The Argument of Empires

by Jacob T. Helvey

  The tribesman had formed up along the Divide, the archers taking up position to bombard the bridge with arrows, the warriors readying themselves in the center. There wouldn’t be a hundred attackers this time, there would be a thousand, perhaps several thousand as every Cutaran on the field flooded the bridge, desperately seeking an avenue of escape.

  “Antis?” Tain asked, nervousness coming close to cracking his voice. “Are you ready?”

  “Eh? You mean to die?” He nodded, seemingly at ease with the idea. “Guess so. Always thought I’d give my life in service to His Imperial Highness in one way or another.”

  Grith took a deep breath and steadied himself. His reserves were good, bolstered by a large meal they had managed to shovel down while the fighting had been concentrated on the rise above. Yes… he was ready.

  When the warriors were gathered and the archers had nocked spear sized arrows to strings, a cry went through the Cutaran ranks. It was a single note, a single word. Grith knew its importance, even if he couldn’t guess at its exact meaning. It was a death knell, signaling the final assault…

  The warriors rushed forward, somehow even more ferocious than before. As they reach the barrier, they jumped, landing on top of the stones before Grith or Tain had time to respond. The fight on top was brutal. The Cutarans with their two handed weapons were ill prepared for this close, body-to-body style of fighting, and Grith and Tain made quick work of them with their shorter blades.

  After a few tense seconds in which Grith was sure they would lose the barrier, they managed to reassert control, pushing the Cutarans screaming onto the planks below. Antis gave the order and arrows shot between Grith’s legs, impacting the front rank of warriors. Three fell, but the survivors rushed forward, using the bodies piling up at base of the barrier as an impromptu ramp.

  Grith cut down the first to come his way with a slash to the neck, receiving a spray of blood across his face in return. The second warrior was smarter than the first, dropping his axe and throwing himself at Grith. Grith didn’t have time to bring his sword up before the Cutaran had his arms wrapped around his waist, lifting him into the air.

  Grith was stronger by far than this Cutaran, but he didn’t have the weight to resist and there was little he could do while he was in the air. A sudden panic took him, as the warrior turned, shifting Grith so that his back was to the right side of the bridge. The fucker was going to throw him off the side! He started to struggle against the hold, lifting himself up in the man’s grip and trying to part his assailant’s arms, but he simply couldn’t get the leverage. And without leverage, all the strength in the world would have been for naught.

  Before the Cutaran could toss Grith from the bridge, a bolt ruined his grinning face, punching through his left eye to imbed itself in his brain. Every muscle in the warrior’s body went limp as one and he let Grith tumble.

  “Tain!” Grith barked as he regained his footing behind the barrier. There were already Cutarans on top where he had stood only moments ago. “Pull back!”

  The only acknowledgement Tain gave was a backwards summersault onto their side of the bridge. The Cutarans gave a cry of victory from above. One of them raised his sword high over his head. His other hand held a finely decorated shield.

  Anits and his men had thrown down their crossbows and switched to backup weapons. They carried short swords, daggers, and one even had a stubby spear. “We’re with you!” was all the sergeant managed before the Cutarans were upon them.

  Grith grabbed the blade of his sword with his off hand, imitating the technique Tain had employed earlier with his montante, and thrust towards the closest Cutaran. In such close quarters, the monsters’ weapons were next to useless, but worryingly, they didn’t need to be. The sheer weight of massive bodies threatened to push their small force off the bridge, but summoning all of his strength, Grith held. He managed a glance towards Tain. The man had cut enough space to swing his sword, but even he faltered under the tide of Cutaran warriors.

  Grith cracked the skull of the next man forward with a brutal pommel strike and pushed, throwing him into the chasm below. More and more and more came, each one falling before Grith, but each pushing him a back a little further. There wasn’t much of the bridge left behind them now. If they lost this ground, they would quickly find themselves surrounded and slaughtered.

