Dark Key: Book Two of the Phantom Badgers

by RW Krpoun

  She checked the folds of the net in her hands as she briefed her men; overhead she could hear Henri shifting his entire company to fire on the new threat. As the Fists crashed into the wall she carefully murmured a short incantation that caused her entire form to blur and lose its definition; her very limited grasp of the lesser Art known as Vectius Meum was helpful, but the Art itself was individual in nature and largely defensive, unlike Henri's more robust and offensive spells.

  The breakthrough came sooner than she expected; Green Company stopped one Fist and the force on the east wall another, but the third simply swarmed through the ditch and up onto the rampart. Elonia screamed a war cry and sprinted to the breach, swirling her net out as she ran. The first Direbreed caught the three-foot-wide net full in the face, the weighted mesh wrapping itself tight around its head and ram's horns. Confused and blinded, it missed a step and tumbled into the compound, dispatched in passing by one of Elonia's men.

  The mixed-blood Badger caught the next Direbreed's sword blade in the tines of her left manople and jerked it aside, thrusting in with the right, punching the sharp point through the creature’s throat and twisting the blade with all of her arm’s strength as she withdrew, tearing the Direbreed’s windpipe and the great neck-artery open. Wresting the sword, blade still trapped, from its dying owner, she hurled the weapon into the face of a mastiff-headed Direbreed and ripped open the creature's belly with a savage slash, following it up with a thrust to the chest that skidded across the breastbone and tore a great gash across the beast’s ribs. Parrying a pair of axe blows, she nimbly knocked the wielder off the wall with a roundhouse kick, using her unencumbered speed and Threllish night-sight to best advantage against her lumbering foes, most of whom were nearly winded after their climb and charge.

  The fighting in the corner was deadly and desperate; men and Direbreed hacked at each other in the weirdly broken darkness as the outcome of the battle and the fate of the fort teetered in the balance. War cries and animalistic bellows faded after the first encounters as the surviving combatants found it necessary to conserve their breath. Screams of pain, grunts of exertion, and curses served as a verbal undertone to the crash and clatter of weapons impacting on shields, weapons, armor, and flesh. Increasingly weary warriors hacked with leaden arms at any figure that appeared before them, swinging bloody weapons that seemed to grow in weight with each blow, the bucking back-lash that accompanied each connecting strike steadily numbing hands, wrists, forearms, and elbows. Organization fled from the forces on both sides, and the battle in this corner degenerated into a mad free-for-all whose outcome rested on acts of individuals, and the determination of those involved.

  But the penetration had been held to one Fist, and that Fist was counterattacked even as it crossed the ramparts; Gold Company's fire and three halberdiers sent from Red company by Dmitri ultimately turned the tide. The wall was cleared, and shortly thereafter the deep horn recalled the Fists: the second attack was over.

  Despite the darkness the defenders were better prepared and more experienced: with only a moderate amount of confusion the various companies sorted themselves out, gathered the dead and wounded, and determined who was still available and who wasn't.

  Dmitri, who had taken a spear-thrust in the thigh and could no longer stand, waited until it was light enough to see before he allowed the defenders to stand down. Besides himself they had lost four dead and nine wounded too badly to fight, while nearly every man on the walls bore some sort of wound. There were five standards or totems added to the collection in front of the towers: Elonia had captured one, Elkhart another, and three were found in the ditches.

  When the sun was fully up and a meal consumed the defenders repeated their post-battle activity: check and move the Direbreed dead, recover quarrels, arrows and throwing weapons, replenish the stake belts and ditch defenses, and collect the Breedstones of the fallen beast-men.

  The defenders, though tired, were buoyed by a second victory and cheered by the distant sounds of leadership duels drifting to them in the cool morning air. The veterans amongst them assured the others that desertions would surely begin in the Darkhost after two such defeats, and even the novices could see the masses of dead the Darkhost had left behind. An air of confidence surrounded the battered fort, mingling with the stench of death as the second wave of Direbreed dead swiftly decayed.

  The noon sun warm on his back, Maximilian steadily worked at the forms as Kroh called them out through a mouthful of beef, hacking and shield-bashing at unseen Direbreed with an intensity that surprised himself.

