Gilead's Blood

by Dan Abnett

  But it was not enough. The Tilean bowmen at the mound’s foot maintained their rain of missiles, and by force of sheer numbers, the Murderers were reaching the gate, charging in at Gaude, Erill and the Maltane defenders with swords and pikes.

  A ferocious melee erupted in the gate mouth. Erill realised how truly disadvantaged he was by the loss of his injured eye. He had trouble gauging space and size quickly, and the atrocious light and weather made it all the harder. He was surrounded by a dizzying, screaming, stabbing, whirling mayhem.

  Brom leaped down from the wall, throwing aside his bow now he was out of arrows, and laid into the thick of the attackers with his mace. He smashed his way in next to Galvin, sending Tilean dogs flying, and they drove in at the press, mace and halberd raking and swinging.

  Gaude swung his ex-master’s sword with the same formidable skill as he had shown before. His armour and clothes were tattered and bloody. With one hand he pulled up a young Maltaner who had been knocked down in the surging mass, hacking with his sword at the same time. He couldn’t see Erill anymore. Was the lad down? Before he could look around, another two Tileans were at him with blades.

  In a sudden pause in the melee, Gaude realised the rain had eased. Combustive thunderflashes still lit the fight, but the wind was up and the billowing clouds above were spent.

  Fanned by the wind, the stockade walls began to burn as another hail of lit arrows thunked into them.

  BRUDA, CLODEN AND Fithvael were locked in a hand-to-hand fight in one of the narrow rows between tents. Tileans milled all about them, snarling and yelling. The Carroburg greatsword whispered as it swung and two men in cavalry armour were sent flying backwards, bringing a tent awning down on a pot-fire. Flames licked up out of the collapsed material. More tents fluttered and fell, some dragged down under falling bodies. Fithvael ground forward over swathes of loose canvas, trading sword blows with a trio of brutish mercenaries. His long shield was on his arm now, and the Tileans were gouging ribbons of wood out of it.

  Bruda felled a gunner who came at her with a horselance, and then moved in beside Fithvael, spinning one of his assailants away, dead. Fithvael slew another with a jab of his sword, but more rushed in to fill the Tilean’s place.

  Flailing left and right, Dolph broke skulls with his mace. He was cornered by a row of latrine dugouts, cracking out at anything that came near with his heavy weapon-head.

  Vintze and Madoc stood together by the horse pens, blades dancing. Vintze was putting his small shield to good use as an offensive weapon, driving off as many with his shield blows as he did with his sword. The broadsword in Madoc’s hands spun and whirled like a hammer, making orbits and circuits in the air, cutting through armour and flesh and sending helmets flying.

  With a savage cry, Gilead ripped his way out from a tent that was starting to slump over him, leaving three Tileans dead under its flopping shroud. Through the confused tumult, he suddenly caught sight of Fuentes, Maura’s lieutenant, wading in with a hooked shortsword in each hand. Gilead cried the dog’s name and hurled himself at him.

  Fuentes heard the shout and wheeled his thickly muscled frame around with an answering snarl. His slabby face was sheened with sweat and his good eye was so hooded and dark it matched his eye patch, making his face a death’s head in the storm-light. Roused from slumber or a drinking bout in the tents, he had not had time to pull on his rich blue cloak, but his ornate golden cuirass and shoulder guards were in place, gleaming with raindrops like extra jewels.

  They slammed at each other like rutting stags, splitting the press aside to reach sword-length. Gilead slashed a dog-soldier carrying a billhook in two as he cut a path to Nithrom’s killer. Fuentes showed equal contempt for his own, slaying two more of his own mercenaries who were foolish enough to get in his way, with scissoring blows of his hooked swords. He had taken the first defeat personally, and no doubt had suffered Maura’s anger for the failure. Now nothing would stay the blood-rage that drove him after the ones who had bested him. Nithrom had already paid. Now this other inhuman dog was in sight, and Fuentes knew him from the meeting at the outer ditch.

  They clashed hard, Gilead blocking one shortsword with his own blade as the other raked a gouge down his long elven shield. Fuentes wheeled and set in again, swinging his paired swords in independent arcs. For all his bulk, he was as swift as a cat, and the twin blades made it impossible to address him in any conventional way. It was like fighting two expert swordsmen simultaneously.

