His soldiers froze, their eyes following their grounded General as his jogging slowed to a steady walk. The Black Man eyed Marciano, not letting his arm waiver. The General tried to fight through the catch in his breath from the run and commanded in his diplomatic tone, "We finish this like gentlemen."
Either the Black Knight could speak avari or deduced as much of battle etiquette as Marciano, for he slipped off his horse, only glancing back briefly at the red headed woman whose venom spewed at the Lord. When that didn't have the affect she wanted, she took to beating the man with her balled fists. The Lord took it without saying a word, silently watching his Black Knight prepare for a duel.
Marciano walked into the circle, his own sword lifted. One of his knights tossed him a shield, and he fitted it over his arm. The Black Knight bowed lightly before charging at the General. He'd been expecting it and dug his legs in, putting his force into the shield.
As the Black Knight bounced against it, he rolled to the side and spun down, the end of his sword slicing along Marciano's shield arm. "Ah!" the General cried, but didn't drop his shield, already expecting the second attack as the Black Knight cut back.
The two broke apart, Marciano trying to take stock of his wound without looking at it, the Black Knight still limping from the arrow in his thigh. Slowly the general looked up and smiled, "My turn," and he ran straight at the Black Knight, who flipped his shield up in time.
Marciano took the shattering blow to his own shield and rolled, trying to find an open spot on the Black Knight but the man was quicker than he looked. He'd already curled away from the slash of Avari steel, it only tasted a bit of leather strap.
The General staggered back. "Sir," one of his men whispered to him, "we can finish the job for you."
"No!" Marciano ordered. There was a good chance I won't survive this fight, he thought as he watched the Black Knight rolling back his shoulders, but it would be a satisfying death.
The Black Knight screamed again, running at the General. Again, Marciano blocked with his shield, this time raising it up to meet the descending sword. The blade bit through hard wood and then stuck fast. With as much strength as remained in the General's arms he wrenched the weapon free of the Knight's hands and tossed it and his only shield away.
The Black Knight fell back to his shield, taking a blow from Marciano and sliding back in the snow. The General pushed again, driving the man back. It should have been simple, quick, but the Black Knight refused to give in.
One of the General's wide swings caught a fleeing hand, digging deep into dark flesh. His troops cheered at the bloodshed, but over it the screams of the Red Headed woman deflated any boost of confidence. The slick blood turned the shield slippery and with one quick blow, Marciano used that to bat away the only thing keeping the man alive.
The shield skittered to the side, flying towards the Emperor's feet. Marciano glanced over momentarily as his Lord leaned down to scoop up his prize. Finally, he looked deep into the eyes of a man staring down his own death.
He didn't cry, or whimper, or say anything. The Black Knight rose proudly at having protected his kith and kin and accepted the coming blade. Marciano, fighting through the exhaustion, swung wide. As his blade was about to connect, the Black Knight stepped forward taking it deep into his gut. The still bleeding hand graced the General's shoulder while the other fumbled about his side. A strange smile took over the Black Knight's lips and he tumbled to the ground, soaking the spring grass in his blood.
Marciano breathed deep, feeling a dangerous stitch in his side from exertion. The stinging made his head buzz and he looked over at the shocked and broken faces of the Ostero knights turning away from their fallen brother. "We should head for the trees before they arm their archers," he mumbled to whoever would listen. "We cannot take the tower."
But Vasska giggled, waving at some imaginary friend deep inside the gates, "All in good time, my dear. All in good time."
Marciano tried to stretch but that made the stitch worse. His questing hands dropped his sword to the ground as he patted along his torso, and fingers tumbled across an errant handle dug deep into the narrow gap of his armor. The Black Knight stepped to his death to get a final sting at his enemy.
Gritting his teeth, the General ripped the blade out, blood gushing with its freedom. "Sir," one of his minions called before exhaustion finally claimed her check and he collapsed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Cries twisted into screams as a pair of demons in surgical cloaks scuttled past the dampening flame, their tools of torture shimmering in the dying light. The drizzly rain made for difficult work, but still they pressed on, moving from one pile of broken soldier to the next, taking whatever limbs they wanted. The few fires that remained smoked against the drizzle, casting noxious fumes into the few upright soldier's faces, who only blinked back at the ash.
