The Swampling King (The Windwalker Legacy Book 1)

by Ben S. Dobson

  That stroke never came.

  Instead, an eagle’s cry rang out from above, and a bird—the boy’s eagle, it had to be—swooped low overhead. The beetleback’s entire body spasmed violently, like some kind of seizure; its arms jerked high over Rudol’s head. It swiveled its torso skyward, searching without eyes for the source of the sound.

  What in the Deep? In all the years Rudol had spent fighting Deeplings with the Knights of the Storm, he’d never seen anything like this. It almost looks… afraid.

  The strange fit lasted only for an instant, but while the beetleback was distracted, the broad-shouldered knight swung his halberd low. The front two legs on the thing’s right side parted from its body at the first joint. The severed ends fell to the ground in a black puddle; dark ichor gouted from the stumps.

  The beetleback slumped hard to the right, unbalanced, and then lurched into motion again. The one remaining leg on that side slipped and scratched against stone, fighting for purchase, and it thrashed blindly downward with both arms at the spot where Rudol had been.

  But Rudol was already clear, rolling back to his feet. With one hand, he grabbed the nearest pitch cauldron—it was hot even through his heavy glove, and he thanked the Wind of Grace that he wasn’t bare-handed—and flung it full at the beetleback’s head. The creature made no sound as the pitch coated it, but its round hole of a mouth stretched open and its mandibles spread wide, as if it was screaming without sound.

  Rudol flung the end of his broken halberd at the open-mouthed monster, and the guttering flame was enough to ignite the pitch. Flames engulfed the upper half of the beetleback’s body, devouring the air with a sudden roar.

  The creature swung one arm-blade in wild arcs to hold back the knights, and scraped at its face and torso with the other, trying desperately to remove the burning pitch. But it was too late now. Its wild movements exposed a point between chitin plates in its left side; the stocky knight took the opening and buried his halberd-spike in the thing’s guts.

  One last great spasm, and then the thrashing stopped, and the great beetle-shell crashed down on the stone, still burning.

  Rudol looked up then, searching for the little eagle that had saved his life. It was already wheeling away to the east and up the road, as if answering some distant summons. He would have called it back if he’d known how; that cry was a more powerful weapon than he would ever have believed possible. That’s the reason Shona needed all those birds from the eyrie. He’d had other things on his mind when they’d spoken, and hadn’t thought to ask her—and if he had, she probably wouldn’t have answered. But he understood now.

  There was little time to celebrate the victory, and it was a paltry one in any event—they’d killed one Deepling, and that at too high a cost. They didn’t have a cauldron of pitch for every beetleback, and one small eagle couldn’t distract a hundred at once. Dozens more were already taking the place of the fallen creature. All along the wall, rotborn and grublings and beetlebacks were forcing their way over, gaining footholds on the ramparts. Here, two rotborn yanked a knight over the edge and then pulled themselves up; there a grubling simply threw its weight over the wall, crushing two wingbowmen as they reloaded their weapons. There would be no rest or respite now, and not for a long time to come.

  But still, before rejoining the fight, the broad-shouldered knight took the time to clasp Rudol’s shoulder.

  “That was quick thinking,” the man said. “It might have killed a half-dozen more of us before we stopped it.”

  Rudol recognized the voice, and when he turned, he knew the face, too, even beneath the helm—Knight-Commander Farrel, with his dark mustaches.

  Farrel looked at him for a moment, and then his eyes widened in recognition. “Princ—“

  “The same thing will work again,” Rudol interrupted hastily. “Have your men douse their weapons in pitch and set them aflame. The Eyewall is lost, but we can give the king a little bit more time.” It wasn’t a long-term strategy—the flame would weaken the weapons, and then they would break just as his had. But they only had to hold a little longer here, long enough for Josen to get safely out of reach. Then they could fall back towards the Queensgate themselves.

  Farrel didn’t argue, just nodded decisively. “All halberds in the pitch!” he bellowed to his men. “We’ll burn them back!”