  Gilead leapt one scything sword as if he were a salmon, and blocked the other with a downswing of his sword in mid-leap, while turning his upper body and swinging the long shield around like a blade. The tip caught Fuentes below the chin and sent him reeling and choking.

  Gilead had seen how well Vintze used his shield as a proactive weapon, but then Vintze’s shield was a small, weighted buckler. It took a being of unnatural strength - or of unhinged mind - to swing a long, leaf-pattern shield the same way.

  Fuentes rallied and came back at him, chopping down with his right sword as his left dug inwards in a low thrust. That left blade sliced through the edge of Gilead’s shield and cut a wound through the ithilmar mail-shirt above his left hip. The last son of Lothain drove in with his shield and slammed the face into Fuentes’s chest, before following through with his sword in a side-thrust that Fuentes barely parried.

  They broke, circling, for a second. The hooked shortswords spun in interlocking windmill patterns under Fuentes’s deft touch. Then the big Tilean lunged in again. His right shortsword buried itself through Gilead’s shield, wedged fast, and slashed Gilead’s shield-arm. His left ripped through the mail of Gilead’s right shoulder, and bit flesh there too.

  Gilead wrenched his shield aside, tearing the wedged blade out of Fuentes’s grip. The other sword swept in, but Gilead made it rebound from his blue-steel longsword, angling it vertically. Then he tore downwards with his blade, and cut Fuentes diagonally across the face and down to the chest.

  Blood spurted out and Fuentes stumbled back with a howl. He clamped his hands to his face, screaming and cursing in rage and despair as he realised that Gilead had taken his surviving eye. Blind, drenched in blood that pumped out from his savage wound, he slashed and cut frantically at the air around him with his remaining sword.

  With a cruel smile on his gaunt elven face that Fithvael knew he would never forget, Gilead side-stepped and placed himself so that Fuentes’s next blind lunge carried him onto the elf-blade. Three feet of blue steel jutted from Fuentes’s back. Blood gushed out over the gold dragon hilt and over Gilead’s hand.

  ‘For Nithrom, you bastard dog!’ Gilead spat into the dying man’s face in clipped Tilean.

  FITHVAEL WITNESSED THE brief, explosive clash from twenty paces away, as he and Bruda battled the scrum of Tileans around them. Bruda yelled out in joy to see Fuentes fall and another, Harg or Vintze, lost in the thick of it, also bellowed.

  Meanwhile, Cloden was surrounded by spearmen and halberdiers. He chopped and hacked, urging the greatsword round in circles, breaking hafts and lances, splintering each weapon that jabbed at him. But a pike-tip got through intact, long enough to punch through the Carroburger’s left shoulder. Blood gouted and Cloden stumbled to his knees, dragging the pike down with him. He lost his grip on his greatsword and tried with both hands to tear at the lance transfixing him.

  Madoc cut his way through to the man, slaughtering the halberdiers who were rushing in to finish the fallen man of Carroburg. Madoc’s mouth was wide open in a battle yell that made no sound. The fire of Ulric, the White Wolf, was in his limbs, and his broadsword demolished them. Four Tilean dogs broke and ran in terror. Others, braver, closed in on the silent Wolf guarding the bowed Cloden. There was a loud report, and the first of them fell, his skull shattered. Dolph threw aside his handgun and ran to Madoc’s side, mace swinging. Together, they fought off the waves of Tileans, dragging Cloden back towards the horse pens.

  Harsh cries came from nearby and another tent fra
me collapsed. Two battling figures ripped their way out of the flopping canvas, swords clashing and stroking and biting. It was Vintze. He had found Maura the Murderer - or the Murderer had found him - and the pair were now locked in a combat to the death.

  MALTANE WAS BURNING. The wooden walls blazed brighter than the intermittent flaring of the storm above. The night was bathed in a hot, flickering flamelight.

  Overwhelmed, the defenders had fallen back into the compound, into the ruins of the inner hall, and were making their last stand there against the driving hordes that flooded in through the burning gates.

  Just before they had broken from the wall, Gaude had issued commands to those about him who could hear. He sent Brom and three of the remaining Maltaners back into the scarcement with orders to lead any who could still move out through the tunnel into the woods. He knew full well this would leave dozens too sick, hurt, old or young in the scarcement hole, but to save any would be a victory. The rest he would defend to the end of his life.

