Ancient Blood

by Robert Earl - (ebook by Undead)

  The elder approved.

  Raising his staff for silence, he turned to the crowd.

  “Ushoran,” he said, “has chosen his champion. Will you follow him?”

  One word. One voice, “Yes!”

  As if summoned by the unity of the Strigany, two men, sentries from the barricade across the road, thundered into the ring.

  “They’re here!” the first cried, even as he leapt from his horse. “Averland’s men are here!”

  The sentry was white-faced, and there was a dark patch on his cloak, which looked like blood. His comrade remained in the saddle, perhaps not wanting to move the arrow that was buried in the meat of his thigh.

  Brock, half-naked and covered in blood, glared at him with one glittering eye.

  “How many?” he asked, his voice seeming to come from somebody else.

  “Thousands,” the sentry cried. “They came from everywhere at once. I don’t know how many of us escaped.”

  “All right,” Brock said. He nodded, sensing the hysteria that lurked behind the man’s words. “You are safe here.”

  Then he paused, gazing sightlessly at Zelnikov’s ruined body.

  “Do you have any orders, Kazarkhan?” the elder asked.

  Brock hesitated. He was dazed, sickened and dizzy with pain. He needed medical treatment and rest, and to arrange Zelnikov’s funeral. Meanwhile, of the tens of thousands of people gathered in Flintmar, none had a rank, or a task, or any idea what to do, and the enemy was upon them.

  On the other hand, Brock told himself, I am the chosen of Ushoran.

  Those odds were good enough for him.

  “Make them quiet,” he told the elder, and then, in the nervous silence of the bloody amphitheatre, Brock started issuing his orders.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “The only victors of any battle are the ravens.”

  —Peasant saying

  In the grey light of dawn, Blyseden had chosen a small hillock for his headquarters. It was the only a bit of high ground in this blighted heath, and so it was here, amongst the windswept grass and stunted bushes, that he had planted his army’s standard in the dew-soaked grass. It was no more than a black cross that had been stitched onto a white field, and, although it was a drab thing compared to most battle flags, Blyseden was happy with it. It was simple, it was functional and it served its purpose; all qualities that Blyseden admired.

  Behind him, his campaign tent was still being set up over the hastily-buried pay chest, but, although the sun had barely risen, he had already had his cartographer’s table set up and his signal rockets unpacked.

  The wood and canvas expanse of the Striganies’ encampment lay about half a mile away. It had spread like a dark stain across the brown expanse of the wasteland, the shacks and wagons even darker than the withered heath. Thin wisps of smoke from morning cooking fires rose straight into the still air, with not even the faintest breeze to stir them, and tiny figures went blithely about their business within the camp.

  “They don’t seem to be expecting us,” Vespero gloated. Blyseden had kept the Tilean’s company with him as a private guard, but the honour seemed to have gone to Vespero’s head. He wouldn’t stop talking.

  “Don’t be fooled,” Blyseden replied. “If they weren’t expecting us, why send the assassin? Anyway, they must have noticed the loss of their pickets by now.”

  Vespero shrugged.

  “I don’t know if that man was an assassin. Northerners are a weak-minded lot, and they have a tendency to crack up. I’ve seen it before.”

  Blyseden said nothing. It really didn’t matter what the Tilean thought, just so long as he and his company stayed close. He would have preferred to keep the ogres for his personal guard, but he had other plans for them.

  “Tubs, pass me the telescope,” he snapped. His clerk handed him the instrument, and then knelt down, so that his master could rest its long, brass tube on his shoulder.

  Blyseden peered through the miraculous arrangement of lenses, and the distance between him and his companies disappeared. He had gathered over three thousand mercenaries on his way to this miserable place. His ragtag army contained soldiers from many provinces and many races. It contained every variety of fool, cutthroat and hero. Even so, despite their differences, his men were all dogs of war, and each of them had been trained, armed, hardened and sharpened by a lifetime of battle. Compared to them, the bands of miserable-looking militiamen that Averland had pressed into service were a poor sight. Where the mercenaries’ strode, they skulked, and where the mercenaries waited, they huddled.

