“How do you propose we do this, Master?” Tyndal asked, wide-eyed in terror.
“I don’t know,” I said, shaking my head. “Start at the ankles and work up?”
The creature’s head was six feet in the air over mine, his beady little eyes flashing in rage. I knew there was a brain somewhere up there, but it wasn’t going to be easy to get to. Nor was he being a cooperative target – he proved able to maneuver with blinding speed, as he took two steps to the left and batted the head clean off of one of our infantryman from Tudry.
“Uh . . . I’m open to suggestions,” I said, suddenly wishing I hadn’t wasted the bone-breaking spell on the goblins. In retrospect Mavone could have figured something out, and it really would have come in handy now. At least to break his shins and get his head somewhere we could strike it. He was wearing a jousting shield like a breast plate and if he had a neck he was hiding it, so a head shot was about the only thing that might take him out. And I was out of prepared offensive spells.
Just then a squadron of heavy infantry approached us at a jog and slid into defensive positions around us with practiced ease, shields raised, spears out. Orphans, of course. I’d been continuously impressed with how well they fought, especially compared to the levies from Tudry. I was even more surprised to see Bold Angus, their captain, leading them.
He took off his helmet and nodded a salute, then peered up at the rampaging troll. A few brave spearmen were trying to pin him down, but their shafts were no match for that club. You just can’t parry a tree trunk.
“Troll, eh?” he asked, matter-of-factly.
“Yeah, we were just discussing the best approach. I was thinking a paralysis spell, see if we can slow him down. Then maybe if we can surround him with spearmen—”
“Not with those bloody goblins protecting his flanks!” pointed out Delman, who arrived breathlessly, his blade stained with blood and hair. “There’s more coming, and another bloody troll, too!”
Tyndal groaned in despair. I took a deep breath. “Tyndal, you remember that wand you used back at Boval? The one that was over-charged?” He nodded. “I’ve got an idea. If we use a depleted warwand, and each of us—”
“How long is that going to take, Marshal?” Captain Asgus asked, nonchalantly.
I shrugged. “A few minutes. I’m sure he’s not going anyplace.”
He shrugged back. “That seems like an awful long time. And I have a pressing engagement elsewhere. So why don’t I just take care of him now, and move on?” Without waiting for an answer, he gave a couple of curt orders to his men as he dropped his shield and traded it for two short-hafted axes one of his men carried around in a bag of weapons. Before I could even formulate a witty response he was prepared. He nodded, and two of his men crouched, their own shields overlapping to form a crude but effective ramp.
Asgus didn’t even take a breath, he just started running, yelling, and launched himself up the ramp, an axe in each hand, until he was in the air at eye level to the troll – who was clearly not expecting the attack. Hell, neither was I.
I watched in fascination as Asgus swung both of his axes at the same time at the perfect moment of his downward arc. Both blades bit deeply into the forehead of the monster and there was a loud “click!” as they met somewhere within his brain. The troll’s forehead exploded in blood and hair and greasy brown brains, but Asgus wasn’t quite done. He planted his feet on the monster’s chest and rode his body down as it realized it was dead and fell. He ended the masterful move by decapitating a pair of gurvani who had been in his way, before dismounting the massive corpse.
“Or, we could do that,” I muttered to myself.
“Hope you don’t mind, Marshal,” Asgus called over his broad shoulders as he took a defensive stance against another knot of goblins, his men hurrying to cover him. “I just thought it might be more expedient to just kill him, instead of spending all day figuring out how.” He grinned broadly. “No extra charge!”
“There had better not be!” I shot back. “Trolls were in your contract!” I looked around for the next wave. I didn’t have to wait long.
I don’t know how long we struggled in the darkness, trying to cover as much territory as possible and push what was left of the goblin army back against the escarpment. But while we were enjoying some modest success, the cavalry to the west was getting hammered, I learned from a psionic dispatch from Penny.
Azar’s trying to hold them together, but a bunch of trolls is throwing rocks at them, big ones, and that’s spooking the horses. Apparently Lenguin wants to attack in force with cavalry, but Azar is maintaining the hold as ordered. Lenguin is mad about that. He thinks that his household guard could defeat the trolls. Azar thinks they’re just trying to lure them into a trap.
