He turned his attention to those remaining defenders he could see without turning his head too far. His eye caught that of a man on his left. He was bleeding heavily from a stomach wound – he only wore chain. It might have saved him from a slashing blow, but had obviously provided little protection from the thrust that was soon to kill him. He wouldn’t stand for much longer.
He bled himself, from numerous wounds. His lip, a slash on his unprotected thigh, and a steady seeping from a deep laceration to his skull. It throbbed dully. He knew his brain was swollen, too, but that didn’t explain the emptiness.
“Hold the keep!” cried Renir Esyn, the only man he knew by name. “They come again! You! What’s your name?”
A young beardless warrior replied to the war leader, but his words were lost over the clamour of the Draymen, massed before the keep, banging their weapons together in an awful cacophony.
The nameless warrior couldn’t remember what lay outside those walls, but from the sound of it there was little in the way of resistance. The clattering of weapons was rhythmic, boastful. It was not the chaotic clanging of battle, but of victory.
He smiled to himself. There was little else they could take from him. If his dying breath was to be expended protecting this crumbling keep, then so be it. At least he knew what to do now, and why he was here. It made a refreshing change.
He relied on sight instead of sound.
Renir clasped the young man on his shoulder and pushed him gently toward the keep. Along the way the young soldier took the dying man around the waist, taking care not to touch his wounded stomach, and together they limped toward the keep, where their remarkable physician held court over men’s lives. Border rights, spousal disagreements or cattle prices were not at issue in the doctor’s court, but whether you lived or died. It was a heady kind of judgement. He instinctively did not trust the learned, although logically he understood that he had as great a need of him as the gutted man had.
How did he know there was a healer? Perhaps it was just a logical assumption. He did not know, but he presumed a man such as he was relied often on logic, and not experience.
With no memory, what recourse did he have, but for logic?
His head was tender at the best of times, but now he knew what he was doing here he wouldn’t give up and lay his head down on some healer’s sainted lap. He was a fighting man. He would fight until he could fight no more or the enemy had fallen.
Allies beside you, enemies in front. Rarely was life so simple. Why spoil it by passing out and having to start all over again?
He tore a makeshift bandage from the bottom of his shirt and tied it firmly round his head.
Renir Esyn approached him, wobbling slightly on his feet. The nameless warrior was gladdened to see he was not the only one affected by the shifting ground. As he came closer, the war leader looked carefully in the nameless warrior’s eyes. “Are you fit? If you’re not, you’re a liability. Take yourself to Drun. Your injuries are grave.”
“No, lord, I am not badly enough injured to risk a physician. I am fit enough.”
The war leader studied him, gazing deep into his eyes.
“How many fingers am I holding up?”
“Two, lord. I am fine.”
“I am nobody’s lord. What’s your name, warrior?”
He had the sense to look away. “What does it matter? I’ll be dead before suns’ rise.”
“Can’t you remember?”
“No,” he replied with all honesty, but then added, “but it is not unusual for memory to take a leave after a blow to the head. My head remembers the sword well enough.”
“Fine then, but…well, I won’t tell you to leave, but passing out on the end of a pike is no better than being spitted awake.”
“No, I guess not. I’ll be fine.”
Renir Esyn did not seem so sure. The man that would be king was weighing his options. Nobody liked to have a man with a head wound at their back – they behaved as if possessed of spirits sometimes – but there was little choice.
The war leader needed every man he had.
For a moment it looked as though he meant to add something further, but he just waved a hand absently and strode to stand before the gates.
The warrior watched as Renir Esyn hefted his axe and stood before the slurred gates. The man who would be king placed the head of the axe against the ground and rested his hands on the haft. After a while, the warrior saw that he had closed his eyes.
Surely they could not hold.
Perhaps, with this man leading them, they would die a worthy death. It might be enough.
No one else spoke. To his right a bearded man hefted a greatsword onto his broad shoulders and rested his chin against his chest. Most of the men wore stubble, or beards.
The nameless warrior rested his eyes, too. He was weary to the bone, his vision swimming before he shut his eyes on the insanity of the battle before him. Futility, surely. If so, why did he feel so alive?