  Those who could were quick to follow his command. In moments, there were flaming halberds along the length of the wall, glowing against the night sky like a score of lamplighter’s poles. And wherever they swung, they won back a little bit of the space the Deeplings had taken.

  But there were still too many monsters, and too few knights. The fire helped, but it wasn’t enough.

  And then, from below, there came a great creak and snap. Wood breaking. A voice followed: “They’re coming through!”

  “The doors!” Farrel shouted. “Fall back to the stairs! We need to help hold—” His voice choked off suddenly; his eyes fell to his chest.

  A sharp bone spike jutted through the rings of his mail, stained red with blood.

  The knight-commander fell to his knees as the spike pulled free, and then Rudol could see the rotborn that had stabbed him. A man’s bones gave the creature’s body structure, but not all from the same man. Earth and spoiled meat held together arms and legs of mismatched length; where a head should have been, there was just a broken jawbone at the top of a crooked spine. It had the strange hand-like feet of a boggard, and both arms ended in sharp spurs of bone, one still red with Farrel’s blood.

  It lunged at Rudol with both arms; he didn’t flinch or hesitate. In a single movement, he spun to the side and drew his sword—not a knight’s saber, but a straight blade from the Keep’s armory. With both hands, he brought the blade down on the thing’s outstretched arms, breaking them off at the elbow. It started to turn, still reaching for him, and he kicked it away, then slashed again across its midsection. Rotten meat and brittle bone separated, and the rotborn fell into two pieces.

  Rudol knelt beside the fallen knight-commander, felt for breath. Nothing. He’d known Farrel for many years—a good man, but this was no time to mourn. Like his guilt, he set that aside for later. Right now what mattered was who would take the command.

  But whoever Farrel had named his second, either they hadn’t noticed the knight-commander fall, or they were already dead. Nobody took up his last cry.

  Rudol had come to fight, not to lead, but someone had to.

  “Fall back!” He repeated Farrel’s final order, and prayed to the Lord of Eagles that the men would obey. “We need to join the men at the doors!”

  They obeyed.

  Knights and army men retreated toward the stairs as quickly as they could, but those who didn’t wear the grey had never learned that Deeplings were quick to take advantage of a turned back. In the blink of an eye, a dozen men were cut down by black claws or crushed under skittering legs.

  “Knights, guard the retreat!” Rudol ordered. With his sword in hand, he fell back alongside a dozen knights armed with sabers or halberds. Shoulder to shoulder, they backed away with their weapons out, keeping the monsters at bay so that others could escape.

  Beside Rudol, a tall knight thrust his halberd—little more than a flaming stick tipped with a twist of blackened metal now—into the razor-toothed maw of a grubling the size of a carriage. The weapon lodged in the creature’s pale throat, snapping the weakened haft just below the blade. Black ichor gushing from its mouth, the giant worm-thing lunged forward on a hundred legs. Rudol sidestepped right, crouched, and slashed left, severing a score of spindly appendages from one side of the grubling’s body.

  The grubling crashed to the ground, tried to rise, and failed—the legs it had left weren’t enough to move its own massive weight. Wriggling against the stone, it gnashed the huge toothed circle of its mouth in futile hunger, spitting blood from the wound within. Rudol and the tall knight both stepped back to avoid the spray and continued their retreat—there was no need to fin
ish the thing now. As long as it struggled there, it would slow down the others, if only a little bit.

  The other man gave Rudol a simple nod and drew his saber to replace the halberd he’d lost. They had no time for more.

  Already, three rotborn were swarming over the white mass of the grubling to take its place; one was thrown back by the savage thrashing, but the others climbed over and continued forward. Nearby, similar fights ended much the same. For every Deepling cut down, there were two, or three, or a half-dozen more behind. Men fell under beetleback blades, or were pinned down by rotborn and pulled, screaming, into grubling maws. Red blood and black spilled freely, pooled and mingled against the white stone underfoot. Even if they somehow won this battle, somehow held the gates and drove the Deeplings back, a great many men would be taking the last pilgrimage in the turns to come.

