by David Welch
Fergoth picked her up, crushing her against his chest in a bear hug. She sobbed uncontrollably into his shoulder as the Vale warriors dispersed through the camp. They found the other missing girl, barely a woman, in a nearby tent. When Angot brought her out, she was motionless; alive but dead silent. She’d fared little better than Maros, with bruises covering most of her lithe body.
Kilthern and Taloth drew near, watching as the warriors went about recovering whatever else the vermin had stolen. A good amount of the dried meat was regained and piled near the center of the camp.
Gunnar saw Angot ride to the far edge of the camp, near the river, and followed. The Cold Serpent survivors waited on a ridge beyond, looking angry and defiant despite the recent reversal. They had been slightly outnumbered when the battle began, now they faced three-to-one odds should they try anything. Their leader seemed particularly bold. He was a tall man in a broad-brimmed hat with a triangular peak. He pointed a spear at Maros, where she sat in Fergoth’s arms. He hooted, shouting something in a strange language, then made thrusting motions with his hips. With a laugh, he and his men turned and rode towards the bluffs that lined the river’s far side.
Angot turned to Gunnar.
“Westerner, I think I want to kill those men,” he said, his voice even and cold.
“Seamot wanted a message sent to their fellow raiders,” Gunnar reminded him.
“You only need one man to do that,” Angot remarked.
“Yes,” Gunnar agreed, nodding. “That’s true.”
“Mount up! Kilthern, Taloth, Verthot, you stay here with Fergoth! Secure this camp and all they took from us. Everyone else, with me!”
The warriors sparked to life, jumping on horses and taking off after their leader. Gunnar darted back to where Kamith held Thief’s reins near the edge of the camp, watching it all from horseback. He got on his horse and stared into her eyes for a long moment, trying not to imagine it had been her in one of those tents. A strong flush of rage ran through him at the thought. Forcing himself to take several deep breaths, his heart began to slow. He hadn’t realized it had been racing.
A war cry went up, and they rode, falling in at the rear of the party. Hooves thundered and splashed as twenty-three people stormed across the shallow waters of the river and onto the opposite shore. Their foe had already ascended the far bluffs through a small gap where a steep, but not impassible, slope worked its way back up to the plains. Gunnar worried momentarily about ambush as he approached, but he saw nobody awaiting them up top. With so few trees, it was impossible for them to be up there and remain unseen. The Vale warriors funneled through, ascending the short rise in a matter of heartbeats.
They were on to the plains again. Ahead, several hundred yards distant, the Cold Serpents shouted and cried. They spun around in shock, then turned again and pushed their horses into a sprint.
“They’re heading east!” Angot cried, almost joyously. Several loud cheers went up from his men. Gunnar was confused but said nothing. “Form a crescent! Herd them to the jump!” Angot bellowed. He turned to Gunnar. “Westerner, you and your woman are in the center, with me. We may have need of your sword and shield again!”
Gunnar nodded and pushed on. With practiced skill, the Vale warriors stretched out on each side of their commander, those on the end riding a bit forward of the others, creating a large crescent of warriors and horseflesh. Then, at a cry from Angot, the riders tore forwards. Gunnar spurred Thief on, pushing his horse to the limit. Beside him, Kamith caterwauled as she rode, her hair whipping back behind her. She looked glorious, galloping across the plains with a bow in one hand and reins in the other.
For tense moments, both sides sprinted on, their mounts straining and sweating as they ran. Gunnar feared for a moment, thinking. They’d ridden the horses hard getting to the Cold Serpent camp, whereas the enemy’s horses had been picketed and fresh. He had no close familiarity with the types of horses the Vale People bred, but good sense seemed to dictate that their own horses would tire before their foe’s mounts.
