“Come on,” Michael said to his friends, feeling the tremble of the crumbling tower beneath his feet. “We have to move to the east tower. They are going to come for us, but we sure as hell are not going to make it easy for them.”
“Stay low!” Fryon pleaded. “No more careless deaths today, alright?”
The small band of men and women nodded their agreement and crouched behind the protection of the wall, moving quickly across the expanse of the battlements and into the archway of the eastern tower.
A loud CRASH and BOOM startled them all as the floor above the great hall fell in on itself, burying a mass of Raven soldiers and the broken body of their friend and protector, Vŏlker the giant.
“Vŏlker,” Margarid said, a sob catching in her throat.
“Quickly now!” Timorets ordered. The group began to roll leather trunks and crates filled with books and scrolls from the upper rooms out into the archway in front of them.
“How many arrows do we have?” Michael asked the group.
“Forty … maybe fifty at best,” Celrod said with a forlorn face.
“And swords?” Michael continued to take inventory of their defenses.
“We have those, for what good we can do with less than a dozen,” Timorets replied.
“Well, we will have to make the arrows count. Wait ‘til they are on the battlements before we even take aim. We can’t waste them firing into the horde,” Michael told them.
“If nothing else, we will pile their cursed bodies high enough to slow them down,” Fryon agreed.
“Right. Fryon, you and I will wait at the ready with blades in hand,” Michael said as he placed his hand on Fryon’s shoulder. “We will let the rest of them do the shooting while we defend the east tower.”
Fryon nodded his understanding and secured the leather strap of his ancient, feathered helm tightly under his chin.
The fire slowed the Raven army down, as the rubble had buried the easiest point of entry to the tower. None of this would have mattered in the least to the Nocturnal army of several thousand soldiers, save the fact that the gatehouse held the only release to the lever holding the mighty portcullis in place, and the gatehouse was securely fortified at the base of the east tower.
The clank and the click of the siege scorpions cut through the noise from the army below them. With the stairwell of the west tower blocked by flame and rubble, the Ravens would have to climb their way atop the wall.
THWACK! CRACK! The sounds of the black scorpion arrows shook the remnant as the barbs bit and grappled into the ancient stone of the Halvard.
“They are coming,” Michael whispered to his friends. “Wait ‘til they are firmly upon the wall, and be true with your aim.”
The invaders climbed the ropes and leapt atop the battlement. Half a dozen of them at first, but with a silent wave of Michael’s hand they were cut down and dispatched from this world by the sure-fired arrows.
This happened over and over again, and with each little victory, their stock of defense dangerously diminished.
“Your supply is dwindling, and your champion has fallen!” came the booming, emotionless voice of General Aius from below. “Open the gate and let my army pass, and I will allow you to live in the ignorant darkness of your choosing!”
“Shhh!” Michael said as he raised a finger to his lips.
Timorets raised his head up to steal a glance down below, and he saw the general mounted upon his green-eyed steed, a raven perched upon his shoulder. He notched one of his last arrows and took aim at the leader of this evil horde.
“Timorets, no! What are you doing, man?” Celrod said in a worried whisper.
But the brewer paid him little mind and loosed an arrow at the general. The missile flew with great haste, but still narrowly missed the head of the general as it screamed by him in a defiant fury.
“Time is running short, and my Queen requires her army at once!” he roared, angered now. “And you play a fool’s game? Open the gate and be done with it, or I will see to it that you and all your kind are fed to the twins of the air, one limb at a time!”
The remnant was silent as they took inventory of what little hope they had to survive this assault.
“Maybe we should just let them pass and be done with it,” Celrod said, the defeat thick upon his voice. “We haven’t the means, Michael.”
“And let them march freely through the north, all the way to whatever hell is being inflicted upon someone else?” Margarid asked incredulously.
“What else can we do?” Celrod reasoned. “I doubt we can fend off much more than a few of their waves, and last time I peeked out over the wall, there were still thousands of those damned Ravens coming for us.”