I’m with Azar on that, I agreed, when I had a moment to think. Let him know I support him. The last thing we need is a headstrong Duke leading a cavalry charge against trolls in the dark.
I’ll tell him, she assured me, and was gone. I hacked a couple more goblins apart as they broke through the front lines before she came back. Problem, Min.
What?
Lenguin is insisting. He’s forming up three hundred cavalry and plans on gallantly charging with lances. His Lord Marshal is egging him on, too.
Gods damn it! I swore in my head. I told that son of a whore no!
That’s the problem with Dukes, she quipped. They think they run the place.
You tell Azar to keep Lenguin in check – that’s a direct order! Getting harassed by rocks might be annoying, but shifting the lines and exposing your flank to the gurvani is a lot more annoying. And deadly.
Another pause, and the warmagi and I rallied for a brief but furious assault on a score of goblins who seemed to appear out of nowhere. Tyndal took a savage cut to his forearm in that skirmish, and it might have gone badly if I wasn’t there to mitigate it magically.
Min! Penny’s mental voice said, screeching with alarm. Lenguin says you should stop giving him orders in his own Duchy. He’s going to charge!
“Damn it!” I swore out loud. The moment he does, he’s going to get creamed!
That’s what Azar keeps telling him! He isn’t listening!
I surveyed the field around me, where small groups of infantry danced and dueled with goblins under shifting magelights. They didn’t really need me here. I caught three or four warmagi by eye and gathered them to me in a corner of the battlefield no one else was currently using.
“Let’s pack up, gentlemen,” I said with a sigh. “We need to go keep someone important from doing something stupid. And it may already be too late.”
Chapter Forty:
Timberwatch, Equinox Night
By the time we got there, it was indeed too late.
It’s not that we dawdled. I collected every spare warmagi around me, gathered a bodyguard of Orphans and summoned a dozen mounts from the light cavalry used to pass messages from headquarters to forward command in the conventional way. That should have made things go more quickly, but as we tried to thread our way through the devastated battlefield in the near blackness of night, every step forward became an exercise in treachery. Twice we were ambushed by goblins hugging the shadows. We let the Orphans deal with them – the warmagi were already exhausted with our efforts, and the night had just begun.
It took more than an hour, therefore, for my little team to finally get to the rear of the western cavalry. They had advanced to the base of the western causeway, but the constant sniping from above and the hit-and-run attacks in the dark had taken their toll. The problem was that while wrecking the causeway had kept large numbers of goblins from advance or retreating, the gurvani had lowered ropes and gotten enough infiltrators down the slope to keep our cavalry irritated.
The trolls were the worst of the foe. They didn’t seem to have any problem lowering themselves down the escarpment, and once they made it to the bottom they became instant rallying points for their smaller cousins. There were a lot of shamans who had
made it, too, and our heavy horse had borne up under near-constant irritation from the dark priests of the Dead God. Azar and Landrik and the other magi who had attached themselves to the cavalry were doing an admiral job with defensive magic.
But around two hours after dusk, a troop of a half-dozen trolls and a couple of hundred goblin skirmishers had begun tossing rocks the size of two-pound loaves into their midst in an effort to lure them out. A few hotheads did just that – mostly younger squires and men-at-arms who wanted to gain favor under the eyes of the Duke.
The goblins would wait for a squadron to go charging off into the darkness, then they would throw those weighted tangling ropes at the feet of the destriers and bring them down, hard. If the ropes missed, then the trolls would lumber out and smash the knights with large iron rings in their hands. One punch could snap a mount’s neck.
That kind of skirmishing had been going on – and increasing in intensity – while I was playing around with fire. While both armies had been entranced by the pyrotechnics, the goblins had kept up their nuisance tactics until one of their rocks dashed out the brains of Count Loso, a personal friend of the Duke’s, and that’s when things got complicated.