Then their enemy, still many hundred yards ahead, pulled to a sudden stop. Gunnar’s eyes grew wide in shock. He had no idea why they had suddenly halted. They couldn’t be crazy enough to want to fight. A battle of arrows, on open terrain, when outnumbered and demoralized? Crazy! Even the dumbest warchief wouldn’t subject their men to that. Not only that, but the way ahead of them seemed clear. Gunnar could see no hills, nothing. Why—
Then it came together in his mind. No hills, no land of any kind, not even a horizon. Behind them, he saw nothing. That’s what Angot had meant when he said ‘jump’; a damned bison jump. The Cold Serpents stood on the edge of a ledge; the kind that people across the Great Grass used to stampede frightened bison to their death. Should the Cold Serpents keep going, they’d fall to their deaths, and their remains would be left to rot amongst the thousands of bison bones undoubtedly piled up at the base. They were trapped.
Angot’s men thundered in, the crescent sweeping wide, surrounding the Cold Serpents. A few tried to ride north, along the cliff edge, but arrows turned them back. They retreated back to their fellows, forming a short line. The horns of the crescent reached the cliff edge, sealing them in.
“Clever,” Gunnar said as he pulled up next to Angot.
“They trespass on our lands, but they do not know them,” Angot declared. “They will undoubtedly try to charge me. It’s what I would do. Kill the leader and disorient your enemy, buy yourself enough time to escape. And even with only nine people, it stands a good chance of working.”
“So you’d like me to put the steel to any who get too close,” Gunnar figured.
“I have heard that warriors of the Langal kingdoms are trained to brawl on horseback as well as they do on foot,” Angot explained. “I am hoping that is true.”
“Yeah,” Gunnar said, pulling his sword. “It’s true.” He turned back to Kamith. “Cover my back?”
She nodded, an arrow nocked and ready.
Gunnar turned back towards the trapped riders. They were talking amongst themselves in their own language, building towards something.
“The short one on the far left, leave him alive. Kill the rest,” Angot shouted.
The face of the Cold Serpent leader darkened at the words. He shouted defiantly, and a roar went up. The Cold Serpents charged.
Arrows struck from three sides. Before Gunnar could register what was happening, four of the enemy were dead and on the ground, along with their horses. The remaining Cold Serpents closed the short distance quickly, barreling in on Angot and Gunnar. All five of them had at least one arrow in them, their horses equally shot, but they kept up. The leader led the charge, an arrow sticking out from one hip. He held a spear ready. Angot pulled a lance.
“Yah!” Angot cried, charging the man.
An arrow shot from Kamith’s bow, piercing the leader’s neck. Moments later, Angot’s lance ripped through his chest, unhorsing him. As this happened, Gunnar charged into the fray. Pulling to the right of the ruckus, he deflected a spear as it stabbed forwards, flinging it away with an upward stroke of his sword. He brought the sword back down hard, but momentum had carried him past his attacker. Instead, the blade cut into the flanks of the horse, sinking deep. The animal brayed and collapsed, hurling the man to the ground. Before he could react, the hooves of one of his fellows came down on him, smashing his body as the animal circled to face Gunnar.
Gunnar leapt in close, before the mounted man could line up his spear for a thrust. Their mounts bashed against each other, flank-to-flank, trapping their legs between them. Gunnar punched with his sword, smashing the man’s face with the guard. The rider lolled back, disoriented, and Gunnar stabbed him, plunging his sword into the man’s gut.
As he did so, the edge of a spear raked his shoulder, sliding against the chain-mail. With a shudder, he realized that, had he not lunged forwards to kill the previous foe, the spear would’ve plunged straight into his chest. He reared back in the saddle, shi
fting his left arm so that the shield on it covered his side. The spear came again, driving into the hard oak of the shield, doing little. The attacker roared angrily, pulling back to stab again. As he did, Gunnar put the spurs to Thief. The horse muscled out of the scrum, breaking free. Gunnar was in the clear now and circled behind the man. Angot circled in front of him. They had him trapped between them.
Gunnar noticed one man on the ground nearby, standing, but alive. Sure enough, it was the short man Angot had picked out. Three Vale warriors had knocked arrows pointed at him.
