The Best of Men - an epic fantasy (Song of Ages Book 1)

by Wilf Jones

  ‘No. I’m not the best horseman in the world but I’ll stick with it. Where are the others, Captain?’

  ‘Well Garaid and Piedoro are with the bowmen comin’ in from the West, unmarked I hope. His brother should be with that group comin’ in from the guard post, see ‘em? They’d best hurry and so’ad we: they’ve started movin’.’

  The enemy, in regimented precision had begun to walk their horses towards them.

  ‘Come on; come on!’ yelled Lord Gumb, ‘Let’s get it together. One man to take Miss Travers back to the trees. Good man! Off you go Helen, and quick about it.’

  ‘Yes, yes. Good luck uncle. Make them pay, won’t you.’

  ‘Oh they’ll pay alright, don’t you worry. Now go! Seama, will you join us? Can you follow the formation?’

  ‘We’ll work it out, Gumb.’

  ‘Right lads. Double Phalanx,’ the baron screamed, his face redder than ever, ‘and move on!’

  Fifty horses rode out to meet seventy. And to meet whatever the three remaining sorcerers could conjure up. It was a daunting task but Gumb and his men were brimful of confidence. Their enemy’s’ chief was dead, they had yet to suffer a casualty, the woman they championed had been freed unharmed and they had the legendary wizard Seama Beltomé to give them victory. Why should they fear?

  It was a matter of minutes between Gumb’s order and the conflict. Twenty riders formed a loose wide spread vee-shape with the point faced to attack and in the arms of that formation the remainder formed a second and much more compact vee. The first line was a screen and a decoy which would split into two halves and compress just before impact while the main body, suddenly revealed would charge heavily through the centre and smash into their opponents with their lances thick before them. From head on the array may have looked like a disordered rabble: it was anything but.

  Their opponents, though, were not only well-disciplined when it came to fighting, they were also well-schooled. They’d not be caught like novices, and with alarming speed they altered their battle stance just before the critical moment and in two columns they charged thunderously outwards on either side of the phalanx and quickly began to curl in behind Gumb’s cavalry. It was the obvious reply. Without a pair of swords meeting, or blood on a single spear, the Black Company had gained a brief advantage.

  But Gumb could box clever too. As the brigand army circled in to attack the rear, Angren was amazed to find himself the only one of his company charging towards the house. Everyone else had managed an about turn that brought about a mighty clash of steel. Blades at last rose and fell, blood spewed from gaping wounds on men and beasts and conflict finally took its toll.

  The two cavalries rode through each other and left the dead and dying trampled behind them.

  Angren found himself on the wrong side and in some danger but he was saved by his Gotherian clothes. The Black Company in the confusion had no time to realize he wasn’t one of their own. The antagonists wheeled again and Angren followed after his enemy wondering how he could avoid being skewered by his own side.

  There was a pause as the opponents took a moment to size-up the challenge before them and then set out for a collision.

  An arrow whistled through the air barely an inch in front of Angren’s nose. Gumb’s archers were taking their chance and added to his problems. He hoped that Garaid and Piedi would recognize him.

  On a slight rise to the left of the dispute Piedoro and the eight other archers waited for their chance to let fly. Piedoro was glad to be out of the melee. He was no coward but sword fights were not for him. Now give him a catapult and he’d show them all. A bow was a reasonable alternative, and he’d scavenged a good one from the guard house. Though he would never admit it, he was more than happy for Edro to grab all the glory with his swordplay.

  They’d been too far away to cause any damage at the start, but after the first feint and clash the archers found a closer shooting point. Piedoro was so startled to see Angren cantering along behind his enemies that he dropped his first arrow, but all around him the bows of his partners strummed a deadly tune.

  ‘Garaid, it’s Angren. Be careful’, he shouted to Mador’s spy. Though the rest had been aiming at the centre of the pack, Garaid had picked the straggler as his target. ‘No Garaid, it’s Angren!’

  Piedoro barged into Garaid’s shoulders a second after the arrow was loosed.