  Well, never mind, Blyseden thought. At least their captains are competent. They might not be as good as the mercenaries, leaders with the brains and the balls to hold their villainous crews together with little more than force of will, but at least there were no feudal wranglings either. Blyseden had let the militias elect their own leaders, and they were stronger because of it.

  Blyseden congratulated himself on the tactic as he watched them struggling through the heath towards their positions. He was pleased to see that not a single one of them was out of place.

  This won’t be a battle, he thought, it will be a slaughter. He thought back to other massacres, and a slow, satisfied smile crept across his face.

  “Where are the giants?” Vespero asked, and Blyseden fought back the urge to tell him to shut up. The Tilean was not a man to be offended at the best of times, let alone when the strongest barrier between him and the paymaster’s chest was his sense of honour.

  “Our friends are being held in reserve,” Blyseden said.

  “You should have sent them in with the main attack,” Vespero said. “Their shock value must not be underestimated. Even I found them quite imposing, and I am not impressed by much.”

  Blyseden sucked his teeth before replying. “Their shock value will be used when and where it is most effective,” he said.

  “As you say,” Vespero said. “As you know, I and my fellows would have liked to be sent in with the first wave. We itch for action, and are ever at the forefront of every battle.”

  “I need men of honour to guard my headquarters,” Blyseden said, and the Tilean’s chest swelled.

  Satisfied that his formations were moving into place, Blyseden turned the telescope back to the Strigany camp. Despite the fact that dawn had broken almost two hours ago, not many of them seemed to be up, the lazy swine.

  “Of course, it may be just as well that we are not in the first wave,” Vespero prattled on. “Our character is such that we could not countenance combat against women and children, and the Strigany are sure to use them in the battle. No doubt, their harpies would use our chivalry against us.”

  “Yes,” Blyseden said, although he had not been listening to a single word. He was too busy wondering why not a single man seemed visible among the wood smoke, and bustle of the camp. Perhaps, he considered, they were all hung over, or just plain idle.

  He frowned, and then whacked his clerk across the back of his head to stop him from fidgeting and moving the telescope.

  “These northerners make terrible servants,” Vespero commented sympathetically. “In Tilea, our retainers are pillars of strength. My cousin, the Magistrate Teo Polidorente, used to practise his marksmanship with a crossbow by balancing pieces of fruit on top of his servants’ heads. They always show marvellous courage. He gets through about a dozen a year.”

  Blyseden grunted, and turned his attention to the stockade that surrounded the Strigany’s camp. A single cordon of interlocked wooden staves sat on top of a continuous earth bank. They would have been enough to break a cavalry charge, he thought, but apart from the squadron of Kislevite lancers, who waited on the road below, he had no cavalry. The ground was too broken for it.

  “They don’t have the intelligence to adapt to a new environment,” Blyseden mused. “Strange for such cunning folk.”

  “Oh, it wasn’t really their fault,” Vespero said. “Teo wouldn’t let them wear steel helmets. He said
the shine of them put him off his aim.”

  “What?” Blyseden asked, turning to him.

  “The shine of the helmets,” Vespero repeated. “Don’t forget, the sun in Tilea is brighter and more cheerful than this weak-blooded northern one. Ah, how I miss my homeland.”

  Blyseden considered asking him what the hell he was babbling on about. Instead, he put his eye back to the telescope, and watched the developing pattern of his encircling troops. They had only left one gap, which would encourage the panicking Strigany within to flee back along the road.

  Once there, they would have to face the lancers. The Kislevites were an awesome sight, each of them mounted on a pale stallion, and resplendent in armour and feathers, and sharp, sharp steel. If any of the Strigany managed to get past them, they would really be in trouble.

  Blyseden smiled with grim satisfaction. His beasts would eat well tonight. He turned the brass length of the telescope to the patch of swamp to the west, where the ogres were making their way slowly forwards. Most of them were submerged in the filthy waters, and, as they ploughed forwards, their heads rolled like grey boulders above the marsh.