It was the camp of the damned that the captors led their new recruits, or victims, into. Or so it seemed to Aldrin as he followed behind the assassin who kept an arrow trained on him the miles of trails eastward. They were grateful there were no more "corpse incidents" as the soldiers didn't seem to be the quickest arrows in the quiver. Ciara tried to ask them who they were or what they wanted, but she only got glares in response. Kynton took the capture in stride, having jumped from the fire into the frying pan more times than he cared to numerate. As the turbid clouds dribbled a slow trickle of rain, he unfolded a hood wisely hidden in the neck of his robes. The others glared upon him in envy, particularly the witch still smarting from the magic burn off; she sizzled each beat a particularly large drop bounced onto her deflated head. Thankfully their captors said little about the steam pouring off a young woman's head, only eyeing it occasionally but nodding as if it they'd seen something like it dozens, no, hundreds of times before.
Tents that began as blurry mirages in the distance, materialized into weathered and moth eaten canvas whipping in the rising winds. A few of the soldiers in the same off the rack armor they'd found on the battlefield greeted the horde as they waltzed into camp.
"Oi! Whatcha been up to, Hammy?"
The one whose parents apparently despised enough to name Hammy responded, "Nunnya, we found these out on the field o' battle."
The first guard looked at the other, "Alive?"
"No, ya daft bugger. They's clearly dead; see how they're walkin and breathin'."
Sarcasm was a strange bedfellow who pilfered all the covers for those in the army, and the first guard lowered his pike and gently poked the hooded priest in the belly. Kynton giggled, despite himself, and tried to knock the pointy end away.
"Seems to me they're alive."
Hammy slapped his forehead hard, mostly damaging his hand and the pointier edge of his helmet. "Ya don' say. So's we can mosey on in then to see the Commander?"
The guards converged and whispered before coming up for air, "You better take 'em to the Commander. He'll figure out what to do."
Hammy looked at his fellow scout with an "interns, what can ya do?" shrug before poking the non-chopping part of his axe into Aldrin's back. "All right, on ya get."
Both guards stood back and let them pass through the poorly defended invisible gates of hell. Most of the tales, when the priests needed to drum up attendance, spoke of an underworld teeming with nasty spikes and poles shoved up people's bottoms. Where demons breathed fire across flayed skin and rubbed toads on you.40 The gate was black as night, dotted with the tears of every victim inside. It would stand over twenty feet tall, and inscribed over the door "Abandon all hope, shoes, and any metal bits in the bin to your left, ye who enter here."
Aldrin, hiding under a Countesses voluminous skirts at little past the age of three, thought that was the worst possible place in the whole world. As he walked into that wounded and bleeding camp he realized how wrong he was.
"And I thought the battlefield was bad," Ciara murmured beside him, her hand finding his of its own accord. He'd probably have felt a dangerous stirring if
he weren't staring into the faces of the lost souls.
Men -- and some women with short hair who'd been a bit less blessed in the tunic department -- sat dejectedly on the muddied ground, staring vacantly ahead, trying to bind their handful of wounds. There didn't seem to be a single person who wasn't coated in bruises and lacerations, but these were the lucky ones. They could still rise and walk.
As the group grew closer into the heart of the underlord, the cold winds picked up, buffeting back their clothes and piercing broken skin. The soldiers were no longer sitting, most didn't have enough blood left in their bodies to fight against gravity. Bodies were tossed about the camp like sacks of grain, some laid overtop others as the demons in hoods shuffled past, talking behind their hands to each other and occasionally dragging one closer to the fire for a better look.
"Healers," Kynton mumbled, "and bloody terrible ones." He glanced down at a man who had almost his entire elbow sliced off and was waiting for the hatchet men to come and finish the job. "Hospar and her many humors," he cursed, before raising his voice, "There's this amazing thing called ligatures! Maybe you've heard of it?"
