“Push the bastards back!” roared Oughtred Bearsark, spinning his great gore-clotted axe. “There’s yet some butcher’s work to be done tonight!”
With a lupine snarl, Caylen-Tor hooked the crossguard of Caled-draca over the rim of a crescent-shaped shield and dragged it from the legionary’s grasp, simultaneously driving Wolf’s Tooth into the man’s midriff. The steel split the warrior’s lamellar cuirass and Caylen instantly tore the blade clear to hammer it into the jugular of a second assailant, who crashed to the earth to be hacked to red ribbons by the blades of the surrounding clansmen. A spearman leaped forth from the imperial line and Caled-draca instantly sheared through his leg below the knee, splitting the greave, flesh and bone with preternatural ease.
“More!” howled Caylen exultantly, his eyes ablaze with the rapture of battle, his lungs filling with the raw scent of fresh-spilled blood. “More souls to feed the wolves of war!”
Caylen aimed a thunderous blow at the head of another legionary and Caled-draca sundered the iron helmet and the skull beneath with a clangorous crack and a jagged shower of bone and metal. A curved blade suddenly tore into Caylen’s shoulder, splintering scale-mail and cutting deep into his flesh.
“That’s the spirit!” Caylen hissed before his return stroke clove the legionary’s shield in twain and ripped through the man’s body, shattering his ribcage to ensanguined shards. Caylen met the next attacker with a primal roar, sweeping both blades laterally to hack through the swordsman’s mail-coif and shear off the top of his head. A slurry of grey brain matter erupted from the sundered skull and Caylen immediately drove his broadsword into the belly of another warrior, opening a great yawning fissure in his armour and flesh. The legionary’s entrails erupted forth, landing wetly at his feet in a pulsating mass akin to a nest of writhing, pallid worms.
To Caylen’s right, the clansman Gylfir fell, a black javelin jutting from his throat. Three imperial troops instantly surged through the gap in the shield wall. Caylen barreled the first from his feet and drove Caled-draca into his back. The second legionary struck a glancing blow against Caylen’s thigh before the blade of Wolf’s Tooth punched through his mouth and out through the back of his fur-trimmed helmet’s leather neck-guard. The slain man crashed to the earth, his fall wresting the sword from Caylen’s grasp. The third attacker stumbled over the body of his comrade and Caylen’s blow hacked off his head in a scintillant cascade of crimson.
Two more legionaries instantly lunged forth from the throng, their blades awhirl. Caylen drove Caled-draca into the belly of the first and the man fell screaming to the heather. The second legionary swept his sword at Caylen’s neck and the Wolf-King dropped swiftly to one knee, thrusting Caled-draca forth in a pitiless blow which all but disemboweled his assailant.
Caylen rose lithely as a towering black-bearded legionary loomed suddenly from the imperial ranks brandishing a huge serrated scimitar. Caled-draca met the warrior’s blade with a blossom of rutilant sparks and the two combatants stood locked in a grueling test of steel and raw strength, the great corded muscles of the Wolf-King’s arms bulging and rippling like an indomitable titan of tribal myth. An errant javelin bit deeply into Caylen’s lower thigh and his knee began to buckle, his hulking opponent still pressing mercilessly down upon him. Spitting a curse, Caylen hammered his fist brutally into the bearded legionary’s cuirass, feeling the bones beneath the lamellar armour yield before his mighty bare-knuckled blow. The legionary gnarred in pain and reflexively twisted his curved blade, reeling backwards and wrenching Caled-draca from Caylen’s grip. Hastily snatching up a fallen clansman’s ash-hafted spear, Caylen drove the weapon’s iron point into the staggering legionary’s chest with all his might, lifting the man from his feet and momentarily holding him transfixed by the broad, leaf-shaped blade. Blood coursed down the spear’s notched haft onto Caylen’s hands, and snarling a guttural oath, the Wolf-King hurled the flailing man back into the midst of the foe. Swiftly recovering his blades, Caylen bellowed furiously at the imperial host.
“Come, thralls of the Witch-Queen! I am Caylen-Tor and death awaits you this night!”
The imperial war-horn thundered again, and abruptly the second assault ended. This time, many more clansmen had joined their foes upon the corpse-mounds.
“Cavalry!” called Oughtred, gazing at the distant imperial ranks where more than three score darkling steeds were slowly assuming formation.
“Plant those stakes, lads!” rasped Caylen breathlessly, hefting his red blades. “First rank, stand fast! Spears high! Second rank, keep those points low!”