  “We need to push!” Grith managed to yell between swings of his sword. “We can’t…” he thrust upward into the eye of the Cutaran before him, “let them take any more ground”

  “A moment!” Tain cut down the man in front of him and rushed into the gap he had left. He shoved his shoulder into the next Cutaran and pushed. Grith followed suit, digging his heels into the boards, using his sword like a crowbar and delivering pommel strikes whenever he saw an exposed face in the scrum they had created.

  Then Antis and his men were behind them, adding their own small strength to the struggle. “Tirrak!” Antis yelled. “It’s like pushing a fuckin’ ox!”

  Grith’s only reply was a grunt. He shoved himself into the bare chest of another Cutaran. He still managed to hold onto his sword, using it to push back the man’s grasping hands. The bastard was trying his best to get a grip on Grith’s shirt. He could feel the sweat on the Cutaran’s chest and the twisting muscles beneath. He was putting all of his strength into pushing Grith back. But like so many of his kin, he was no match for a Delver.

  Antis’ men surged forward, lashing out with daggers and swords over Grith’s shoulders, using the close quarters to their advantage. Hot blood splashed onto his face. He tried to ignore the slick, sticky liquid. We’re winning, he told himself, trying desperately to tamp down his revulsion. That’s all that matters. Between their attacks and Grith and Tain’s pushing, the Cutarans slowly began to fall back.

  That was, until the arrows began to fall. The first found the young man who had woken Grith days ago—Ronto, he thought his name was. He fell back from the line, clutching at the shaft sticking from his chest. It had punched right through his chainmail with the sickening pop of all too weak metal links. He gave a single pained gasp and fell to boards, dead as a stone. Grith gritted his teeth and tried to ignore the broken corpse. He wouldn’t let it get to him. He had seen death, death enough for a hundred lifetimes. What was one more body to add to the pile?

  The rest of the shafts missed their small huddle by a good margin. A Cutaran a few rows forward gave a shout of pain. Grith could just barely make out where the arrow had struck him in the back. “The dumb bastards are shooting their own men!” Tain yelled.

  “They’re getting desperate!” Grith gasped. Pressed on all sides, the Cutaran commander had begun sacrificing his own. Luckily, the massive warriors were bigger targets, and there were far more of them squeezed onto the bridge.

  “Antis!” called Tain. “Get your crossbowmen in the towers to start picking off those archers!”

  “They’re out!” the sergeant growled.

  “Out?!” Tain demanded. Grith could hear the desperation in his voice. “We had what, two thousand bolts?!”

  “We been fighting for hours! A man can fire three bolts a minute-”

  “I don’t need to know the details! Just get them up here! We need everyone we can trying to kill these fuckers!” He said more, but his voice was muffled as the Cutarans tried yet another counter-push. Grith turned his head just enough to see soldiers running up from the towers. There were six in all. Six to add to their seven.

  We don’t have enough! Grith thought. It was thirteen against a thousand. Even with Delvers, it was hopeless by any stretch of the imagination.

  More men fell under another rain of arrows. There were screams of anger and pain on both sides, but still they held. Grith couldn’t even look to see who had fallen. All he could do was push, using every ounce of strength in his burning muscles to shove the Cutarans back.

  Then, strangely, the weight on
Grith’s shoulders began to lessen. He found the men in front of him easier and easier to shove back, until the Cutaran who he’d been pushing against let go and made to run. Grith gasped in deep breaths as the pressure was lifted from his chest, the air filled with the myriad scents of death. He glanced up. The bridge all the way to the barrier was clear. Amazingly, miraculously, their stack of stones still stood.

  Like a black rain, the bridge became suddenly shadowed. Arrows! Grith realized, nearly too late. “GET TO COVER!” he roared, rushing towards the barrier. The arrows rained down, each one carrying death on its edge. Five men, almost half their force, fell before they could reach the barrier. Antis got there first, followed by two of the others. Those further away retreated to the relative safety of the watch towers. Grith ducked his head down and shoved himself as close to the side of barrier as he, the stone rough against his cheek. Arrows clattered against the wall, taking chunks of gray and brown stone with them. Spirits! One of those heavy shafts might even have the power to take down a Delver.