"Shut your never ending gob," Isa hissed, trying to close out the screams that dug on her own soul. A witch never took the Hospar oath41, but they were still human...mostly. Yet she knew she'd exhaust herself and their supplies before they'd help half the men slowly bleeding out in the mud.
Kynton crossed his arms, for the first time showing real anger at her, "You'd let these people suffer?"
"If it would save and protect my own skin, yes!" Isa countered, "Unlike you, priest, my life actually has meaning."
"Yes," Kynton muttered close to her ear, "You can raise the dead."
She raised her fist, but he already rose away from her as if he hadn't made that idle threat of exposure. Instead, he was ripping a section of cloth off the man with the tattered arm, trying to cinch it tight to shut off the blood.
Hammy poked him in the sides, but Kynton ignored it, shifting with each poke, but still carefully wrapping the binding. "Robey! Get yer ass up!"
Still Kynton ignored him, his hand resting on the broken man's knee and getting a brief glimmer of life in those eyes, "It'll be all right," he lied and a small tear answered him.
Rising, the priest sloughed off the Ham's hand clamped onto his shoulder and lifted his shoulders, "Lead on, oh noble soldier."
"Commander!" their trusty scout with the bow suddenly exclaimed, waving his hands over his head with excitement, "Commander Bedros!"
A line of salt and pepper heads huddled around a smaller but more pristine fire. One broke free and turned to look at them. He was much thinner than one expected from a Commander of armies, as if it could slip easily through the slots in some floorboards. The face was gaunt, not entirely unexpected given the ragtag army, but it had a more permanent sunken cheek look, as if he preferred it that way.
His armor was as beaten as the rest and tarnishing in the rain but still fine quality with a delicate etching of a slightly dented dragon on the front. "Corporal Hamster," the gaunt Commander said crisply, "and Scout Alyosis."
Oh gods, the entire party -- even Taban -- rolled their eyes at their captor's name. I wonder if there's a Major Gerbil somewhere as well, Ciara thought.
"Sir! We've brought you captives!" Hamster saluted with his axe, causing what would have been brain damage in someone with a working one.
The Commander paused, his crystal eyes surveying the bedraggled faces of the group from a pair of sand worms, to a squinty eyed fish monger, an oversized healer, and..."Bonny?" he cried out suddenly. Isa and Ciara both pointed at themselves, then each other while mouthing Bonny. Taban snickered to himself.
"Little Bonny, is that really you?" Bedros continued.
Aldrin sheepishly dropped Ciara's hand and stepped past the Assassin who was trying to swallow a laugh, poorly. "Yes, it is I. Little Bonny," he said bitterly.
But Bedros didn't notice, instead his light hand landed onto Aldrin's expanding shoulders as he scooped the boy into a side man hug and looked him in the eyes, "By Scepticar's left nut, you've grown! You're more man than boy now!"
"I..." Aldrin stuttered, not sure how to answer that, feeling even more like a little boy in the shadow of one of his father's leaders.
"We'll have to call you Big Bonny soon!" Bedros joked, which got an appreciative laugh from Kynton who was enjoying this turn of events. "Fellows!" Bedros called behind to the line of the leading Ostero knights at the fire. "Prince Bonny's found his way home!"
Aldrin risked a look back at Ciara, expecting her to be angry at the lie of omission again, but she had her warm hand covering her mouth shielding what was clearly a gaping grin by the puckering of her cheeks. Despite the embarrassment burning up Aldrin's insides he still smiled back.
"Lil' Bonny!" A herd of silver men flocked around the prince, cutting him off from his friends.
"Is it really you? In the living flesh?"
"Yes, it's me," Aldrin started.
"By the bright stars, how did you get here?"
"Well I had help from..." the living prince tried to explain before getting cut off again.
"The Lady will need to see him."
"Of course," Bedros, who still had a grip on Aldrin afraid he may vanish, said, "This is the first bit of good news the Queen's seen since we broke through the line."