“Can we withstand a cavalry charge?” barked Brodir Finn, wiping blood from his lips.
“We must,” Caylen replied. “They’re getting desperate. If we can weather this, we’ve all but broken them!”
Oughtred moved to stand beside Caylen. “If we do withstand this, they’ll send in their best troops,” he whispered. “The Iron Jackal Legion, Ebonfyre’s own regiment.”
Caylen’s eyes narrowed. “That’s what I’m waiting for.”
Suddenly, Wulfric appeared beside the two men, his twin shortswords and leather armour darkly imbrued with blood.
“You still alive, wolfshead?” growled Caylen, a cruel smile etched upon his gore-spattered face.
“That remains to be seen,” replied Wulfric mordantly, casting a sombre glance over his shoulder at the black expanse of the valley behind them.
“Hoping for the other clans to arrive and heroically turn the tide?” smirked Oughtred. “Forget it, lad. That sort of nonsense only happens in the sagas.”
“Imperial cavalry advancing!” Caylen shouted. “Hold this ground! Give not a yard!”
The mournful imperial clarion rang out across the dark expanse and seventy caparisoned black horses, their riders bearing broad shields and iron-tipped lances, moved swiftly from canter to full gallop. The rumbling tattoo of hooves filled the valley, echoing from the crags like a brooding thunderstorm. The ground began to shake as the beasts closed on the shield wall, the dark riders levelling their lances as they bore inexorably down upon the assembled tribesmen.
Then, above the rumbling cacophony, Caylen heard another sound. A voice rode the night air; a darkly sepulchral voice which although seemingly little more than a whisper was yet clearly audible over the thunder of the charging cavalry. The words uttered by this voice were unknown to Caylen, for they were fell words of power hissed in an aeons-dead tongue long since fallen beyond time and the fleeting memories of men. The Wolf-King looked to the eastern crags and beheld the figure of Drogha Tul etched black against the gibbous moon, his gnarled, ensorcelled staff held high, his stygian silhouette darker than night or shadow.
The cavalry charge abruptly faltered, the horses slewing and clattering to a chaotic halt. The steeds began to scream and snort in terror, rearing, twisting, heedless of the commands and the whips of their harried riders. Horsemen were thrown to the earth, some dashed and hammered by black hooves, others scrambling clear of the frenzied mass of equine carnage. Those not unsaddled found that they had no control over the beasts, struggling in vain to master their fear-fraught mounts. The cavalry turned in disarray and began thundering back towards the imperial line, the steeds driving headlong in a desperate charge to be free of the valley and the eldritch terror that had gripped them. The empire’s infantry scrambled to avoid the onrushing beasts, parting frantically to allow the lathered mounts to surge through the ranks and careen into the shadows beyond the valley’s threshold.
A deafening cheer arose from the clansmen’s shield wall.
Oughtred turned to Caylen. “Now I see why you keep that old conjurer around!”
“They’re undone!” Caylen bellowed to the tribal army. “They’re all but beaten!”
“Aye, but they don’t know it yet!” said Wulfric, peering through the gloom at the imperial host. “Something else stirs in the shadow.”
A deep, malign war-horn then thundered its baleful report from the darkness of the
valley.
“The Iron Jackal Legion!” rasped Oughtred. “At last, they send their best!”
Caylen-Tor stared into the black expanse that separated the two forces, surveying the foe beyond. Visible within the flickering pools of torchlight which illumined the imperial army’s ranks, a column of black-armoured warriors silently slipped from the ragged throng and began to advance slowly across the valley. A banner emblazoned with the sigil of a sable jackal’s head against a field of deep crimson was borne aloft at their centre.
“Can you see him?” spat Wulfric anxiously. “Is Ebonfyre amongst them?”
“He’d damn well better be,” growled Caylen.
From the shadows at the rear of the legion, a towering figure slowly manifested, striding through the serried line to march at the forefront of the formation. A huge horned helm adorned the warrior’s head and a fearsomely curved sword with a pommel fashioned in the form of a jackal’s head swung at his side. A dark and nebulous aura seemed to surround the sinistrous giant; a tenebrous eidolon which appeared to writhe and undulate blackly as the troops advanced.
Caylen raised Caled-draca, its chalybeous steel awash with viscid rivulets of blood. He levelled the great blade at the approaching figure and spoke, his voice no more than a whisper. “I’ve been waiting for you, demon. You will go no farther this night.”