Lenguin ordered his troops to attack the trolls who lurked in the shadows. When Azar and Horka, my two senior warmagi, objected to breaking with the battle plan, the Duke ended up pulling rank. Observers claim that he was just bored of sitting around in armor in the middle of the night while others were fighting, and had delusions of striking a decisive blow. His reasoning was that the sudden appearance of the might and majesty of the Duke of Alshar in the midst of the enemy would strike a mortal terror in them.
He was forgetting, of course, that the goblins and trolls he faced would have a hard time being impressed by a thin man in pretty armor after being in the presence of the Dead God.
Azar cursed and cajoled and stormed against the idea. Horka silently glowered and fingered his mageblade and tried to look menacing. Landrik stood on his dignity and the responsibility of a soldier to follow orders. But none of that mattered to Lenguin. Just before midnight, as the waxing moon was cresting the mountains in the west, Lenguin led a thousand of his horse out into the night against the trolls. Most of them, the cream of the Alshari Wilderlands, would never see the sun rise.
We arrived on the scene just after the trolls and goblins launched their counter-attack. Their strategy had been to separate the horse squadrons into smaller and smaller groups, and slow them down as much as possible. Heavy cavalry are one of the deadliest troops in war, but only if they stay in formation and can gain sufficient speed. At night, in broken country against an uncertain enemy – and with abysmally poor leadership – getting split up into easy-to-swallow pieces destroyed what tactical advantage the Alshari had. They were massacred in a dozen small skirmishes, where their lances and swords were little use against ropes, hooks, and trolls.
I watched in horror with magesight as we galloped into the night as a troll nearly fourteen feet tall smashed the face of a massive warhorse and killed the poor beast on the spot. The mount rolled on his rider, pinning his leg, and while he had managed to draw his sword and hack futilely at the troll from his prone position, that didn’t stop the monster from reaching out with one mighty claw, grasping the knight’s helmet in his palm, and plucking it from his shoulders, head and all, like a boy might pick an apple.
I was saved from having to figure out how to fight the troll when he took a lance in the eye from a particularly skillful charge by the lone knight left in the skirmish. The man had drawn his sword and delivered a slice across the troll’s broad back while his destrier stomped goblins into the dirt. A hail of arrows from the Orphans who accompanied us finished the rest of the enemies, and we were able to add the knight (Sir Festelan the Brave, a landless Alshari who was fishing for a fief somewhere) to our rescue party.
He was the last Alshari we saw alive for a while. Or the last human, period. We did come across plenty of bodies, though, bodies smashed to a bloody pulp and stripped of their valuables. We found plenty of goblins, too, but we expected that. The Alshari Wilderlords might have been stupid, but they weren’t cowards, and they were very good at fighting, even on foot. And every now and then a couple of stragglers would pop up and one of us would burn them down where they stood. It’s not so easy to sneak up on someone when they can use magesight to see in the dark.
“Which way, Marshal?” asked Master Cormaran, as he began making passes in the air that helped invoke a map of the battle. It was bound to the great diorama, so it was as accurate as it possibly could be. “It looks as if there are pockets here, here . . . here and here,” he pronounced, thoughtfully. “Lenguin – or what’s left of him – could be in the middle of any of them.”
“Bide,” I said, and contacted Azar directly. When Lenguin took off on his fool errand, what was he aiming for?
He mentioned wanting to breakfast on that largest howe, to the east, southeast, the one with the three elms on it. But he could have gone off to Duin’s dungheap, for all I know. He’s about as piss-poor a commander as I’ve ever seen – and I’ve seen some real winners.
What he lacks in command abilities he makes up for in pure arrogance, I observed. But if we don’t rescue him, then we’re looking at a dowager duchess ruling Alshar for the foreseeable future. And Her Grace makes His Grace look like a beacon of reason and wisdom.
You make a compelling point, Azar agreed. Tell you what: my lads have this post in hand, why don’t I come east with a team while you come from the south, and we’ll meet somewhere in the middle.
Are you sure you can be spared?
Nothing is going to happen here until the infantry withdraws from the center, and that will be hours from now. And the hard part is over – the rest is just straightforward cavalry tactics that not even this lot could muck up.
