Crusade

by Daniel M Ford

  Nothing for it now, Landen thought. Her ears rang and she couldn’t hear herself, but she thought that standing straight in her stirrups, raising his sword to catch the sun, and spurring her horse forward would be sign enough.

  She could feel, rather than hear, the rumble of the mounted men charging along beside her. She wished they’d had lances. Lances were a distant second to good bowmen when it came to killing Braech’s Holy Berzerkers, but a damn sight better than swords and axes.

  True to their reputation, the Islandmen charged out to meet the horsemen, but not before unleashing a volley of throwing axes. Most clattered harmlessly to the stones, deflected off of a raised shield, or poorly thrown.

  Each of the berzerkers had thrown as well. One of their slim-bladed weapons buried in a horse’s skull, sending the poor animal toppling in a boneless heap, the rider thrown forward like a bundle of rags. The other carried off the upraised sword-hand of another rider, blade and gauntlet clattering to the ground, leaving the man to gawp at the stump of his arm as his horse bore him heedlessly forward.

  Grimly, Landen lowered her sword and aimed her horse into the mass of fur-clad men.

  Islandmen strategy for dealing with horsemen was brutal, but effective; they attacked the horses. Landen knew this, and so when one bent low and held his axe out to sweep at her mount’s legs, she waited till the last moment to turn the beast so that it bore down on the Islandman with its weight.

  Over a hundred stone of horse and rider barreled straight over the man, crushing him to the street. The horse, trained well, put one iron-shod hoof into the man’s head as it swept over him.

  Landen let the horse run on, shouted madly at the walls of the Dunes, hoping men inside might hear her, see her, recognize her voice. She started her horse into a turn, describing a wide arc back towards the men. Most of her horsemen had pierced the line, but there were empty saddles and men on foot being surrounded and hacked to pieces.

  Sanglais had his guards double-timing, spears leveled. They’d make short work of the ordinary Islandmen warriors, she thought, for all their inexperience. But she searched frantically for the Dragon Scales.

  One had leapt upon the man unhorsed when his mount had taken the throwing axe. His scale-gauntleted hands were around the dazed man’s throat, twisting.

  Even through the ringing in her ears, Landen heard the panicked shriek, suddenly and sickeningly cut off. Mercifully, she was too dazed or too far away to hear the snap.

  But she could see it plainly when the berzerker lifted the head clear of the dead man’s body, showed his grisly trophy to the sky, and then hurled it into the melee.

  The second had run clear of the horsemen and his compatriots and instead flung himself into the midst of Sanglais’s guardsmen, clearing their leveled spears with a leap that seemed effortless. Two shocked guardsmen fell to axe and gauntlet in as many moments. A handful more broke and ran.

  “My Barony for a decent length of ash and steel,” Landen muttered, even as she spurred her stallion towards the nearer of the two berzekers, the images graven upon his bare back making at inviting target.

  She sensed movement at her side, spared a glance, saw Chaddin joining her. Together they lowered their swords and spread out, Landen switching her grip to her left hand, so that they’d bracket their target. They risked a dreadful cost, but the half-siblings moved as if they’d trained together from childhood.

  The berzerker they bore down on had dragged another Delondeur knight from his saddle. To his credit, the armored figure never stopped swinging his axe, but the force of the fall took some of his strength, and the bare-chested man contemptuously knocked the axe aside with one gauntleted hand. Meanwhile his other hand, curled into a razored fist, crashed into the knight’s helm, staving it in on the second blow.

  The third sent spurting streams of blood through the mangled slits. Feebly, the knight swung his axe again. The Dragon Scale, kneeling atop his foe, snatched the weapon, clutched it with both hands and pressed the blade against the already ruined helm. He leaned forward, arms rippling.

  The axe punched through steel, flesh, and bone, and the knight twitched and bled and died on the street.

  As the Dragon Scale stood, Landen and Chaddin’s swords, with the speed and mass of well-trained warhorses behind their points, sank home.

  Landen felt far more resistance than any bare skin should’ve offered. It was like striking with the point against steel plate. For a moment she thought her blade might break, but it endured. Both points entered the berzerker’s back and punched through the front of his chest; both swords were ripped from the hands of their wielders.