  There are too many. The men weren’t falling back fast enough. The single narrow stairway served as a bottleneck—only wide enough for two men abreast, and even that was tight.

  “We have to slow them down,” Rudol shouted. He had an idea how he could do that. Abandoned pitch cauldrons sat along the wall at intervals, and he supposed there was no purpose in trying to conserve them now.

  As he backed past one of the cauldrons, he set his foot against it and kicked it over. Pitch and burning coals spilled and splattered over the stone; the viscous fluid ignited almost instantly.

  He didn’t have to waste time explaining; these men were his brothers-in-arms. They understood. One man grabbed another cauldron from its brazier and upturned it beside the first; another set his flaming halberd—one of the few that hadn’t yet been lost or broken—against the spreading pitch to set it ablaze. Suddenly the heat on Rudol’s face was nearly as uncomfortable as the heat of the bonfire at his back.

  A low-set rotborn with the arms of a boggard and the stubby feet of a longmouth lizard was the first to burn. Droplets of pitch from the second cauldron spattered across its body and quickly ignited; the greasy earth and meat that bound it together caught fire, bubbling grotesquely. It tried to scrabble away, pushing back against the creatures behind it, but it was too late. In a moment, the fire had engulfed it completely. It made no sound as it died.

  Flames and pitch-splatter took several more before the Deeplings had time to react; their onslaught halted as those nearest the fire leapt aside. A dozen or more pushed forward, escaping to the near side of the fire, but most pulled back from the blaze.

  It didn’t stop them for long. Instead of giving chase, the creatures across the fire simply began to crawl over the inside of the wall. If they couldn’t reach the men on the stairs, there was easier prey below.

  The Knights of the Storm were still dealing with the Deeplings trapped on this side of the flames, but Rudol’s eyes went to a pair of full pitch barrels sitting against the rear of the battlements. It was going to be a long withdrawal from here to the Queensgate; it would help if there was something down there to slow the Deeplings’ advance.

  But he couldn’t lift them alone.

  Most of the army men had already retreated down the stairs, but not far away Rudol saw a heavyset man who looked like he could bear his share of the weight. He was moving in the wrong direction—toward the Deeplings, not away. His eyes were glazed, and as he walked his wingbow fell from his faltering grip. A rotborn with the head of some giant bog-snake lurched toward him on the half-decayed body of a mistcat that had already lost one of its forelegs.

  Instead of fleeing, the man stretched forth his hand.

  Rudol moved without the need for thought; three long, quick strides, and a sweep of his sword severed the lone front leg clean off. The rotborn reared shakily onto its back legs, and the snake-head snapped forward, fangs dripping with dark venom. Rudol sidestepped and shoulder-charged the creature at the center of its mass; already unsteady, it staggered sideways, caught its legs against a crenel in the battlements, and tipped over the edge of the wall.

  The heavyset man didn’t even look at Rudol, just stared at the spot where the Deepling had fallen. Still swept up in its power.

  Without hesitation, Rudol gripped his shoulder and slapped him across the face.

  The man blinked, and slowly raised a hand to his cheek. “What—”

  “Tell me your name.”

  “S—Sammed.”

  “Sammed, I need you to ignore that voice in your head. Keep your eyes on me, and concentrate on what I tell you to do,” Rudol said. “Go to the bonfire, and bring me a flame. Quickly now.”

  For a moment, Sammed only stood gaping at the black blood pooling beneath the blade of Rudol’s sword.

  “Move!” Rudol barked.

  Sammed did as he was told. In the space of a moment, he’d returned with a length of burning wood.

  Rudol took it from him, and thrust it into the mouth of one of the barrels, setting the surface of the pitch aflame. Then, he laid his sword on the ground and squatted down. “Help me.”

  Together, they hefted the barrel, lifted it over the edge of the wall.

  “Stand back!” Rudol called down to the men at the gate, and then they let it fall.

  The barrel plummeted to the ground below, just in front of the door. Wooden staves broke on impact; the barrel burst like an overripe Sunhome melon, sending splatters of dark liquid in every direction. Flaming pitch sprayed over the first Deeplings through the broken door, forcing them back.