  Blyseden twisted a focusing wheel on the telescope, and one of the ogre’s heads sharpened into focus. A cloud of flies and biting insects was swarming around it, although Blyseden had an idea that the ogre’s hide was proof against their attacks. Its smeared features remained as calm as ever, and it made no move to shoo the insects away.

  “I wish that I had brought a crossbow,” Vespero said, still lost in the happy memories of his homeland. “Look at the birds, circling above. I’ve never seen such a flock. It would have been fine sport to see how many we could have brought down.”

  “Yes,” Blyseden said.

  Content with all that he had seen, he stood back up, rubbed his eyes and stretched his back. Everything was going like clockwork. In fact, he was so confident that he was even considering sending the Tileans down, if only to shut up their captain. As far as he could see, nothing could go wrong.

  Dannie sat CROSS-legged on the ground of the amphitheatre. He had pulled his hood over his eyes, and, in the shade it cast, only the lower part of his face could be seen. His lips moved as he silently repeated the words of the charm that Petru Engel had taught him. Other apprentices sat around him, the hiss of their breath keeping perfect rhythm with his own. Here and there, petrus stood over them, the older men watching them for any errors in their repetition or their cadence.

  Flintmar’s petrus and their apprentices had been gathered here since before dawn. The younger members had been given a simple charm to repeat, a small enough conjuration, but, when spoken as part of this terrible choir, a powerful thing, especially when shaped by some of the more expert of the petrus.

  Gathering like some taloned storm cloud, the birds wheeled above the clearing. They had been arriving ever since dawn, and it was amazing how many had been gathered from this wilderness. Their breeds and plumage were as varied as the mercenaries’, which were, even now, closing in below. Ravens, black as night; herons, ghostly grey against a greyer sky; sharp-winged hawks and wheeling buzzards, were all there. There were even vultures, their feathers as black as an undertaker’s smock, and their heads bald.

  Despite their differences, the flock moved with a perfect, wheeling harmony. They soared around Flintmar in a wide, lazy circle that made an umbrella above the ragged township. Only the centre of the circle remained empty so that the sky above the petrus was as clear as that at the centre of a hurricane.

  Dannie couldn’t see this huge, gathering flock, his eyes remaining closed as he chanted, but he could feel it. Petru Engel had taught him the way to shape his thoughts, as he shaped his words, and he felt himself slipping into the blizzard of consciousness above him. He knew that the birds were impatient to begin, hungry for the spoils.

  For a brief moment, he saw the ground below them, and felt the bright hunger of the carrion bird whose eyes he was sharing.

  Dannie shuddered, and with a rush of vertigo, found himself back in his body, fumbling over the words of the charm. One of the petrus, a lean old weasel of a man with a goatee beard, saw his distraction, and whacked him on the back with a laundry stick.

  “Concentrate,” the elder snarled.

  Recovering, the apprentice continued to chant.

  “Those birds are really quite something,” Vespero said. “Maybe I will send back to the main camp for my hunting bow.”

  Blyseden ignored him. He was squinting through the telescope again, this time at the last of the ogres. It emerged from the dank embrace of the swamp, and joined its comrades on the somewhat drier ground of the heath beyond.

  Most of the other units had found their positions. They waited, hunched down in an effort to keep out of sight. Blyseden had never dared to hope that his deployment would remain unnoticed for so long, but he was glad that he had ordered his men to make the attempt. Against all the odds, their stealth actually seemed to be working.

  He checked the different units, and then looked back at the Strigany encampment. There was a group of women, weaving what looked like a tapestry, completely unaware that, not a hundred yards from them, a company of Marienburgers was ready to pounce.

  “Can you see the Kislevites yet?” Blyseden asked his clerk, without looking up.

  “Not yet, commander,” Tubs said, unhappily. He had joined his elector count’s court as a scribe, because he had wanted a quiet life indoors.