Oughtred Bearsark moved amongst the depleted ranks of the clansmen. “This is it, lads!” he growled. “See these bastards off, and we’ve won! They’ll flee back to the east like whipped curs! One last time ‘ere the sun comes up!”
The silent line of black-armoured titans slipped from the gloom fifty paces from the shield wall, their aphotic steel naked in the moonlight. Talus Ebonfyre stalked at their centre, and for the first time Caylen could see a faint rutilant luminescence, akin to the glow of twin embers, gleaming behind the eye slit of his great horned helm.
“It is witchery, then,” he seethed.
“By the gods!” hissed Brodir Finn. “The empire sends pit-fiends against us!”
“Faith, my brothers!” Caylen-Tor bellowed. “They are but men, and they will bleed like men when they meet our blades!”
The great tribal ram’s horn clarion boomed in the darkness, and with a hundred war-cries on their lips, the army of Caylen-Tor met the Iron Jackal Legion of Mytos K’unn.
Chaos reigned and shrieking carnage cast its sable shroud upon the battlefield. Wood splintered, steel shattered, flesh and bone were sundered. Time seemed to stand still, grinding to a juddering halt; the sanguineous red river of battle had seemingly ceased to flow, its harrowing course no longer linear, now distorted and devoid of any semblance of form or substance. In the midst of the eldritch throng, Caylen-Tor was dimly aware of screaming, ravening shapes rearing up before him, massing like flies upon the bloated corpses of the slain, scores of stygian spectres clawing at his flesh with envenomed talons. The mighty Three Tongued Serpent in his grasp clove ruinously through the wraiths, dealing death and carnage left and right, hewing through aphotic flesh, lancing into darkling, muculent faces. Abruptly, the familiar howl of a wolf reached Caylen’s ears and the maelstrom of keening chaos fell instantly silent, its chittering cacophony at once reduced to acquiescent obeisance by that imperious, lupine decree. And then, Caylen was alone, the roil and tumult of battle which had raged and seethed all about him suddenly naught but a distant and incorporeal vagary. From the black miasma which hung before his eyes stepped an image born of fevered nightmare; a vast towering horror, horned, fanged, red eyes gleaming with ceaseless malice and pitiless hatred, a curved black sword clutched within its chitinous, taloned hand. Then, with a voice like the crashing of a stygian sea upon a benighted shore, the arch-fiend spoke.
“Caylen-Tor!”
Abruptly, Caylen awoke as if from a lotus-dream. His swords were red and a mound of ravaged legionaries lay twisted and butchered at his feet. All about him the battle raged furiously. The shield wall was broken, the armies were embroiled in pitiless combat, carnage seethed untrammeled. And before him loomed Talus Ebonfyre.
“I have sought you,” Ebonfyre rasped, his voice a black malediction. “And at last, I have found you. Now, it is time for you to die.”
Caylen hefted his gore-flecked blades defiantly. “I’ve been looking forward to this,” he spat. “These are my lands, and you are not welcome here. I’m going to send your head back to your empress. Tonight, the crows pick your bones clean!”
Then, the two combatants met in the midst of the sanguineous slaughter which raged upon the battlefield. Caylen arced a thundering blow toward Ebonfyre’s head, but the twisted sword of the giant was there to meet it, a shower of rutilant sparks erupting from the clash of blades. Driving his spiked gauntlet brutally into Caylen’s jaw, Ebonfyre hammered his sword down against his momentarily unbalanced opponent, cleaving the Wolf-King’s scale-mail cuirass. Grunting in pain and spitting bright blood, Caylen immediately drove a great lateral strike at his foe with Caled-draca, the powerful blow only partially parried by the giant’s curved sword. With blinding speed, Caylen’s second blade struck, meeting its mark with no obstruction. The honed edge of Wolf’s Tooth bit deep into the section of Ebonfyre’s armour where the pauldron met the gardbrace and a great many riven rings of chainmail yielded beneath the force of the strike. The dark giant bellowed in untrammeled fury, the touch of Caylen’s steel having sent a searing lance of pain through his great frame.
“So, the vermin has a bite after all,” seethed Ebonfyre.
“There’s more where that came from,” growled Caylen.
Ebonfyre laughed, the sound baleful and devoid of mirth. “Let us see.”
