Frostborn: Excalibur (Frostborn #13)

by Jonathan Moeller

  “I shall bring him word at once,” said Dux Gareth.

  “Besides,” said Arandar, “Sir Valmark had the last one. Your sons cannot claim all the glory of victory, Dux Leogrance.”

  Leogrance inclined his head with a small smile. He had ruled Taliand for decades, and no doubt knew exactly what had been going through Arandar’s head in the last few moments.

  “I hope Sir Valmark can serve as Sir Constantine’s second,” said Arandar, “and we shall also need to find a herald.”

  “I suggest the headman Crowlacht of Rhaluusk,” said Leogrance. “Since we are not choosing an orcish champion, it would be good to represent the orcish kingdoms. That and the headman has an astonishingly loud voice.”

  “He would also be able to speak insults that would be inappropriate for a Swordbearer and a knight of Andomhaim,” said Gareth.

  “True,” said Leogrance with a snort. “Though when it comes to Tarrabus and his coven of devil-worshippers, it is hard to think of any insult that would be inappropriate.”

  “Agreed,” said Arandar, turning from the rampart. “Karlus! Owen!” The squires looked up. “Please summon Sir Constantine Licinius, Sir Valmark Arban, and the headman Crowlacht of Rhaluusk with all haste.”

  The squires ran to do Arandar’s bidding. It did not take long. Crowlacht was already with King Ulakhamar. The old warrior had a chest like a barrel, a bulging paunch, arms like tree trunks, and a huge hammer he used in battle to smash the heads of his enemies like dropped melons. Like his king, Crowlacht sported a ragged gray beard, his tusks rising from it, and a fringe of gray hair hung from the back of his green head. Sir Constantine and Sir Valmark arrived a moment later. Constantine Licinius looked like a younger, thinner version of his father, with curly black hair, green eyes, and a nose that had an unflattering resemblance to a hawk’s beak. Valmark Arban resembled his brothers, with blue eyes and black hair. All Leogrance Arban’s sons were good knights and competent swordsmen, but Ridmark was the most dangerous of them all.

  Then again, Ridmark was the only one who had gone to Urd Morlemoch and Khald Azalar.

  “My lord headman, my lord knights,” said Arandar while the lords listened to him. “It seems the usurper has chosen to send another champion to challenge us. Sir Constantine, I would be grateful if you could teach the braggart a lesson in humility.” Constantine bowed. “Sir Valmark, please act as his second for this duel. Headman Crowlacht, I wish you to act as the herald.”

  Crowlacht snorted. “I’ve no tongue for smooth speech when dealing with traitors.”

  Arandar smiled. “Why do you think I wish you to serve as herald?”

  Crowlacht boomed with laughter and then nodded. “As the Prince Regent wishes.”

  Beyond the siege wall, Sir Rhison continued bellowing his challenge.

  “Shall I kill him, my lord Prince?” said Constantine with perfect confidence. Again, Arandar suppressed a smile. Knights were often arrogant, and that could be a fatal flaw. Yet in the heat of combat, a man needed confidence in himself.

  “I shall trust to your judgment, Sir Constantine,” said Arandar.

  A few moments later Constantine, Valmark, and Crowlacht strode forth from the gate in the siege wall, Crowlacht carrying a lance flying the banner of the Pendragons. Sir Rhison fell silent in mid-boast, and Constantine and his two companions stopped thirty yards from the Carhaine knight and his herald.

  “You shall cease your yapping!” roared Crowlacht, his voice booming over the wall. The hoarse roar of the orcish headman’s voice was astonishingly loud. The man had to have lungs like a blacksmith’s bellows. “Your empty boasts and impudent bragging shall be answered. Constantine of the Licinii, knight and Swordbearer, comes to answer your challenge, break your shield, and cast your proud words into the dust!”

  For the next several moments Crowlacht and the Carhaine herald shouted threats at each other while negotiating the terms of the duel. Sir Constantine stood motionless in his armor, gazing at Sir Rhison, while the Carhaine knight stared right back, a sneer upon his face. At last, the terms of the duel were settled. Crowlacht drew a circle twenty yards across in the dust with the butt of his lance, and both Constantine and Rhison stepped into it. The duel would be fought to first blood, and the first man who stepped (or was knocked) out of the circle would be defeated. The winner would claim the loser’s armor and shield.

