Norbert? Gideon’s voice sounded in Allystaire’s head.
Taken, Allystaire replied, gritting his teeth.
Torvul’s voice intruded. That’s worse than dead.
I KNOW.
Allystaire wasn’t sure how he shouted without using his voice, but he managed it. There was silence in his mind, and only the sounds of the wind and of horse’s hooves pounding at the turf while the landscape blurred past him. He felt his destrier rein himself in. At full gallop the huge grey would’ve left the other horses behind him just by the length of his stride. Brown and green Varsyhne countryside turned into one continuous smudge around him. He strained his senses inwardly. He still heard the notes of the Mother’s song. He hefted his hammer and found it as light as a flower. That the strength was still upon him was not reassuring.
After a few moments, Tibult managed to urge his charger to Ardent’s side. “We’re going to have to stop and rest them soon,” the knight yelled, “or they’ll be in no condition to fight.”
“We will press on, Tibult,” Allystaire yelled back. “The lives of too many depend on it. Between me and Torvul we will do what we must to keep them alive, but we will not slow!”
Allystaire, Gideon said, I could go ahead of us. I could destroy the Gravekmir. Some, at least. Perhaps all.
How dire is it?
I will tell you.
* * *
Gideon slumped forward in his saddle again as his Will worked itself free of his body; a portion remained of course, enough to animate the functions of life, to breathe and pump blood. Yet the bulk of himself, and the vastness of the power he commanded, came with his mind.
He swept low over the ground, trading the panorama view for speed, imagining himself as a huge owl winging for its prey. Gideon saw the Gravek, tall shapes looming before him, fifty if there was one. But smaller figures ran amongst them as well. Smaller than true giants, but larger still than any man, even the Dragon Scales.
Graveklings, apparently leading their larger, wilder kin into the fray.
He had no time to study them closely, had only the impression of fierce faces with sloping brows, of limbs wrapped in reeking hides and skin that was tough as boiled leather. The Gravekmir carried rocks or huge clubs, there being no weapons large enough to truly suit their stature, but the Graveklings wore armor and carried longaxes or spears
Gideon thought he saw one of the smaller giantkin wearing the blue scales and dragon pendant of a priest of Braech, but he wasn’t certain and he passed too quickly to know.
He put an extra burst into his flight and found Arontis arranging the soldiers and knights in a line three ranks deep beneath their many banners, too many for such a small host.
In the center stood the Bear’s Paw over compact lines of scale-armored axemen. To either side the red-surcoated Thornriders stood, their horses being taken behind a hill by grooms sprinting with reins in hand. They held lances awkwardly, and from a distance Gideon could feel their unease. Mingled among them were knights in many colors, beneath the other banners: the Fox, the Mailed Fist, the Tower, the Vined Great Helm. He found the Damarind Manticore borne up by the only knot of figures still mounted, black-clad, lightly armored.
Gideon! He felt Allystaire’s voice weakly as the Arm tentatively reached out to him, the distance almost too great for his Will to stretch. Tell them not to be stable. No lines. A circle, if they must, but take the initiative.
He climbed higher to gain perspective. Gideon did not have to gain too great a height to see the problem Allystaire’s words indicated. Along a line, with no walls and no way to build them, they couldn’t hope to protect their flanks from foes that were three or sometimes four times their height, with proportionate reach and stride.
Arontis. For a moment, when Gideon saw a red surcoated figure beneath him clutch at his head and fall to a knee, he feared that his contact had been far too strong, but then he saw the Baron stand, waving away offers of help from men nearby.
Allystaire says not to form a line. Don’t be stable, he says, take the initiative. If you’re forced to fall back, form a circle, but no lines.
He saw Arontis nod, and begin waving and shouting orders, pushing through the crowd to find Unseldt Harlach, whose great mane of white hair and stature made him easy to spot from Gideon’s vantage.
Allystaire, they have only moments! He climbed into the air again and wheeled away, turning back towards the onrushing giants. You will not reach them in time, even if you do kill your horses. I have to try and delay them.
