“Not yet,” said Ridmark. “I think you will need every man here.”
Drums boomed from the Mhalekite army, and the roar of thousands of orcish voices filled the air. Six columns of orcish warriors marched forward, three on either side of the northern gate. The warriors at the center of the columns carried heavy siege ladders, tall enough to reach the top of the ramparts, and broad enough for two men to climb abreast. Other warriors with heavy shields screened the orcs with the ladders.
“I think,” said Joram, “that you are correct.” He turned and raised his voice. “To battle! To battle! All men to their stations! Spears and swords in front, archers behind! To battle!”
The clatter of armor and shields rose from the ramparts as the men arranged themselves to face the oncoming orcs. Shouts and the tramp of running boots came from the streets of Dun Licinia as the reserve companies rushed to the northern gate.
“Ridmark, Brother Caius,” said Joram. “You are both doughty warriors, and I have no lawful authority over you.”
“We certainly will not run from the fight,” said Caius.
“I would expect not,” said Joram. “I ask only you go where the fighting is the fiercest. Your skills could help us hold off the Mhalekites.”
Ridmark gave him a tight smile. “It shall be as you say. Come, Brother.”
Joram shouted additional commands as the columns approached the wall. The militiamen and the men-at-arms responded with more efficiency than Ridmark would have expected. The men-at-arms were professional soldiers, but the militiamen were townsmen and freeholders. Still, Ridmark suspected that most of them were veterans of the war against Mhalek.
He supposed he had led these men in battle five years ago.
Ridmark walked west along the wall, keeping behind the archers, Brother Caius following after. Men-at-arms raised crossbows, while the militiamen lifted short bows.
“Here,” said Ridmark. “We’ll make our stand here.”
“Why here?” said Caius.
“Because,” said Ridmark, pointing, “we’re closer to the gate tower here. Any orcs who gain the wall will try to take the gate. We’ll stop them.”
“I should have seen it,” said Caius. “I shall never get used to warfare upon the surface. It is simpler in the Deeps. But it would be better not to have war at all.”
“Tell that to Qazarl,” said Ridmark.
Caius sighed. “I tried.”
“Archers!” boomed Joram’s voice. “Release!”
The archers released, and the crossbowmen squeezed their triggers. Scores of arrows and bolts hissed from the walls and slammed into the advancing orcs. The warriors with the shields caught many of the missiles, the steel heads thudding into the thick wood. But some of the quarrels and arrows struck the orcs carrying the ladders. One of the ladders wavered and came to a stop as the arrows pierced the orcs carrying it.
But the other five ladders kept advancing.
“Release at will!” shouted Joram.
The archers kept a steady stream of arrows, while the crossbowmen reloaded and cranked their heavy weapons. The crossbows were more powerful, but took too long to reload. Ridmark guessed that the men-at-arms might have a time to fire one more volley before the orcs scaled the ladders.
“Spears and swords!” came Joram’s voice. “Ready!”
The men-at-arms and militiamen moved closer to the ramparts. The crossbowmen reloaded and loosed another volley, and Ridmark heard more roars of pain and fury rise from the orcish warriors. More had died…but far more were coming.
The orcs reached the walls, and the ladders thumped against the battlements.
“Stand fast!” roared a nearby sergeant, and the orcs scrambled onto the ramparts.
The first warriors met a wall of steel and arrows. One orc caught four arrows in the chest and tumbled backwards, while the warrior next to him took a pair of spears in the gut. But more orcish warriors scrambled up the ladder, roaring in fury, their black eyes gleaming red as the orcish battle rage took hold. One orc threw himself forward and crashed into the militiamen, striking right and left with his short sword. Green blood splattered as a man-at-arms struck with a sword, but the orc whirled and impaled the man-at-arms.
The man-at-arms fell, the orc charged into the line, and Ridmark moved to attack.
The length of his staff slammed into the orc’s face with enough force to break bone, but the orc was in the grip of battle rage. The warrior shook off the blow and charged, and Ridmark sidestepped, swinging his staff with enough force to shatter the bones in the orc’s left shin. Rage or not, the leg could no longer support the orc’s weight, and the warrior collapsed with a howl.
