The Channeling (Rise of the Witch Guard Book 3)

by Luke Sky Wachter

  Falon waved a hand behind her head to indicate she heard and a glance over at the other two companies of the battalion showed that the center was being chewed up. If it weren’t for the armsmen directly behind them, she figured they would have broken by now and the far left wing, the ice fox company…it looked like the Frog’s men were already coming around their far left corner. They must have lost contact with the unit to their side.

  The Prince—or McGrath—had better do something quick, she decided. Otherwise even though the baron had fewer men, their discipline, training and superior equipment was going to punch through and take the Prince’s center via a collapsed flank.

  “Come on!” Falon shouted, reaching the band of reinforcements after a rapid sprint. Waving her sword over her head, she pointed it at the near breach in front of them, “Forward, warriors!”

  Chapter 36: A-Rankin…for a Frog?

  “Hold!” Falon shouted at the wavering men in front of her, “Don’t let these frogs push you around.”

  Grabbing a man that was a good ten feet behind the fighting line—and at least five feet to the rear of his fellow nearest warrior—she took in his white face and rolling eyes before shoving him back toward the line.

  “Fight!” she shouted, but the other man dug in his heels.

  “There are too many of them!” he screamed turning to run away. “We’ll all be killed!!”

  Drawing on the earth, she got a grip on his collar and practically threw him back into the line he’d been attempting to abandon.

  “Stand. Stand, curse you!” she shouted. Deciding she needed the extra power, she quickly bent down and unlatched her left boot.

  It was time for Falon the Witch Knight to take the field.

  Standing up, she leveled her sword at the white-eyed man and then kicked off her boot. Instantly, energy seemed to flow through her and she felt ten times as strong as before. And even though she knew that, at best, she was only two—or possibly three—times as strong as she was when wearing the boots, she bared her teeth in a feral grin. She winced as her probably broken nose twinged, but she refused to let anything distract her.

  “We’ll break them here, lads!” shouted an officer on the enemy side, and a group of men on the other side gave a shout.

  “Charge!” she shouted at the reinforcements who’d paused beside her, and then swept her sword forward.

  Reinforcements from both sides met the wavering line at the same time and, meeting the backs of her own men, Falon forced her way forward.

  “A-Swan!” she screamed. “Push them back and hold!”

  “They haven’t got the stomach for it, boys,” shouted the enemy officer. “One good push and they’re finished!”

  “Frog—Frog—Frog!” bellowed the enemy line as it shoved forward.

  “Hold and counter-charge!” Falon screamed, shoving and pushing men forward until, in a sudden shift of the line, she was the metaphorical tip of the spear—and there were only enemy armsmen before her.

  “Argh!” shrieked a man that, from his scarce equipment, she figured must have been one of the new men sent by the Prince. Clutching a vicious wound to his chest, he fell to his knees. An enemy armsman with a plume on his helmet pulled his sword free of the man’s tumbling form and turned toward her.

  “You heard Sir Justin: one good push and they’ll break like the cowards they are. The field is nearly is ours, men,” the plume-wearing officer bellowed, raising his sword and coming at her.

  “In your dreams,” Falon shouted with outrage, “follow me, boys!”

  Then, not waiting to see if anyone was following, she jumped forward to meet him.

  Sword met sword, and thanks to her fully-powered magic she knocked his blade to the side. She saw widened eyes and, seizing her advantage while she had it, Falon balled up her leather-gauntleted hand, made a fist and aimed for his chin. She didn’t care how the enemy fell, just that they did, but at the last second the armsman raised his shield and lowered his helmet.

  Her fist glanced off the shield and went up over his head, only catching slightly on his helmet to cause zero damage.

  Even though both their swords were out of position, the moment her fist went high the armsman punched forward with his shield, hitting her in the chest with enough force that for a moment she thought she’d just been hit by a falling tree.

  “A-Frog! A-Frog,” he shouted, bringing his sword back into line and then thrusting at her.