  Constantine donned his helm, as did Rhison, and both men lifted their shields. The soulblade Brightherald hissed from Constantine’s scabbard, and at once the blade started to burn with white fire, the soulstone above the hilt glowing. Soulblades glowed in response to dark magic, and the dvargir used enough dark magic that any soulblade in the siege camps sometimes burned when drawn from its scabbard. Yet Brightherald blazed hotter as shadows began to writhe around Rhison’s sword, and Arandar felt the urge to draw his own soulblade.

  Rhison Mordane was indeed one of the Enlightened of Incariel. Arandar wished he could have drawn Heartwarden and marched to fight the wicked knight himself. Some of that, he knew, came from his soulblade. Soulblades had been created to fight and destroy dark magic, and some of the blades’ hatred for dark magic carried over to their wielders.

  Some of it was Arandar’s own loathing for the Enlightened and Tarrabus Carhaine. The Enlightened had tried to kill Arandar’s son Accolon. Tarrabus and his mad cult had murdered High King Uthanaric and his trueborn sons, and they had abandoned the loyalists on the battlefield of Dun Calpurnia to fall to the swords of the Frostborn. If not for Tarrabus and the Enlightened, the Frostborn might already have been defeated, and the realm brought to peace. Instead, Tarrabus had sacrificed Andomhaim to the Frostborn in pursuit of his wicked dream to use the power of Enlightened to turn mankind into gods.

  It was a poisonous, evil dream, and Arandar vowed to cut it from the realm of Andomhaim like the cancer that it was.

  Crowlacht moved to one side of the circle, while the Carhaine herald moved to the opposite side. For a moment, the two heralds and the two knights looked like the four points of a steel-armored compass.

  Crowlacht lifted his lance and struck the end against the earth.

  The duel began.

  Sir Rhison shouted and charged, moving with the inhuman speed of the Enlightened of Incariel. Arandar knew that the Enlightened organized themselves into Circles depending on how strongly they could draw upon the shadow of Incariel. Some of them could command shadows, unleashing torrents of darkness to bind and imprison and paralyze their enemies. Others, like the creature known as the Weaver, could change shape, and some of them lost control of themselves and became ravening monsters. It seemed that Rhison Mordane could draw upon enough of the shadow of Incariel to make himself faster and stronger.

  His tactics were plain – he wanted to hit Constantine hard and fast, driving him out of the circle and ending the duel at once. Constantine advanced with the calm of the veteran campaigner, his shield raised before him, his burning soulblade drawn back to strike. Rhison came at him in a fury, shadow-wreathed sword hammering down, and Constantine caught the first blow in his shield, then the second, and then a third. The Enlightened knight’s blows landed with enough force to carve wooden chips from Constantine’s heavy shield, but the Swordbearer drew upon his soulblade for strength, allowing him to withstand the blows that might have broken his forearm.

  On the fifth blow, Rhison’s momentum played out, and Constantine struck back. Brightherald shone like a shaft of white fire, and Constantine flicked the blade towards Rhison’s helmet. The Enlightened knight flinched away from the soulblade, raising his shield in guard, and Constantine’s next blow skidded off his foe’s shield. The Swordbearer managed to drive the Enlightened knight to the center of the circle, but Rhison recovered his footing and went back on the attack.

  The duel surged back and forth, Swordbearer and Enlightened struggling against each other. Cheers rose from Arandar’s siege wall and Tarrabus’s contravallation wall as the two armies watched their champions. The t
wo knights were evenly matched. Arandar thought Constantine might be slightly faster while Rhison was slightly stronger. Both men bore chain mail and plate armor, and both knights had heavy shields.

  Yet Arandar saw that Constantine had an advantage.

  Rhison was afraid of Brightherald in a way that Constantine did not fear Rhison’s shadow-wreathed blade. Again and again, Rhison flinched from the soulblade’s bright flame, and Constantine exploited that advantage, driving his sword toward Rhison’s face and hammering with his shield when the knight flinched from the white fire. Step by step, Constantine forced Rhison towards the edge of the circle.

  Then Rhison stumbled, and Brightherald blurred forward. The blade slashed across Rhison’s sword arm, and the knight stumbled with a scream of pain. Constantine retreated, raising his soulblade in guard, and a trickle of crimson blood went down the sword.

  “First blood!” boomed Crowlacht. “The victory is Sir Constantine’s!”