  Fumbling to get her flail into her hand from where it dangled on her wrist, Landen turned to watch the berzerker. He still stood, blood pouring freely down his chest and from his mouth, the three streams merging into one over the muscles of his belly. Only when another Delondeur knight rode past, swinging a heavy flanged mace into his skull, did the Dragon Scale fall to his knees.

  Still, he looked towards the fighting, eyes restless, smiling beatifically as he bled, joy plain on his features as he slowly died.

  Leaving him to it, Landen turned her horse back towards Sanglais’s men. The Islandmen were dead or scattering, but a ring had formed around the second Dragon Scale, a ring of black-clad men holding long spears, darting them at him as he hopped and leapt and spun to avoid them.

  It was a taut, tense game, and as Landen rode towards it uncertainly, she saw one of the Iron Ravens suddenly seize a chance, step forward, and thrust his spear straight into the berzerker’s lower back. It was surely a deadly wound, erupting in blood, piercing a kidney and the bowels. Or it would have, if the berzerker’s hands hadn’t closed around the shaft and pulled it free, taking the weapon into his own hands and turning on the now unarmed Raven.

  The professionalism of his Brothers of Battle saved him, for all three surged forward and caught the Dragon Scale with their spears, pinning him between them.

  Grimly, the crazed holy man gripped the shaft of one of the spears, buried in his navel, and started pulling it—and the Raven on the end of it, Ivar herself—closer. Through him, Landen realized, with horror. More of the weapon’s head, and then its dark wooden shaft, was protruding through his back, just having missed his spine. The other two spearmen leaned into their weapons, but the Dragon Scale ignored their efforts.

  Suddenly a white-cloaked figure dashed behind the berzerker, lashing out with a lightly curved blade. Sanglais himself, Landen realized, moving with speed and flair and, above all, calm.

  Hamstrung, the berzerker unleashed another, weaker roar—men still flinched away—and fell to the ground.

  Smiling even as blood began to seep through his teeth, the Dragon Scale threw back his head and unleashed a yelling ululation in the Islandman tongue.

  “Sea Dragon bless my death. Sea Dragon bless this battle. Sea Dragon bless all battles. Sea Dragon bless my foes and the man who killed me with the strength of his arm. Sea Dragon curse the man who killed me his cunning. Sea Dragon take my soul and guard it among His glittering hoard until His waters rise to claim the world.”

  With the strange, chanting words still filling the air, the berzerker fell forward and died. Like the first, his face was as joyful as any Landen had ever seen.

  * * *

  When the berzerkers died, the fight went out of the rest of those still standing, and the remaining five Islandmen and the priest of Braech were taken as sullen prisoners. In truth, the priest, a young man with a downy beard who’d never taken his mace from his belt, seemed entirely dazed by what had happened, and allowed himself to be led away mutely.

  Shortly after the fight was safely over, the gates of the Dunes rattled open and a detachment of a dozen horsemen rode out, splendid in bright armor and gleaming green surcoats.

  Landen found herself staring at the sharp steel tips at the end of the
ir twelve-foot-long ashwood lances, and grew angrier and angrier, but she willed the fury down into a tight, hot ball, let it feed her words and actions, but slowly.

  She ignored the lancers and the streaming pennants as she sought out Chaddin, Sanglais, and Ivar. The latter was staring hard at the spear-pricked corpse of the Holy Berzerker. She spat a stream of bloody saliva out of the side of her mouth. “Mighty high butcher’s bill in a fight wi’ odds three t’one t’us,” she said, probing experimentally at her jaw with one finger, wincing faintly as she pressed one spot over and over.

  “Aye,” Landen agreed. “How many did we lose, Chaddin?”

  “Eight,” her brother answered wearily. Chaddin was holding one arm awkwardly against his side, but seemed otherwise unhurt.

  Sanglais’s white surcoat was spattered with crisscrossing lines of blood. “A dozen dead, at least. And many wounded. That berzerker…” He shook his head slowly, eyes in an unfocused stare. “I had heard tales. Seen them at a distance. Never close, never in a fight.”

