Death's Chosen (First Cohort Book 3)

by M. R. Anthony

  Come early evening and I’d just started to convince myself that my suspicions were unfounded – that I’d become bored with the lack of action and had been looking for shadows where none existed. The trees thinned out and we entered a shallow basin – two hundred yards across - with a narrow stream running through the centre of it. It was little more than a wide indentation, with hardly any slope to the sides. I had no idea why the trees didn’t grow there. Perhaps the stream had sucked poisonous metals from beneath the ground, which had left them unable to take root.

  There was still more than an hour of daylight, which I’d expected us to make use of. Instead, the Flesh Shaper pulled up his horse and raised a hand for us to halt. I signalled agreement and the men behind me stopped smartly. I didn’t slow and walked until I was near to the Flesh Shaper. The horse stank and I saw maggots writhing within an open sore on one of its haunches. I felt sorry for what the beast had been reduced to.

  “Why have we stopped?” I asked.

  “Does this not seem like a peaceful place to make camp for the night, Captain Charing?” he asked, with the hint of mirth that was always present in his voice.

  I could have told him that we cared naught for our surroundings. Instead, I said, “We could make almost two hours further. The last I remember of Malleus, he wasn’t a patient man.”

  “Patience is not his strength, but who has the right to insist that patience is always a virtue?” he asked, not responding to the point I’d made. The hooded head turned and I caught a glimpse of pallid flesh underneath. He could tell that I wasn’t going to let the question drop. “I have matters to attend to, Captain. Matters that cannot wait any longer.”

  “What matters?” I demanded. “Why must they hold us up?”

  “You have spoken of the Emperor’s lack of patience already. It is none of your concern, but I have been called to attend to him. Malleus does not like to wait.”

  I didn’t question him further. The Emperor could have been two thousand miles away still, though the distance wouldn’t stop a powerful sorcerer from speaking across such a vast expanse. I walked back to the men. “Set camp,” I instructed. In a lower voice, “Lieutenant Sinnar, have men sent into the trees all around. They are to look as if they are collecting firewood.”

  He nodded – we carried a few bundles of kindling and sticks with us, but not enough to keep a fire blazing all night. “I’ll make sure they have their swords to hand,” he said, catching on immediately.

  I wasn’t a politician. Regardless, I had been around enough ruthless men to understand that any break in routine was something to be wary of. I watched the Flesh Shaper with renewed interest, yet he still gave away no indication that he was doing anything other than performing the duties asked of him by the Emperor. He dismounted, looked through his pack and then stood motionless, as if he were watching the skies above for a rare bird or an indication of tomorrow’s weather. His behaviour had always been strange and this was nothing different to his usual.

  “What has our ally Jarod Terrax done to alarm you so?” asked Ploster, approaching and standing beside me. He knew me well.

  “It’s my opinion that he is no friend of ours. Whether that makes him our enemy is another matter.”

  “It hasn’t escaped my notice that we’re heading north,” he said. I started at that – I’d been so intent on watching Terrax for anything suspicious that I hadn’t realised we’d altered course.

  “You’re certain?” I asked.

  “I wasn’t, until I asked Lieutenant Craddock.”

  I swore quietly. I didn’t think I’d kept my concerns hidden from my men, but I should have made it clearer that I needed to hear if anything had changed.

  “You need to think carefully, Tyrus,” he whispered. “You have little to fuel your doubts.”

  “You might be right, Jon. Still, there’s something bothering me and I don’t like it. It strikes me as unlikely that the death sorcerer’s night time meeting with someone in a forest as large as this would be a chance one. I don’t like the idea that there was someone waiting. It may be nothing to concern us.”

  “You don’t think so,” he replied.

  “We have far more enemies than we have friends,” I said.

  “If you think he plans treachery, you should kill him, Tyrus. Here, far away from anyone who might be watching.”

  I didn’t have a response to that. We needed Terrax to lead us to the Emperor. Cranmar Sunderer’s lands were vast and we could add weeks or months to our journey if we had no one to guide us. I didn’t know how long it would take for the Emperor to decide that we weren’t coming and order his forces to invade the Saviour’s lands. It wasn’t something I wanted to test.

  I left Ploster and walked to Lieutenant Craddock. With the camp set, he had little to occupy him and he was looking afar.

  “Lieutenant,” I greeted him.

  “What bothers you, Captain?”

  “How well do you know the Sunderer’s lands?”

  “Not well. I have seen maps. I’ve been there as many times as you have.” We both knew that meant only a handful and on those times we hadn’t travelled extensively.

  “Do you trust the maps?” I asked. Some of the Duke’s cartographers could have been justifiably hanged for their inaccuracies.

  Craddock smiled – he knew I was a sceptic when it came to maps. “Not all of the Emperor’s nobles have such a contempt of their geography.”

  “If we’d continued on our original course, would we have intersected any major towns or cities that you know of?”

  He frowned and I could almost see his brain plotting a course through an imagined map of the world as it tried to predict where we’d end up. “We’d have passed close to Tibulon and then Angax,” he said at last.

  “Where are those places?”

  “Tibulon is almost central in the Sunderer’s domain. Angax is far to the north and east.”