“Tell me this, schoolmaster,” Margarid fired back. “Which is the greater woe? To stand and fight against these forces of darkness by what little means we may have left, or to let them pass, saving ourselves at the expense of God knows how many others?”
The remnant was quiet and ashamed, for somewhere in all of their hearts, even the bravest amongst them, it was all too easy to surrender to the temptation of self-preservation.
“Besides,” Michael spoke up, “Cal is out there still.”
“You don’t know that, groomsman,” Timorets replied.
“I believe it more than I know it,” Michael told them. “And I, for one, can’t send the whole bloody Raven army out after him … not while there is still hope that he might find what we are all looking for.”
Margarid reached over and took his hand, squeezing her affection with her own.
“We will not!” Michael shouted out over the wall. “We will not open the gate, we will not allow you passage.”
“There is going to be too many of them!” Celrod said.
“Right,” Michael agreed as a spray of violated stone crumbled down around them. “Fryon, you get down to the gatehouse below. I need you to break the lever, smite the chain … do whatever it takes to make sure that this gate will not open easily, even if there are none of us left to defend it.”
The brave man, who had just lost his brother to the bite of the Ravens, nodded his silent understanding and took off through the maze of barrels and trunks, down to the bottom of the east tower.
“Come on, Cal. We need you to find it for us, horseface,” Michael whispered out his prayer. “I don’t know how much longer this world has left.”
He kissed the flint that still hung around his neck and steeled himself for what he knew he must do now. Suddenly, the hands and heads of the climbing Raven soldiers peeked out overtop the merlons of the wall.
“They are here!” Celrod shouted in a whisper.
“Wait ‘til you have the clear shot!” Margarid said as she tried to steady her shaking breath.
THWACK! A violent crash came again as the scorpions unleashed yet another assault upon the wall.
“Fire!” Michael ordered as a dozen Nocturnals landed upon the battlements and squared off to fight them.
The arrows of the remnant tore through their muted, metal armor, and in a spray of blackened blood the assailants were cut down.
“Reload!” Timorets called.
“We only have a few more of these left,” the schoolmaster reported. “At this rate, two … maybe three shots each.”
Michael looked at the forlorn faces of his friends and at their dwindling supply of defenses. He swallowed his resolve and took off towards the bodies of the fallen enemy soldiers.
“Michael!” Margarid shouted out after him as he ran in a crouch down the barbican.
“What is he doing?” Georgina asked worriedly.
“Is he mad?” Celrod said.
Michael slid next to the lifeless Nocturnals and began to pluck the bolts from their broken bodies. He grabbed the ones closest to him and took a steadying breath as he turned and faced his worried, waiting friends.
More hands and more heads came over the wall just as he began his awkward retreat towards the relative safety of the east tow
er.
“Michael!” Margarid shouted, her eyes wide in terror as a second wave of assailants leapt from the wall and landed with violent intent, not ten paces from where Michael crouched. “Michael, get down! Now!”
Her words registered and he dropped flat upon his stomach as a blast of angry wind shot over his head and buried its pointed barbs in the chests of the Nocturnals that pursued him.
The bolts found their marks, though not all of them fell dead on the spot. For there were many more enemies than there were arrows, and one of them was nearly upon him. Michael rolled to his side, narrowly avoiding the bite and crack of the ugly blade of his green-eyed foe. The Nocturnal raised his sword up and over his head, ready to unleash his fury once again.
WHOOSH! Another arrow flew overhead, and in an instant the Raven soldier dropped his blade and staggered back. Michael scrambled backwards on all fours as he tried to make his way to his friends; and as he did, he felt the hope-killing crack of the recently recovered arrows snap under the awkward weight of his escape.
“No!” he cursed under his breath.
“Michael, hurry!” his friends yelled out after him as the sight of more hands and more helmed heads cleared the top of the wall.
He got to his knees and drew his ancient blade from its ancient scabbard. His desperate eyes found the waiting, worried gaze of Margarid, and without a single word passing between them she knew he was not returning to the tower.