"The Queen? She's here?" Aldrin asked, momentarily frozen in fear. It made some sense. Who else would raise an army to challenge the Empire? But ,on the other hand, who else would want to quickly clear any impediments to the throne? He gulped and tried to shift away from the tightening grip.
"Aye, of course. While you were wading through a dragon's gullet," Bedros ruffled Aldrin's hair as he quipped about whatever adventure took them so long, "Queen Moren was bringing us all together to strike down the invaders who killed good King Elric."
The Knights looked down at their feet in a moment of remembrance of his father, a man who could only be called good when referring to his ability to consume large piles of meat, and King when people remembered his last name. Aldrin wondered if he could ever look at his family throne room the same ever again.
"She's this way," Bedros said, pulling Aldrin along. The other Knights fell behind, each wanting to share in the good news.
"But my friends..." Aldrin tried, but his pleas fell to the ground under the cries of joy from the generals and the screams of pain from their soldiers.
Bedros lifted up the wafting flap of the largest tent with the blue banners of the frost dragon dancing upon it, and gently shoved Aldrin inside. The boy ducked down, surprising himself. The last time he saw his Father's old command center he practically ran under some of the knight's legs, trying to scatter away from the arguing and back to somewhere fun.
The lamps were drawn low, not wanting to waste precious fuel or possibly start a fire. Lackeys, faces who never seemed to let names stick to them, paced back and forth across the muddied grounds dropping documents onto an already overcrowded table or bringing bits of uneaten food to the shadow sitting bolt upright in the corner. Bedros bumped into Aldrin's frozen backside, causing the prince's shin to jangle a bin overstuffed with old maps. It was just enough of a jolt to send the entirety of Arda crashing to the ground.
"Who goes there?" the voice was deeper than what one expected from a Queen, hard as flint, and ready to break upon the head of anyone that disobeyed. Queen Moren was not loved for her charm.
"I bring joyous tidings, your Highness."
"Ah, Bedros," she chuckled, as if she could pick out each of her Generals by their toadiness. "You need not call me that anymore, you know," her voice trailed off, as if it were the middle of a never-ending fight.
"It is what Elric would have preferred," Bedros said solemnly.
"Elric would have preferred to not be decapitated," she said bitterly, pushing off some of the lackeys still buttering around the edges as if the intrusion had no effect on their day. The shadow rose on unstea
dy feet, and walked into the light. "But you said you have news..."
"Joyous news, my...Lady," he finished to avoid her pained wrath. This regime change was going to be difficult for everyone, not all wanted to support the spoiled brat who fell onto the throne.
The Queen slid carefully into the light, her feet having trouble finding a proper footing as she rose wobbly to her barely full height, and came to Aldrin's chin. A piece of cloth was wound about her chest and pinned jaggedly as if someone yanked off her breastplate in a hurry and realized later they should try to maintain their Queen's modesty. Probably because of the still oozing wound deep in her shoulder. The bandages weren't doing much to stop the blood trickling onto her modesty tube top and down to the still armored greaves she wore.
Her calculating eyes of brass looked up at the man Bedros dragged in and traveled about his chin and nose, trying to place why he seemed so familiar. "Bonny?" she asked in the closest to a quavering voice the Queen ever managed.
Aldrin, feeling very self-conscious at everyone's gaze suddenly upon him, tried to lower himself down to her eye line. This towering over people was best left to the elephants. He nodded noncommittally, afraid that with his unveiling she'd just as likely stab him as hug him.
But the Queen was never one to do the expected. She dropped her hand from her chest and held it out to the prince. He very gently took it, expecting a trap, but she gripped his warmly and shook. "How in Scepticar's Grand Name did you get here? We all feared we lost you after the snake betrayed us."
"It's a very long story," Aldrin admitted, her hand still crushing his.
"I imagine so, involving talking bears, and moon dust and witches," Moren had a rather unhealthy obsession with bard's tales.
"Ah," Aldrin shrugged, trying to put off the fact he left a witch sitting at the fire, "something approaching that."
"What do you know of our situation?" The Queen asked him, all fantasy dripping off her voice as her ever-present reality seeped back.
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