  “Prince William and a Swan!” Falon parried as she shouted back. Then, in a lightning fast move, reached down to the sheath at her waist and pulled out the Boar Knife.

  “Die!” he roared, once again going for a shield bash. But this time she didn’t hesitate and jumped forward to meet it and take the shield square in the chest again.

  Momentarily surprised, the armsman didn’t hesitate. Falon was hit in the chest and sent flying backward but, before that happened, she stabbed her Boar Knife down and into his shoulder. She’d been aiming for the neck but in all the jostling and movement, the shoulder was the best she could do.

  The man bellowed in pain, taking a step back and shaking his shoulders from side to side as if he could shake off the pain of her knife strike.

  “Follow the Lieutenant!” shouted one of her long-serving veterans.

  “Sir Falon! Sir Falon,” they cried, and just like that she was no longer alone. Warriors quickly appeared to either side of her—her warriors.

  Seeing her advantage, Falon ignored the blood in her mouth from the double shield punches and jumped forward while the enemy was still disoriented. With a quick blow to his gauntleted hand, she sent his sword flying.

  “Press them. Press them!” she shouted, parrying a blow from one of the man’s shield mates who attempted to cover for him as he stepped backward. But she wasn’t about to let him go, and she stepped right into the space he’d just vacated. Summoning her witchery from the earth, she struck out left and right sending the man’s shield mates on the right and the left to the ground. They weren’t dead, but they were down and scrambling to get up. However, the men behind her weren’t about to let them recover. “We’ve got them on the run now, boys!” she cried jubilantly, and the enemy line started to waver.

  As if by some invisible force, the armsmen in front of her instinctively drew back and she could almost see open field behind them. For moment Falon thought that, with just one more push, instead of the Frogs breaking through her lines it might just be the Swans’ turn to punch a hole and fall like rabid wolves upon the turned backs of the enemy.

  Then a deep and thunderous voice from the enemy side called out.

  “Hold. Hold now, men!” bellowed the enemy officer. As if by magic, the triangular-shaped banner representing an un-landed enemy knight appeared just behind the last pair of enemies between her and a break through. One of them was a solid-looking man and the other was the still-bladeless man she had just chased to his back lines. If she could kill the unarmed one, she figured with the men behind her she could cut the enemy in two.

  “Sir Justin’s here!” cried unarmed man.

  “It’s Justin, the Hammer Sword!” shouted the enemy line, their wavering of mere moments before disappearing as if a puff of smoke in the wind.

  The men in front of her now had the appearance of a rock wall, and the demeanor of men that would need to be killed before they would move.

  Not willing to give them a chance to fully recover, if she could help it, Falon stepped forward and bringing her sword down with all of her power.

  The unarmed warrior raised his shield and fearlessly stepped forward to meet her, a dagger now in one hand while the shield remained in the other.

  “Don’t worry, boys; the Boar Knife will get him,” called out old Aodhan from somewhere behind her and the men of her side cheered. Their cheer only grew louder as her sword split of a third of the enemy armsman’s shield with one strike.

  The other man reeled and Falon stepped forward to finish him off with a stab to the g
ut. But a gauntleted hand pulled the vulnerable man back fast enough to stagger him, but also just in time to avoid her blade.

  “Who’s next?” Falon cried, pushing forward with battle fever. If they could split the enemy lines they would survive, but if they couldn’t and the Frogs did it to them instead then they were as good as dead. There were too many weak spots in the Battalion line. She had to win at all costs, if only to force out a draw.

  “Stand aside, Marcus,” thundered the enemy officer and the unarmed man, Marcus, regained his feet.

  A whirling dervish of magic power and youthful energy, Falon kicked the lower leg of an armsman beside her and then parried a dagger aimed at her kidney at the last minute. Laying about her with her sword, she forced open a circle in the armsmen around her.

  “For a-Swan,” she cried, and then staggered as her latest sword thrust was pushed to the ground.

  “A-Rankin for a-Toad!”

  “A-Toad!” thundered a voice in front of her and a shield slammed out hitting her in the elbow and numbing the hand with her knife.

