by Phil Tucker
He couldn't take any more. The raw emotion in her eyes was too dangerous. He stepped back, bowed stiffly, then gestured to where Kolgrimr was standing, nodded to Captain Patash, and led the way down to the storerooms, Alasha and her Vothaks beside him.
Alasha moved to the Portal and stopped a short distance in front of it. With far more drama than Tiron thought was needed, she spread her arms and intoned a long supplication to the medusa Thyrrasskia which culminated in her spitting out the Portal's command word.
The Portal's interior flickered and filled with that dark, surging liquid. Tiron didn't hesitate. Others might be impressed by Alasha's theatrics, but not him. Hand on the hilt of his blade, he strode through.
Arriving in Starkadr brought back old memories. How fared the magister? His one regret was missing Audsley's visit. Who would have thought he'd come to count the portly Noussian as one of his few friends? Tiron stalked forward through the mist, stepping over the desiccated corpses, heading toward where a large herd of horses were being held by their attendants. The mounts were nervous, shying and stepping to the side, occasionally throwing back their heads and whinnying in fear.
Starkadr was not made for horses.
Tiron went up to the attendant in the lead and took the reins from his hands. The horse was beautiful, with an arching neck, a long face, and delicate hooves, but a deep chest. She was as black as the Gate through which he knew he was destined to pass, but her eyes were fierce and proud.
"Her name?"
The servant understood that much, and ducked his shaved head. "Jhavasha, ser."
"Jhavasha." He moved in close, murmuring to the mare. Young and filled with fire, she stood at fifteen hands. Built for speed indeed. "You and I are going out to weave legends, Jhavasha. Come – we shall leave ruin and blood in our wake."
He led his horse to the Portal, where Alasha and the Vothaks were awaiting him, their steeds brought to them by attentive servants. Slowly the Hrethings and Agerastians gathered their horses, and soon a mass of stamping feet and determined men was standing behind him. Tiron nodded to Alasha, who once more enacted her ritual and opened the requisite Portal.
Tiron led Jhavasha up to the Portal, but the horse would go no farther. Tiron soothed her, then realized she needed guidance. Leadership. He placed his foot in the stirrup and mounted smoothly. As if that were a signal they had been waiting for, the hundred other soldiers did the same. Gathering the reins in his fist, Tiron dug his heels sharply into Jhavasha's flanks, and she leaped forward, startled, and plunged through the Gate.
An army awaited him on the far side. Some two hundred Agerastian soldiers were sitting astride their horses, lined up ten across, General Pethar mounted at their head, his standard bearer to his side.
The sky was tumultuous, storm clouds scudding in from the west, and a dank wind was blowing in with them, promising rain. The ground was muddy, churned up by hundreds of hooves, but just beyond where they were standing, emerald grass swept down a gentle dale. A dense and dark forest covered the far slope, and a river plashed and cascaded down over lichen-covered rocks to their right.
Ennoia.
Tiron breathed in deeply of the cool air, the scents of moss and loam and imminent rain stirring a deep and primal satisfaction. He was back home, back in his land – the land in which he had fought and bled his entire life.
"Ser Tiron," called General Pethar, urging his horse forward. "Have you your bearings?"
"I do, General." Jhavasha danced in her eagerness to ride. Tiron pulled her head aside, controlling her easily, enjoying her vigor, eager to feel her gallop. "One hour's hard ride to the northeast. I know this land well. Are you ready?"
The general gave him a wolfish grin. "Always, Ser Tiron. Always. Lead on!"
Tiron rose in his stirrups and gazed behind him. The last of Captain Patash's soldiers were riding out of the Portal, which was embedded in the trunk of an ancient and long-dead ironwood tree. He gave them a minute, then raked them all with his eyes. Kolgrimr nodded, as did Patash.
Good. There was nothing left to do but hunt.
Tiron knew that Ser Wyland or his like would have given a stirring speech, would have captured the hearts of these men and set their minds aflame. But that was not his way. Instead, he drew his sword, his family heirloom, and held it high, the blade catching the dull light and gleaming fitfully. Turning Jhavasha, he pointed his blade at the horizon, and with a cry he dug his heels into her flanks. She leaped forward, grateful to finally be allowed to run, and with a roar the hundreds of men behind him came after.