  Cheers roared from the siege wall. Some of the men began to bang their spears or the flat of their swords against their shields, while others shouted Constantine’s name.

  “Your armor and shield, sir,” said Constantine.

  “Dog!” roared Rhison, a strange buzz in his words. He straightened up, shadows pouring around him. “Cringing dog! You shall be swept away! We shall be as gods, and you shall fall at our feet and worship us.”

  He stepped forward, and he changed as the shadows bled from him.

  Calliande had told Arandar that something similar had happened during the fall of Castra Carhaine. Sir Claudius Agrell, Tarrabus’s castellan, had drawn upon the shadow of Incariel in his final moments, and the shadow had changed him.

  Rhison swelled in size, his armor creaking and groaning, his skin becoming gray and pallid, black veins pulsing through his flesh. In an instant, his humanity vanished, and he seemed to become a hulking monster, twisted and corrupt.

  “Perish!” roared Rhison, and he surged forward.

  Chaos erupted on both sides of the siege walls. Arandar shouted for the Magistri, and Master Kurastus and the two Magistri of his bodyguard rushed to the ramparts, ready to bring the white fire of their magic to bear against the thing that Rhison had become. Arandar saw men running along Tarrabus’s wall, crossbows in hand. He glanced back at the camps below. Whose men were closest? Dux Sebastian’s camp, that was it.

  “Owen!” shouted Arandar to his nearest squire. “Go to Dux Sebastian at once. Tell him to ready a sortie. Go!” Owen sprinted away, and Arandar turned just in time to see Rhison lunge at Constantine. The Carhaine herald who had accompanied Rhison was fleeing back to Tarrabus’s wall, but Crowlacht and Sir Valmark rushed to Sir Constantine’s aid.

  Yet the younger Swordbearer barely needed help. Rhison’s transformation also seemed to have unseated his reason. He charged at Constantine, screaming with fury, his sword rising and falling in a blur of shadows. Constantine responded with cool skill and control, dodging and deflecting and striking back with Brightherald. His soulblade licked across Rhison’s right leg, slipping through the damaged armor, and the Enlightened knight stumbled with a howl of enraged fury.

  Valmark drove Hopesinger and Constantine thrust Brightherald into Rhison’s chest at the same time, and an instant later Crowlacht bellowed and brought his massive hammer down onto the top of Rhison’s head.

  If the soulblades hadn’t killed the Enlightened knight, that certainly did.

  The three men raced towards the siege wall as the crossbowmen on Tarrabus’s walls opened fire, but the enemy was too late. Constantine, Valmark, and Crowlacht regained the siege wall, and a cheer rose from the ramparts.

  The blast of signal trumpets came from Tarrabus’s wall, and trumpets in turn rose from Arandar’s siege camps. The usurper’s forces were mobilizing themselves, while Arandar’s men prepared to answer them. Arandar gave a steady stream of commands to the nobles below the wall, sending them to their men. The two armies were like a pair of wolves circling each other, waiting for the other to make the first move, and the slightest spark might set off the fire of the battle.

  Perhaps this would be the spark.

  Constantine, Valmark, and Crowlacht hastened back through the gate, and all along its length men rushed to the ramparts. Horsemen gathered before the gates, preparing to launch sorties. Soldiers hurried to man catapults. There had not been time to build a wall strong enough to support the siege engines, but the catapults had been targeted on the gates in Tarrabus’s contravallation wall. If those gates opened and enemy soldiers issued forth, the catapults would loose a barrage of stones and burning oil.

  For a long moment, Arandar waited, preparing to give the order to attack. He knew that when he did, thousands of men on both sides would die in the first few minutes.

  But Tarrabus Carhaine and his soldiers did not issue forth from the walls.

  The spark had not been enough to light the inferno, it seemed.

  But the battle was still coming.

  ###

  Arandar spent the rest of the day as he usually did, riding the circuit of the wall, inspecting the men and fortifications, and solving problems. For the most part, the lords and knights and men-at-arms and militiamen knew what to do. Most of the lords had commanded a battle at some point, and most of the commoners had fought in those battles, and after a year and a half of civil war, every man in the siege camps was a veteran. Arandar praised vigilance and rebuked sloth when necessary. He had commanded men in battle ever since he had first been a simple decurion and then a knight, and he was still surprised by how much of command revolved around giving men permission to do what they already knew needed to be done.