  “What if we continued in the same direction as we’ve been led today?”

  Again, the frown. “We might come within two or three hundred miles of Bandrol,” he said. “It’s central and to the west.”

  “He’s taking us to Angax,” I said at once. “Keep the men alert tonight,” I warned, heading back towards my tent.

  I sat alone for a time, crouched at the entrance to my tent. The daylight was slowly replaced by darkness, the tendrils of night winning their ceaseless battle with the sun. Movement caught my eye. Someone came from the treeline to the north, running as fast as he could. There was another man behind him – I recognized him as one of the sentries we’d posted to the north. The first man was Sprinter – one of the two I’d asked to range ahead of us as we travelled. He was an excellent tracker and could run forever. I waved him over and pushed myself onto my feet. I saw at once that he looked worried.

  “Anything to report?” I asked.

  “Heavy infantry, Captain, and longbowmen. Coming our way from the north. It’s hard to estimate the numbers through the trees – I’d have said more than two thousand. They look well-equipped.”

  “Any sign of Flight?” I asked.

  “Nothing, sir. He took a path off to the east.”

  I dismissed Sprinter and ran to the place Sinnar and Craddock waited. I hauled Ploster with me.

  “Ready the men,” I whispered. “Do it without being obvious. We’re about to be ambushed. We need to kill Terrax and we need to do it before they get here.”

  I heard a cry from somewhere across the camp. I looked to where the voice had come from. The sound of distant, thundering hooves came to us, and I saw the shape of Jarod Terrax, hunched over his sway-backed horse as it made good speed towards the tree line.

  “Shooter, put a spike in him,” I said. My voice was almost lost in the tumult as Craddock and Sinnar urged the men to their feet. Shooter’s bow thrummed and a black missile streaked away, followed by another and another. I don’t know what happened to two of the arrows, but one found a home between the Flesh Shaper’s s
houlder blades, visible even in the near-blackness. The death sorcerers were tough as nails so it was no surprise that he didn’t fall – I’d known when I’d given the order that Shooter wasn’t going to kill him. Sometimes, a statement of intent is all you need to show your enemy. Terrax vanished into the trees to the north and was quickly lost from sight.

  “Get ready!” I shouted. If Terrax had chosen this moment to flee, it meant that his trap was ready to spring.

  At that point, another figure burst from the trees, running flat out and hardly slowed at all by the heavy plates of his armour. I heard the faint flitting sound of arrows through the air. I didn’t see where they landed and Flight joined us, someone handing him his shield as he joined our ranks.

  “Infantry from the north-east and east, Captain,” he said. “Three thousand or more, right behind me.”

  The news did not get better. Another of our sentries dashed down the slope from the south. I didn’t need to speak to him to guess that our troubles approached from more directions than just the north and east. Another two broke cover from where they’d been posted and ran to join us.

  “Lieutenants Craddock, Sinnar!” I barked. “Form square, set us to the east. Fast march! We’ll use the darkness to smash through and escape.”

  The enemy may have thought they had us surrounded and had planned to catch us off-guard when we were settled for the night. I was determined that it wasn’t going to work and intended to punch a hole through their lines. Suddenly, there was a growling rumble to accompany the discharge of magic. Above us, the clearing became illuminated by a vast ball of white light, showing us in stark relief against the darkness of the background. Men appeared, a long line of them a hundred yards away to the north. They drew their bows and released. The shafts of their arrows flew into the air, before dropping down upon us.

  5

  Sounds filled the air. At first, there was the heavy staccato beat of heavy iron arrowheads clattering against the metal of our shields as we hunkered beneath them. With this first volley successfully weathered, we set to a fast march, the overlapping edges of our shields banging against each other and drowning out the muted stamp of our feet across the soft foliage of the clearing. Craddock and Sinnar shouted orders, their voices rising above the din. I felt the air vibrate, the sound so low as to produce nothing audible. Clods of earth fountained into the air to one side, splattering us with musty-smelling soil and leaves. I knew that the enemy sorcerer had tried to tear our formation apart with a burst of percussive energy. I heard Ploster laugh from nearby, a sound of pure delight at his successful deflection of the attack.

  “He’s that way, Captain,” he shouted, from beneath the cover of his shield. It seemed strange for a moment – to see him acting like an infantryman.

  Sinnar and Craddock had picked up on Ploster’s words and we changed course, until we were going slightly more to the north. The archers loosed another volley and then another. Unprotected troops would have been slaughtered by their attacks, but we held our shields close and stormed up the hill towards them. I could see it in their faces that they’d been angered by how easily we’d repulsed their fire and it goaded them into staying longer than they should have done. Many of the archers turned and ran back into the trees, but a section of their line held in order to aim a final volley. Their determination to get a first kill cost them their own lives. They tried to dash away at the last second, little realising that we could travel much quicker in a square than any other heavy infantry. The tips of our spears took them in their spines, driving easily through the light protection of their leather cuirasses and adding their screams to the cacophony of our charge.

