Marlyn took his bow with trembling hands, ready to fire an arrow, but fumbled, dropping his ammunition to the floor. Daveth was beside him, calmer, weapon already aimed.
He let fly, but their foe leant to one side, almost casually, the arrow brushing past and clattering harmlessly off the wall behind him.
The Khrda chuckled.
“Too slow.”
Like lightning he grabbed a small metal star from his waist and brought his leather-clad arm up, sending the weapon flying unerringly towards them.
Daveth, ever cocky, leant to one side in the manner of the Khrda, the star just nicking him on the neck, barely drawing even a bead of blood.
“Hah!” He gloated. “Seems like you’re… too slow… as…”
“Daveth!”
His legs went from under him as he fell to the floor, shuddering violently in the midst of some horrific seizure and Marlyn dropped to his side, bow cast away despite the danger, helpless horror wracking his face as he held his friend.
Finally he lay still, foam flecking the edge of his mouth, eyes lifeless and staring.
Tears streamed from Marlyn’s face as the impossibility of the situation failed to register in his head.
Daveth.
His friend since he could remember. They’d done everything together.
And now he was gone. One tiny nick, not even a shaving cut.
He looked up, face a mask of confusion and loss, to the Khrda who still stood, watching the moment with interest.
“Venomberry,” shrugged the Khrda by way of explanation and Marlyn felt a burning rage rising up inside him at the nonchalance of the man’s words. The loss of his friend’s life, so young, his whole journey still left to walk, a woman to find and marry, children to raise. All of it meant nothing to this stranger who had so casually taken it all away.
Marlyn roared as he surged to his feet, hand finding the hilt of his guard-issue short sword.
“You will pay for this!”
The Khrda’s eyes shone with amusement through his leather mask.
“Not by your hand, whelp.”
“No, by mine.”
A firm hand shoved Marlyn aside and the stern form of Sergeant Poland limped past, sabre in hand.
The Khrda laughed, the tone sibilant and mocking, ludicrously out of place amidst the sounds of slaughter and dying.
“Oh yes, for what a stripling can’t handle, surely a cripple can.”
The old man smiled, humourlessly.
“You mean this?” He pointed to his weak leg. “That’s nothing. I could beat an insolent brat like you with one arm, never mind one leg.”
The assassin roared and charged, dagger in each hand.
A shower of sparks as Poland deflected the flurry of blows with expert parries, before slowly forcing his foe backwards, step by step, the speed and strength of his ripostes and the reach of his weapon taking the Khrda by surprise.
The assassin, seeing that he’d underestimated his foe, span low, one leg kicking out to sweep his opponent off balance, but the veteran sergeant saw it coming, raising his foot to avoid the trip, bringing his fist round in an arc to connect with the Khrda’s masked face as he came back up.
The fist connected with the crack of a broken nose and the assassin fell backwards in an effort to keep his distance.
A brief pause in the combat, as the Khrda wiped the blood from his face.
Poland stood, proud and resolute, sabre-arm held out straight ahead despite the burning in his aged chest, the acid in his fatiguing limbs.
His opponent smiled, seeing the strain the pace of the fight was placing on the silver-haired warrior.
“I can go on like this all day, old man.”
The Sergeant smiled back, lowering his sword.
“Not today.”
The assassin frowned in confusion, before the creak of wood and cord caused him to freeze. He turned, slowly, to find the point of a strung arrow between his eyes.
“This is for Daveth, you bastard.”
The Khrda’s corpse fell to the ground with a thud and Marlyn looked up at his sergeant with a smile of grim triumph, but it soon evaporated.
Poland turned and backed away, closer to his recruit, sword arm now held, once more, in a defensive stance.
The Khrdas approached, slowly, from a rampart strewn with gore.
Of the brave defenders, there were none left. The only casualty amongst the enemy, that of the lone assassin cornered by Marlyn and his sergeant.
Poland’s voice was hushed and urgent as he glanced sidelong at his guardsman.
