The first mercenary to hit their position took Varo's pistol shot through the chest from thirteen feet away.
It punched through the left side of the man's chest and buried itself inside him, dumping the full force of the shot into flesh and bone. The mercenary's legs failed immediately. He crashed through the dead leaves and undergrowth with the heavy noise of a body hitting ground too tangled to absorb the impact cleanly.
Varo already had his second pistol out. He found the next target before the first man stopped moving.
His squad fired along the position, each soldier engaging whatever threat reached him first. The front of the charge broke apart almost as soon as it entered the trees. The mercenaries behind them still hadn't understood the kill zone they'd run into.
Three men dropped in the first few seconds. Two others hesitated and looked for another way through, only to realize the flanks were covered too.
One mercenary ignored the problem and pushed forward anyway. He was a large man, moving hard through the brush with his sword already cutting toward Varo's neck.
Varo stepped inside the swing and let the blade pass over his shoulder. Then he drove the barrel of his second pistol up beneath the man's jaw.
He fired.
The impact threw the mercenary backward into the trees. Blood and brain matter spread everywhere.
Varo dropped both empty pistols and brought up his saber. The fight had closed now. No time to reload.
"Left flank!" a soldier barked farther down the line. "Bastard's tryin' t'go wide!"
Two soldiers pivoted immediately. They'd drilled together long enough to understand the danger without further orders. The mercenary trying to circle the position never made it past the flank.
"Finn's got two on 'im! Right side!"
Varo checked the spacing automatically.
Finn had one man tied up in front of him while a second mercenary worked in behind the exchange, waiting for an opening. If he timed it right, Finn would be trapped.
Varo crossed behind Finn's engagement and intercepted before the strike came. His saber slashed across the second mercenary's forearm and the attack died before it began. The man stumbled back, losing nerve with the initiative.
"Backin' off my left!" the mercenary shouted toward his own side. "Oi! Someone get over here!"
Nobody answered. The charge had broken too badly. Anyone close enough to help was already fighting for himself.
Finn finished his opponent a moment later.
"Back to line."
Varo returned to position before another gap could open.
Another mercenary across from him was holding together better than most. At some point he'd taken a saber cut to the left arm, and the limb barely worked anymore. He compensated by shifting everything into his remaining guard.
Disciplined.
He caught two of Varo's strikes cleanly and turned the third enough to force Varo back a step.
The man saw the chance at once and pressed forward.
"Come on then," he said through clenched teeth. "I've still got time."
He never noticed the soldier moving up on his exposed right side.
"Drive 'em through, keep movin'!" the mercenary captain roared from across the road.
One mercenary had adapted faster than the others. He'd found a tree wide enough to shield him and fought from behind the trunk instead of charging blindly. He waited for a chance instead of forcing them.
Smart.
The cover made anyone approaching him expose themselves first.
Varo pointed two men out from the center of the position and sent them forward from separate sides. The mercenary saw the trap, the tree couldn't protect both directions at once. If he stayed where he was, they'd pin him there.
So he abandoned the cover before the maneuver closed around him.
Out in the open, he lasted only a few seconds.
"Left flank's clear!"
The fight was thinning out now. The mercenaries had stopped functioning as a unit and the survivors fought individually, reacting instead of supporting one another.
Then one of Varo's soldiers made a cry that cut through the rest of the battle.
Varo recognized it immediately.
The pistol fire and crossbow exchanges had already ended. This wasn't a combat shout.
Varo turned.
Eald sat against the base of a tree with one hand pressed below his ribs. A dead mercenary lay at his feet beside a fallen sword.
Easy enough to piece together. Eald had killed the man, but taken the thrust at the same time.
The nearest soldier was already moving. He dropped into a crouch beside Eald and checked the wound without wasting motion.
"Blade still in?"
"Came out wi' him," Eald muttered. "Dropped when he did."
Good. Better than the weapon snapping off inside.
The soldier pulled cloth from his equipment, folded it fast, and pressed it against the wound with both hands. He kept steady pressure without probing, no sense worsening the damage.
"Don't move yer upper body," he said. "Keep the knees bent. Don't stretch out."
"Right."
Eald's breathing already sounded tight.
"And no water neither. Don't care who offers it."
Eald looked at him for a moment. "Aye. That's poor hearin', then."
The soldier said nothing. He kept pressure on the wound and focused on the bleeding.
That silence told Varo enough.
"Get him against the birch," Varo ordered while still tracking the line. "Keep someone with him."
Then he turned back to the fight.
Only two mercenaries were still fighting.
One had spent the last minute retreating while he fought, giving ground a step at a time. Eventually survival outweighed discipline. He turned and ran for the road.
The other ended up trapped against a tree with his sword still raised. His eyes kept moving between the soldiers around him, searching for a path that wasn't there.
The mercenary looked at the sword in his hand. Probably weighing the odds. Probably realizing there weren't any left.
Then he lowered himself carefully to his knees, set the weapon aside, and laced his hands behind his head.
A soldier moved in to secure him.
The fight here was finished.
Across the road, the captain had driven the other engagement the entire fight. His voice carried constantly through the noise, giving direction, holding formation, keeping men fixed on their sectors.
"Holdin'! Keep holdin' the flank! Don't break away!"
He sounded like he understood bad positions. The first rule was keeping people oriented. Once formation failed, everything failed after it.
Then his voice changed.
The steady cadence disappeared, replaced by something harsher and much closer. He'd stopped directing the fight from outside it. He was inside the melee now.
Then the voice cut off completely.
One moment he was speaking, the next the sentence stopped halfway through a word.
Nothing followed.
The calls from the combat collapsed after that. The surviving mercenaries started moving without coordination, some stopped in confusion before deciding stopping was worse. Then they moved again, but without any shared direction.
Brek's voice carried across the track.
"Enemy's routing!"
The last mercenaries were already turning away. First one, then another, then the rest. They retreated back toward the track and the route their force had used coming in.
The formation that had attempted to reinforce the camp was gone now. What remained was just men trying to put distance between themselves and the position they hadn't managed to break.
The ambush held where it was.
That had always been the mission. Hold the position. Delay movement through it. Nothing about the objective had changed.
Both squads regrouped near the edge of the track shortly afterward.
Eald sat against the birch while the soldier kept pressure on the wound. Another man watched from the opposite side in case the situation worsened. Eald was still conscious, but the color had drained from his face and his breathing came in short pulls. He managed the pain one breath at a time.
The soldier treating him never took his hands away from the wound.
From camp one, the sounds reaching them had changed. Lower now, less frantic.
One soldier from Varo's squad stood near the kill zone and looked down the track between the two positions.
At the bodies left by both volleys.
At the signs of the melee scattered through the brush.
He stood there quietly for a few moments, taking stock of what the defense had bought them.
"So they tells us to ambush 'em."
He said at last, voice ironic, like a man reciting orders he'd heard too many times. "Buy 'e captain some time t'sort the camp."
He kept looking down the track.
"We bought 'em some damn time."