“No!” She screamed as she leapt out from behind the girth of the stacked trunks and loosed an arrow in the face of the first Raven soldier. Michael ducked, narrowly missing the sword of the Nocturnal, then swung his own blade, opening up its ashen neck.
Margarid notched one of her last remaining arrows and fired over Michael’s right shoulder, ending the advancement of yet another assailant.
Blades crashed and sparked, and black arrows flew up from the frigid ground below. Timorets and Celrod were moved by such a display of bravery, and they, too, rose from their perch and ran out to meet their friends in the chaotic fray of battle. For every enemy that was cut down, another climbed up the wall and took its place. Exhaustion began to take its toll, and traces of warm red appeared on the wounded limbs of those who wielded their violent defense.
Then, an unlooked for sound, simultaneously sweet and angry, cut through the clamor of war with a bright-noted melody.
“What is that?” Margarid said as she slashed and parried with her own blade.
Again it rang out, clear and bright, from the west.
“I don’t know!” Michael shouted back, his movements now labored and clumsy beneath the weight of his own sword. “I can’t see anything!”
“What in the damnable dark?” Celrod said as he risked a glimpse up and over the line of merlons.
Another sound, this one dark and soul-chilling, rang up from the ranks of the Nocturnals below; its very tone stood in pure contrast to the brightness of the first sound.
“What is it?” Margarid begged, her heart afraid to hope.
“I don’t know!” Celrod shouted as he sunk his blade in the gut of another enemy. “But it is beautiful!”
“What?” Timorets turned his head, confusion lining his bearded face.
The dark, sickly tone rang out again, but as it did, the darkness about them erupted in a burst of violet light.
“Michael, what is that?” Margarid shouted as she stopped swinging her sword and stood still, amazed and overcome by the unexpected onslaught of such beauty out here in the forsaken lands of the Halvard.
Michael’s eyes went wide as a fragrant wind blew in from the west, and his mind registered the fantastical scene that unfolded before them. “Sprites!” he yelled, hardly believing the words that came from his own mouth. “The Sprites … the Sprites have come … they have come for us!”
Chapter Forty-Two
Enemy arrows flew in a violent storm of raven feathers, loosed from the crossbows of the Sorceress’ archers. Her fury was so great at the murder of her dragons that she cared not whether her bolts cut down her own forces as they extinguished the lives of the traitors.
“Kill every one of them, every damned bird, every ram, and man who dares to defy my power!” Nogcwren screamed as she strode fearlessly into the line of battle.
Seig’s green eyes glowed with fierce obedience as he and his men marched in formation about the Sorceress. He eyed Yasen at the opposite end of their column, wondering if by chance a blade might mistake him for one of his unenlightened brothers.
Nogcwren held her arm high above her head, and in her hand was her onyx scepter, whose deadly point thirsted ravenously for the blood of her enemy.
THUANG! Arrows loosed and riddled the sky in pursuit of the Oweles that had assaulted her troops.
A contingent of Navid’s Ramsguard barreled recklessly though the line of her spearmen, their white-horned helms now nearly black with the blood of slain soldiers. They screamed and shouted their defiance as their mounts hooked and bucked against the ranks of foot soldiers, and their mighty, curved blades slashed and bit into greying flesh.
The Sorceress held her scepter high, and with a flash of her rune-covered arm, whipped the head of the weapon towards the ram riders. A blast of green lightning, like the web of a hideous spider, shot forth to squeeze the life out of an Amaian warrior. He choked as a jolt of electricity coursed through his body.
“See your Queen!” Seig shouted in elation.
The men of the Ramsguard froze momentarily in terror, and then, resigned to the doom all about them, continued to fight as if their death had already befallen them. The sky above them hissed and popped as more arrows were fired, though not all of them were raven-fletched. Nogcwren raised her scepter again and shielded herself from the assault that rained down upon her.