“The door behind us,” he hissed. “To the Gatehouse. Tell them to fall back, to tell the Lord what he faces.”
“But…”
“The walls are lost, but go now and the Keep may hold, leastways for a while.”
Marlyn gaped, his mouth opening and closing like his namesake, but the sergeant brooked no argument.
“Go, I’ll hold them off while you make a break for it.”
Marlyn nodded, before stammering a quick “Good luck, sir.”
He turned and bolted for the thick, iron-banded door.
The shrill whistle of poisoned throwing stars chased him, but the ting of metal on metal told him that his sergeant had dashed them from the air with his sabre, saving his young life yet again.
With one last look at his brave commander, the recruit slammed the heavy door shut, bolting it fast from the inside.
***
Memphias walked forwards, ignoring the sergeant who stood with his sword raised, his attention instead on the fallen Khrda that lay on the cool stone floor, a steady trickle of blood flowing free from the arrow that stuck out, almost comically, from between his eyes.
“Lando,” he spoke quietly, not out of grief but merely interest.
The Khrda had been young, cocksure and reckless. No great loss.
He turned back to the guardsman that stood watching, unwilling to give up, for he knew he wouldn’t be spared, but also unwilling to rush headlong to his fate.
“Quite the skill you must have, to hold your own against poor Lando like that. I would have been interested to see the outcome had your young friend not been there to aid you.”
The sergeant didn’t deign to respond.
Memphias’ eyes narrowed as he took in the details of the old man’s face.
“I know you…” he told the man, his voice low as he wracked his memory. “Didn’t you approach us? Why, it must have been thirty years ago…”
“It was,” nodded the veteran. “I can see I’ve not aged as well as you.”
The Khrda laughed.
“Why did we refuse you, remind me? You must have been quite swordsman in your youth.”
The sergeant patted his leg.
“Ah. Well that’s too bad. To be a Khrda is to pursue perfection in the art of killing. Anything that holds you back from that, be it a gammy leg, or,” he gestured at the corpse of his fallen soldier, “be it overconfidence, means you can never rank with the best of us.”
The Tuladorian sergeant raised an eyebrow.
“Aye? And you have none of these disadvantages, I presume? You have achieved perfection?”
Memphias smiled.
“Indeed.”
“Hmph. Now that’s overconfidence.”
Memphias laughed, holding his black-gloved hands out to his side to show that he was wielding no weapons.
“Please, try me.”
The sergeant needed no encouragement, seizing the opportunity to charge the man, hoping to extract at least some vengeance from his predicament.
His silver sabre flashed out, left, right, weaving a web of death that only a skilled duellist equally armed could hope to survive, but the Khrda simply leaned, this way, that way, his feet shuffling as though in some ballroom dance of the Merchant Coast, evading every stroke as though he saw it coming a mile off.
Finally, Memphias grew bored with the play, disappointed with himself for letting things drag on so long,
catching the blade of the sword between his spiked vambraces and snapping it in two, before punching the sergeant in the stomach, causing him to buckle over, then grasping the man about the throat in a headlock, the cruel barbs of his armour pricking his throat and causing tiny beads of blood to well up.
“You did your duty bravely,” he told the struggling man, “but this is where it ends. Just think, if not for that leg of yours, you might have been on the winning side today. Ah well, we cannot choose the hand that’s dealt us, eh sarge?”
The grizzled man struggled on his knees, knowing his time was done, choosing his last words carefully.
“There are only two types of sarge…”
The Khrdas never got to find out what they were.
***
Bounding down the stone stairs two at a time, Marlyn burst into the guardroom next to the gatehouse, gazing about in abject disbelief at the men he saw lounging, oiling their weapons.
An officer, Sergeant Ranclif, if he remembered right, glanced over at the trooper as he struggled to regain his breath, a hand of cards kept close to his chest.
“Hah! Poland sent you for a glass-hammer, trooper?”
The gathered guardsmen chuckled at their sergeant’s words, before Marlyn exploded, causing them to start.