He rushed forward, once again envisioning himself as some great bird of prey. But then his wings lengthened and curved outwards, their tips growing razor sharp.
You must save your strength, Gideon. What of the Eldest?
The Eldest fears me, as well he should, Gideon replied as he gathered speed. You told me I would know when I needed to use my Gifts, Allystaire. I need to use them now.
He heard Allystaire voice some further protest, but did not listen. Gideon envisioned once more the flaming giant, the burnished golden titan he had first become back in a newly-plowed field outside Thornhurst.
He was the Will of the Mother; what he imagined became true, or as true as he needed it to be. The more real it became, the more of his power it cost him, but what did he have his power for if not this?
He needed a weapon. Something with length to it. A whip came to his hand, its long coils the same color as the rest of him.
He waited as the line approached, then snapped the whip out across the necks of a handful.
When Gideon’s weapon struck them, they fell in boneless heaps. They did not bleed or show wounds, they simply collapsed to the ground, tumbling against each other, sending others dropping.
Gideon realized that he had not killed them, not by dealing wounds to their flesh. He had simply ripped what animated them from their physical selves.
He had, he realized in some horror, ripped their souls from their bodies.
From these suddenly-free essences, he felt confusion, fear, panic, outright terror. They hadn’t known what they were fighting for, or whom, or why; they had been gathered from their warrens, their mountains, their caves beneath lakes of ice, and told that the glory of the Sea Dragon demanded them.
True, deep within, many harbored anger, resentment over the small men of the walls, or even their smaller kin, but it wasn’t deep enough to become hatred, to ignite them into a crusade. They barely worshipped Braech, but they feared his power, feared the symbols of it.
And because a mad priest and a Braechsworn berzerker had cowed them in ones and twos, they’d come boiling forth onto the mud plains of Varshyne to fight.
Even as Gideon digested all of this, the forces he had parted from their bodies, six of them, ceased their panicked, insensate wailing, and vanished. He looked for signs of their passage, but even he could find none.
GIDEON! Allystaire’s voice was loud in his mind again, what have you done?
I took action, he answered weakly even as he willed himself back, at the speed of thought, to his own body.
He sat back up in his saddle, bouncing on the back of the palfrey at the fullest gallop it could manage. A cold knot was forming in his stomach and working its way to his throat.
What did you do, boy? Even Torvul’s mental voice sounded labored. His animal was lathered and inevitably slowing.
The same thing I did to the Braechsworn back in Thornhurst. I thought.
Discuss it later. Allystaire’s mental command had the force of a blow. We are moments away. He held up his hand and pulled Ardent to a halt.
Alone among the animals, the paladin’s destrier seemed ready to continue their mad pace, and he slowed only reluctantly. All around him, the men of the Order slid from the saddles of spent mounts, themselves exhausted. Most gasped for breath.
Tibult slid right from his sadd
le to lift his horse’s hooves carefully, tenderly. The rest shamefacedly followed his lead, as Allystaire went from animal to animal, extending his left hand to their lathered necks. “Torvul,” he called, “get them fast again.”
Tibult glared up at Allystaire from where he squatted next to his bay, shook his head, but said nothing.
Harrys cleared his throat, spat into the grass. “What happened to gettin’ to the fight fast?”
“They can hold for a moment,” Allystaire replied. “They must.” Torvul was moving among the horses with a wide bucket full of water mixed with one of his tinctures. “We will ride as soon as the animals have had what the Wit has prepared for them. And so will we.”
Torvul gave Allystaire a sharp look, but whatever expression he found on the paladin’s face seemed to cow him, at least a little. He nodded lightly and reached to the side of his belt, pulling free the skin and tossing it to Allystaire.
* * *
“Freezing Gods,” a Thornrider next to Arontis gasped, as the line of giants hove into view. A ripple of fear and awe went through his little square of men. The soldiers had given up on the long, thin line under Allystaire’s orders, and broken into four blocks, preparing to charge. Arontis had planted their banners on a nearby hillock, and yelled orders he hoped the men had heard—to rally there in a circle if things broke badly.
