He led the men downwards. Flame flickered from the dozens of torches, casting a dark and foreboding aspect to the steel naked in his companion’s hands. Shadows loomed and danced as the men wound their way down. Jacob quietly called for a halt. The ramp had flattened, they no longer moved deeper beneath the earth. He signalled the men to stay in the shelter of the hallway they had come to and stepped out on his own into the only exit from the spiral rampway.
He stepped through and awe stopped him mid step. He had come to a massive cavern, larger than any hall or castle save maybe for Sprettaman itself. Lights glowed from the ceiling, fruits and plants grew from the very walls. Though underground, the cavern had a warm and dry feel, as if fashioned for comfort and not made by the forming of the earth.
He took two steps more and moved out of the shadow of the archway. It was bright enough to see without the need for burning brands, so he cast his to the ground and stamped the fire out. Without the hindrance of the flickering fire so close to him, he found he could see more clearly. The wall, ceiling and floor were all the same clay colour, and a glow seemed to illuminate all. He cast no shadow.
His gaze was drawn to the centre of the great hall, for that was clearly what this place was, not some damp cave or desert cavern. A great fountain lay in the very centre where a glorious glow came from the water laying still in the pool. He felt the presence of a great power here. As if He who is Greatest of them all somehow lived within, bending His will to allow life to flourish in the most improbable of places.
Figures moved around the vast pool. Jacob approached slowly, sliding his sword back in its scabbard as he went. It was a hundred paces to the pool, and he took each step in a slow and controlled manner, hands held open and apart in a gesture he intended to mean peace.
As he closed the distance, he noticed details of the figures. There were around a hundred, or slightly less. Some were very old, others very young. They were not warriors; they had no weapons, yet they all held the air of defiance. Eyes glimmered in the glow of the waters, irises like cats, vertical pupils wide in surprise. Ropy, yet thin muscles contracted, flexing hands that held feline-like claws.
Jacob stopped some ten paces away from the group. He felt men behind him and turned his head to see the entire host of men stalking out of the archway.
‘I said halt.’ He snarled, attempting to show his displeasure without alarming the creatures by the pool.
Lord Beringer the Younger marched arrogantly in front of his men. All now who were not brothers of the order followed the young lord’s lead. He came to stand beside the prince. He cast his own torch before the Elves, causing them to hiss and snarl aggressively.
The young lord looked upon them with obvious distaste, then swore loudly. ‘I see not one speck of gold upon these heathen beasts.’
With a gesture of his hand, the soldiers of the kingdom broke into two groups. One circled the Elves who stood restlessly around the pool, speaking in hushed tones. The second group broke into smaller groups and dispersed to search for the promised gold.
‘You presume to give commands without my leave.’ Jacob hissed, his voice full of controlled anger.
‘I have made no attack, as ordered, my prince. But the men are eager to be about our mission and return home’, Lord Beringer replied dismissively.
Jacob ignored the young lord and took a few steps closer to the Elves.
‘My name is Jacob.’ He spoke to the group, his voice soft as if he were talking to a distraught animal. The Lord Godwin sniggered but remained further back, speaking quietly with the men of rank. The brothers of the Order of Light stood around the chamber awaiting orders from the prince.
A female Elf stepped forward from the group, a young boy beside her, his hand in hers. Neither showed fear.
‘I am called Releaka, life mate to Cameos, chieftain of the Elven people.’ Her head was held high with pride. ‘And this is our son, Caleak.’ The boy smiled warmly.
‘Where are the rest of your people? I see no young men and very few young women’, Jacob asked.
‘They have gone’, Releaka replied.
‘Where?’ Suspicion crept into Jacob like a fox stealing into a henhouse. He looked around for signs of ambush, but his men covered all the entrances to the chamber.
Releaka laughed, it was a strange sound, neither mirthful nor menacing. ‘You have no need to fear.’ She turned her hand in a gesture that pointed to those behind her. ‘Unless you fear the old and the very young.’
‘Where are your people?’ Jacob asked once more.
‘They have gone to your lands, much as you have come to ours. Armed and dressed for war’, Releaka said simply. The boy beside her showed discomfort at her words. Jacob looked stunned as he tried to process what she spoke of.