  With him stood Erill, Galvin, two youths called Malkin and Froll, three older farmers named Guilan, Kelfer and Hennum, a drover called Bundsman and an old goatherd that everyone knew as Old Perse. Drunn had wanted to stay, but Gaude had despatched to help Brom evacuate the cellar.

  The last ten men used the hulk of the hall against the foe, cutting them down in ones and twos as they pressed in through the open doorways and shattered windows.

  Erill kept the main door with Nithrom’s silver blade. He had marvelled at the weight and balance of the short sword Fithvael had loaned him, but it was as nothing compared to this longsword. In his hands, it seemed to adjust for his faulty depth of field and inexperience, twisting and writhing like a living thing as it ate into the attackers. Erill knew such blades had individual names. He wished Nithrom had told him the name of this one. He prayed Fithvael or Gilead might know. And he hoped he would live long enough to leam it from them.

  Tilean dog-soldiers dropped down into the hall through a rent in the roof, some tumbling, spraying loose tiles with them. They had climbed up to find a way in and brought a section of the damaged roof down with them. Galvin and Bundsman killed the first few with Guilan’s help, but more jumped in, deliberately now, and the first to find his bearings lopped Hennum’s head from his shoulders with a mighty blow.

  Gaude rallied and chopped the Tilean beast in half, bearing down on the next and the next after that. Malkin lost a leg at the knee and fell screaming before another strike of a mercenary’s axe silenced him.

  More pushed in through a window on the left side, overrunning Old Perse, who fell under their kicking, trampling boots. They did not even bother to finish him. He was left, broken and moaning, under the shattered window frame.

  Three Tilean pikemen burst in from the south end, and pinned Froll, twitching like a puppet, to one of the hall’s roof posts. Gaude broke to meet them, leaving Bundsman and Galvin to stem the flow from the roof. He saw Guilan lying dead on the soaked boards in a pool of his own blood. He hadn’t even seen the man fall.

  The whole place was lit by the flickering blaze outside, darting shadows and skirmishing black shapes moving through the ruddy smoke-haze.

  Kelfer screamed as a sword took off both his hands. The scream turned to a gurgle as the blade switched back and cut through his neck.

  The sword’s owner threw Kelfer aside. Gaude recognised him in an instant. It was Hroncic, the other trusted lieutenant of Maura the Murderer. Hroncic was a huge, swarthy man from the south of Tilea, with a wispy beard and bad teeth. The wizened ears of past victims dangled on a thong around his olive neck, bumping on his chest-guard as he moved. He carried a long, curved blade from Araby and a crescent-shaped buckler. His ornate leggings were dressed in gold braid tassels.

  Gaude turned on him, cursing foully in Bretonnian. Gaude’s blade, the sword that had belonged to Le Claux, was an old one, and had been witness to several crusades into the burning south where it had despatched many of the godless who carried just such curved swords. It felt to Gaude as if it smelled an old foe.

  Bretonnian crusader’s steel rang against Araby blade and sparks flew in the half-light. Hroncic seemed to giggle in delight as he fought back against the other’s frenzied attack. Gaude battled him down the length of the hall in a whirling blur of blades.

  At the hall door, Bundsman fell to three simultaneous swordstrokes, and Galvin collapsed as a pike-end smacked into his head. Erill realised Galvin was still alive, just dazed, and stood over him, keeping the foe at bay with Nithrom’s sword. He lost count of the wounds he had inflicted. The floor of the hall was littered with bodies and awash with blood.

  Hroncic parried Gaude’s sword and spun around, coming up hard. Gaude stiffened and froze. Hroncic giggled. The entire length of his sabre had stabbed through Gaude’s neck and the only thing keeping the brave ex-squire on his feet was the blade on which his body hung.

  Gaude’s eyes were wide. Cackling, Hroncic tugged the blade out again.

  Gaude should have fallen then. His face was white but the rest of him, front and back, was bathed in gore from the dreadful wound. But the Bretonnian had one last ounce of vengeance-inspired energy in him. Dead by any standards, he swung his beloved sword one last time as he fell. The blow almost decapitated Hroncic. It did not. The brute flinched back in shock and the tip of the blade cut open one cheek.

