by Ty Johnston
“I did not expect us to meet again,” spoke a high, familiar voice.
Guthrie’s head snapped around. The image of the wizard in black was now gone, replaced by a vision of the ice witch, her hair black, her flesh azure, her garb a thin garment one could almost see through. If not for her obvious nonhuman traits, the pointed ears and the skin, she might have been beautiful.
“You!” Guthrie cried out. He tossed his crossbow to one side, the weapon landing in the snow, then lifted his right leg from its stirrup and over the saddle, dropping to the other side.
The ice witch watched with a thin smile of amusement as he marched forward, the sergeant’s hands bunched into fists at his sides.
“What did you do to me?” Guthrie asked as he approached, finally coming to a stop just out of her reach. His chest heaved and his eyes flashed. There was true anger in the Ursian. This woman had brought upon him a curse of magic, and somehow she was involved with the Dartague. It also seemed she had been the black wizard in disguise, a slayer of priests and a destroyer of a church.
Before the witch could answer, pounding hooves sounded at the sergeant’s back. Guthrie turned to find Hammer and Tomlin galloping forward, their bows held high over the heads of their steeds.
Guthrie waved them off. “Away! The witch is mine.”
“Witch?” Tomlin called, but he yanked on his reins, as did Hammer. Their horses slowed.
“She is mine!” Guthrie yelled.
“She?” Tomlin asked. He and Hammer brought their steeds to a halt.
Guthrie looked back to the witch, his face showing he was more confused than ever.
“They see me as a man, as the wizard in black,” the ice witch whispered to him. “They see me as I wish, much the same as you yourself did but moments ago.”
The sergeant spun around again, facing the two riders. Frantic, he threw up his arms and shouted. “Get out of here! He will kill us all.”
Hammer wasted no time spinning his horse about, but Tomlin remained for the moment, staring with curiosity at the sergeant and what he took for a robed wizard.
Guthrie lowered his voice to less than a shout. “Tomlin, go! Our weapons will do nothing here!”
“Then get out of there, man,” Tomlin said back.
Guthrie looked to the witch once more. She still grinned. Then he turned toward the militiamen again. “Leave. If I fall, then the rest of you must avenge me.”
Slowly, Tomlin tugged around his reins, his horse turning to face the direction Hammer had already fled. It was obvious the man did not like this situation.
Guthrie could think of no excuse that sounded plausible, yet he had to get Tomlin to ride off. The rider was in danger, the sergeant was sure, and Guthrie wished to speak with the woman without others overhearing.
“Enough of this nonsense!” the witch woman shouted.
Guthrie turned to her again, but there was a flash of light from her now outstretched hands. Bolts of lightning shot forth, bypassing the sergeant despite the nearness of the electric heat and the thunder knocking him to the ground. His face buried in snow for the moment, Guthrie saw nothing, but he heard a terrible cracking noise and Tomlin crying out.
When Guthrie looked up, he found the rider and his horse were no more. All that remained of them was a smoking pile of ash melting into the snow and a splatter of red in a circle around where the rider and steed had once stood. Guthrie’s own horse had been spooked and galloped away. In the distance Hammer was still riding as if a devil were on his tail, and beyond him Guthrie could spy the men at the burnt church milling about, probably preparing for action.
“Damn you!” the sergeant yelled out. Then he jumped to his feet and spun to the witch.
She cackled at him within the golden aura Guthrie would always recognize, her head thrust back much as had been that of the image of the wizard.
He placed a hand on the haft of his mace at his belt.
Her head snapped down to glare at him. “None of that!”
Guthrie growled, yet he allowed the hand to fall away from the iron club. “What do you expect of me? You have placed your curse upon me, slain my countrymen and my priests, destroyed one of our churches! Do you think this should please me? That I should approve of what you’ve done?”