  "Nothing like a fight to give you interest," Starr commented to Rolf, moving a draught on the board. "Did he find you last night?" she called to the huffing scholar, a mischievous grin tugging at her sky-blue eyes.

  "Who?" Maximilian puffed, snapping his battered shield at a foe's head and following with a vicious thrust. He was secretly proud of the battle-marks on the shield-he hadn't cut down dozens last night, but he had accounted for several Direbreed.

  "Some maniac was running up and down the wall screaming your name, damned annoying it was." Seeing the scholar's exertion-reddened cheeks flush even deeper she winked at Rolf. "At least he kept knocking Direbreed off the wall while he was doing it."

  The Threll maiden's giggle was choked off by a double jump by Rolf, who did not let personal feelings interfere with draughts. Frowning, she returned her full attention to the game.

  After the Dwarf had run him through all the basic forms twice he told Maximilian to take a rest, as there was no point in wearing himself out in practice mere hours before a battle. The scholar cleaned and oiled his helm, mail shirt, sword, dagger, and wiped down his shield, feeling a thrill of chilly excitement as he ran his fingers over the splintered grooves and notches hacked into its surface by Direbreed weapons. Water was plentiful so he enjoyed a sun-warmed sponge bath and followed it with a light meal. Refreshed, dressed in clean clothes, face tingling from scraping off two day's growth of beard, he seated himself in one of the towers, journal in hand.

  Staring across the valley, he tried to put things in perspective. Less than a full day ago this fort had been a brush-covered ruin, the Marquis and his dashing companions were alive and vital, and there was a Darkhost forming amidst the cracked and crumbling alters below. Now vultures fought over the remains of the Marquis and his knights, and the cloying stench of Direbreed corpses intruded upon every thought. What was left of the punitive expedition was holed up in the fort behind belts of stakes, besieged by the battered remnants of the Direbreed army; the brush for a hundred paces all around (nearer two hundred, to the west) was trampled flat, but still green as not enough time had passed for the leaves to lose their color. The world had changed for him, and he had very little idea how to cope. He had killed a harpy and several Direbreed, participated in two battles and watched another, been joked with by the Badgers as if one of them, been made second-in-command of a company of soldiers, however irregular the formation and title were, and had earned the right to wear a sword. Small things and large, and none left him unchanged.

  Frustrated, he banged his fist against the rough floorboards. How to explain the shock of an axe against your shield, the sound of a comrade's dying gasps, the feeling at the end of a fight when you realized that you had survived and would see another day, the realization that in a matter of a hour or two an attack would be launched that, succeed or fail, would spell the end of existence for some or all of the inhabitants of this fort? He was a scholar and writer for nearly thirty years, man and boy, so how could the words desert him just when the truth of it all had been revealed to him? He thumped the planks again.

  "Careful; we'll need this tower for a while longer." Maximilian jumped at the calm voice. Turning, he found Elonia climbing over the railing.

  Lithely settling into a corner, legs crossed, the Seer raised an eyebrow, an enigmatic smile softening her eyes. "Forget how to spell a word?"

  The scholar grinned sheepishly, then shrugged. H
e swept a hand to encompass the blood-soaked defenses and killing fields, the stench of the unburied dead beast-men, the grimly drilling irregulars, and the neat row of fourteen fresh graves. "I just can't find the words... what can you say? There has been bravery and fear and horror, and so many other things. Words on paper can't even touch what has happened here." The idea, pure scholarly blasphemy, unsettled him. "I mean that this is history here, what we've done. This is important. A whole Darkhost is dying out here and countless lives on the Red Shore are being saved via proxy, and I can't write it down so it comes across as it happened."

  "If you ever could convey what a battle was really like in word or song, there would be fewer wars," Elonia shrugged. "Or perhaps not. Too many find it easy enough to cope with the horrors."

  Maximilian nodded absently, brow furrowed. "Then what should I write?"

  "Write the names of the fallen, and what they bought with their heart's blood. Write of the courage, and the hope that victory brings. Tell people that the followers of the Dark One can be beaten if the willingness to fight is there." She paused, smiling. "And don't forget to mention the wisdom and beauty of the Phantom Badger's Seer."