“Are you… are you all mad?” he gasped in genuine exasperation.
The sergeant rose, to his feet, laying his cards down, forgotten on the table. It was a losing hand, anyway.
“Best have a good reason for that little outburst, recruit…”
Marlyn stalked up to him, face serious.
“We’re under attack! The walls are lost!”
The sergeant frowned, suspicious as the men began to mutter amongst themselves, gathering weapons in readiness.
“Attack? We heard no alarm…”
The youth went to retort, then paused, thinking. There hadn’t been an alarm; they’d been cut down too fast to raise it.
“I know, we were overrun too quickly.”
“How?” The sergeant asked, his patience running thin, fast thinking this trooper to be mad.
“Khrdas!”
The guardsmen gasped, even the sergeant’s eyes widening at the statement.
“You are sure of this?”
He drew near to Marlyn, eyes serious. The youth nodded, the desperation in his eyes revealing the truth of his words.
The sergeant bit his lip, mind racing, before turning to his men.
“They can come down two ways; the staircase from each wall leading down into this guardroom,” he pointed out of the window to the other side of the portcullised gatehouse, “and the other guardroom.” He turned back to Marlyn. “You bolted the door behind you?”
A nod.
“And the other side?”
Marlyn thought furiously, back to the bloodfest of minutes before, then shook his head.
“Shit.” The sergeant roared to his men, “To arms! Cross the gatehouse, defend the door; Khrdas or not, they can only come down that staircase one at a time.” He hefted a bow. “And they shall find death waiting to greet them.”
He turned to run with his men, but Marlyn’s hand on his shoulder stopped him.
“My orders were to warn the Lord and seal the Keep!”
The sergeant nodded.
“Do it, lad. The portcullis is yet raised, for the outer doors are sealed. Cross the courtyard, find Lieutenant Hofsted and explain the situation. Go!”
The soldier went to run, pausing for an instant, as he looked up at the Sergeant.
“Don’t let their weapons touch you. They’re poisoned; one scratch is death.”
The officer nodded in thanks and charged out the door, crossing the gatehouse entrance, strewn with straw and horse muck and flying up the stairs into the guardroom on the other side. Marlyn came out too, longing to join the soldiers that lay in readiness by the staircase door, wishing he could extract some vengeance for his fallen friend and sergeant, but he had other duties.
He turned left, away from the thick, impenetrable doors of the gatehouse and ran, underneath the heavy iron portcullis, flying across the stone-flagged courtyard in the direction of the keep.
***
Ranclif crouched in the silence of the dim guardroom along with the twenty troopers under his command. The air was thick and heavy with tension, the smell of sweat and fear, as all eyes were on the door that led down from the right hand wall of the citadel.
Their bows were not yet taut, for the strain of holding a nocked arrow for any time was tiring and none of these warriors wanted to be fatigued when the enemy showed their face, trusting instead to their instincts and training to allow them the first shot.
And Ranclif, in turn, trusted his men.
A minute passed since the youth who’d warned them had fled to the Keep. Then two, still no sound of approaching foes breaking the strained silence.
The sergeant frowned, not doubting the sincerity of the threat, for he’d witnessed the horror in the trooper’s eyes, but wondering where the enemy was and what was taking them. Come to think of it, he thought, how did they get to the walls in the first place? None of the tell-tale rumbling of siege towers had shook the ground, nor could ladders reach across the yawning chasm of the moat.
They had no wings, that he had heard of. Short of climbing, there was no…
His eyes widened in horror as the thought struck him like a slap to the cheek, even as the screeching sound of spiked vambraces scraping down the inner wall of the courtyard squealed through him with a shiver.
“Men! Turn, run for the Keep! We are outflanked!”
The twenty warriors took heed of the urgency in his voice and flew into action, filing out the door and making to break from the shelter of the gatehouse and into the bright sunlit courtyard, but before they could even get ten paces, a black figure dashed away and into the courtyard, leaving broken chains in his stead, the heavy spiked portcullis coming screeching down from thirty feet up.