A militiaman brought down his spear with a yell, and the warrior went still.
More orcs scrambled up the ladder, fighting the beleaguered militiamen, and Ridmark saw Qazarl’s host charging across the field. If they did not find a way to disable or destroy those ladders, the orcs would swarm up to the ramparts and drive the defenders from the wall.
And in the resultant chaos, Qazarl could carry out his threats upon the town’s women and children.
“To the ladder!” shouted Ridmark, and threw himself into the fray. In the tight quarters, he did not have enough room to swing his staff properly, but he had enough space to jab and thrust. His blows stunned the orcish warriors, permitting the men-at-arms and armsmen to land killing blows with their swords and spears. Caius fought at his side, shouting exhortations to the men, his heavy mace landing bone-crushing blows. Step by step they drove the orcish attackers back, the ramparts growing slippery with green and red blood.
They reached the ladder.
“Push it over!” shouted one of the men-at-arms, seizing the end of the ladder.
“No!” said Ridmark. If they pushed over the ladder, the orcs could simply raise it up again. “Grab it and pull it over the ramparts. Quickly!”
He seized the top rung and started to pull. It was too heavy to lift himself, but a dozen other men saw the wisdom of his plan and hurried forward. Together they began to jerk the ladder upwards inch by inch. The orcs below howled in outrage and seized the bottom rung, and the ladder slid back towards the ground. Caius dropped his mace and grabbed the ladder. The dwarf’s sturdy strength, coupled with the efforts of the militiamen, proved too much for the orcs on the ground. The ladder ripped free of their grasp and toppled backwards over the rampart. It landed in the street below with an echoing clatter.
The men loosed a ragged cheer.
“Thank you for your efforts, Brother,” said one of the men-at-arms. “We would not have gotten the ladder over the wall without your strength. Truly, they breed strong backs in the Three Kingdoms.”
Caius grinned. “And they breed valiant fighters in Andomhaim.”
“Come!” said Ridmark, picking up his staff. “We can help drive the remaining ladders from the wall. Archers!” He pointed his staff at the militia archers and the men-at-arms with crossbows. “Stay back and loose at any orcs attempting to pull back the ladders. The rest of you, follow me.”
Ridmark strode forward, Caius and the others following him in grim silence.
###
The fighting was over by mid-morning.
Ridmark had led the men-at-arms and militiamen along the western half of the northern wall, pushing back the orcs and pulling their ladders into the town one by one. Once the last of the ladders had been pulled up, the archers had been free to turn their full attention to the orcs below, and the Mhalekites had retreated in disarray to the trees.
The defenders had not fared as well along the eastern half of the northern wall. Joram’s counterattacks had pulled two of the three ladders over the wall, but at the third, Qazarl unleashed some sort of black magic. A dozen men fell dead in a heartbeat, and the orcs fortified themselves upon the rampart. Only when Ridmark led the defenders from the western half to join Joram’s men did they finally force the orcs from the wall.
The Mhalekites fell back to the trees t
o prepare another attack.
Ridmark stood on the rampart with Caius and Joram. Below came the groans and cries of the wounded, and dead orcs lay strewn about the ground below the wall.
“How many?” said Joram, his voice hoarse.
“Perhaps two hundred of the foe dead,” said Ridmark. “Thirty or forty more, if some of their wounded perish.”
Joram sighed. “We lost forty men, and suffered another forty wounded. Of those, thirty should still be fit to fight…and the rest may not live out the day.”
“The Mhalekites had a rougher time of it than we did,” said Caius. Specks of drying blood stained his gray, stone-colored skin. He looked at the dead orcs and sighed. “May God have mercy on them, and save them from an eternity as slaves of the cruel blood gods.”
“The Mhalekites indeed suffered greater losses,” said Joram, “but they can afford to spend blood. A dozen more such assaults will wear away half of Qazarl’s host…but they will destroy us utterly.”
“Then we must delay them at all costs,” said Ridmark, “and hold until aid can come from Castra Marcaine.”