This was what he needed. Release – the exhilaration, the black madness of imminent combat. There were some who came to love this anticipation, who became addicted to the thrill of coming violence. Tiron had thought himself above this vicious addiction, but today, here, as he thundered at the head of the largest host he had ever led into war, he felt it grip him tight by the throat. He welcomed the fire it sent coursing through his veins.
They pounded down the dale, along the stream, around the wood, and on, three hundred mounted warriors with murder on their minds. They passed into the next valley, and then the next, the land swaybacked and humped, the hills old and worn down, the forest hoary and dense. Tiron avoided the roads. He wanted complete surprise. He knew he was close to Otran when they started riding through fields, leaping the low stone walls, sending farmers scattering away from them.
The clouds closed, grew darker. The wind blew fitfully, promising a drowning rain. The colors of the land grew muted, but Tiron found in them a dark beauty that matched his savage mood. He had to fight not to give Jhavasha her head. To pace her, to reserve her strength.
He caught the smell of campfires and the sudden tang of salt water and marshes. Otran was a coastal city, defended by the ocean on one side and brackish mire on the other, connected to the mainland by an arching causeway that rose ten yards over the swamp. The Ennoian forces would be camped in a mass before that causeway, bottling in the Agerastians, deliberating their attack.
Tiron rode over a final rise, and Otran hove into view below. It was a small city, insignificant compared to its military value, its ancient stone walls rising ten yards high, the spaces between the merlons bristling with Agerastian troops. The ocean was hammered slate beyond it, low waves rolling in at all angles, colliding with each other under the whipping of the winds.
And there they were: the Ennoian forces. Tiron felt a surge of exultation. There were more troops than he had anticipated. Perhaps a thousand five hundred, the tents forming a city to rival Otran in size, the cook fires sending up a hundred smudges of smoke into the air, the spaces between the tents churned to mud, filled with camp attendants, dogs, and equipment. Each tent bore its own heraldic flag, the younger sons and brothers of those men who had died during the first Imperial engagement with the Agerastians so many months ago.
The pickets let out a cry of alarm. Tiron laughed – a fell, almost maniacal sound. The poor fools. Yet who could blame them? Why should the Ennoian forces have expected an attack from inland? The sentries had been placed too close to camp, too close to do any good. Tiron raised his blade as Jhavasha began to gallop down the slope toward the enemy, overtaking the first of the pickets as the man leaped onto his horse and dug in his heels.
It was no good.
Tiron rose in his stirrups and leaned out wide, swinging his blade at full gallop. The picket's head sailed free of his body, trailing a gout of blood, and his corpse fell over, dragging the horse down by the reins. Tiron rode on, and now Alasha and her Vothaks caught up and formed behind him, forming the point of the spear they were hurling into the heart of the Ennoian army.
Panic was burgeoning ahead of him. Men were rising from cook fires, scrabbling for their weapons. A hundred yards to go. Sixty. Forty.
Yells, trumpets, and the frenzied banging of drums rose around them, and Tiron realized that he was screaming along with the rest of his soldiers. General Pethar's one hundred were directly behind him, the mo
unted archers falling back, Kolgrimr sweeping out to the right, Patash to the left – three arrowheads striking into the soft underbelly of the army.
Twenty yards to go. A thin line of soldiers had formed up, militia with pikes, men desperately trying to load their crossbows. Tiron guided Jhavasha directly into a crossbow man and with a savage yell rode him down. The man's scream was cut short, and then Tiron was amongst the tents.
His sword flashed down to the left, then down to the right as he sped on, hacking and slicing at soldiers as they strove to collect themselves and to form up, not giving them time. Dogs howled and ran from them, women screamed; soldiers emerged from tents, pulling on their leather, their mail, lifting their shields.
But Tiron was the tip of the spear, and nothing could stop him. On they plunged, Alasha and her Vothaks ready on both sides of him, waiting for the moment of truth.