Before Jacob could reply she spoke again, her tone now cold, ‘But why have you come here?’
Lord Beringer arrived at Jacob’s side. ‘Your treasure horde, where have you hidden it?’ He snarled through anger.
‘Treasure? All around you lays our treasure, unnamed man. Do you not see the fruits upon the plants?’ She turned and retrieved a clay cup with simple patterns glazed upon its surface. She bent down into the fountain’s pool and filled the cup. Calmly she walked to Lord Beringer. Her hips swayed as she walked, her lips pursed. In a human woman she would have been called provocative, seductive in her form and demeanour, even tempting, but it was just her Elvish way.
‘Here is our treasure.’ She handed the cup to Beringer and bowed.
The young lord sniffed the cup. ‘I do not travel to the ends of the earth. Watch my own father taken by the monster of the deep, for fucking water!’ He screamed the last as he threw the cup to the ground and pulled his sword.
‘Where is the gold, bitch?’ He snarled, taking a step forward.
‘Put up your sword, Beringer’, Jacob ordered, his voice menacing as he interposed himself between the she-Elf and the lord.
‘Why do you protect her? You know our orders’, Beringer said loudly, calling the attention of all in the cavern. Those men not of the order stood behind their master.
‘Your orders are what I say they are! Do you forget I am the crowned prince? Or maybe you seek station higher than that of your father’, Jacob retorted.
The men-at-arms of the Order of Light moved to stand behind Jacob, Brondolf was already a pace behind Jacob, his great-sword held loose in his hand, the tip resting upon the ground. He hefted his shield and flexed the muscles of his sword arm as he judged the distance needed to end the young lord’s brief reign.
As the cavern split into two groups of armed men, readying for bloodletting, those men tasked with searching returned.
‘We found nothing, my lord’, one man called.
‘No metal at all, my lord. No silver nor gold’, another called.
Soon other men took up the same calls. The tension in the room turned to fury, and the men looked to their lord for an answer.
Beringer stepped to the side of Jacob; his confidence came from the six hundred men at his back. He saw the one hundred and twenty men who would stand beside the prince and knew he could overwhelm them.
‘She-Elf!’ The lord shouted over the din of angry voices. Releaka turned back to face him. She seemed unafraid.
‘If you show me where you have hidden the gold, I shall spare your boy’s life.’ He spoke reasonably, as if offering a fair deal for goods at the market.
‘His life is not yours to spare.’ She too spoke reasonably, but her eyes burned with the fire of fury. She took a dagger from her belt. Her son pulled her arm, and she crouched down as he spoke into her ear.
‘Enough with these niceties’, Beringer snapped.
Jacob drew his sword, and before his own blade had cleared its scabbard, the sound of over a hundred great-swords scraping through their own scabbards filled the air.
‘They have no gold’, Jacob said. ‘It was a fool’s errand, my Lord. Surely you can see that.’
‘They have h
idden it princeling, do you not see? They are making you the fool.’ Beringer appealed to Jacob.
‘I do not know what gold is.’ Releaka blurted, in what appeared an attempt to prevent bloodshed.
‘Liar!’ Beringer screamed. He took a coin from out his tunic and threw it to Releaka, who caught it in mid-air. She took the coin and looked at it intently. Then she sniffed it, tasted it, and gently applied pressure to its surface with her wicked-looking canines.
‘You come here to wage war for this?’ Releaka asked incredulously. A much older Elf came and studied the coin for a moment and spoke quietly with Releaka. She tossed the coin back to Beringer.
‘Why make war for this, man? It has no value. It is neither food nor drink. It is a thing devoid of life. It is pretty, for a trinket, but it has no true worth.’
‘It is gold’, he replied, surprise etching his expression.
‘We have none nevertheless’, Releaka said casually.
‘We shall see. Seize them all’, Beringer said commandingly. His men made to move towards the group of Elves.
Jacob came to stand before the Elves, steel in his hand, the men-at-arms of the brotherhood at his side.
‘They have no gold!’ Jacob said in an imploring tone. ‘No gold and no need for bloodletting.’