His muscles ached, and more than one felt torn. Evidently, they had been fighting for some time.
They would not fight for much longer. One more push from the enemy and they would fold. They could not hold the opening. He did not know where the rest of the Sturman army was, or why the keep was important enough for them to throw away their lives, but he understood on some deeper level that if their war leader demanded their sacrifice, these men would give it willingly. He would not shirk. He would not running screaming into the night, or fall on his own sword.
He was a warrior.
The jarring clatter of weapons from outside halted. It was followed by the pounding of many feet, amplified by the otherwise deserted city streets outside the keep.
The defenders stirred, the light of fire in their eyes. The eyes were willing, but their bodies were nearing the end. They shuffled forward into a line, using their failing strength to hold their weapons proudly before them. They were rock, but even rock crumbles before the storm, eventually.
Renir Esyn said nothing, but merely looked at each of them, holding every man’s gaze for a second. He raised his broad, glittering axe to them in salute, nodded, and turned back to the gates as the Draymen rushed in.
Maybe he had already said his goodbyes and made his speeches. The warrior would never know.
The enemy poured in, screaming hate in their idiot tongue. Their hair was worn in braids, some had their faces painted. Such observations were irrelevant, though. The warrior looked to their weapons, and their sparse armour. The weight of their bodies would be armour enough.
They could not hold. The enemy were a torrent, a flood of bristling muscle and steel.
What did it matter? For the warrior, the present was all there ever was. Tomorrow did not matter. What did tomorrow matter, when all your yesterdays were forgotten?
With a hoarse cry he swung his sword with all his might. His sword arm was strong enough. With the dagger in his left he parried a blow from a wild haired attacker, turned his wrist and stepped inside the return blow to drive his knife into an unprotected armpit.
There was a moment, when the attackers first flooded into the courtyard, that there was time for fancy swordplay. The warrior realised that he was good at it. The attackers were untutored and ill-equipped. He could have stood all day against such warriors. But it was not that kind of battle. This was not a training ground, as the mounds of the dead testified.
Then, there was no more room for swordplay. The defenders were forced to stand too close together to swing their crimson blades. It was all about thrusting where you could, or dagger work, or if you were lucky a swift knee followed by a quick killing stroke to a bared neck.
Only Renir stood alone, his blade whirring. Startling, eerie patterns danced around his head as the light glinted on the steel. Men fought to protect his flanks while the axeman drove the Draymen back toward the gates. His men (and I, I am one of his men for sure, thought the warrior) followed him, side by side.
A giant Drayman, a fo
ot above a normal man, bore down heavily on the king in waiting. The nameless warrior saw that his war leader was unaware of the threat. Slashing wildly where he had room (the spaces between defenders were gradually widening as men fell), butting and elbowing when he didn’t, he wove his way toward his leader.
There was no time for fancy. The nameless warrior charged forward, sword finding a path through one man’s face, through a woman warrior’s unarmoured arm, and into the thigh of the giant. The giant screamed in rage as the blade sank.
The giant turned and thundered a powerful left cross into the warrior. He followed through with a slash from a wood axe, a single headed weapon ill-suited for war, but the nameless warrior had already fallen.
Turning back to Renir, the giant hacked a Sturman’s head clean from his shoulders and advanced.
The Draymen found new vigour.
In the melee, the nameless warrior rose and found his sword lying on the ground. As he bent to pick it up, a blade rebounded from his breastplate but found its way into his arm, drawing a line of blood. He backfisted the offending blade clear and slashed his dagger across a throat.
He laughed, his pain granting him brief clarity. Renir was all that mattered.
Renir stood alone. The remaining men could not reach him. The giant was closing all the time.
There was nothing for it but foolishness. There was always a time for stupidity in battle. The warrior thought this was it.
He ran, shouldering one man out of the way, and in some hazy sense realised he must have dislocated his shoulder as his sword fell from his useless hand. He saw a bent knee before him and planted one foot on it, leaping forward with the other. He tumbled on the air rather than dived, but reached his target. He stabbed down into the giant’s neck and was rewarded with a crunch as blade met bone, and he fell onto the floor.