With a cry he tore free of the camp and hurtled at the sieging army where it was lined up at the mouth of the causeway. Knights were racing for their mounts, only to give it up as a lost cause and turn to face the onslaught with their bastard swords held before them with both hands. Regiments of archers were turning and tangling with each other, sergeants screaming themselves hoarse. Infantrymen were fighting to turn, their neat blocks becoming irregular, collapsing in confusion.
There, at last: a worthy enemy. Thirty heavy knights, cantering into view from the east, crying out in excitement, lances raised, pennants fluttering. Tiron grinned savagely. He knew their thoughts, for they matched his own: At last. Open combat. No more siege. No more waiting. Time for honor, time for combat, time for death!
Tiron rose in his stirrups as Jhavasha, indefatigable, streaked forward. He rode right at the center of the knights, roaring his defiance.
The heavy knights lowered their lances, closed ranks, and broke into a gallop. The dinner-plate-sized hooves of their destriers shook the very earth. They were thirty across, a wall of death in heavy plate, and Tiron laughed as he rode into their center. He held his blade aloft. This was madness, to ride at lances with no plate, no lance of his own, nothing but his family blade and his complete lack of fear.
The world narrowed to a point. There was only a small segment of knights ahead of him, their flanks fading into obscurity. He prepared to bring his sword cutting down from above and to the side, shearing off the point of the lance, then sweeping past it so he could collide with the knight, perhaps to knock him down or burst past him. A slim hope, next to impossible, but Tiron didn't care.
Let me die here. Let me die here and now!
Black fire split the world. A sheet of terrifying energy crackled out and sliced through the knights as if they were clad in spider webs instead of plate. They toppled from their mounts, their destriers screaming in pain and fear, their line broken.
"No!" Tiron howled his fury, turning to glare at where the Vothaks were unleashing hell. "No! They are mine! Mine!"
More black fire, more havoc, and then Tiron was through the ruined line of the enemy, his heart in his throat, robbed, his fate stolen. He screamed again, could hear the sounds of war behind him, the sound of three hundred men falling upon almost two thousand in surprise – the massacre, the clash of blade, the ring of shields, the screams and curses and pleas and sobs.
From the back of their host the Agerastian trumpets played, plangent and filling the air: the call for aid, the summons for reinforcements. Up ahead, at the far end of the causeway, Tiron saw the portcullis begin to rise. He buried his fury and despair and wrenched Jhavasha to the left, leading her and the Vothaks away from the marsh toward which they were hurling themselves and into the flank of a square of pike men, standing front and center at the end of the causeway.
Black fire spat out once more, and the pike men screamed and collapsed, smoking and sheared into pieces. Tiron rode into their midst, swinging down on all sides, thrusting and hacking, Jhavasha rising up and lashing out with her hooves. Tiron wanted to leap down, to wade into combat where it was thickest, to discard his sword and grip the heads of the enemy and bury his thumbs into their eyes, to kill them from a distance of inches, to embrace them all and welcome every sword point and arrowhead as it buried itself into his body in turn.
But he couldn't. Not yet. He had sworn to Iskra that he would rescue Roddick.
So he wheeled Jhavasha around and waited in the bloody wreckage of the pike square, and when the Agerastian army poured forth from Otran, he swung his sword in a great loop through the air, the pre-arranged signal, and the trumpet calls blared forth the retreat.
Breath burning in his throat, Tiron dug his heels into Jhavasha's flanks again and raced back, directing her so they would skirt the camp and gallop right past it and back into the Ennoian hinterlands.
Arrows darkened the skies and fell whistling around him, thudding into the loam. A Vothak screamed and fell. An arrow punched into Tiron's shoulder and bounced off his mail, knocking him onto the pommel of his saddle, nearly twisting him right off. He held on grimly and then laughed, a sound that caused Alasha, who was riding five yards to his left, to stare at him in horror.
Looking back, Tiron saw the Agerastian army being vomited forth from Otran, riding emaciated horses, the men wrapped in old bandages, their faces gaunt, their mouths open as they howled like the damned. How many? Three hundred? Five hundred? Not much more than that.
Tiron gritted his teeth. They'd overestimated the number of survivors. They'd hoped for a thousand, were getting half of that. Had the rescue been delayed any longer, who knew if there would have been anybody to ride out at all.