Joram nodded, and they went to prepare for the next assault.
Chapter 20 - A Challenge
Three days after the fighting began, Calliande hurried through the nave of Dun Licinia’s stone church, her hair tied back, the sleeves and hem of her dress spotted with blood. Tapestries hung on the church’s thick stone walls, showing scenes from the scriptures. One showed the Dominus Christus healing the ten lepers, and another displayed him creating loaves and fishes to feed the multitude. Still another showed him healing the eyes of the man born blind, or commanding the paralytic to rise and walk.
Calliande prayed for such miracles now.
Close to a hundred wounded men lay upon the church’s stone floor. The most severely wounded, those unlikely to live out the day, lay upon cots. Those likely to survive lay upon blankets on the floor. Men who needed only some patching and stitching but could still fight sat on benches near the thick pillars that supported the roof. Groans echoed off the walls, and the air smelled of blood and sweat and urine, even with all the doors and windows open. Women from the town moved about their tasks, tending and feeding the wounded men. The keep’s staff of halfling servants had been moved to the church, and now worked to clear away bloodstains, change bedding, prepare bandages, and when the end came, to carry away the bodies.
And Calliande was in charge of it all.
She did not know how she knew as much about medicine as she did, but she knew things. How to clean a cut with mold and boiling wine, and how to suture it closed. How best to set a broken bone, and how to give a man the right kind of drugs to sleep as she closed his wounds. Yet she knew all those things, and as the first of the wounded had come to the church, the knowledge had risen unbidden into her mind. Soon she found that none of the townswomen or the priests knew as much about medicine as she did, that without her aid, men would die who might otherwise have lived.
So she had taken charge of the wounded, and found that the priests and women were grateful for someone to tell them what to do. Calliande labored among them, stitching wounds, winding bandages, applying poultices, and helping to carry unconscious men. It was grim, tiring work, but better than sitting alone in her room, trying to summon magic that she might not actually possess.
And she no longer felt so useless.
A wounded militiaman sat upon one of the benches, stripped to the waist. His right shoulder was a hideous bloody wound, and a deep gash went down his ribs to his belly. An orc had stabbed him in the shoulder, and as the militiaman had struck down his foe, the orc’s short sword had sliced along his ribs.
“What is your name?” said Calliande as she examined the wound. Best to keep them talking. It helped distract them from the pain.
“Bann,” said the militiaman with a grunt.
“An interesting name,” said Elaine, the matronly woman assisting Calliande.
Bann grinned. “My father was mad for the tales of the Old Earth, Lancelot and the High King Arthur and his knights. Named me for one of them.” He snorted. “Suppose if I had cut down that Qazarl, I might have been made a knight myself.”
“You fought valiantly,” said Calliande. “All your wounds are in the front.”
“I did!” said Bann. “Not to boast, but I did. And even the Gray Knight himself said I fought well.”
Calliande nodded. Sir Joram Agramore commanded the city’s defense, and the men respected their Comes…but they followed Ridmark. Even Sir Joram followed Ridmark. She would not have thought an exiled Swordbearer could win their loyalty, but she was not surprised. Had Ridmark not snatched her from terrible danger, brought her to safety through fierce perils, relying only upon his wits and courage and his skill at weapons? Little wonder the defenders of Dun Licinia followed him.
Little wonder he had taken command of the host of Andomhaim five years ago to defeat Mhalek.
Again she wondered why such a man had been expelled from the Order of the Swordbearers.
“Wine,” she told Elaine.
“You’re going to tell me this won’t hurt very much?” said Bann.
“Actually,” said Calliande, “this is going to hurt a lot. But alternative is to wait until your wounds putrefy, and then you die raving and screaming of a fever. Which will hurt a great deal more.”
Bann grimaced. “Best we get on with it, then.”
Calliande washed out his wounds with a mixture of boiling wine and mold. Bann gritted his teeth, sweat pouring down his face, but did not scream. After the wounds were cleaned, Calliande closed them with a needle and thread. Still Bann remained silent, though the muscles in his jaw jerked with every jab of the needle.
