Bransen glanced at Milkeila and Cormack, the three of them understanding that they were the only ones among this group who hoped the prediction would prove true.
And Bransen, who had been at Badden’s camp, who had seen the hundreds of trolls and the giants there, knew it to be an unrealistic hope, and one that would soon enough be destroyed.
They ran over another group of trolls soon after. A volley of Alpinadoran spears flew out to the east soon after that, taking down a pair of scouts.
The barbarian horde didn’t even slow to retrieve the missiles.
Good fortune gave Bransen and his companions a fine vantage point as the real battle commenced. The path wound down and around a huge outcropping before spilling onto the glacier, and the powrie contingent, Bransen’s trio among them, was up high and still back of the stone when the leading Alpindorans swept onto the ice like a breaking wave, washing over those nearest trolls before smashing into a more coordinated defensive formation. Spears crisscrossed in midair, with the trolls taking the brunt of it, as their spears were too small and light to get through the Alpinadoran wicker and leather shields.
The Alpinadoran warriors poured over the front troll ranks, their towering line of broad-shouldered men and women, most well over six feet in height, dwarfing the diminutive, light-featured trolls.
But the trolls did not break and flee, and those in the back scrambled all over each other trying to get to the front ranks and into the fight. Like a horde of rats, they leaped and bit and scratched and kicked, flailing so wildly that they were as likely to strike their own as they were to hit their enemies.
More barbarians swept onto the glacier, lengthening the line and filling in the holes as some of their kin fell away.
In the back, watching from on high, Milkeila chewed her bottom lip, her knuckles whitening about the handle of the stone axe she carried.
“They are winning,” Cormack pointed out to her, and draped an arm across her sturdy shoulder.
“Yach, but we’re not to even get to the ice afore the fight’s done,” Mcwigik complained.
“Aye, and all that fine spilled blood’ll seep into the cracks by then,” added Pergwick, he and the young Ruggirs hopping over to join Mcwigik and Bikelbrin and the humans. “Or mixed with the scraped and melted ice to be even thinner!”
“Come on, ye bleating sheep,” another dwarf called, and as they turned to regard the shouter, he waved them his way. Apparently they weren’t the only ones concerned that the fight would end before their arrival, for before that yelling dwarf, a line of powries was going over the ledge and out of sight, picking their way, the group learned when they got to the spot, down a steep but climbable descent that would get them out onto the glacier just to the south of the Alpinadoran position.
Glancing over the ledge and following the line of powries climbing down (with amazing deftness, he thought, given their short limbs), Bransen could pick out the point of demarcation. Few trolls stood in that area of the glacier, focused far more heavily to the north and the barbarians.
For a brief moment, Bransen’s eyes flashed wickedly, wondering if the enemy had left open a flank they might exploit.
But as the leading powrie dropped down the last few feet to land upon the ice, Bransen’s excitement turned to dread.
A rain of heavy, large stones complemented the dwarf’s arrival. The northern, left flank, far from open, had been charged to the giants, half a dozen of the behemoths, standing tall now behind a wall of ice blocks that had obscured their position. With their light, bluish skin, white hair, and wrappings of white fur, they blended well with their shiny and eye-stinging environment, but that camouflage did nothing to diminish their overwhelming aura of strength now that they had been spotted.
Bransen started to call the dwarves back up, but stopped, stunned, as they seemed more excited and eager to get down than they had before the giants had risen up.
“Giants!” Bransen pleaded with those dwarves around him, a call seconded by Cormack.
“Bah, them ain’t giants,” Mcwigik said with a howl.
“Not like the giants we got on the Julianthes,” Bikelbrin added, using the powrie name for the Weathered Isles, their Mirianic Ocean homeland.
“Not half,” Mcwigik agreed, “but I’m betting their blood runs thick!”
That was all the others had to hear, and Pergwick and Ruggirs nearly tumbled from the ledge as they fought and scrambled over each other to get to the descent. After the dwarfish tumble rolled away, the three humans stepped up to the ledge.