Then bring whom you can spare . . . but I want at least one High Mage present with the cavalry.
I’ll make Horka do it. He’s been getting on my nerves for the last few hours.
Just don’t make him sulky. You know how he gets.
Well, I won’t be here to see him sulk, now will I? See you presently.
“We’ll head for that cluster of them, near to that string of hillocks,” I said. “Azar says he was heading in that direction, originally. It’s as good a place to start as any.”
“It’s also the largest group,” Cormaran pointed out.
“All the better,” Mavone said with a wicked chuckle, fingering the blade of that dagger of his.
We proceeded north cautiously, picking up two more stragglers along the way. One was the ashen-faced Sire Geston of Grimly Wood, his armor rent and his head bleeding under his chainmail coif. He didn’t look nearly as lordly, now. Apparently Sire Geston had seen a troll up close, which was a lot different from stomping nasty goblins to death on the back of a horse. The troll had killed the rest of his party, but Sire Geston had been knocked unconscious and left for dead. We found him wandering, dazed, holding onto his two-handed axe for dear life.
Not long after we came across an dismounted squire who had been separated from his household, half-frightened out of his wits and far more verbally grateful than Sire Geston had been about his rescue. He pointed us in the direction he last saw the Duke’s household riding, and we followed a trail until we heard sounds of battle. I had Mavone scout ahead for us – he had picked up a fair amount of shadowmagic while haunting the Duke at court with Lady Isily, and he had already a profound knowledge of being sneaky. He came back ten minutes after he set out.
“There are thirty or forty knights at the top of a rise,” he reported, softly, after padding out in a black cloak by foot and returning so stealthily he sidestepped our pickets. “Most of their mounts are dead, but I saw Lenguin’s personal banner still flying, so it’s probably him. They’re holding a couple of trolls and two hundred or so goblins at bay by holding sway at a tight point, but they’re not going to last long with that many damned s
crugs pawing at them. And Min . . . they aren’t skirmishers. They’re eunuchs, armored and armed with swords and spears and halberds.”
“Bide,” I said, and contacted Azar. I think we found them. Two rises to the west of that big howe. They’re holding out on top of it, but they’re getting hammered. How far are you from here?
We’re to the north and a little west of there, now, he replied. I’ve got Landrik and two dozen Megelini knights with me. I explained what we were facing, and he agreed to hit the troop moments after we did. They wouldn’t be expecting a sudden attack on their flank while facing Lenguin’s gallant armored fools. And they damned sure wouldn’t be expecting two attacks on their flank. Even with trolls, they were going to have problems.
“Master Cormaran, you, Delman and Mavone prepare to discomfit our enemies with confusion and panic spells, and don’t spare the power. Tyndal, Astyral and Curmor drew swords and joined me in a more direct attack with our Orphans and stragglers. Even dumpy old Sire Geston looked determined and brave as he drew his sword and followed us in assaulting the rear of the goblin band. He hefted his greatsword and plunged after the rest of us as we charged, making noise far in excess of our numbers. Cormaran’s spells went off just before we hit, so that our little attack set off a panic that soon led to chaos, as the goblins turned to face us.
Mavone was right – these weren’t skirmishers. These were medium infantry, almost as tall as humans and well-armed with crude but effective steel weapons. And they knew how to use them. Far from charging in and sweeping the heads off of the first half-dozen, I ended up dueling mageblade-to-axe with a determined gurvan with a helmet shaped like a fox’s head. It took me almost two minutes to eventually wound him enough to make him fall back. Meanwhile, Tyndal had taken out four of the foe. Embarrassing.
“Trolls to the right!” called Sire Geston, gruffly. To his credit he didn’t run, and steadfastly backed up the squire and Cormaran as they prepared to meet the beast. The squire had picked up a fallen spear and was keeping the troll at bay – barely – while Geston took broad swipes at it with his greatsword. That was to keep him busy while Cormaran found the spell he was looking for, had the time to cast it, and blasted a hole in the monster’s massive face.
The Spellmonger Series: Book 02 - Warmage Page 72