  Pawing at his torn face, Hroncic stepped over Gaude’s corpse, dark eyes fixed on Erill. He wasn’t giggling now. He spat blood copiously and, slurring from the wound in his cheek, ordered his men back.

  The Tilean dog-soldiers fell away from Erill. The youth looked round and saw that Bundsman was curled in a corner with a lance through his chest.

  He was the last, Erill realised. A one-eyed lad, the very least of the company that had ridden out to save Maltane, facing a bloodied bastard who had just defeated their best.

  Smoke welled into the ruined hall. The flames were now eating at the hall itself. The Tileans pounded their hands together and chanted Hroncic’s name. The gore-smeared killer stepped forward.

  Erill spat and raised the glorious elven blade.

  THE DUEL BETWEEN Vintze the thief and Maura the Murderer lasted perhaps ninety seconds, and in that time, hundreds of blows were traded, faster than most eyes could follow.

  Vintze, six feet tall and as hard and fast as a whip’s cord, had his basket-hilted Reikland straightsword in one hand, and a foot long poignard held blade up in the other, under his buckler guard.

  Maura was a monstrous man, nearly seven feet tall, dressed in heavy golden Tilean plate mail of intricate ornament. His head was covered by a silver hound’s-skull helmet, topped with a blue and white plume, visor down so that none could see his face. None of Gilead’s company ever would. But they could hear the bellowing Tilean oaths that the beast spat as he circled in towards Vintze with his jewelled broadsword clamped in one gauntlet and a cavalryman’s axe in the other.

  They were a blur, Reiklander and Tilean, swirling and circling and exchanging two, three blows each second. Broadsword and axe rained and jabbed at straightsword and buckler. Sparks flew. Maura’s axe dug a chunk out of Vintze’s thigh. In return, the thief’s poignard punched a hole through Maura’s shoulder.

  From the speed of their blows, they sounded like mad tinkers working metal in a forge to fend off some curse.

  The appearance of Maura himself had driven the Tileans back and allowed the remnants of the company to close. Gilead, Bruda, Harg and Fithvael hacked through the mob to reach the duel, and Dolph and Madoc stood over Cloden, watching in awe.

  Thunder rolled above them. None saw the way Maltane’s inner fastness blazed on the top of the mound.

  Sword against axe, sword against buckler, sword against sword, axe against buckler, poignard to thigh, axe to buckler, sword against sword… shrieking down the length in a fizzle of sparks. Tilean broadsword into Reikland shoulder.

  Reikland buckler into grilled Tilean helmet.

  Reikland s
traightsword against Tilean shoulder plate.

  Tilean broadsword into Reikland buckler again, and again.

  Reikland straightsword clean through Tilean helmet plume.

  A fluttering mass of blue and white feather-plume.

  Tilean axe into Reikland swordarm.

  A great spray of blood.

  Reikland straightsword bouncing off the mud from nerveless fingers.

  Tilean broadsword glancing off desperate Reikland buckler. The sliding sword blade caught between the blade and bulky tines of the Reikland poignard.

  A twist of a Reikland wrist.

  Fragments of broken Tilean broadsword shattering in every direction.

  Tilean axe-head hard into Reikland chest.

  Ninety seconds, barely as many heartbeats.

  Vintze fell.

  The company, even Gilead hacking through the foe, paused in dismay. Maura boomed a victory call from his hound’s-skull helmet.

  A second later, a far louder boom shook them all.

  Dolph’s set charges blew, lighting the sky with a flare brighter and more brilliant than the worst of the lightning. The powder threw a forty-yard chunk of earth into the air and set off a landslide of wet mud that rolled down over the Tilean camp. Dozens of Tileans were buried. Many more were maimed by splinters and flying rocks. An entire gun carriage with a two-ton cannon flew through the air and crushed down onto the Murderer’s files as they fled and fell. The horse pens were smashed open and panicked steeds stampeded in all directions. Everyone else was thrown flat.

  Eyes swimming, ears dull, they struggled up. The main force of the Tileans in the camp were fleeing, those that were still able. Upwards of forty Murderers lay broken, wailing or dismembered in the torn mud.

  Bruda thought she was first back on her feet. When a blade cut across her back and felled her into the mud, she realised she wasn’t. Then she passed out.

  Madoc saw Bruda fall, and saw Maura standing over her, his golden armour blackened by soot, a massive blade in his hands, about to finish her.