“You do not seem convinced of your course,” Cormack remarked to Bransen, and the Highwayman smiled at his own inability to keep his emotions from his face.
“I came here to buy freedom for myself and my family,” he replied honestly. “Badden’s head for a journey south.”
“We’ll make sure that you get the foul one’s head, then,” Milkeila assured him.
Bransen snickered. “All who came north with me are lost. Either dead or trapped in that castle. Dame Gwydre would not refuse me my reward even should I return now, before the task is complete.”
“But Badden must be stopped,” Cormack said.
Bransen looked at him skeptically.
“Do you deny his evilness?” said Cormack.
“Not his, not that of your Church. Not of the lairds-not one of them,” said Bransen.
Cormack stiffened at that poignant reminder of the lack of familiarity between them.
“Then you agree that he, Badden, is worth killing,” said Milkeila, her voice taking on a distinctively sharper edge.
Bransen looked at her carefully, his expression measured, and caught somewhere between amusement and condescension. “That is not the question. The question is: Is Badden worth dying over?”
Below them, the powries encountered a group of trolls and the fight was on. “He is,” said Cormack, and he started over the ledge, moving swiftly down the steep decline. Milkeila shot a disappointed look Bransen’s way and followed.
Bransen passed them easily, using his Jhesta Tu training and his marvelous control of his body to run down the cliff.
TWENTY-NINE
Despoilment, Inevitability, and Questionable Triumph
By the time Bransen got down to the ice shelf, most of the trolls were either down or scattering and more than half of the powrie contingent was already in a full sprint to the edge of the chasm just south of their position. Both their courage and commitment stunned Bransen, for not only were they charging headlong into the waiting giants, but they were putting themselves into a position where they would be afforded one less avenue of retreat, where, if the battle went badly, they would find no escape.
It wasn’t stupidity, or ignorance of battle techniques, that launched them to the chasm, Bransen knew. They weren’t going to retreat. They were either taking the fight right to Badden’s castle across the way, or they were going to die trying.
His surprise and confusion over their level of commitment nearly cost Bransen his life, as a troll spear flew in for his side. At the last moment, and with the prompting of a cry from Milkeila, the Highwayman half turned and snapped a backhand against the spear, just below its stone head. The force of the blow flipped the light spear into a near-right-angled turn, and the nimble Bransen flipped his hand and snatched it from the air, his legs moving perfectly to catch up to his shifting shoulders.
He sent the missile back out at the nearest troll, though he didn’t know if that was the missile-thrower or not. The creature flailed wildly and tried to fall away, and indeed did fall away, though not as it had intended, embedded as it was on the end of the spear.
Bransen thought to yank that spear back out of the squirming troll as he ran past. But he shook his head, confident that his hands and feet would prove to be all the weaponry he needed at that time. He skied into a pair of trolls, spinning a circle-kick as he came in. That one foot turned both their spears aside, and as he came around fully, Bransen quick-stepped forward
, snapping off quick left and right jabs into the faces of the respective trolls. He pressed forward, staying inside the optimum reach of their weapons. He spun to face the one on his left and drove his elbow back behind him to further smash the face of the other.
A fast left-right-left combination knocked the troll facing him back and to the ground; then Bransen similarly dropped, turning sidelong and coiling his legs as he did. The troll behind him, now below his prostrated form, had just begun to recover from the elbow to the face when Bransen swept his lower, left leg across, hooking the troll behind the ankle and sliding its foot forward, while Bransen’s right leg straight-kicked for that same knee.
Legs weren’t supposed to bend like that, as the troll’s howl of agony proved.
Bransen thrust his left arm down below him, driving his upper torso up from the ice. He tucked his legs again and spun with the momentum, right into a standing, turning position that allowed him to circle-kick the descending troll right in the face.
Its head snapped over backward with such force that its neck bones shattered.