  “The next, now!” Rudol lit that one too, and they sent it over beside the first. A crooked wall of burning black pitch now stood between the broken door and the waiting line of Storm Knights.

  There was no one left atop the Eyewall save for a half-dozen knights, Rudol and Sammed, and countless Deeplings. No one left to defend, and no room left to fall back. They were near enough to the bonfire at the top of the stairs now to make the closest Deeplings cringe away. That will slow them if they give chase.

  “Down the stairs!” Rudol called to the others, and reclaimed his sword from where he’d dropped it. Pulling Sammed with him, he sprinted toward the stairway; the remaining knights followed close behind.

  Deeplings were starting to cross the flaming pitch by the time Rudol and the rest of his knights—already, he was thinking of them as his—joined the others below. Deeprats and some of the smaller rotborn picked their way between patches of flame, and those that could creep along the walls of the pass were already crawling over.

  “Wingbows, keep the walls clear!” Rudol swept his saber from one side of the pass to the other. A chorus of bolts sang through the air in answer to his cry.

  He fell into place behind the front line as the first Deeplings charged. The Knights of the Storm met them with shield and spear. Dozens of monsters fell, but claws and teeth carved gouges in the heavy shield line, and there were more coming. Behind the deeprats and rotborn, countless more Deeplings waited beyond the flames, larger and deadlier. More still were pouring through the broken eye-hole, and over the ramparts, so thick that Rudol could almost have believed the Eyewall had been transmuted from stone into glossy, wriggling insect-flesh. It wouldn’t be long before they braved the flames; very soon, the ones behind would simply push the frontmost Deeplings through.

  “Fighting withdrawal, toward the Queensgate! Make them pay dearly for every inch!” No one challenged Rudol’s order; he suspected that anyone who might have was either dead or long since retreated to safety.

  The Deeplings were pushing through the flames now. The largest grublings and rotborn simply threw their bodies down in the burning pitch, smothering it, and hundreds more swarmed over the twitching corpses. They advanced quickly after that, flooding up the road and the walls of the pass like a river driven over its banks by a summer monsoon.

  Too quickly for the wingbows to hold them back.

  Too quickly to stand against.

  Rudol could see no way out. If he ordered the men to run, the Deeplings would slaughter them from behind; if they stood, they’d be crushed underfoot. Even in a fighting
retreat behind the shield line, they couldn’t fall back quickly enough. Against so many, the shields and halberds of the Storm Knights would be overwhelmed in minutes. And the rest of the men wouldn’t hold, even if there had been some hope. He could smell the sour terror-stink growing behind him, hear the growing hysteria of men who had never met monsters in battle before. Behind Rudol and to his left, Sammed mumbled a constant stream of babbled prayer: “LordofEagles WindofGrace SpiritofAll they’recoming saveme saveme saveme…”

  This is it, then. He’d come to the end Shona had warned him about; the one he deserved. Lord of Eagles, be merciful. I did what I could.

  And then he heard the eagles.

  The first cry came from somewhere behind him, then again from just overhead. When he looked up, the night sky was filled with birds, silhouetted against the starlight. By their wingspans—as wide as Rudol was tall—the four nearest the front were full-grown eagles, and behind them flew dozens of broad-winged messenger falcons and long-tailed sparrowhawks and small, graceful kestrels and more.

  And at their head, leading the charge like a warrior king, was the Windwalker boy’s little eagle. Even in the dark, Rudol somehow knew it by sight, knew it beyond any doubt.

  He’d never been a superstitious man—as far as he was concerned, most of the omens and portents people spent their days fretting over were only tricks of wind and weather and circumstance. But his faith had always been strong, like his mother’s had been; that was part of what had led him to the Knights of the Storm. He knew a true sign from his god when he saw it. Shona might have brought the birds here in her wagons and set them loose, but it wasn’t her hand guiding them now. No one, man or woman, chastor or king, could command the creatures of the sky like that.

  Only a Windwalker.