Not far away, he could hear Unseldt Harlach bellowing. “Wait till the last moment, lads, then move inside the arc of their club! Don’t stand and wait, scatter if they throw!”
The Gravek had no organization, but they needed none. There was a huge gap in one half of their line, if that’s what it could be called, Arontis noticed, lacking the time to ponder it. Their running feet were a thunder rolling out in shockwaves upon the ground. Their hoarse yells, in a language no man there spoke, were a gale of fear.
He shifted his feet and hefted his lance. The Gravekmir were less than a hundred paces now. The stench of the poorly-cured hides they wore wafted on the breeze, souring his mouth. Some carried heavy rocks in both hands, while others hefted clubs. The Gravekling that ran at their sides or in front, that exhorted them onward, carried iron, and wore it, too. Squinting, Arontis thought he saw that one of them wore the blue scales of the priests.
Arontis had learned all his life that horses needed special training to fight Gravekmir without panicking, that without it, fighting giants from horseback was hopeless. Made a man a bigger target, he’d heard, or made it easier for the giants, with their curiously small eyes set under their sloping brows, to see you, or simply that their hunger for horseflesh made them mad fighters against men in the saddle.
He told himself all this and more, but as the giants closed, Arontis found himself wishing for nothing more than to be astride Gardener.
Unless it’s for a hundred longbowmen, he thought.
He looked from side to side at the columns on his flanks: Landen’s and Unseldt’s. The latter waved his axe and Arontis could barely hear him yell, “Till the last moment! Till the last moment!”
Likewise Arontis raised his lance, hefting it like a spear and leaning forward very slightly, trying to keep his body weight behind the steel at the tip of the nine-foot long pole of ash in his hand. It made an awkward spear, but it would have to serve.
Mother, he thought haltingly, if you are with us this day, please know that we also are trying to serve, no matter how ill-suited we may be.
He didn’t finish the thought, because he saw the Harlach column break and charge, roaring and lifting their axes. As they ran they separated into clusters of a few men each.
Arontis screamed, lifted his lance, and broke into a run. He felt the weight and the sound of the men behind him doing the same, their lances raised upwards towards the Gravekmir’s unarmored legs and bellies.
Some part of his mind wanted nothing more than to throw down the heavy, unwieldy wood and turn and run, but he pressed on towards the lumbering, towering, stinking masses. To his right, Landen’s column, two Gravekmir raised and threw their huge stones. Arontis heard the screams of men whose feet were too slow, or whose luck was too poor.
He felt and heard the sweep of a massive club passing over his head. He stabbed upward almost blindly, his helm too big to allow him to lift his head and follow the aim of his lance’s steel tip. Even so he felt the resistance of the lance sinking into something, heard a massive roar. The club descended again, smashing into men around him, breaking bodies and sending great clods of earth into the air. Arontis twisted his lance and bent his body against it; it split apart with a loud crack, showered his helm with splinters, and left its last three feet of length dangling from where the point was imbedded in the giant’s stomach.
Arontis barely had time to rip his sword from the sheath on his hip and begin swinging huge two-handed cuts against the giant’s leg, when something bowled into him from behind. He sprawled out upon the ground, looking up at a Gravekmir as it died. Two other lances besides his were imbedded in it and the huge brute had dropped its club, using its massive hands to try and pull the lances free. When it did, blood only gushed more freely and it began to sink to one side.
He had more immediate problems, though, than that the dying giant might fall upon him, for a Gravekling stood over him with axe and shield, raising the former to end him with one great blow.
Arontis rolled to the side and heard the axe hit the ground. He sprang to his feet, brought his sword in a wide, sweeping cut against the Gravekling’s shield. He brought his sword in a wide, sweeping cut against the Gravekling, who intercepted it with its shield.