  ‘What are you doing, you fool?’ Piedoro demanded, ‘you could have killed him.’

  Garaid stared at the sailor with fear in his eyes. His face twisted into a scowl but the fear remained. Piedoro realized that Garaid had not mistaken Angren for one of the Black Company at all. The shot had been deliberate.

  ‘Who are you?’ he said, clutching at Garaid’s arm as he turned to rise, pulling him back face to face. ‘What are you?’

  The rest of the archers had run forward following the fight heedless of the two of them picking themselves up off the ground, and the sailor was suddenly frightened to be alone with this man, this traitor.

  Piedoro moved to draw his knife but he was too slow. Garaid picked up Piedi’s arrow and sprang at him. The King’s spy was a heavy man and the sailor was flattened and winded before he could attempt anything. Garaid sat on top of him, knees pinioning flailing arms, and Piedoro could barely catch his breath and had no strength to move–he knew his life was finished. The mad man above him raised the arrow but then stopped. That strange expression of fear and guilt intensified on the face and the hands trembled as though they held back a great weight, and the lips moved to deny.

  ‘No’ was all the whisper said, but then the big man grabbed Piedoro by the hair, yanking back his head, and savagely rammed the arrow up his nostril and into his brain. Piedoro’s last thought was that he could hear his murderer screaming ‘No, No, No, No.’

  The sailor shuddered and was dead. The narrow-head arrow had ripped his brains apart, but when it was pulled out left no sign of violence beyond a bloodied nose.

  The man who was not Garaid picked up his bow and quiver and went to join the fight once more.

  Yelling and screaming the two sides clashed for the second time. It was the once and for all moment of the battle. Men died on shivering spears, horses died or threw their masters and fled. The mounted struggle became disordered and individual battles spread over the field. They left behind a death struggle of grounded men.

  Angren landed with a thump but luckily the fall was into soft muddy earth. He was up in an instant, sword whirling. This was more like it: up to his ankles in miry ground with the enemy all around him. He put himself about with a vengeance and killed three or four men before he had some breathing space. Looking around he saw that the balance of the fight had shifted slightly to his own side. Bibron and ‘Berta were not far away. Although the Captain was competent enough to take on any one man at a time, ‘Berta wreaked havoc on a grand scale. Things were looking up.

  As his gaze shifted, Angren became aware of three well attired men, sitting on fine horses, on a hummock well away from the melee. The sorcerers at last. They were watching the battle with interest but showed no sign of wanting to join in. That was not their role. Where in all of this fix, Angren wondered, was Seama?

  He turned to look just as a huge curved scimitar swung toward his head. Remarkably it changed direction and nicked his left thigh. The wielder of the blade, a man seven feet tall, lurched towards the weapon master but his scarred face had turned white and he fell heavily into the soggy earth. His helmet was crushed and his head stove in.

  ‘You’d better wake up, Old Angren,’ said Sigrid. ‘‘Me and Berta won’t always be around.’

  ‘Berta grinned wickedly, swinging her mace, while Sigrid bent to look at Angren’s bloodied thigh.

  ‘I’m alright, Sig’, Angren said, squirming away from her like a child avoiding a blackheading session.

/>   ‘Keep still, you. baby. You’re right though, only a scratch.’

  ‘There’s no need to sound so disappointed.’

  ‘How’s the rustic rust stick, Angren?’ ‘Berta asked.

  ‘The what?’

  ‘Your new sword! You know: that heap of junk you’ve been cleaning-up.’

  ‘Oh Yeah.’

  Angren held up the sword for them all to see. The rust was long gone but the blood of his last opponent still ran along the blade. He frowned. ‘Do you know, I’ve barely noticed it. Not sure whether that’s good or bad.’

  ‘Berta laughed. ‘I’d say good, judging by all the bodies round here.’

  ‘Could be right,’ Angren nodded, ‘but I’ll give it another go before I decide.’

  ‘Well, lets get to it then.’