  He gritted his teeth. They would be sitting ducks while the Cutarans had free reign to do as they pleased. There had to be something they could do—

  The clatter of metal on rock ceased, and the world became quiet again, save for the distant sounds of the battle still raging on the slope above.

  “They’ve stopped,” Antis said. He poke his head up just high enough to get a view over the barrier. “Someone’s out there,” he continued. “Looks like a fuckin’ woman!”

  Grith leaned forward and followed the old soldiers gaze. Yes, there she was, massive, easily over seven feet tall. She had to be three times Grith’s weight. Even so, she was small by Cutaran standards. But still, there was something dangerous about her. She stood on the bridge with confidence, unconcerned with the blood and gore that seeped in between her toes.

  She had clearly seen action. Her body was covered in minor wounds, none of which seemed life-threatening. As Grith looked on, she took a step forward, drawing her sword from its place at her belt. It was six feet long and bronze, with a wide blade and a grip that easily accommodated the woman’s beefy hands.

  “You have fought well!” she called to them in accented Sasken, her voice rising as she spoke. “To defeat so many of my warriors… it is quite a feat!”

  “I saw you tear through an entire pike squad!” Tain replied. He didn’t make to stick his head over the barrier. No need to risk getting shot by the archers flanking the bridge. “Maybe I should be congratulating you!”

  “Except that despite all my strength, I lost!” she said. “And now I will have to ask for the use of this bridge.”

  Something wasn’t right about this woman. Besides speaking perfect Sasken, she had a certain confidence Grith wouldn’t have expect from someone who had an army bearing down on her back. Granted, she was a Delver—the same as they had seen on the rise hours ago—which had to count for something, but Grith would have never been so sure of himself, if put in similar circumstances.

  “Sorry, but we’re closed for business. I told your men the same thing, but they didn’t seem to get the message.” Tain pointed to Grith’s bow as he spoke. He made a motion like pulling back a bowstring and waved his hand in the woman’s direction. Grith nodded. Best they shoot this Delver if they could, rather than fighting her hand-to-hand. It would need to be the fastest, smoothest shot he had ever made, but he knew he could do it. He’d reserved arrows for just this kind of situation. Time to use them.

  “Then I am sorry,” the woman said. From the shelter of the barrier, Grith could hear her take a heavy step forward. “I am Xisa of the Coldwaters Tribe!” It had the sound of something ceremonial, a mantra often repeated. “I have led my warriors in many a great battle! I have traveled to the Crater of Salthis in the far south and retrieved this sword from the smoking ruins of the ancients!”

  Grith poked his head up, sighting distance, windage, everything he would need for his shot. “I have united the tribes, and I will lead them to salvation, a world where the Demon Hadan’s Empire has been wiped away! This I have seen!” She held up her sword and the women and men behind her roared in response. Even as Emperor Hadan’s army closed, gaining ground with every minute, ready to destroy them, the Cutarans showed absolute trust in this leader of theirs.

  “This may not be the blade I was promised,” Xisa said, almost to herself. “That will come later.” She leveled the point of the weapon at the barrier. “But it will be enough.”

  Grith felt his blood run cold. The woman was mad, clear as day. She spoke of visions, and destiny, the same as he had seen in the Eye, but Spirits! But he would never act on what he’d seen there.

  In that madness, there was danger. He couldn’t tell why, but he believed every word she had spoken. Her conviction, even in insanity, was infectious.

  “That’s some speech!” Tain said. He barely hid the shake in his voice. He was as frightened as Grith.

  “Your people wouldn’t understand!” replied Xisa, her voice rising again. “You will never understand the hardship of being beaten! Of being ground into the dirt so thoroughly, that it seems as though you will never rise again!” She gave a cold chuckle. “Well, after today, maybe you will.”

  “Now!” Tain shouted. He leaped onto the top of barrier. Simultaneously, Grith rose from a crouch and drew his bow to his cheek. His perception of time quickened as he entered the Deepening. He leveled his arrow at Xisa’s chest and let a single held breath past his lips.

  He loosed…

  The arrow flew through the gap in between he and the Cutaran, cutting the wind like a bird in flight. Grith let time return to something close to normal and watched as the projectile raced towards Xisa.