Arontis Innadan was a tall man, the tallest of his line in living memory, a head over six feet, but the Giantkin he faced was more than a pace higher yet. Even as a part of him marveled at the size of his opponent, Arontis wasted no time attacking. He swung his sword again, in a tighter arc, stepping forward into the blows.
His father had been an indifferent swordsman, a better leader than he had been a fighter. But Arontis had grown up a second son enthralled by stories of the great knights of story and song. Sir Parthalian. Reddyn the Redoutable. But especially Arentenius and the Argent Blade, the sword that would serve only the greatest swordsman living, and could not be lost to theft or coward, only to defeat in single combat.
As a second son, Arontis had grown up believing he needed to excel on the field. That he needed, deep down, to be another Arentenius. He had lived his training with the sword.
A half-trained Gravekling raider with a wooden shield and an iron axe was not ready to face a man in the prime of his life who’d spent that much of himself on becoming a swordsman.
Arontis’s blade had sheared half of the poorly-made shield away and cut into the Gravekling’s arm and one leg before that seemed to dawn upon the foe. The Gravekling tried to throw everything into one last mad swing, raising its axe and stepping forward.
Arontis stepped to one side and drew two feet of edge across the Gravekling’s belly, then pivoted away as it fell to the ground to die.
Whatever hot rush he’d felt as the battle had been joined began quickly freezing over when he took a moment to survey the field. Many Gravekmir were down or dying, perhaps a dozen, but for each one of them were two corpses in Delondeur green or Innadan red or Harlach blue. He caught a glimpse of Damarind riders dashing in, some bending low over their horse’s necks with axes to harry Gravekling, others throwing short javelins at giants that still swung their clubs.
We’ll make a good show of ourselves, Arontis thought, maybe even drive them off. But we’ll be left too weak to make a second fight.
Withdraw to the hill! Go! Arontis knew he was not the only commander hearing the Will’s voice in his head. He raised his voice to scream out the order, saw the banner-bearers on the hillock raising the Baronial flags and waving them, heard other voices take up the call.
“RUN,” a voice boomed out above them, “PUT AS M
UCH DISTANCE BETWEEN YOURSELVES AND THE GIANTS AS YOU CAN!”
Arontis did as he was told, as did all the other members of the Baronial host.
He looked back over his shoulder just in time to see a wall of bright orange flame spring straight up out of the ground, a dividing line between men and giantkin. Some of the Gravekling were too slow diving to either side and their cries of pain echoed in his ears as their clothes ignited.
The flames climbed higher as the Barony men scrambled for the hill. Loaisa Damarind, holding one arm close against her side, slid from her saddle and was directing men into a circle. Most lances were broken, and there were few spears, but they were raising what they had. Those with intact lances were pushed to the front ranks.
The Damarind riders released their horses and put their reins into the hands of the few grooms that had come with them, who led the lathered animals away from the field as fast as they could still run.
By the time Arontis arrived on the hillock along with the remnants of his column of Thornriders, he looked back over the wall of flame and the confused Gravekmir whose heads still towered above it.
Then the fire ceased, disappearing upwards into the air, and a new thunder rent the air. The thunder of horses running madly, dizzyingly fast, and at their head a huge grey bearing a man in the brightest of silver armor.
The paladin put his lance through the belly of a Gravekmir with a thrust that, to Arontis’s eye, should not have cut with the force it did, the way Allystaire raised his arm and angled it upwards. Even so, the steel punched through the back of the giant, bringing viscera and a hunk of the giant’s backbone with it. The huge creature tumbled to the ground and the paladin’s destrier charged straight over the corpse.
Behind him, three other lancers formed a wedge, and they helped clear a path for the rest of his party. Their weapons struck into the legs of the Gravekmir who barred their way, but didn’t hit with the shock or force of Allystaire’s.
The paladin drew his hammer, bearing down on a knot of Gravekling who’d chosen that side of the fire barrier. Among them was the giantkin priest in his blue scale, which drew Allystaire like a beacon drew a ship to harbor.
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