“I care not for your feelings on the matter,” the ice witch stated, “only that my desires are fulfilled. Do you not recognize my hand in all of this? I disguised myself as a skald, what you saw as a wizard in black, and secretly urged on the Dartague, giving your nation a war they truly desired. I handed you a present to allow you to hunt down the wyrd woman, and I destroyed your church to enrage your priests, to ensure there would be war.”
“You did all of this to slay one woman?” Guthrie asked, his voice nearly a gasp.
“I did!” the witch cried out. “I have lived thousands of years, and I will not fall prey to the babe of some mere mortal, no matter how skilled she might be in the arts of glamour.”
The sergeant gritted his teeth. “You forget one thing. The powers you have given me, they also allow me to hunt you!”
The woman snickered. “I am not an imbecile. Your powers only work on me when I allow such.”
“If we do not cross one another today, I will find you,” Guthrie said. “I will hunt you to the ends of the world and slay you myself.”
“That is not to be my fate,” the ice witch said. “I have seen my future. Besides, I believe you will be busy with your fellows in the coming war.”
Guthrie grasped his mace again, this time drawing it up and ready for combat.
“I think not,” the witch said, taking a single step away from the Ursian. “In fact, Sergeant Hackett, I believe we will not meet again after today.”
“I told you I would hunt you.” His grip tightened on the mace’s handle.
“And I will be in a place you can never find,” she said. “I will ... remove ... myself from the mortal world for some while, at least until I am sure the wyrd woman is no more.”
She blinked. Then she vanished. Drifts of snow sprang up from where she had stood but a moment earlier.
Guthrie swung out with his mace, but there was nothing to hit. He spun around, and again, and again, his eyes searching, seeking, but there was no sign of the ice witch, only his comrades in the distance now riding toward him as if their lives depended upon it. Perhaps they did.
“One last thing,” the witch’s voice spoke to Guthrie’s ears though he could not see her, “I believe you should end your search for me rather soon. It would seem others have have been drawn by the smoke rising from your church.”
He felt a pull upon one shoulder and twisted about with hopes of spotting his enemy. But the witch was not there. All that remained of her presence was a distant choking laughter that echoed through the winter winds.
What he did see was the mountain range some miles ahead of him. There was a cloud of white along the bottom of the nearest hills. Snow. Snow flying into the air from the hooves of riders. Many riders.
The Dartague.
Guthrie reeled around, searching for his horse. Spotting the beast in the distance, he took of at a run as fast as his legs would carry him in the weighty snow.
Part II:
Sundered Shields
1,913 years After Ashal (A.A.)
Chapter 1
The horses’ hooves pounded into snow, churning up the pale powder and chunks of dirt from beneath. Stretching in all directions was a sea of white with a gray sky above. The only break on the horizon ahead of the galloping animals was a grim line to the east where a copse of dead trees hugged one another. At distance behind the horses was a scorched circle littered with crumbled stones, a tail of smoke stretching up from the remains of what had once been a church to Ashal, the God Who Walked Among Men. Further back was another mass of rampaging steeds, these animals generally smaller in size but much larger in numbers. Beyond this second group of horses was more white, reaching back and back until finally coming up against
the cold crags of mountains.
The eleven horses in the lead carried men in armor of various types and conditions. The second group of steeds bore large, burly fellows in furs, swords swinging from their hips or gripped in their bulking hands.
Sergeant Guthrie Hackett rode in the fore group, his breathing nearly as heavy as the tired beast beneath him. Through the slit of his helm, Guthrie glanced back, spotting the church and the barbarian riders beyond. He cursed as he looked forward once more. The Dartague were nearer, their steeds having shorter legs but more familiarity in charging through snow. The Ursian horses the sergeant and his comrades rode were better suited for open plains and roads, but did not fare so well in snow and mud.
Beneath the Ursian horses was snow and mud. Thus the improving circumstances of the Dartague.