  As soon as we crossed the treeline, we entered a world of semi-darkness, filled with moving shapes and shadows. We couldn’t hold our formation in the trees, so we broke into squads of thirty. Fighting amongst trees was awful, dirty work and I hoped the enemy wasn’t trained for it. The trick was to keep our own groups as large as possible and hope that our opponents were dispersed by the trees into smaller groups that we could easily overcome.

  I chanced a look behind, before our advance into the trees denied me a clear view into the clearing we’d just escaped. Over two hundred yards back, I saw what I took to be separate units of archers and heavy infantry as they flooded down the slope to the south side of the clearing. Ahead of us, the archers had been nullified by the cover of the tree trunks. They’d doubtless expected to mow down huge numbers of us as we lay in our tents, or sat around our fires. When our square split, a few of them turned and released snap shots at us. I saw Ninks take an arrow in the shoulder, but he ignored the jutting shaft and stuck with his squad.

  The enemy infantry was not far behind the archers. I guessed that the bowmen had outrun them as they closed in on our camp and it seemed likely that they’d attacked us sooner than they should have done. If they’d waited, they could have filtered away through the heavily-armoured troops behind them and regrouped more easily.

  My eyes adjusted to the gloom and I led my squad forwards. We maintained a short column as best as we were able and adjusted our speed to the unevenness of the ground. To our right I could see Sinnar’s group and Craddock’s was further right again. It’s a stupid man who fights in the dark, except where he has no choice. Whoever it was that we faced had evidently been so confident of a quick victory that he’d made no plans for what might happen if the ambush failed. To his modest credit, he’d kept the heavy infantry together and they came towards us in a rough line, which wavered and broke around the stout trunks, before reforming again. In the chaos, we knew that everyone was our enemy, whilst the infantry had to decide in the half-dark whether we were friend or foe. In daylight, there would have been no disguising who we were. Here, we were able to get close to their men before they could identify us.

  My squad struck an area of their line where they held their spears high. The message had evidently not yet reached them about what had happened to the archers. We lowered our spears and crashed into them, shouting as we did so, to instil them with fear and to bolster our strength. It was almost too easy – our front five thrust their spears through breastplates and flesh alike. I saw Scratch discard his spear, which had completely impaled his man and draw his sword. Two other men dropped their spears and drew their own blades. Rune-etched steel glowed with the faintest of lights.

  Screams filled the night and the earthiness of the forest air was joined by the metallic sweet tang of fresh blood. The place where we’d engaged was hardly three men deep and even then, they weren’t in tight formation. Our column punched clean through them. Beneath my feet, I felt something crunch as I stepped upon fingers or ribs. The man gave no sound, already dead from a sword thrust to the heart. With that, we were through them, the woods ahead beckoning invitingly for us to make our escape. Nothing ever seemed to be that simple.

  There was another rumble to the left, followed by the pattering of ejected soil falling through leaves. The sorcerous light reappeared, just beneath the canopy thirty feet above the forest floor and centred eighty or more yards to the west. I looked over and saw that Stumble and Hacker’s squads had been caught in the light. The enemy had been more closely gathered there and it looked as if they were already regrouping and offering a much greater resistance than we’d met.

  “Corporal Ploster, can you get that sorcerer?” I shouted at him. He was three men back in my squad.

  “I already did, Captain,” he said. His face looked haggard.

  “Then there’s another,” I said. “Tell us where he is. Or find him and kill him!”

  He didn’t speak and pointed away to the left, towards where the fighting was at its thickest. I looked again towards Sinnar and Craddock’s squads. Rather than dashing away into the darkness, they’d waited to see what happened to the other groups. Sinnar was closest and he watched to see what I commanded. He towered above his men and stood calmly while his own squad hewed about them, taking down the enemy infantry in great numbers. We were all l
oyal to each other and there was not a chance that we’d abandon our fellows. My own squad found itself in an oasis of calm. The remains of the enemy where we’d broken through had scattered or ran towards their fellows on the left. In the split second I had before giving my orders, I saw how badly outnumbered we were. It looked as if we’d broken through on their flank, whilst the majority of their troops remained in the middle. In the end, it mattered little. When all is chaos, the stronger arm and the man with the greatest ferocity will win.

  “Left!” I shouted to my men. The sound of my voice carried to Sinnar and he echoed the command with his own. I heard Craddock repeat it, further away again.

  We charged through the trees. After fifty paces, we entered the sphere of sorcerous light. Stumble’s men were there. They were holding together, fighting back-to-back. The weight of their heavy shields would have weakened lesser men, but I saw no sign of fatigue as they butted against the smaller shields of the enemy. They weren’t surrounded even if it seemed likely that they soon would be, with more and more of the enemy arriving through the trees. Drawn from the north and the west by the light, they came. I knew there’d be little time until the troops I’d seen to our south reached us.

  The urgency spurred my actions and my strides lengthened, carrying me to the front of my squad. I shoulder charged one of their infantry and sent him hurtling to one side in a daze. I slowed not at all and engaged with another man, who had turned when he saw our approach. He died, though I can’t remember exactly where my blade fell upon him. We did our best to join with Stumble’s men, though in the heat of the melee it was hard to reform and the enemy did his best to keep things scrappy. Whoever commanded them, he was either elsewhere or a fool.