A roar from behind turned Bransen around just in time to see a giant topple over, grasping both its knees. The powries wasted no time, swarming over the behemoth with glee, stabbing it and slashing it and wiping their berets across the wounds.
Bransen’s jaw dropped open in disbelief as he lifted his gaze to view the fight beyond the fallen giant, to where a group of powries was rushing to and fro and back again, in and around the legs of a futilely swatting giant who never got close to hitting any of them.
Oh, but they were hitting the giant! Great, reverberating smacks, and always about the knee. They looked like wild lumberjacks chasing animated trees. The giant danced and tried to keep ahead of them, but they’d only reverse direction, dart between its legs, and whomp it yet again. They howled with excitement and sheer enjoyment, and that only infuriated the beast more, it seemed, and its swings became more frantic, and more futile. Other powries joined in the dance, chopping, always chopping, at the giant’s legs. Down it went, to be swarmed and finished.
Bransen remembered his feelings upon first seeing the giants. How puny and helpless he had thought himself. But the powries had long ago found the answer to the imposing, seemingly impregnable behemoths. One after another, the giants fell. And the powries rolled along, berets glowing in the afternoon sun.
Cormack and Milkeila collected the stunned Bransen as they rushed to catch up. “We’ll be at the ice castle within the hour!” Cormack predicted.
Accurately, Bransen knew.
Toniquay sang great songs of rousing tenor, heroic deeds, captured and amplified and now enhanced magically to provide more than a morale boost, but an actual physical boost to the listener. And the warriors of Alpinador, the brave men and women of the many tribes that inhabited Mithranidoon, lived up to their heroic heritage. With coordination and fury, their line drove deep into troll ranks; whenever one group broke through and spearheaded out in front, those to either flank appropriately stretched behind them, so that instead of having any group get caught out alone and surrounded, the length of the barbarian line surged forward in a series of small wedge formations. One-against-one, there was no contest to be found. The larger, stronger, better-armed Alpinadorans stabbed ahead with impunity, skewering troll after troll.
And yet, Toniquay and the other leaders observed, their progress proved painfully slow. Waves of trolls came against them. Mobs of the monsters rushed in, leading with a barrage of flying spears that set the barbarians back on their heels and forced them to pause and cover with their wicker and leather shields.
Toniquay looked to the distant ice castle, their goal, and then to the west, toward the dipping sun. They would not get to the castle in daylight, he surmised to his dismay, and the night would not be kind.
A cheer in the southern end of the Alpinadoran line turned Toniquay that way, and when he noted the fierce fighting there, he did not at first understand. As he focused, though, he heard the bolstering cry “Another giant is down!”
He swept his gaze out farther to the south, to the powries, the fallen monk, the stranger, and Milkeila. The shaman’s tight old face crinkled with confusion and consternation; were these to be the saviors of Mithranidoon?
All he had for weapons were his hands and feet, and Bransen really didn’t see how either would do any damage to the giant battling the powries before him. But he had to try.
A dwarf rolled right around the behemoth’s treelike leg, ending with a solid, two-handed wallop of his heavy club against the front of the giant’s knee. As the behemoth lurched and howled, Bransen closed the last dozen running strides and leaped high. Good luck was with him, for even as he lifted, the dwarf, having gone around to the back of the giant’s leg, drove in a dagger, then smacked it hard with his club. The giant lurched backward this time, distracted and overbalancing just as Bransen crashed in and began launching a series of heavy punches. Over went the giant, crashing down to its back on the ice, and Bransen hopped up to a crouch, sprang into a forward somersault, and double-stomped his heels into the giant’s eyes.
The giant howled and swatted him, launching him away, and only good fortune and a beam of wood prevented Bransen from going over the lip of the chasm. As soon as he had steadied himself, his legs dangling over the ledge, he looked back in fear, expecting the behemoth to rush over and finish him, but the damage had been done, and now powries swarmed over the supine giant, hacking with abandon.