After he leaned against the cool stone pillar, gasping. “I don’t suppose you have any of that wine left?” His voice was a croak. “Because I would dearly like to get drunk just now.”
“We do,” said Calliande, and Elaine handed over a clay flagon. Bann took it with his good hand. “Drink up. That should take some of the edge off. I would give you more, but we have to save the stronger medicines for those with grievous wounds.”
“As you should,” said Bann, draining half the flagon in one gulp.
“The wound should heal cleanly,” said Calliande, “if you don’t rip out your stitches. What is your profession?”
“Stonemason,” said Bann. He finished off the wine.
Calliande nodded. “You’ll be able to swing a hammer again. It will take some time to regain your strength after the stitches come out, but you should recover completely.”
She had not often been able to say that today.
Bann nodded, eyelids heavy as the effects of the strong drink took hold. Calliande forced him to drink a large amount of boiled water, lest blood loss and the drink conspire to dehydrate him. Then Bann lay upon a blanket on the floor, closed his eyes, and went to sleep.
“He will recover, I think,” said Elaine.
Calliande nodded. “With God’s favor, and if he doesn’t rip out his stitches, he will recover.” She sighed. “We can say that of too few men.”
“But more than we could without your aid, Lady Calliande,” said Elaine.
“Don’t call me that,” said Calliande. “I don’t know if I am noblewoman or not. For all I know I was a freeholder’s daughter before the orcs took me captive.”
But she doubted it. No one would trouble to put a freeholder’s daughter into a centuries-long magical sleep.
“If not nobility of blood, then nobility of spirit,” said Elaine. “Without your aid many of these men would have died.” She blinked. “Including my husband.”
“Your husband?” said Calliande, alarmed. She could not remember Elaine’s husband. Was her short-term memory starting to fail as well?
Of course, the last three days were a blur of blood and screams and tears.
“He lost two fingers,” said Elaine, “when his left hand was caught between his shield and an orc’s sword.
” Calliande remembered him, a blustery, jovial merchant with a paunch who had made jokes even as the putrefaction set into his wounds. “He shouldn’t have been fighting at all, the fat old fool, but he would not stand by while the younger men fought for our lives. Not after that shaman threatened to kill us all. And after he took his wound, he hid it and fought on.” Elaine blinked again, her eyes bloodshot. “When I saw him, I was sure he would die. The putrefaction had set in. But you thought to use that mushroom to treat the wound. He will live.”
Calliande shrugged. “It was…something I remembered, that is all. It is well for us the mushrooms were growing in the alley behind the warehouses. We could hardly leave the town to forage in the woods.”
“It was the mercy of God,” said Elaine, “that brought you to Dun Licinia. You and the Gray Knight. I would not think a man with a coward’s brand could fight so fiercely. If we are to be delivered from this peril, he will find the path. Sir Joram is a good man, of course, but he is not a warrior. Not the way your Gray Knight is.”
Calliande blinked. “My Gray Knight?”
Elaine only smiled in answer, and then Calliande heard a commotion on the other end of the nave. She turned her head, fearing that more wounded had arrived. Some of the men on cots stood, and Calliande wondered if the orcs had broken into the church…
Then she saw that Ridmark had come to visit the wounded.
She watched as he moved through them, face grave as he spoke. He listened to their stories and praised their valor. He remembered how each man had taken his wound. The men stood straighter around him, and even the badly hurt tried to stand until he urged them down.
He was good at this. He was the son of the Dux of Taliand and had been born to command, but some nobles were cowards and ineffective. But Ridmark, Calliande thought, had been born to lead men into battle the way an eagle had been born to rule the skies. He could have conquered Andomhaim, had he wished. The histories of Old Earth told of a man called Alexander of Macedon, a ruthless tyrant who had carved an empire of blood founded entirely upon his fearlessness and iron courage, a man whose name still echoed two thousand years later on a world far from Old Earth. Ridmark Arban could have become such a man.
Frostborn: The Gray Knight (Frostborn #1) Page 23