  Falon gave her head a shake. Something was wrong. Her arm was numb and her ears were still ringing from all the hits she’d taken, but she was sure she’d said ‘A-Rankin for a-Swan’ like usual. But what she’d heard was the Toad cry instead.

  Putting both hands on her sword, she swung with all her might at the plate mail armored knight in front of her. His sword was decent, but his armor was neither new nor old but firmly in that hazy area somewhere in between that seemed the purview of most country knights. The chance of him being a sword expert was low; she could take him. After all, she’d dealt with spirit-enhanced savages.

  She screamed, determined to drive through the enemy knight, force a breach, and clear that mistaken battle-cry from her mind.

  “A-Rankin for a-Swan—A-Rankin for a-Toad!” her own cry for the Swans was shockingly matched, almost perfectly, by one of her counterparts on the enemy line!

  The Knight bellowed at the same time she did, meeting her blade to blade. He gave a grunt as he was forced back—forced back, but he held to both their great surprise. Hers that he held at all, and his likely that she was so strong.

  Then the realization that they both had nearly the same battle cry seemed to break through simultaneously, and they both stepped back. This caused a momentary lull in the fighting.

  “Who cries Rankin?” demanded the Knight with surprise.

  “What?” Falon asked harshly. “Who are you?”

  “If you think to use my family name to save your life, it will not work,” said the Knight, drawing himself up. “Where do you hail from?”

  “Save my life? I was clearly winning!” Falon said indignantly as eyes nervously shifted toward the exchange from both sides of the battle line. “And I’m from Brown Creek Grove in the Swan Lands.”

  “What! Daman…Garve, is that you? You seem,” he pursed his lips, “shorter than I expected.” The Knight threw up his visor.

  “It’s Falon—and just who are you?” she answered reflexively before she thought about it and then snapped angrily. “And just who are you calling short? You know my brothers?” she asked, skipping topics like a rabbit jumping through a field. Then she almost choked as a very familiar face appeared behind the raised visor.

  “Falon? In the Fie!” he said with surprise and his eyes bulged.

  “Father?” Falon blurted, and then shook her head knowing she was wrong. He looked just like her father—or rather just like she imagined he’d looked twenty years ago.

  “Who are you?” she asked with suspicion.

  “Sir Justin Rankin, now of the Toad Lands,” the Knight said dismissively, and then once again stared at her with amazement. “No…no, I must have been wrong; you can’t possibly be Falon and you clearly aren’t either Daman or Garve. So unless you’re possibly a by blow I haven’t heard of, you, Sir, are nothing more than a natural born liar,” he finished, brandishing his sword with a flourish. “On your guard,” he warned.

  “Justin? Justin’s my father’s name; you can’t be…” Falon paused and then blurted, “Justin II? You’re from the first family with Elaina Miller Rankin—the one who went off as a Squire?”

  She stood there dumbfounded for a moment as the tension among the men both behind and before her rose with each passing second.

  “Justin Junior, it’s me: Falon!” Falon exclaimed with excitement. “We exchanged letters a few years ago before you moved and the messages came back unopened! We figured you moved but couldn’t find out where!”

  “Falon?” Justin said, shaking his head from side to side like a bull that had just been hit in the head by a sledge hammer. “And don’t call me ‘Junior’!”

  “Wow…we all thought maybe you were dead or something,” Falon said eagerly.

  “You can’t be here,” he said, still looking confused before his eyes suddenly cleared, “what are you doing on a battlefield?”

  Falon blinked and then realized that maybe admitting to an enemy knight that she was a girl while on the battlefield wasn’t exactly the smartest move she could have made—even if that enemy was her long lost brother from Father’s first wife.

  “What do you think I’m doing?” Falon demanded exasperatedly. I mean, wasn’t it obvious what she was doing out there? “I’m an officer in the Battalion and I’ve been raised by Lord Richard Lamont.”

