of blood, the rider tumbling free of the saddle to surge to his feet, sabre drawn. Spit reared again, his hooves sending the Alpiran reeling, his helm flying.

Vaelin paused to gauge the impact of the charge. Nearby Frentis was running his sword through a dismounted Alpiran whilst the rest of the scout troop were cutting their way through the throng, although he could see three blue cloaked bodies lying amidst the carnage. Looking over at Brother Inish’s company he saw the ranks had stiffened, the line straightening as the Alpiran advance lost momentum.

A warning shout from Frentis dragged his attention back to the battle. Another Alpiran was charging, sabre outstretched, then abruptly pitching from the saddle as a well aimed arrow from the regiment’s archers on the dunes punched through his chest. However, the man’s horse kept coming, eyes wide with panic and fear, ploughing into Spit’s flank, the force of the impact sending them both sprawling to the ground.

Spit was up quickly, snorting in rage, kicking and biting at the offending horse then chasing after the terrified animal as it fled. Vaelin found himself dodging determined sabre thrusts from an Alpiran mounted on a grey stallion, parrying desperately until Frentis spurred between them to cut the man down. “Wait there brother!” he called above the din, reining in to dismount. “Take my horse.”

“Stay in your saddle!” Vaelin shouted back, pointing again at the tall pennant in the centre of the Alpiran host. “Keep cutting!”

“But brother - ”

“GO!” Hearing the implacable note of his command, the young brother hesitated before reluctantly riding away, quickly swallowed by the swirl of battle.

Glancing round he saw Janril was also dismounted, his horse lying dead nearby. The minstrel’s leg was gashed and he supported himself with the regimental standard, slashing clumsily at any Alpiran who came close. Vaelin sprinted to his side, dodging lances, casting a throwing knife at the face of a rider who raised his sabre to hack down the minstrel, the man wheeling away with the steel dart embedded in his cheek.

“Janril!” He caught the man before he fell, noting the bleach-white of his skin, the pained sag of his features.

“Apologies my lord,” Janril said. “Not so fast a rider as you…”

Vaelin jerked him to one side as an Alpiran bore down, his lance-point gouging the earth. Vaelin hacked the lance in two then half-severed the rider’s leg with the back-swing, grabbing his mount’s reins to bring the animal to a halt as its owner collapsed screaming. He calmed the panicked horse as best he could then hauled Janril onto its back. “Back to the beach,” he commanded. “Find Sister Gilma.” He slapped the flat of his sword against the horse’s flank to send them on their way, the minstrel swaying alarmingly as they sped through the confusion of flesh and metal.

Vaelin grasped the standard and thrust it into the earth, leaving it upright, the hawk sigil snapping in the stiff morning breeze. Defend the flag, he thought, smiling in wry amusement. Test of the Melee indeed.

About twenty yards away he saw a sudden convulsion in the Alpiran ranks, men reining in to wheel to one side as a rider on a magnificent white charger forced his way through, waving his sabre for them to clear a path, his voice raised in command. The rider was clad in a white enamel breastplate adorned in gold with an intricate circular design that echoed the wheel sigil on the pennant still standing tall in the Alpiran centre. He wore no helm and his bearded, olive skin features were tense with rage. Oddly the men around him seemed intent on restraining him, one even reaching out grab his reins, then shrinking back in servile deference as the white-clad man barked a harsh rebuke. He cantered forward, halting briefly to point his sabre at Vaelin in challenge, then spurred into a charge.

Vaelin waited, sword held low, legs balanced, breathing slow and even. The white-clad man came on, teeth bared in a snarl, rage burning in his eyes. Anger, Vaelin recalled Master Sollis’s words, a lesson from years ago. Anger will kill you. A man who attacks a prepared enemy in anger is dead before he makes the first thrust.

As ever, Sollis was right. This man with his fine white armour and excellent horse, this brave, rage-filled man, was already dead. His courage, his weapons, his armour meant nothing. He had killed himself the moment he began his charge.

It was one of the more hazardous lessons they learned at the hands of mad old Master Rensial; how to defeat a head-long charge by a mounted opponent. “When you are afoot a mounted enemy has but one advantage,” the wild-eyed horse-master had told them on the practice field years ago. “The horse. Take the horse away and he is just a man like any other.” That said he had spent the next hour chasing them around the practice field on a fleet hunter attempting to ride them down. “Dive and roll!” he kept calling out in his shrill, madman’s voice. “Dive and roll!”

Vaelin waited until the white-clad man’s sabre was an arm reach away then shifted to the right, diving past the thunderous drum of hooves, rolling to his knees and bringing the sword round to cleave through the charger’s rear leg. Blood bathed him as the horse screamed, crashing to the earth, the white-clad man struggling free of the tangle as Vaelin leapt the thrashing animal, his sword sweeping the sabre aside then slashing down, the enamel breastplate parting with the force of the blow. The white-clad man fell, coughed blood and died.

And the Alpirans stopped.

They stopped. Upraised sabres hovered then fell limply to their owner’s sides. Charging riders reined in to stare in shock. Every Alpiran within sight of the scene simply stopped fighting and stared at Vaelin and the corpse of the white clad man. Some were still staring as arrows took them or the Wolfrunners hacked them down.

Vaelin glanced down at the corpse, the sundered golden wheel on the bloodied breastplate gleamed dully in the gathering dawn light. A man of some importance, perhaps?

“Eruhin Mahktar!” Words spoken by a dismounted Alpiran, stumbling nearby, clutching at a wound in his arm, tears streaking his bloodied face. There was something in his tone, something beyond anger or accusation, a depth of despair Vaelin had rarely heard. “Eruhin Mahktar!” Words he would hear a thousand times in years to come.

The wounded man staggered forward, Vaelin making ready to knock him unconscious with his hilt guard, he was unarmed after all. But he made no move to attack, stumbling past Vaelin to collapse beside the body of the white-clad man, sobbing like a child. “Eruhin ast forgallah!” he howled. Vaelin watched in horror as the man pulled a dagger from his belt and drove it without hesitation into his own throat, slumping across the white-clad corpse, unstaunched blood gouting from his wound.

The suicide seemed to break the spell gripping the Alpirans, a sudden fierce shout rising from the ranks, every eye fixed on Vaelin, sabres and lances levelling as they stirred themselves and began to close, murderous hate writ on every face.

There was a sound like a thousand hammers striking a thousand anvils and the Alpiran ranks convulsed again, Vaelin could see men thrown into the air by the impact of whatever had struck their rear. The Alpirans struggled to turn their mounts and meet the new threat, but too late as a wedge of burnished steel skewered their host.

A hulking figure clad head to toe in armour and seated on a tall black charger smashed his way through the lighter mounts of the Alpirans, his mace a blur as it clubbed the life from men and horses alike. Behind him hundreds more steel clad men wreaked similar havoc, long-swords and maces rising and falling with deadly ferocity. The enraged Alpirans fought back savagely, more than a few knights disappeared under the mass of stamping hooves, but they had neither the numbers nor the steel to stand against such an onslaught. Soon it was over, every Alpiran dead or wounded. None had fled.