Most of the troopers stopped, loosing arrows after the receding figure, but one sprinted at full pelt in an effort to roll under the descending gate.
Half of him made it to the courtyard.
With a resounding clang of metal on stone, the heavy iron grid blocked their path, sealing them like rats caught in a trap of their own devising, the lone figure pinned, groaning in hushed agony through lungs pierced with rusted black iron.
From the bright sunlight outside, a figure coalesced, dark and menacing.
Ranclif gave a gulp as he recognised the white hair and cold eyes from tales told in the night to scare young children into going to bed.
Memphias.
The Khrda spoke through the square gaps in the portcullis, his voice calm and polite with only a hint of condescension.
“Guardsmen, you have done your duty to your Lord. But your duty to your King demands that you surrender. Return to your guardroom and rest; we will return later and, should you co-operate, you will be allowed to continue your service under whatever new master your King sees fit to appoint as replacement to your traitorous Arbistrath.”
His only reply was the streaking, invisible point of an arrow, aimed impeccably at his face, but his hand moved in an impossible blur, snatching the missile from the air and holding it fast.
Ranclif lowered his bow with a gormless look of disbelief, as the Khrda turned away with a grunt, dropping the arrow and began to march across the courtyard, stopping for an instant to issue a single order to his men.
“Burn them.”
The guardsmen shuffled backwards in fear as two Khrdas came forward from the pack, each hefting black ceramic containers emblazoned with etchings of flames. They hurled them, the flasks shattering against the portcullis and spraying their contents far and wide, the clear, reeking liquid soaking the straw-covered floor of gatehouse and the unfortunate man who still lay, impaled, before spontaneously combusting, the wave of heat washing over the troopers and rippling the air.
Through the smoke a
nd chemical fumes that stung their eyes, the troopers fought their way to the winding mechanism for the front gates, all the while trying desperately to ignore the agonising screams of their trapped comrade.
With grunts of exertion, they heaved on the windlass with all their might, spurred on by the advancing flames that tore their way through the dry straw of the floor. Slowly, the heavy front gates began to part, allowing the cooling rush of fresh air to blast through. They didn’t wait for the doors to fully open, for they were only men and the gates were designed for horse and cart, instead squeezing their way out as soon as the gap allowed, standing and blinking in the sudden brightness of the causeway.
Ranclif stood, hands on knees, his fevered lungs drawing in great gulps of cool, fresh air, as his body shuddered with relief after its near-death experience.
Slowly, his eyes grew accustomed to the sunlit stone and he frowned, in puzzlement, at the figure that stood on the causeway in front of them.
The man was tall, dazzling both in sheen and looks, with long, windswept hair and a stone-headed hammer of titanic stature resting head down on the floor by his side.
He flashed them a disarming smile before speaking to them in cheery, youthful tones.
“Going somewhere?”
His smile morphed, in an instant, into a savage snarl, his face contorting into a death mask of unbridled bloodlust as he charged the nineteen startled men, his hammer whirling an arc of death as he cackled in manic glee.
***
“Khrdas?”
Lord Arbistrath shivered in barely suppressed fear at the very sound of the word. This was not what he’d let himself in for. This was not what he had wanted. His father had been an honourable man, doing what was right by his people, even it was in contradiction to the King’s wishes. Arbistrath had tried to live by that example. As a lone child, with few friends of his own age, and no wife, he had done his best to fight down his own haughty, proud nature and win the respect of his people.
But now the Khrdas had been loosed and there was only ever one outcome.
“Rise.”
The youth got to his feet. He was broad with the meaty forearms that came with wielding the pitchfork and scythe, but not as tall as Arbistrath. His smooth skin and youthful demeanour told the Lord that he was not much younger than him, maybe nineteen summers compared to Arbistrath’s twenty four.
The Fall to Power (The Graeme Stone Saga) Page 5