  Tain had already descended onto the other side of the barrier, ready to follow up Grith’s shot. Grith waited for the moment when the arrow hit flesh, but… nothing. Xisa hadn’t dodged the projectile. From what he could tell, she still stood rooted in place

  No… she had grabbed the arrow out of the air! Grith didn’t, couldn’t, believe his eyes as she tossed the shaft, almost toy-like in her fist, off the side of the bridge. She smiled and took another step towards them. Tain had come up short, his mouth agape, as disbelieving as Grith himself. What this woman had done should have been impossible. No one, not even a Delver, could move so quickly.

  “I have no wish to fight you, Fanalkiri,” Xisa said, noting Grith with a glance. “I have no quarrel with your people. In fact, I plan on freeing them. You can leave if you wish, go back to your home. Or you could join me. Your crimes,” she motioned to the blood covering the bridge, “could be forgiven.”

  “I’m not Fanalkiri,” Grith said. After what he had just witnessed, part of him—a small part—itched to take the woman’s mercy and run, to give up this fight on the Emperor’s behalf. But he forced that cowardly piece of himself down. He wasn’t fighting for Hadan or for his Empire. He was fighting for Tain, and even for Antis and for all the other men who had stood on this bridge and faced the impossible. He fought for those on the heights above, giving their all when they had no other choice. That was why he fought, not for a ruler in which he held no trust, but for the men who had been forced into this battle. Men who had no choice but to accept the way of sword, blood, and death.

  “I am Corrossan.” It was strange to say the words, to not think of himself as somehow apart and outside the Empire. But it felt right, in a way, relieving, like a weight lifted from his shoulders, carried for so long that he could no longer remember a life free of its burdens. “And I will die before you take this bridge.”

  Xisa let out a long sigh. Her eyes strayed to the boards beneath her bare feet, to the blood and the gore and the few scatter bodies that hadn’t been shoved into the Divide in the last mad rush. Then her eyes rose again. They were full of… was that pity? Sadness? “Then I am truly sorry.”

  She exploded into motion and was on them in a br
eath.

  Her first swing went for Tain. He managed to block the strike, before leaping back onto the barrier. Grith again entered the Deepening just as she twisted, bringing her immense sword around to sweep the top of the stones behind which he stood. He skipped back, dropping his bow, drawing the sword from its scabbard, and tried to counter attack, jumping to the top of the stones and adding extra momentum to his swing. Xisa beat the attack away with a parry so powerful that it nearly knocked Grith’s sword from his hand.

  He stumbled to the side just in time to avoid another swing. Tain had already jumped forward, summersaulting through the air. He landed behind Xisa and gave a classically elegant lunge, trying to slash for her legs.

  It would have worked, save for the Cutaran’s speed. She spun, letting the mirrored edge of Tain’s sword nick her knee, and delivered an overhead chop. Grith’s teacher dove to the side and slid for several feet along the bloodied surface of the bridge. Xisa’s sword crunched into the wood… and splintered the boards! That should have been impossible, even for a Delver. As Antis had said, you would have had to work at the ironwood with a saw for days to get a similar effect.

  Tain recovered with a Delving powered roll and took a ready stance a dozen paces from the Cutaran. Grith jumped down onto the surface of the bridge and placed his back to the barrier, trying to ignore the blood that seeped through his jacket and into the sweat-stained fabric of his shirt. Their only option now was to attack together. This woman was fast, but she couldn’t be in two places at once.

  At an unspoken command, Grith and Tain rushed forward as one. They had practiced long enough that they no longer needed to talk, didn’t even need to share a look, to communicate. They were like longtime dancing partners, able to read the movements of each other’s bodies. And Spirits did they dance!

  Grith delivered a thrust towards Xisa’s chest, and Tain a downward slash towards her head. Xisa spun, quick enough that she was a blur even in the Deepening. She parried the point of Grith’s thrust and brought it up over her head, dragging him forward. She went into a crouch as she did, wheeling her bronze sword over her head and knocking aside Tain’s cut. In a single fluid motion, she had stopped them dead.