Ebonfyre’s great notched blade then proceeded to weave a pitiless web of destruction, striking time and again like the venomous tongue of some colossal adamantine serpent. Before the fearful force of this ceaseless onslaught, Caylen was driven slowly and inexorably back. Gouts of blood began to escape from the score of furrows which the giant’s blade was etching into his armour and flesh, and yet the Wolf-King steadfastly refused to falter before the malefic storm of preternatural steel. Barely parrying a tremendous lateral strike, Caylen desperately riposted with Wolf’s Tooth, but the gleaming blade was easily knocked aside by the fiend’s twisted sword. The clamour of the embattled blades was deafening, each strike, parry and riposte shrieking a resounding war-song of grinding pattern-welded disharmony. Roaring an ireful oath, Ebonfyre delivered another devastating blow and in a blazing corona of cerulean sparks, the glyph-scored blade of Caled-draca was shattered into a thousand silver shards, the thunderous impact breaking the bone of Caylen’s forearm and driving him abruptly to his knees. With a hoary malediction upon his tongue, Ebonfyre swept his sword back to deliver a final merciless blow, but at that instant a slender throwing knife suddenly embedded itself between the joint of his blood-stained couter and rerebrace, sundering the chainmail beneath the argent plates. Ebonfyre bellowed in pain, grasping the knife and tearing it free. The Wolf-King smiled mirthlessly as he recognized one of Wulfric Oakenbrand’s unerring blades. Seizing the opportunity, Caylen brandished Wolf’s Tooth, driving all his rapidly fading strength behind a desperate, ruinous thrust. The sword pierced the giant’s engraved steel fauld with a resounding crack, gelid ichor erupting forth to spatter the spell-forged blade. Ebonfyre shrieked in raw agony and fury, the terrifying sound chilling the blood of all who heard it upon the battlefield. Dragging his sword quickly clear of his foe and scrambling to his feet, Caylen followed the strike with another, but Ebonfyre’s serrated blade parried the blow and a vicious kick sent the Wolf-King reeling, his weapon spinning from his grasp. Swiftly, Ebonfyre advanced on his dazed opponent, raising his jackal-blade for another dire attack.
“Now you die, savage!”
Suddenly, in a flash of silver and crimson, a huge axe blade arced from the gloom and wrought a great ragged cleft in the giant’s breastplate. Ebonfyre reeled backwards several paces as Oughtred Bearsark loomed before him, his great
battle-axe dripping with gore and brain-matter.
“Now you owe me a keg of ale, Wolf-King,” Oughtred bellowed, bringing his axe down with thunderous force upon Ebonfyre’s horned helm. The blow sheared off one of the helmet’s gnarled ram’s horn adornments and the ensuing strike clove neatly through the giant’s right pauldron, scattering broken chainmail rings to the war-churned heather. Bright blood erupted from Ebonfyre’s riven shoulder and Oughtred arced another strike toward his foe’s armoured neck, seeking to hew the fiend’s head from his body. But with a bestial growl, Ebonfyre’s gauntlet lashed out and grasped the axe haft in a vice grip, stopping its arc and holding it fast.
“Gods curse your black sorcery!” spat Oughtred contemptuously.
Snarling, Ebonfyre swept his curved sword out in a wild blow which clove into Oughtred’s cuirass and sent the red-bearded clansman crashing heavily to the blood-sodden earth. Dropping the ensanguined axe, Ebonfyre shrieked in primal rage and hefted his great jackal-sword to the moon-swathed sky. With blood bubbling in his throat, the ireful giant spun to face Caylen-Tor once more.
But now the Wolf-King stood before him, the shattered hilt of Caled-draca in his hand, his face a mask of ferine fury in the pale moonlight.
“It is over,” Caylen growled. With pitiless force, he drove the broken blade of Caled-draca into Ebonfyre’s chest, the razor-sharp shards punching cleanly through the ravaged plate armour. The broken tribal sword hewed through metal and bone, becoming embedded to its serpentine crossguard. Gasping for breath, Ebonfyre stumbled back three paces, his hand curling around the hilt jutting from his chest, his own curved blade wavering. Gathering up Oughtred’s fallen axe, Caylen strode forward, and summoning all his faltering might he swept the imbrued weapon at his foe. The axe bit deep into Ebonfyre’s cuirass, opening a gaping fissure from which blood and viscera spilled forth. Acrid smoke billowed from the terrible wound and with a sibilant curse, Talus Ebonfyre fell at last to his knees, his curved jackal sword falling from his grasp.
The Chronicles of Caylen-Tor Page 12