  Carlex muttered to himself as he rubbed the blade of his axe along a tree trunk, scraping the blood and flesh from the blade. It was all coming apart; he had had to fight three duels himself, hacking apart rebellious Fist-lords who aspired to overall command, and who saw the twin defeats as an indication that he, Carlex, had somehow fallen short of the mantle of command. Not that there was much left to command: the night assault had been costly, especially in terms of morale. Too many of the veterans and loyal Direbreed had fallen, leaving his force without internal cohesion. Despite his best efforts to rally his force for another attack, half of his troops had melted away in threes and fours, and even a couple of complete Fists had deserted.

  Resigned, he had reformed his remaining Direbreed into nine full-strength Fists, all under veteran leadership; these, his personal Talon, and Thraxx's battered Talon were all that remained. He planned to hurl this force at the west wall in a last, despairing attempt. That thirty Fists had failed to take the wall the day before had not escaped him, and he fully expected to die in the attempt. As it stood now his mission had failed: even if he turned away from the fort (an action that would cause most of his remaining troops to desert) he lacked the numbers to accomplish the tasks assigned him in the Red Shores. The only hope to salvage anything lay in storming the fort and recapturing the Breedstones the defenders had cut from his follower's bodies, as he still had the Harbingers and enough strength to protect them while they gathered up host-animals.

  He shook his head. He had been born into the service of the Hand of Chaos, the dark faith that controlled a nation's worth of land in the east and had its fingers stretched deep in the West; for most of his life he had been a member of the Colo Magice, the Night Guard, one of the seven elite warrior societies of the Hand, and if those bastards in the fort thought he would slink back home just because he lost a couple fights, they were dead wrong.

  Carlex had been a Champion of the Dark One for nearly seventy years, ever since the ceremony that had marked his transition from elite servitor to a full Minion of the Void, Champion of the Dark One, Servant of the Darkness. He had earned the right to ingest potions and powders laced with andern, both to enhance his abilities and to achieve Oneness with the Void and its dread Master, and bore the resulting mutations with pride. Undoing his breastplate, he exposed his massive, hairless, and semi-scaled chest, the burnished copper hide glowing in the bright daylight. Nearly every inch of skin was decorated with scars in the shape of occult symbols, the reason why the followers of the Eight called his kind Scarred Ones. Using a curved knife he carried for this purpose, he sliced open a scar he felt had served him well in the past and carefully packed the oozing wound with a thick andern-laced paste.

  As he refastened his breastplate he felt the familiar roaring building in his ears, the warm rush of strength to his limbs, the heart-pounded enthusiasm that heralded the onset of Oneness. Victory was assured, he knew. He would not, could not, fail. The Dark One would smile upon him, and his force would crush the fort and recapture the Breedstones. He would round up wolves, mountain cats, fierce stags, bold rams, and use them to bring his Direbreed, all veterans now, back to life. At their head he would bring fire and death to the Red Shores and beyond. All that remained was to crush the life out of the vermin cowering in their pathetic little fort. Simple.

  Dmitri settled himself on his perch and surveyed his dispositions. His thigh wound was not serious but incapacitating; the brothers had exhausted all their power in Healing those whose lives hung in the balance, and could only provide cleaning poultices and elixirs to prevent infection. Time, they had assured him, would heal his wound cleanly and without lingering effect. In the meantime, he could barely stand on it and could not fight at all.

  With that in mind he had a bench seat built two-thirds of the way up the center tower, and he sat there now with a panoramic view of the fort and a cocked crossbow in his lap; Gold Company was smaller now and there were crossbows to spare. He may not be able to fight, but he could still command and work a crossbow.

  The scouts had reported large-scale desertions from amongst the enemy, even to Fist-sized units, and what remained was forming for a last desperate assault on the west wall. They were as ready to receive the attack as they could be: everyone had gotten a couple hour's rest, and anything that could be turned into a stake had been cut down and planted in the west belt, even to the point of stripping some stakes off the east belt.

  Rolf and Kroh anchored the ends of the west wall as usual; Red and Blue Companies, each with three men from Gold, held the west wall, with Elonia leading Maximilian and the five survivors of Green Company as a reserve. Starr was up in the tower with orders to remain until she had emptied her quiver and then to join the reserve. On each of the other walls were two men who, though too wounded to fight, could at least move around on the wall and look as if they were defenders; additionally, they could give a warning should the Host-lord send any Direbreed on a flanking attack.