  “That’s…entirely beside the point,” Sir Justin, her brother said, reaching up to grab his visor, “there’s no time to have a family reunion on the battlefield. We can catch up later. As a knight in the service of Baron Froggor, I can guarantee your safety as long as you surrender to me personally. But if you don’t surrender now, I can make no promises if another knight or armsman captures you.”

  “Capture…surrender?” Falon asked with surprise before jutting her chin out defiantly. “But we’re winning!”

  “If you think that, you’re a fool,” Justin said, snapping down his visor and bringing up his sword. “You have no business on a battlefield, Falon. I advise you to surrender. Then, after the battle, you can go back home—where you belong.”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” Falon rejected immediately before deciding to offer an olive branch of her own. “Look, the Prince hasn’t lost yet; maybe you should surrender to me instead.”

  “Impossible; I’m a knight in the service of my Baron,” Justin said pointing his sword at her. “Last chance, Sis—…er, Brother!” he snapped after recovering from his near gaffe. “Do not think that family affection will stay my blade; I don’t know how much father taught you but I assure you that you don’t stand a chance. As a knight and a member of the Old Blood, I am sworn to seek victory—I cannot lose!”

  “That’s Sir Falon to you, Sir Justin,” Falon said angrily, “and I’m just as much a knight as you are! I helped saved the Prince’s life. I’ve been practically running this battalion for six months. I should go home? Is my oath of service worth any less than yours? You have no idea what I’ve learned, or who from. If you think you can’t lose, you’re wrong,” she snorted.

  “Guard your life then, kinsman!” Justin said, coming back at her with an overhand blow, and the battle that had temporarily drawn to a standstill around them suddenly erupted back into life. “Don’t hold back on my account, men! Today we fight for the Frog and victory—victory against Tyranny in all its forms!”

  “Fight with all your strength, men, and cut down all these tax evaders!” Falon shouted back with bile as she vented her spleen. Her own brother had told his men not to go easy on her. How could she tell the warriors and men who looked to her for leadership anything less? “We’ll break their lines before they can break ours. We can win this!”

  Steel met steel and, once again, the sound of men fighting and yelling—and dying—rang out.

  “Alright…let’s see what you’ve learned,” said Sir Justin Rankin—he said it so seriously, in fact, that Falon couldn’t quite believe that this was actually her long lost eldest
brother from the first family.

  Silently summoning up the power of the earth until it overflowed from within her, Falon crouched down feeling the energy coiled in her legs like a spring.

  “Let’s do this!” she shouted, all the while wondering where was McGrath and the Prince in all of this.

  Chapter 37: The Battle Turns

  “The Left Wing has broken in the middle and several other places, my lord Prince,” Lord Declan said clinically, “if nothing is done they will break into a rout and run. The Center is hard pressed as it is.”

  “Leaving the Right intact and holding,” Prince William swore, then grabbed his long hair and twisted it, he used the pain to help give him clarity. “By the Stag, whose idea was it to recommended McGrath for the post of Wing Commander? Someone make a note and remind me after this debacle is over with.”

  “Yes, of course,” Lord Declan said, looking off to the side at the various scribes with a warning in his eye before he turned back to the Prince, “Highness? Your orders?”

  “McGrath! Give me back my men,” he shouted angrily, and then turned to one of the couriers standing by waiting for orders. “You,” he barked, pointing at one of them, “tell McGrath that by the time you get to him he is to ordered to make an immediate counter attack!”

  The courier nodded and turned to run off with the message.

  “My Prince, are you sure that is wise?” Declan asked with concern.

  “It will be after my next order,” smirked the Prince, turning to his next runner, “tell the White Tower that by my command they are to use their magics to relieve the Left Wing. Fireballs! Acid Storms! Any and all magics they have, do you understand?”

  “Yes, Highness,” replied the second courier before he too ran off.

  “Young Quinn is not the only lord covered in glory this day!” the Prince said angrily.

  “Yes of course my lord,” Declan said openly agreeing with the Prince, “however, if I might remind the Prince, you sent several hundred armsmen of your personal guard to stiffen the forward lines.”