A horse on his right moved closer, and Guthrie spared a glance in that direction. The rider nearing him was Captain Werner, the mustachioed leader of the ragtag militiamen the sergeant found himself riding among. Those same militiamen had saved Guthrie’s life, finding him in this winter wasteland after the sergeant’s squad had been brought down by Dartague arrows and an ice witch had attacked him personally. The Dartague had since spread slaughter across all of northern Ursia, word that the entire northern army had been wiped out flowing from mouth to mouth. The barbarians had numbers on their side, as well as those able to conjure with spells, and they did not balk at slaying Ursians wherever they found them.
Which was why Guthrie and his band were fleeing the church destroyed by magic, Dartague riders fast on the Ursians’ tails.
His steed nearly touching Guthrie’s own, Captain Werner leaned in closer to the sergeant, the officer’s long whisks of nose hair flapping in the wind. “How many do you think there are?” he shouted above the hammering sound of hooves and the snorts of the riding beasts.
Guthrie dared a glance back again. The Dartague were too far away for an exact count, but he could make an estimate by the size of the pack of riders.“At least fifty. Perhaps more.”
The captain grimaced. “Not what I wanted to hear.” His eyes shot forward, straying across the white flats before them. “You know this land better than the rest of us. Anyplace to hide?”
Guthrie looked forward himself, staring and staring. He pointed. “There! That group of trees. There’s an old creek bed runs through it.”
“That’s no place to hide!” Werner shouted.
The sergeant shrugged. “No, but there is no other. At least we can make a stand there. Better than being cut down in the open.”
Werner eyed the only break along the horizon. It seemed the sergeant was right. There was no place to hide, and no place else to make a stand. Even the church had been tumbled so much it was little more than blackened rubble. The captain sighed, the sound lost beneath the pounding hooves.
“All right!” he called out. “The trees it is, then!”
Guthrie nodded and the two riders parted, spreading word to the other men. Soon enough the eleven riders swung their horses toward the left and the gray, dead limbs sticking up from the snow in the distance.
The breathing of the animals was growing more and more ragged, the poor beasts having already traveled a good distance from the militia camp at the battered village of Herkaig. The horses needed a rest, one that was soon coming but which did not bode well for their survival unless the Dartague decided they wanted extra steeds.
A glance backward revealed the Dartague were still following, adjusting their own direction to keep up with their prey. Guthrie cursed again and spurred his animal onward despite its fatigue.
Slowly the copse of dried trees grew nearer and nearer, and the sergeant could make out beneath the snow the faint outline of the dead stream bed running through.
“There!” he pointed to the center of the tall, dead plants reaching to the sky like the giant finger bones of some ancient, forgotten corpse.
As one the riders shifted their approach again, slowing as they came closer to the edge of the trees.
As he reached the cluster of dead trees, Guthrie wasted no time sliding from his saddle and tugging on the reins to bring his horse into the weak shadow of the gray limbs. To both sides of him, other riders were doing the same.
“We can make a stand in the creek bed,” Werner said, pointing ahead as he pulled his own beast. “Put up a shield wall.”
Guthrie glanced around. He didn’t see but a pair of shields among the group of militia, and those only wood without the backing of iron or steel. “Where are we going to find shields?” he asked with puffing breaths as he and his animal continued forward.
“The horses,” Werner asked, stopping at the lip of the creek bed. “We’ll have to use them. Only thing to do.”
Around them, the other men were leading their animals forward, riders and horses alike tired at the ride from the village and then the church. As a group they stared down to the narrow ledge of the former waterway evident only by a small rise in the snow.
The captain glanced to Guthrie. “Don’t supposed you know how deep this thing is?”
“Only a few feet,” Guthrie said, jumping. He fell through the snow, his boots leading the way, and came to a standstill with the white powder nearly up to his belt. All the while he had held onto his horse’s leathers, keeping him from tumbling to either side.
Werner chuckled. “Everyone in!” he shouted.
At all sides, the men began to scramble or dive into the snow. As with the sergeant, they found themselves sinking up to their waists, their horses tired and waiting patiently above.