  “You,” Landen said, raising the sword she’d pulled free from the first berzerker’s body at the dazed priest. “What is your name and what was your purpose here?”

  “Hissop,” the priest sputtered, his eyes suddenly drawn to a focus by the bloodstained sword pointed at his chest. “Hissop. I did not mean to give battle, m’lady, only to seek out your purpose.” His voice quavered and he raised his hands. “The Scales. They wouldn’t listen. T’wasn’t me, m’lady.”

  Landen’s sword hand twitched. She longed to bury the blade in the tall, blond-bearded fool in front of her, but she steadied herself. “They wouldn’t listen to a priest of Braech?”

  “They are hard to control, m’lady. I tried to bend my will upon them. It was like trying to make a rope fast to a wave. It wasn’t possible.”

  “Who sent them to you in the first place?”

  “The Choiron Sy—”

  “Symod. Where is he?”

  The man shook his head, his skin growing more pallid. “I don’t know.”

  Landen raised his sword again. “Answer me!”

  As the priest was shaking his head, Landen felt certain she would run him through, until Chaddin stepped to her side and pressed one hand to the flat of her blade, gently pushing it towards the ground. “No, m’lady. Not in the street.” Chaddin flicked his eyes and Landen followed them; a crowd was gathering once more, gawping at the bodies and the wounded.

  “You are correct, Lord Magistrate,” Landen muttered. She sheathed her sword, heedless of the blood that coated it, and grabbed the priest’s arm in her fist, swung the man roughly around.

  The troop of lancers had wheeled smartly, ranks gleaming under the risen sun. Landen finally read the sigil on their tabards, lances crossed behind the familiar tower. Baron’s Own.

  That they seemed to be reporting to her was a good sign, she thought.

  “Captain!”

  The first man in line, seated on a tall bay warhorse, cantered it forward, snapping the wood of his lance pole against his breastplate in salute. “Detail men to take the remaining enemies to the dungeon,” she said, “and to arrange for the street to be cleared, our wounded to be taken to the chirurgeons. Then you report back to me.”

  Another salute, an “Aye, m’lady” muffled by his helm, and the man rode back to his line, barking orders. One of the riders dashed away towards the gate, with the balance smartly surrounding the remaining Islandmen and Hissop.

  Landen and Chaddin had pulled themselves wearily back into their saddles by the time the lancer captain rejoined them.

  Steeling her face and working hard to keep her voice calm despite the anger she felt, Landen stole another look at the lance. At the foot of steel it was capped with.

  “Why did it take so long to ride out, Captain?” Landen’s tone was more clipped than she intended.

  “Had to wait for orders to raise the gate, m’lady.”

  “And who was giving those orders?”

  “Sir Kelten had command of the gate, m’lord, as given by the Castellan Lord Sundegar.”

  “I am not familiar with Sir Kelten.”

  “He was but lately knighted, m’lady, by his cousin Sir Leoben, before leaving in command of the Salt Spears.”

  “Bring Sir Kelten to me. In the Great Hall.”

  By now their horses were carrying them through the gates and into the safety inside the walls. Landen felt herself relax, felt muscles begin to unclench. But she forced herself to think of the carnage on the street just beyond the keep, and the anger knotted up again.

  * * *

  Landen hadn’t bothered to shed her armor, except to remove helm and gauntlets, when she strode into the Great Hall and walked straight up to the seat. She didn’t stop to take in the trophies: the banners of defeated lords, the prized Purple Mare of the former Barony Tarynth, or the Gravekmir skull that hung directly above the seat.

  With Chaddin at her side, she walked straight to the chair, turned, drew her sword, and sat with a heavy clank. Servants, courtiers, knights, and clerks all rushed in her wake, whispering and murmuring to each other.

  Silence fell over them like a wave as she sat.

  “I am Landen Delondeur,” she said, voice raspy, one ear still ringing. “Fifteenth of my line. Lady of Barony Delondeur. If anyone would contest this, come forward now. For those of you who would swear fealty, take a knee.”