‘I do not believe her! She lies to protect her horde.’ Beringer turned his full attention upon Jacob. ‘Do you forget the king’s own order? ‘Retrieve the gold and kill all who abide there.’ Those are the words of the king.’
With that, Colburn moved. It was the time he had waited for. His instructions clear.
‘I countermand those orders’, Jacob said. The tension in the room was palpable, slaughter only seconds away.
Colburn had moved unnoticed. The king’s voice sounded clearly in his mind. ‘The prince will betray me. And you will kill him.’ He was now only two paces away from the prince.
Jacob stood before Lord Beringer but spoke to the men who took his lead. ‘There need be no fighting here. Our kingdom is in peril. She needs her trusted warriors.’
Jacob looked amongst the men who stood with Beringer, greed and violence dominated their appearance. ‘Put up your swords, by order of the crowned prince.’ Jacob roared with all the authority he could muster. His words failed. The men under Beringer’s command moved forward.
Colburn was within reach, his sword held low. He saw Jacob try in vain to forestall the oncoming violence. Saw the soldiers of the kingdom. The various colours of the different nobility, including the blue upon which rested the sigil of the royal household, the two joined rings of gold. Jacob opened his mouth to speak. Colburn struck.
His blade held low had whirled upwards in a flash of steel and then blood had sprayed, bright and plentiful. A torrent of arterial blood gushing forth. And Beringer fell to the floor, writhing in his death throes as the last of his lifeblood had spurted upwards. Until the squirting had lessened, and the body grew still.
The brothers of the Order of Light charged forward, throwing their shields before Jacob, who stood in surprise with Colburn at his side. The huge shields smashed together in a thunder of noise as the brothers made a shield wall just as the soldier’s charge crashed home.
Jacob felt a tugging of his arm and brought his sword to bear swiftly, pulling up the blade. In horror as he saw the young boy looking up at him, smiling.
‘It is time for us to leave.’ The boy named Caleak spoke as if he were playing with children, and it was time to go home for supper. Yet Jacob felt a strange comfort from the boy, a willingness to accept whatever the boy said as truth.
‘Where shall we go?’ Jacob asked over the din of battle.
The boy still smiling pointed to the other side of the cavern where the mouth of a vast tunnel could be seen.
The soldiers fought now under the command of several of the lesser lords and their own commanders. They had little coherency and so struggled to put their overwhelming numbers to use. The superior skill and strength of the men-at-arms of the brotherhood were proving to be a match for the unequal numbers. Both sides were taking casualties, but neither took much advantage.
Jacob saw that the she-Elf, named Releaka, was already leading the Elves away from the chaos and towards the tunnel mouth, but the boy waited for Jacob. The prince passed word to Brondolf, and the brothers pulled back. Colburn ended the life of anyone who sought to attack the prince, with unsurpassed skill and contemptuous ease.
It took twenty minutes before Jacob led the last of the brothers through the tunnel mouth and into the gloom beyond.
‘We lost sixteen men in the fighting, these twenty will stay and cover our retreat’, Brondolf said indicating twenty men who now stood in two ranks blocking the tunnel mouth. ‘They can hold that gap until exhaustion takes them.’
‘It is a death sentence’, Jacob said mournfully.
‘There are much worse ways for a brother to die’, Colburn said, though with admiration and sympathy in his tone.
Jacob looked around the tunnel. Of the Elven kind he could only see Releaka and the boy Caleak who stood by Jacob’s side.
‘Where are your people?’ Jacob asked of Releaka, afraid that in their haste they had left the Elven people on the wrong side of the shield wall.
It was the boy who answered, ‘We have a contraption, sort of like horseless wagons.’ He spoke excitedly. ‘The people have taken them. It travels much faster than we can run. They cannot move well, so they will meet us there.’
‘Where is there?’ Jacob asked.
‘A day’s march.’ The boy shrugged his shoulders. ‘We have a long journey, and it is but the start.’
‘I shall lead, do not tarry’, Releaka said. Then, she was running through the tunnel. Caleak pulled Jacob and soon the remaining brothers followed, their hearts heavy as the sound of battle grew faint.