"Kolgrimr!" Tiron's roar was almost lost in the chaos, but the Hrething warrior still heard him and twisted in his saddle. "Retreat!"
He saw that a number of Hrethings had leaped down to fight on foot. Damn! They couldn't wait. Escape now depended purely on speed. The monster that was the Ennoian army was finally fully aroused, and Tiron saw regiments emerging from the camp by the hundreds.
"Kolgrimr, ride!" Tiron dug his heels into Jhavasha's sides once more and burst ahead.
Patash? Where was he? The far side of the camp, the third arrowhead. Tiron rose on his stirrups to see, and an arrow punched into the back of his helm. He saw a flash of white light, then spun and fell. The world darkened as he hit something vast and unyielding. Bright pain burned in his ankle. Where was his sword?
He was buffeted over and over again, slammed about the shoulders and head. Jhavasha was still galloping. His foot was trapped in the stirrup. He was being dragged along the ground. The world spun. She veered around a campfire and Tiron lashed out, tried to clutch at anything, but missed.
A horse rode up beside his. Kolgrimr leaned out, desperate, and snagged Jhavasha's reins. She whinnied and rose up. Kolgrimr tried to bring her under control, but then he let out a jagged cry as an arrow appeared in the center of his back. Reeling, the Hrething released the reins and slashed his blade right through the stirrup.
Tiron fell to the ground, rolled away, sat up and fell over. Yells surrounded him, and he drew his knife by instinct. His vision was swimming, but slowly returning. He heard a wicked hiss of arrows all around and people collapsing in screams.
Tiron took a deep breath, let out a cry of rage, and staggered to his left. His vision focused just in time for him to see a knight come pounding toward him, lance leveled in his direction. Tiron laughed, spread his arms wide, then changed his mind and hurled his knife overhand at the knight. The man flinched his head to the side, the knife missed, but the lance jerked up and Tiron ducked under it just in time to see Patash riding right at him, arm extended.
Tiron hurled himself forward, clasped Patash by the forearm and nearly tore the smaller man from his saddle. Momentum whipped him around, his leg going over the back of the saddle, and then he was on, hugging Patash tight. They raced ahead, around the far flank of the Ennoian camp, the bulk of the Agerastians ahead of them.
"There!" Tiron pointed off to the left, where a charger was standing beside a fallen
knight. Patash nodded, veered, sawed back on the reins. Tiron leaped down and his knees gave way. He fell to all fours, but forced himself back up, breath sawing at his throat. The charger shied back, but Tiron didn't give it a chance – he lunged forward, ankle almost giving out, grabbed the reins, threw them over the horse's head and hauled himself laboriously into the saddle.
Just in time. The Ennoians were galloping toward him, a hundred knights in a broken wave, screaming their outrage and desire for destruction.
"Come on, now," rasped Tiron, leaning forward and digging his heels into the charger's flanks. "Fly!"
It was a true destrier, bred for war: massive and able to carry a man in full plate. Tiron weighed but a fraction of that, so the horse surged forward, huge haunches rising and falling beneath him. It felt like riding atop an avalanche. Patash fled before him, but slowly Tiron pounded up beside him, then overtook him.
The Ennoian camp fell behind, and they struggled to climb up the ridge. The Ennoians were right on their heels, their screams of hatred curdling the air. Come on, thought Tiron. Come on! Now! Now!
Pethar's hundred horse archers appeared at the top of the ridge and unleashed a flight of arrows. The fletched shafts hissed over Tiron and punched into the charging knights. He didn't look back, but the screams were sweet. Another cloud of arrows, a third, a fourth – and then Tiron gained the ridge, the horse archers wheeling around to race away with him, and they were pounding down the far slope.
Tiron kept shooting glances over his shoulder, watching that empty ridge and waiting. It all depended on this now. Either the shock of the surprise attack and their heavy losses would break the enemy's morale, preventing a leader from mustering their counterattack, or they would come boiling over that ridge and give chase, running Tiron's knights down before they reached the Portal.
Hope began to stir in Tiron's chest. Not for himself, but for the thousand men who were riding madly away ahead of him.
Still nothing.
He dared to grin.