  Chaddin, standing at the foot of the dais on which the chair sat, was the first to sink to one knee.

  The assembled men quickly did the same. Landen stood, descended the stairs, and reached down to take Chaddin by the shoulders and pull him to his feet.

  “My half-brother Chaddin, natural son of Baron Lionel Delondeur, I name my full brother, my heir until I continue our line, and Lord Magistrate of Barony Delondeur.” She paused to let that sink in, saw more than one raised head, more than one curious look. “There are going to be changes,” she added slowly, finding a pair of upraised eyes and staring hard until they dropped. “We have not the time for individual oaths, but know that we are marking every person in this room. You have sworn your fealty to me on your knees. Loyalty, honesty, and courage I will reward. Now,” she added, as she ascended back to the seat and sank gratefully into it, “someone fetch my brother a seat. And bring forward any clergy of Braech within the keep.”

  As Landen settled into her chair she surveyed the crowd that had gathered. Her eye was drawn to a young man, clean shaven, fair-headed, dashingly dressed with a uselessly thin-looking mail shirt polished to a high sheen, a slender sword worn on his hip, a silver spur ringing melodically on one boot, and a half-cloak of crushed red silk hanging over one shoulder.

  “You,” she said, raising one hand to point at the youth, “what is your name?”

  “Sir Kelten, my lady.” Though the youth had a slight frame, the voice that issued from it was strong, proud, and clear. “I had command of the gate this morning,” he went on, striding forward—strutting, really, Landen thought—and dramatically bowing. “I sent forth a squadron of the Baron’s Own to secure your safety, m’lady.”

  Landen sighed and sat back, flicked her eyes away as a pair of liveried servants hustled into the hall with a chair. Though not so large nor as ornate as the one she sat upon, the wood was well-worked, and showed the gleaming patina of years of polished care. They set it at the foot of the dais, placing Chaddin a span or so below her in height; her half-brother sat carefully, his back blade-straight, awkwardly managing the sword at his side.

  “There are three things wrong with what you have just said,” Landen spoke up, as she turned her eyes back towards Kelten. She thought, for a moment, of the intensity with which Allystaire Coldbourne had looked at her when trying to impart some message or, as he often did, imply a threat. Stillbright, she reminded herself.

  Landen doubted her ability to replicate
the force of the paladin’s gaze, but she had years of training and generations of Baronial breeding behind her eyes, and she narrowed them, tilted her head slightly. “First, it was not a squadron, it was a troop. No man is fit to command who does not know such basic terms. Second, it was not my safety that you secured with your orders, but the death of my men by your lack of haste.”

  As Landen spoke, the young knight’s face grew paler. He licked his lips, blinked, but remained silent.

  “Lastly, Kelten, you are no knight. I strip you of that rank and all of its attendant privilege until you prove yourself worthy of it.”

  A collective gasp went up in the room, followed by the silence of the crowd holding its breath. Chaddin looked back over his shoulder warily. Landen gritted her teeth to keep her chin firm and her eyes locked on Kelten’s.

  Finally, the fop spoke up, hand falling dramatically to his sword. “My lady! You cannot—”

  “Do not presume to tell me what I cannot do, Kelten.” Landen twisted the name, making obvious the honorific it lacked. “Whether cowardice, game-playing, or simply incompetence, had the Baron’s Own ridden forth the instant our path was blocked, lives could’ve been saved. Instead they were thrown away while you did what, tested the air with a wet finger to learn the direction of the wind?”

  Kelten drew himself up to his full height, which was not terribly impressive. “I am no coward, my lady. And my patron, Sir Leoben, will take it ill that you would disregard his judgment so recklessly.”

  “Do you see Sir Leoben here?”

  “I take it he returned in your train,” Kelten answered, though hesitantly.

  “Sir Leoben died outside the walls of Thornhurst, engaging in my father’s last and most monstrous folly,” Landen said.

  “Then I demand the right to seek satisfaction against the man who killed him. Tell me who it was.”

  Landen looked to Chaddin. “Lord Magistrate, can you help the young man direct his ire?”