  Commanding a vast host was the same thing upon a larger scale.

  Sometimes he needed to settle disputes between the lords and knights and headmen. Since the lords were accustomed to command, they sometimes butted heads over the most trivial things. One lord wanted a campsite claimed by another. One knight claimed that his neighbor was taking too much fodder from the stores. That seemed unlikely, since Arandar had made Sir Joram Agramore the quartermaster for the entire host, and the knight guarded their provisions with scrupulous diligence.

  Arandar resolved disputes, issued judgments when necessary, and made sure that every man knew their real enemy was beyond the wall.

  At night, he did the same thing he had done every night for the last three weeks.

  Namely, he stood in the map pavilion with the other lords and tried to discover a way out of this stalemate.

  The map pavilion was a short distance from Arandar’s own pavilion, and a long wooden table held maps of both Andomhaim and the city of Tarlion itself. The map of Tarlion had been modified to show the three earthwork walls that had been raised around it, two for Tarrabus and one for Arandar. Flat stones painted different colors showed the position of Arandar’s men, the siege camps, Tarrabus’s army, the dvargir, and the various warships watching each other outside the harbor of the city.

  Perhaps a stalemate was the wrong word. A standoff described the situation better. The two armies were like a pair of men pointing loaded crossbows at each other, their tense fingers upon the triggers. The first man to shoot might die. The first man to blink might die. There was no way to know.

  All Arandar knew was that the first man to make a mistake would die.

  “Master Kurastus,” said Arandar, looking at the old man who was Master of the Magistri. “Has there been any messages from Sir Corbanic or the Magistri trapped within the city?”

  The white-robed Magistrius shook his head. “I fear not, lord Prince. Sir Corbanic activated the ancient defenses that the Keepers of old and the Magistri wove into the walls of Tarlion. No creature or spell of dark magic can pass the walls of Tarlion, which is likely why the city has not fallen to the dark powers of Tarrabus and his devil-worshippers. Unfortunately, that means no magical message can pass the wall. The city has not fallen, we know that much. Beyond that, we can only speculate.”

  �
��I could ask for another volunteer to sneak through the lines,” said young Dux Sebastian Aurelius, who no longer looked as young as he had at Dun Calpurnia. His men-at-arms had grown up hunting the plains and hills of Caertigris, as had Dux Sebastian, and he had become the commander of the scouts.

  “No,” said Arandar. “No, I will not waste lives to no purpose.” Twice before he had asked for a volunteer to sneak through the lines and contact Sir Corbanic Lamorus. Both times they had awakened the next morning to see the volunteer’s mutilated body hanging from the contravallation wall, in brutal and bloody defiance of the knightly codes of warfare.

  “The hard truth of the matter is that it is best for us to wait,” said Dux Kors. “Aye, I don’t like this waiting any more than the rest of you. But we have that traitor Tarrabus over a barrel, and he knows it. All he’s got left is the food he has with him inside his walls. We’ve only to wait until he runs out of food and he gets desperate.”

  “Aye,” said Arandar, “and desperate men do desperate things. And sometimes desperation is enough to carry the day. We can be certain of one thing. Sooner or later Tarrabus will launch an assault upon Tarlion and try to break into the city, or he will attack us with overwhelming strength and drive us off before resuming his siege.”

  “His wisest course is to storm Tarlion,” said Prince Cadwall. “If he can bring his entire army into the walls, he can resupply from the sea through the ships of Arduran and Tarras, and I do not yet have enough ships to stop them. Then we will be forced to lay siege to him in turn.”

  “I suspect he will attack us rather than assault Tarlion,” said Dux Gareth. “It would be easy for us to cause havoc in his lines if he tried to assault the city. For that matter, Tarrabus Carhaine is a ruthless and cold-blooded man. Did not he have High King Uthanaric and his sons murdered, and did he not try his best to have your own children slain, my lord Prince?” Arandar nodded, recalling the long, hard year where he had feared for Accolon’s life. “If he storms the camp and kills you, it will throw us into chaos.” He glanced at the Swordbearers and Magistri standing at the entrance to the pavilion, silent reminders of the dangers of assassination. “To be blunt, if you are slain, it will take us some time to decide upon a new leader. Tarrabus may be able to deal with us piecemeal, or take Tarlion before we can reunify.”