  It left three walls undefended, but the scouts had reported no subterfuges in the enemy deployments. The carefully sealed kegs of Breedstones hidden in the oxen's pen was the only hope the Host-lord had for recouping his losses, the big Kerbian reasoned. There would be no holding back this time: the enemy would throw in everything for the last roll of the dice.

  'It was about time the bastard had to do it,' Dmitri thought sourly. 'I've had to do it every time they attacked. Let's see how he likes it.'

  The hawk rode the breezes, drifting with imperious disdain over the battered fort, seemingly oblivious to all that transpired below. Starr watched the bird of prey with more than a bit of envy: how lovely it must be to fly.

  The din to the west dragged her attention back to the situation at hand. After delaying most of the day so the sun would be in the defender's eyes, the Darkhost was preparing to attack. Her sharp eyes, the same color as the sky the hawk rode, picked out the careless movement as the Fists moved into position. More than the Fists, she corrected herself as she spotted a flash of armor. Both the depleted Centaur Talon, now down to nine effectives, and the Host-lord's own Talon, twenty-five armored Direbreed were moving up. It was an all or nothing attack: the Darkhost would either overrun the fort or be smashed beyond rallying.

  Bracing the inner curve of her yakici, the deadly recurve bow of the Lanthrell, against her calf, she strung the weapon and checked her arrows. She had brought two full quivers along on this expedition, sixty shafts in all, plus the dividing arrow and the last sleep-inducing arrow of the four her father had presented to her when she had left home four years ago; now she had thirty-two ordinary arrows and three enchanted arrows, plus the sleep arrow which she would not use in a battle such as this. The arrows themselves were arranged neatly in upright rows at her feet, each barbed head thrust lightly into the planking.

&nbs
p; The beast-men hesitated on the edge of the killing ground like a bather pausing before jumping into an icy pond. Starr nocked an arrow and waited expectantly; below her she heard Dmitri ordering the reserves forward to the west wall. The entirety of both forces would meet at the western ramparts and there decide the fate of the fort.

  The Darkhost’s drum and horns boomed out their challenge, answered immediately by the higher-pitched Arturian hunting horn of the defenders. With a howling that set the defenders’ teeth on edge the Fists and Talons hurled themselves out of cover and made for the fort at a trot, gradually picking up speed as they closed.

  Starr let Gold Company fire a volley before sending her own shaft into a Centaur's chest. Three more arrows flickered from her bow before the best of Gold Company fired again. She drew and released again and again, letting the archer's cool detachment consume her, focusing solely on each shaft, on each target, on the smooth, efficient motions of pulling an arrow free of the floor, nocking, drawing, and release. Her eyes never left the mass of enemy; she chose her targets as her hands manipulated arrow and bow. One arrow, one target; seldom did she miss.

  She watched the tide of Direbreed sweeping across the open ground leaving a scattering of dead and dying behind; it reached the first mounds of rotting corpses and swarmed over into a hail of rocks hurled by the wall defenders as her twentieth arrow leapt from her bow to take a Fist-lord in the throat scant feet from the outside edge of the stake belt.

  Carlex roared encouragement as his battered Darkhost charged through the stake-belt and entered the ditch. On the northern end of the line he saw Thraxx, the last of the Centaurs left alive, hurl himself up the slope and over the rampart, sword in one hand and Talon standard in the other. That the antlered Champion, wounded by at least four crossbow bolts, could have done so was amazing; that he died within seconds of reaching his goal was no surprise. It was a start, though; Carlex leapt into the ditch, ignoring a brilliant beam of light that burned a line across the front of his armor, leaving a smoking groove in the thick, Void-blessed metal. Beside him one of his Talon went down, clutching an arrow that should not have penetrated his armor- enchanted, no doubt. Too many were down, but his confidence never wavered. Only a few feet to go and the prize was his. He would shatter this pathetic fort, kill all who cowered within, and then the Harbingers would bring back Threxx and all the others for Carlex to lead onto even greater victories, larger triumphs, vast rewards. It was all very close, now.