The screams and grunts of her guard rang out as the shots of Johanna’s archers found their mark. The ranks of Seig’s guardsman began to diminish as it became evident that the protection of the queen did not extend far beyond her own flesh.
Metal upon metal, blade against bone; the battle in the shadow of the Itxaro Mountains waged heavily on. The Sorceress used dark magic as an extension of her own fury, while Seig and his guardsmen fought desperately to guard her flank.
Pyrrhus swung his sword, felling men with little joy, as he fought to protect a queen and a commander that no longer needed him.
“There she is!” came the shouts of the woodcutters. “The witch is right there!”
“To me!” Seig ordered his men as he saw the horde of bearded mad men charging at the queen.
“Argh!” came the shouts of the Northmen, their axes at the ready and their eyes burning with furious determination.
Arrows flew, and men fell, and still the woodcutters charged. Goran reached the line of guardsmen first, and with one mighty swing of his axe, he released the heads of two of his former countrymen from their now-lifeless bodies.
Seig gritted his teeth and swung his blade, burying it deep in the flesh of an assailant.
The Sorceress continued to wreak her havoc as her sinister magic pierced both the armor and the resolve of all who opposed her.
Goran made his way through the battle until he came in sight of Seig. The large woodcutter looked for Yasen, still unbelieving that his friend had fallen to the side of this mad man and that witch.
“Have you come all this way just to die, woodcutter?” Seig taunted as he came near.
“Where is he?” Goran shouted. “What have you done with him?”
“With who?” Seig said playfully as he narrowly avoided the flash of an axe blade that swung within a handbreadth of his face. He kicked, landing his boot upon the sizable stomach of the woodcutter and placing a breathable distance between the two of them.
“You know damn well who,” Goran roared as he swung again, sparks erupting as the weight of his axe collided with the metal of Seig’s sword. “Where is our brother?”
Seig’s blade sparked and then snapped as a myriad o
f razor-sharp shards raked across his face. He looked at his broken blade and felt the now-black blood of his own Nocturnal flesh run down his cheek.
“Do you not know?” he chided. “He has taken the gift of the Raven Queen,” he said with a sinister laugh. “He’s now more my brother than he will ever be one of yours!”
Goran looked at the governor and saw his glowing, green eyes alive with the light of such hatred. “Yasen!” he shouted. “Yasen, where are you, brother?” Goran searched the fray of Rams and Ravens, his eyes desperate to find his chieftain and his friend.
“If you want to join him, all you have to do is bend the knee!” Seig shouted as he charged the large woodcutter and buried his broken blade in the belly of his enemy.
In the same moment that the sword bit flesh, Goran spotted his friend across the field of battle, and his heart sank in despair. Yasen stood, axe in hand, at the defense of the Sorceress herself.
“Yasen!” he shouted in surprised agony.
The North Wolf heard Goran’s call and turned. As he spun around, their eyes met across the carnage. “No!” Yasen shouted, his eye wide in terror.
Pyrrhus heard the cry, too, and turned to see where it was coming from.
“You see, woodcutter,” Seig gloated, whispering in Goran’s ear as he twisted the iron deeper into the bowels of the woodcutter. “He has chosen the side of glory, and you … fools, all of you, will water the grass of her kingdom with your insolent blood.”
Confusion washed over Goran’s dying face as he beheld the single eye of his friend. “Tell me this, Governor,” Goran choked out amidst crimson coughs. “Why isn’t his eye devil-green like yours, huh?”
The smug smile on Seig’s face fell, turning into a confused scowl.
“Ha!” Goran grunted. “He has been playing you for the fool this whole damned time! He’s only got one good eye, you know.”
Pyrrhus watched as the North Wolf ran towards his dying friend and raised his axe as if he meant to throw it. “What in the damnable…” he whispered in confusion.
WHOOSH! The rushing sound of double-bladed vengeance echoed overhead as Yasen hurled his mighty axe across the field, burying it into the back of the once-proud Governor of Haven.
The Coming Dawn: Epic of Haven Trilogy Book 3 Page 33