Chapter Thirty-nine
Archer
Audemar loosed again, dipped his hand into the arrow bag at his waist and found it was empty. His mind had begun to fog, for four hours now he had loosed arrow after arrow into the flame lit Orc upon the battlefield. And yet still they came. The immeasurable horde of Darkness. His body ached, his heart faltered, despair gripped him in the deep hours of the night.
He looked to his left as a Goblin scaled the battlements and lashed out with a wicked-looking serrated short sword. The blade whistled through the air, where Oleif, only a second before, had been standing. The man-at-arms who dragged Oleif roughly from the assault quickly dispatched the Goblin with an expert thrust of his great-sword.
‘Bowmen! Pull back!’ One brother roared over the clamour of the battlefield, as more and more Goblins climbed the stones of the keep in defiance of gravity. Audemar looked over the edge of the parapet at the rear of the battlements and saw to his dismay a hundred or more Orcs waiting at the keep’s barred doors. The enemy tried to force the great oak doors, but they had been barricaded too well. And now the Orc seemed content to wait for the more agile Goblin to breach the fort through the roof and remove the door barricade from within.
‘To me!’ Audemar shouted, and without hesitation his bowmen joined him at the rear of the battlements. He jumped onto the battlement and leaning over the edge loosed a bodkin arrow into the mass of Orcs below. Growls of anger followed as his arrow struck home. The Orcs below roared and reared their tusks, brandishing gruesome-looking weapons and bellowing at the cowards to come and be killed. Audemar looked behind him and saw the men-at-arms of the Brotherhood of Light hacking the Goblins with chopping motions of their great-swords as soon as they reached the summit of their climb. The air was filled with the sounds of butchery, screeches of the enemy and the thud of lifeless bodies hitting the ground.
More of Audemar’s bowmen joined him on the wall of the battlements, firing down into the enemy. The area around the door of Iron Guard was now thick with enemy dead, yet they seemed reluctant to move, even in the face of death.
A scream filled with agony and terrible to hear pierced Aud
emar’s ears. He turned, as did all upon the battlement, and the sight that confronted them was of the darkest nightmare. Arachnithion had climbed the battlement and was perched upon it. The great spider he rode was ripping through the flesh of a screaming brother. Great fangs dug deep into the torso of the doomed man, the dark creature’s mandibles shovelling the man’s innards into the creature’s maw. The men-at-arms broke combat with the Goblins and leapt bravely at the creature, swords whirling in the flickers of flame.
Arachnithion sat astride his beast, with satisfaction upon his face as he watched his creature devour the screaming man, and his giant spider pinning the man to the stone roof with its foremost legs. As the men-at-arms of the brotherhood leapt forward Arachnithion laughed, the sound soaking up any remnants of hope like a sponge.
Arachnithion drew forth his weapon and raised the staff in the air. The blue stone crackled into life with a sound like wet logs on a fire, hissing and spluttering as it drew energy. The deep blue of the stone became fierce in its intensity, radiating a malevolent light.
‘I am your doom!’ Arachnithion said in a maniacal voice as he pointed his arcane and magical weapon at the brothers upon the battlements. His spider had devoured the insides of the man in its grasp, the fangs draining the man of blood whilst the mandibles devoured the organs. Audemar gasped aloud in horror as he saw the husk of bone and skin being tossed over the battlements’ edge.
A flash of blue light shot forth from the staff’s stone. It hit a man-at-arms in the chest and the smell of burning flesh filled Audemar’s nostrils. The man’s hair vanished from his head in the fierce blast of energy that engulfed the man in a searing heat. In the blink of an eye, the man’s flesh sank as the fat rendered and muscle melted off his bones. Audemar turned away as the man’s scream died, his facial features disfigured as the intense and sudden heat loosened the flesh from his skull. Oleif vomited. Audemar nearly joined him but felt vengeance settle his stomach. It was the most horrible death he had ever seen, and he felt a deep-seated need to make atonement. He notched an arrow and inhaled deeply, steadying his trembling body. He released the arrow and watched its short flight and then sighed in dismay as the arrow hissed passed the Arachnoid rider. His aim had been true, but Arachnithion’s speed was born of magic and of service to dark powers, and the chieftain of the Arachnoid riders had swerved his body from harm’s way.
The Banner of the Broken Orc: The Call of the Darkness Saga: Book One Page 44