When everyone was down, the militiaman Pindle turned to Werner. “Captain, how do we do this?” He motioned toward their steeds above and the thunder of the approaching Dartague in the distance.
“If you can’t tie them off, leave them standing,” the captain answered. “We’ll target between their legs and hope they don’t get too antsy.”
The idea was a sound one. Though outnumbered and baring few shields, the Ursians were armed with crossbows, which each man was now breaking out and loading. Guthrie reached up to his horse and retrieved his own quiver and the crossbow hanging there, thankful he had retrieved the weapon after having dropped it when facing the ice witch. The Dartague, too, were known to carry bows, but they were not natural archers nor riders, not skilled at launching arrows from horseback; if the barbarians should target from their saddles, they were much less likely to hit, and if they should touch land to make use of their bows, they would have a difficult time of it with the trees and horses between them and their targets. At least those were Guthrie’s hopes, and those of the men around him. Their location was actually a decent one, and would serve well against a force the same size or only slightly larger than their own, but it appeared their enemies had them outnumbered at least four to one, perhaps more.
Pulling back his crossbow’s string to place one of the short arrows against the weapon, Guthrie glanced up at the horses above him and the other men. So far the animals were not skittish, remaining more or less in place, their reins hanging. Whether the beasts would stay that way once the arrows began flying and the enemy closed was likely a different matter. Militia were not regulars nor cavalry, and did not travel with many horses. The horses they had were not trained in the arts of combat.
Between the animals’ occasionally stamping legs, the Ursians could see their foes still riding as fast as their short-legged beasts could carry them. The lead rider, a big man with a shaggy black beard, waved a heavy sword about his head then pointed the steel blade at the trees and the Ursians.
“They’re coming,” Pindle said off to one side.
Guthrie looked up and down the line. These were nervous men he was with, many of them young and inexperienced. Guthrie knew Captain Werner was an old hand at combat, and Pindle and the fellow called Hammer looked as if they had seen a scrap or two over the years, but most of the others were quivering with fear, their eyes huge as they stared at their doom fast approaching.
>
At least the Dartague were still a hundred yards away and finally slowing their steeds. Apparently they felt a safe approach was best, which was fine with Guthrie and the other Ursians. Every moment of life was cherished at that point, and the men realized they might have precious few of those remaining.
Captain Werner raised his voice, but not to a shout. “Take aim for their horses. Spill as many of those bastards as you can. Maybe we’ll get lucky and a few of them will break their necks.”
Guthrie wasn’t sure this was the best of plans, but he wasn’t going to argue about it. The Dartague couldn’t approach directly on their horses, at least not without being slowed by the trees, precious few of them that there were. It was more likely the barbarians would jump from their saddles at some point and storm the Ursians while on foot, or perhaps flank them. And any Dartague knocked from the saddle would already be on foot, making them more dangerous to Guthrie and his fellow men.
But then all ruminations were trumped.
There was a twang and an arrow shot from the snow-covered creek, darting between the trees and out into the open. The Dartague were still some distance away, however, and the arrow fell short, slamming into the snow.
“Wait until they’re almost to us!” Werner called out. “Wait until they’re right at the trees!”
But it was too late.
Nervous fingers tapping the trigger bars of crossbows, three more arrows launched. One fell short again and another didn’t make it out of the trees, slamming into a stump and cracking. The third arrow sailed true, however, closing the distance between enemies in little more than a flash and burying itself in the shoulder of one of the nearer fur-garbed riders.
The struck rider cried out and flung up an arm for balance. The arm did him no good. He tumbled from his saddle, one leg trapped in a stirrup holding him and pulling him along through the snow for a moment, but then his boot slipped off and he rolled beneath the pounding hooves of the horses behind him.
The Ursians threw up a cry of triumph. At least one of the enemy was gone. The barbarians, however, did not stall in the forward pursuit of their foes; none so much as paused to offer a solemn farewell to their compatriot’s corpse being tossed about and broken beneath the hooves of their steeds.