The giant crashed on top of him, and someone, seeing their chance, thrust a sword tip into the nameless warrior’s eye.
The world exploded into fiery sheets of bright brain-searing light. His face felt warm and sticky. For a moment he could move neither hand, just lay there with hot blood burning his face. The brightness was startling and he closed his one good eye but it did not go away.
Sharp agony leapt from his lips and he roared his pain as he pushed the giant’s carcass from his legs. He picked up a fallen sword with his good hand and swung wildly. He could see nothing but the burning light, but there were so few defenders left it was almost assured he would hit a Drayman.
He hit nothing but air. Gradually, each swing weaker than the last, his good hand fell to his side and the sword dropped with a dull twang to the ground.
The light faded and he could once again see only the otherworldly glow of the aftermath of a battle in the moonlight. With his one good eye he looked around, and saw Renir Esyn.
No man should wear that smile, thought the warrior. No one should wear a smile full of such sadness.
Esyn was blooded, deeply wounded across the jaw, but the smile was unmistakeable.
Confusion got the better of the nameless warrior. He roared again and turned all about, but there were only corpses. They smouldered, and the stench suddenly assailed him. He collapsed to his knees.
Magic.
Turning, his head protesting against the movement, but fighting the pain all the time (as he always had, he knew) he saw two men standing at the foot of the stairs that led to the keep. They wore long, cowled robes, one of green, one of sunset orange.
Preternatural light bled from their eyes.
Wizards, surely. No other creature could wreak such destruction, reave so much life in an instant.
Such a perfect victory, such a beautiful night, sullied by the return of magic to Sturman shores.
But Renir Esyn was smiling. The smile of a king, one learning how to be a king, perhaps, but it was regal, that smile. Weighed down by the fate of nations.
The nameless warrior could not smile. His jaw would not unclench.
He wanted to roar. Victory, for his king. His king.
Perhaps that was why he hated wizards so – there could be no room for a warrior with a pure heart when beings of such power roamed the earth.
But what did it matter to him? It was no longer his battle.
Weakened, he put his good hand out to catch the floor, bending from the waist, but crumpled onto his knees as his strength gave out. Blood dripped down his side, from his armpit. The arm was useless and wouldn’t move. His breath hitched in his throat and he thought he understood. Perhaps he would be making a trip to the physician after all.
He coughed blood. Renir knelt down before him and took him under the arms to drag him up.
“Drun!” The king’s shout was deafening in the aftermath of battle.
“No! No doctor.”
“But you’ll die! I’ll see no more death here today.”
“At least I’ll know where I am. I don’t want to wake up and forget this. I want to remember it all. And now I can.”
The unknown warrior smiled through cracked lips at the war leader. Esyn wouldn’t understand. But it didn’t matter. He understood enough for two men. Most men lived their lives with the knowledge of the past and thoughts of the future.
But he had been granted a gift. The present. And he aimed to keep it.
He would live for the now. The perfect moment.
As he faded, Renir closed the strange warrior’s staring eye. He was surprise to see a smile on the man’s battered face.
It was a beautiful smile, full of childlike joy.
He could only hope that when he died, he would remember that smile, and that he too would die at peace.
Leaning down weakly he retrieved a fallen sword and laid it on the man’s chest, then took both of the dead warrior’s hand and placed them across the sword.
“See that this man’s grave is marked.”
“What was his name?” replied the soldier who stood watching.
Renir thought for a moment. “I don’t know, but he did.” He nodded to himself slowly. “I think he knew himself better than many men. Perhaps that will have to be enough.”
The End
Table of Contents
Also by Craig Saunders
The story so far...
Dedication
Prologue
I. Builders' Folly
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
II. The Lake of Glass
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Part III. The Lord of Light and the Lady of Dark
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Part IV.King's Bane
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
/> Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter Fifty-Two
Chapter Fifty-Three
Chapter Fifty-Four
Chapter Fifty-Five
Chapter Fifty-Six
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Epilogue
About the Author:
Bonus Short Story
Rythe Falls Page 25