Cormack slid down low and clamped his hands on Bransen’s shoulders, desperately steadying him. Bransen started to assure the man that he was all right, but a shriek from the north, a supernatural, preternatural piercing screech, cut him short.
When he looked at the small dragon swooping across the lines of cowering barbarians, Bransen knew at once that it was Ancient Badden. Leathery wings propelled the beast with great speed, its long hind legs and talon-tipped feet snapping down to keep the warriors ducking and diving aside.
It screeched again, and there was magic behind that powerful wail, for many men fell to their knees, screaming in pain and grabbing at their ears. A dragon claw caught a woman by the shoulder and jerked her from the ground with such force that one of her boots was left behind! With that one foot holding her tight, the dragon’s other foot raked at her, talons tearing clothing and skin with ease.
The creature banked and rolled back under, and with a sudden halt of its momentum, hurled the broken woman like a missile through the throng of barbarians. The dragon breathed forth a line of fire, immolating some and creating an obscuring fog.
Spears reached up at it but they seemed to bother the beast not at all, for they did not penetrate its armored body, or what seemed like a magical barrier encompassing that body. The defiant dragon issued that deafening, earsplitting screech again, sending more warriors to their knees in pain.
“We have to help them!” Cormack cried, tugging Bransen back from the ledge. He scrambled to his feet, as Bransen did behind him, and started for the Alpinadorans.
“That is Badden,” Milkeila mouthed in horror-filled understanding.
Bransen grabbed Cormack by the shoulder, tugging him about. “The castle,” he said.
“We have to help them!” Cormack implored.
“We help them by taking the castle,” Bransen replied. “It is the source, the conduit, of Badden’s power.”
Cormack glanced back at the desperate fight to the north, but desperate acquiescence was in his eyes as he turned back to Bransen.
“Go on! Go on!” Bransen shouted to the powries, for he saw that the way was clear. “To the castle doors, for all our sakes!”
But few powries heeded that call, entranced by the allure of bright giant blood, and with still more behemoths to be tripped up and slaughtered. And the hesitancy of the behemoths-obviously they had fought the tough little powries before-only made the dwarves hungrier.
“Mcwigik!” Cormack called, and the dwarf skidded to a stop and turned t
o face the humans. “To the castle!” Cormack yelled, pointing emphatically that way.
Mcwigik put on a sour look, but he did stab out his arm to stop Pergwick from running by. Cormack nodded and started off, Milkeila and Bransen close behind. By the time they crossed the glacier to the ice ramp leading into the castle, Mcwigik and his three cohorts trailed in close pursuit.
A strange sense of urgency came over Bransen, then, and he overtook Cormack, moving from a trot to a sprint for the front of the large castle. He looked all about as he ran, though his path was straight. Were Brother Jond and Olconna still alive?
How much he suddenly cared about the pair and the other prisoners surprised Bransen, and he silently cursed himself for his hesitance back on the path. How could he have considered turning aside? He lowered his head and ran on faster, right to the base of the ice ramp that led up through the carved towerlike guardhouses that flanked the opening to the castle’s bailey. But there, right at the base of the ramp, he skidded to a stop, and he quickly put his arm out to block Cormack from running by him.
“It is warded,” he explained.
“How do you know?”
Bransen shook his head, but did not otherwise answer. He fell within himself, finding the line of his chi and willfully extending that life energy down to the ground beneath him. He felt the power there, clearly, and discordant with the teeming magic that had constructed and now maintained this castle.
“He says that it is trapped,” Cormack said to Milkeila when she came up beside them, the four dwarves huffing and puffing close behind.
Milkeila nodded her agreement almost immediately. Her magic was quite similar to that of the Samhaists, both drawing their energies from the power of the world beneath their feet. She stepped up tentatively and began chanting and rattling her claw and tooth necklace.
She nodded again and looked back to Cormack. “Our adversary has collected the muted countering energies to his construction together in this one place,” she explained. “It is a powerful ward.”
The Ancient sotfk-2 Page 34