  “Never mind,” Blyseden decided. “I’m sure that they’ve already sealed the road further down.”

  “We would be honoured to make up for their error, my lord,” Vespero said with a small bow.

  “Yes,” said Blyseden, pursing his lips, his attention already turning back to the encircled settlement below. Once the order to attack was given, there would be no going back. The die would be cast.

  He sighed and, dismissing a sudden sense of trepidation, he gave the signal.

  Two of his assistants, who had been looking forward to this moment all week, lit their tapers from the brazier, and hurried over to light the fuses on the rockets. There was an angry hiss as they caught light, a sputtering of sparks and smoke, and then a sudden whoosh, as the fireworks shot up into the sky. All eyes followed their grey tails, and watched them explode in thunderclaps of smoke.

  Even before the clouds of smoke had dispersed, the companies below had raised and unfurled their banners. They bloomed like the flowers of some terrible spring, and, with war cries in a dozen different dialects echoing in their throats, the companies closed in on Flintmar.

  Blyseden watched the rush of a company of Estalians through the telescope. They were stocky men, most of whom were armed with matching cutlasses and leather armour. Blyseden remembered that they always seemed to smell of cloves, and, through the miraculous mechanism of his telescope, he could see that their leader was chewing. He was a big man, black-bearded, and strong enough to wield his weapons as though they were no more than switches. He bounded towards the Striganies’ stockade, like a dog that has spotted a hare, his men following him eagerly.

  Blyseden snatched a quick glance at the encampment, and swore. The women and children he had been watching, just seconds ago, all seemed to be armed with crude weapons. Daggers had been fastened onto the ends of broomsticks, and irons hung at the end of ropes. One woman held two butcher’s knives, one in each hand, and, behind her, a gaggle of grubby children were already twirling their slings.

  “So they were expecting us,” he muttered. “I knew it.”

  “It’s not your fault,” Vespero told him patronisingly. “After all, look at the men you had to work with. A good workman always blames his tools.”

  Blyseden ignored the misquote, and turned back to watch the Estalians’ advance accelerate into a charge. They burst from the last of the heath to rush across the flattened mud and refuse that separated the heath from the stockade.

  They were less than a dozen feet from it, and some of them were already lining t
heir cutlasses to chop through the knots that held the stockade together, when the ground beneath them collapsed.

  Even at this distance, Blyseden could hear the collective howl as their front ranks were swallowed up by the earth. He leapt away from his telescope as if it had bitten him, and stared out to where the remaining Estalians had staggered to a halt. He watched the first of them step gingerly down into the pit. Whether it was to help a fallen comrade, or to advance through it, Blyseden never found out. He was already watching, as another regiment crashed into a hidden pit.

  Meanwhile, behind the stockade, slings began to blur, and bows to twang. As the mercenaries stalled beneath the treacherous barricades, the first of them were already falling beneath the Striganies’ arrows and stones. Their screams joined the chorus from the victims who already lay writhing at the bottom of the pit traps.

  “Archers!” Blyseden yelled, turning to Tubs, and bellowing the command into his face. The clerk seized the red signal flag from a rack, and started waving furiously, the cloth snapping despite the lack of any breeze.

  Below him, the archers stood up from their hides, stretched, and drew their bows. There were hundreds of them concentrated on each flank, and the arcs of their weapons bent back, like a field of wheat stalks beneath a strong wind.

  When they fired, none of the archers bothered to find individual targets. There were enough of them to fill the air with a barbed storm that was thick enough to cast its own shadow. The arrows hissed as they fell, goose-feathered and razor-tipped, into the Strigany camp. Then the sound of their flight was lost beneath the screams of their victims, which could be heard even at this distance.

  Blyseden grabbed at his telescope to watch as the deadly rain fell upon Flintmar. He saw a woman, who had been holding a scythe, hit in the back, the arrow punching through her ribs to bury itself in her heart. She fell, dead before she knew it. Beside her a child of about ten stooped to help her up, and was in turn skewered.