  SORCERY

  Seama was not in the fix at all. He had joined the original charge but after a few private and purely physical conflicts, he’d retired from the fray to prepare for his real work. He quickly marked the position of the three remaining sorcerers and as he approached he was careful to keep hedgerows or hayricks between them. They’d know of his presence soon enough, but the longer they were kept guessing and the longer they were unsure about their plan of action in the absence of their chief, the better it would be for the men in the field.

  The battle had settled down to the heavy blood letting that always occurred when opponents were well matched. Here strategy had been met by counter strategy and all the cleverness of war would have brought no conclusion. The antagonists knew it and squared up to each other quite early. It became clear to Seama as the hour progressed that Gumb was gaining the upper hand, a feat due in no small part to the mighty efforts of Angren, Sigrid, ‘Berta and even Edro despite his wounded arm. Gumb led those still mounted against their counterparts and with him his nephew Alan Travers, who had taken his sister’s exhortation to heart and laid about him like a fury though rarely to any conclusion. Seama couldn’t see Piedoro or Garaid, or Bibron for that matter, but that was hardly surprising in the confusion.

  He was in the middle of wondering about his friends when he was staggered by a sudden exhalence of power. He was so close to the centre of whatever it was that he was nearly thrown from his horse. He was hiding behind a haystack previously misshapen by the storm, but now it had been demolished. For a moment all Seama could see was a turmoil of straw and dust hanging in a thick, filthy yellow smoke that loomed above him. Then rising into the air came a juddering, angry yeowl, so loud it almost pierced his ear drums. It sounded like some gigantic and furious cat.

  In a wind that did not belong to Asteranor, the smoke cleared to reveal the horrific sight of a many-taloned demon. It crouched as would a cat, but this beast was as large as a young dragon, smooth skinned and jade in colour, and the flat long-toothed face displayed a flat hatred for all things living. But then the features contorted in pain and Seama understood the nature of the invocation.

  There was much said about demons in Errensea, some of it correct, but speculation was the basis of most of the teachings – who would be mad enough to research the subject? Now, by adding the wisdom of Errensea to the history contained in the Song of Ages, Seama was sure he had it right at last. A demon was not a god: it was a creature made in the beginning of time by the Lord Evil, and everything he made was brutal and foul. It was not a creature of magical power but of conspicuous physical strength far exceeding the ability of any man or group of men to conquer. Magic alone could withstand an onslaught of demons. During the first age of the world, according to the Song, demons wandered the Earth killing and maiming as they pleased, and it pleased them to kill. The Earth then was a terrible place. But the rule of the Dark God did not last and a new age dawned when Orh’mazd, the Bright God, brother of Ah’remmon, came to power. His greatest act, at the end of a mighty war with all the forces of Ah’remmon, was to banish the demons from the world of men. They were exiled to a place set apart from this existence leaving the Earth free of their predation. In the Hell they made of their exile the Demons continued as before, except that now they must rend their own kind.

  Many sorcerers became demon-callers to make up for their lack of natural power but there were some who became expert in the art – mainly those who somehow managed to survive their early attempts. There were books, foul books of black lore that gave a name for each of the demons. Once learned the names could be used time and again to drag these creatures back into the real world. But they would not come willingly or uncalled. And because Ahura would not suffer the breaking of his rule without sanction, a visit to Earth would bring a fiery pain to the demon, an inner burning that tore through them for as long as they remained. It was important for a sorcerer to keep that fact in mind. A demon would like nothing better than to pass on some of that terrible pain to the summoner. A wise man – no, not a wise man as the wise would not dream of calling demons into torture – a clever summoner would place himself in a protected space, a pentacle or triangle, but most sorcerers relied on the simple fact that the demon’s only chance of returning to Daemonia, of escaping torment, lay with the invoker breaking his spell. Demons had occasionally (and catastrophically for anyone nearby at the time) found themselves trapped forever because they’d killed the fool who had called them. Enough to say that seeking to use a demon without disastrous consequence required a very astute and strong mind.

  The cat-demon was in agony plain to see but this was not a new experience. It knew very well what was required before the spell would be broken. It faced the sorcerers on the hill with a glare of contempt and then stalked the battle.

  Quickly it came close and panic hit the men of both camps like a blow. The Company was unused to a demon being called when it was so closely engaged – there was no time to draw off and the men were unsure about what the beast might do. The forresters were plain terrified. They’d never seen a demon before and weren’t keen to see one any closer.

  ‘Don’t run,’ Seama yelled, thinking that it wouldn’t attack indiscriminately. But it was no use: Gumbs men ran as fast as they could. With an incredible leap, the cat-demon was among them. In the first attack it killed three men, ripping them to shreds. This was no creature of illusion, the claws were very real.

  Seama could wait no longer. It wasn’t possible to break into the spell; all he could do was face the creature. His horse screamed in fear but, trembling and sweating, obeyed his command. He charged. The demon was by now devouring a second batch of victims. Seama’s sword flamed angry red and the beast saw him. It became enraged: nothing had ever dared an attack before – at least, nothing of this world. It prepared to pounce.

  A bolt of flame sprang from Seama’s sword and sizzled the earth before the monster’s bloody feet. The monster stepped back. Another bolt scorched the air around it, and again the demon retreated a little. Seama didn’t want to hurt the creature. Demons, had little enough ability to reason and it was probable that more pain would make matters worse. He was playing for time while his mind ran through lists and descriptions. Eventually he would find it. The demon saw Seama lose concentration and leapt, but the terrified horse moved just as quick and dipped away from the ravening claws. Another bolt of flame. This use of pure energy would become too tiring to keep up. If the name couldn’t be found he’d have to attack in earnest.

  And then he had it: ‘Angraa Bast’, Seama shouted the name and the effect was instantaneous. The cat-demon leaped high and landed right in front of him. It crouched like the mountainous sphinx, and Seama was no more than a mouse between cats’ paws. The demon was so close he could see the veins that overlaid the muscular limbs throbbing powerfully, could feel the rumbling growl that came from deep in its chest, could smell the nauseous odour of its ensanguined breath. Bast regarded him with obsidian eyes.

  It couldn’t speak in any tongue but had the force to project and recieve mental images. A
mishmash of dreadful scenes crowded into Seama’s mind, and their meaning was hard to decipher at first. It was some form of query. The confusion, Seama guessed, was the result of the pain. Whatever the query might have been, Seama had only one answer: a sharp reply warning of his power. The beast was unmoved. Seama reminded the demon of the pain, and with an image of the three sorcerers clear in his mind, reminded Bast of the cause of that pain. The beast sent a kaleidoscope of scenes in response and Seama understood the fear of being stranded upon Earnor forever.

  The wizard was strangely piteous of the creature. His plan would help them both. He knew the hardest part would be to explain the idea, but he had to try. The face of the beast loomed over him, blood dripped from its jaws. The horse backed off but Seama wouldn’t be distracted. He pictured a succession of incidents beginning with the demon attacking the sorcerers in a slow, deliberate action; he showed the sorcerers in fear as they were injured but not killed. Seama wanted them so frightened for their lives that they would end the ensorcelment and send the beast back to the nether world, to Daemonia where it belonged.

  The demon growled so loudly that the trauma of it vibrated through Seama’s chest. It stooped to inhale, to make some sense of this thing that had called its name. The poor horse was now shaking in terror, staying its ground only because Seama held it by strength of will. Seama went through the sequence again, projecting the images as clearly as he could, but still the beast seemed more interested in deciding which part of this horse-man thing to eat first. One last time he tried. The horse was ready to run, he wouldn’t be able to hold it much longer. The demon eased closer, the blood and saliva from its jaws now spattered on the horse’s mane, but still Seama refused to yield. He forced his thoughts upon the demon. He pictured those bloody jaws closing on the leg of one of the sorcerers, ripping it from his body, he pictured a broken thigh bone, the twisting of gristle… And then there was understanding. Immediately Bast turned away from the them, turned away from the remnants of the battle and growling low and steady, slinked up the hill to confront its so-called masters.