“You want him, Westerner?” Angot asked, drawing Gunnar’s attention back to the last armed Cold Serpent. The man, already wounded from an arrow to his back, shifted painfully to keep an eye on both of them.
“I am just here to help. You are the one sending a message to your foes. The honor should be yours,” Gunnar replied.
“You sure, westerner? He did nearly stab you,” Angot said, mocking the doomed man.
“I insist—”
The swish of an arrow interrupted him. The Cold Serpent pitched backwards, an arrow through his eye. Gunnar and Angot both turned to see Kamith lowering her bow. She shrugged. Around her, the Vale warriors laughed and cheered. Angot smiled and shook his head.
“Hard to do better than a woman of the Great Grass, eh?” he said.
“Impossible to do better,” Gunnar agreed. Kamith beamed proudly.
Angot sighed audibly then turned to the surviving Cold Serpent. The man looked both terrified and pained. An arrow transfixed his left arm, not far below the elbow. Angot rode up to the man, pulling his lance and pointing it at the man’s throat.
“Walk to whatever of your filth remain and tell them of what happened here,” Angot said coolly. The Cold Serpent nodded, a defeated expression on his face. “And do not ever return,” Angot continued, then motioned towards Kamith. “Because, as you can plainly see, even our women are too much for your kind.”
Gunnar rolled his eyes but said nothing. The survivor just nodded and then started limping northwards. With a shout, Angot turned and headed back for the river, the war party in close pursuit.
***
They ended up staying a week, taking some time to relax before the long sun began to fade and harvest season began. The Vale People didn’t really farm, so they had no harvest, but that was still how Gunnar thought of the cooling months before winter.
They rode east to avoid any more Cold Serpents and to reach a ‘large town’ the Vale People had spoken of. Four days brisk ride and they would be there.
“I’m going to teach you how to fight,” he said as they rode through the evening.
“Oh?” Kamith asked. “I thought I did pretty well.”
“You did. I mean how to fight hand-to-hand,” he said.
“Like you?”
“Like me,” Gunnar said. “Great as you were, if you’d fallen off your horse and had to fight them up close, all you’d have had is that knife you carry. Time to find you a sword.”
“Against a man, up close, would it matter?” she asked.
“Not gonna lie, you’ll never match the power of a man, but most men with swords and axes don’t know shit about their weapons; they just hack and slash blindly with all their strength behind it, especially out here. A little skill goes a long way against people like those Cold Serpent bastards.”
She shifted nervously in her saddle.
“I saw the look in your eyes, Gunnar, when we rescued Maros. With what the ‘bull’ tried to do… I know why you want this.”
“Yeah, well, it’s a dangerous life we live, so…”
She nodded her understanding.
“I suppose you still want to learn how to shoot from horseback,” she replied.
“Yes,” he said. “Figure if I’m out here on the plains, I should probably know how to fight like the locals.”
“A soldier of the Kingdoms, deigning to fight like wild men?” she questioned, smiling.
“Yeah, well, I got a wild woman to keep up with,” he said, cracking a slight smile.
“Yes,” she replied, “you do.”
Her ankles dug in and Dash leapt forwards, sprinting out ahead of him. Kamith caterwauled triumphantly as she tore through the wind. Gunnar urged Thief onwards, his glum mood fading with each second of the chase.
Harlonth
“By the Gods Above,” Kamith said, staring down the bluff before them.
Gunnar rode up beside his lover. What the Vale People had described as four days’ ride at a brisk pace had turned out to be seven at a moderate gait. Yet there, about two hundred feet below them, rested the town of Harlonth, as promised.
A river, the Slow Trade River, meandered its way across the plains at the bottom of the bluff. Oxbow lakes flanked the snaking flow on both sides. The town of Harlonth had been built in a clover-shaped stretch of land that lay between the river and one of these oxbow lakes. Great mounds of earth had been built up around the town, pushing up against the lake and river shores. Ten feet high and thirty wide, they served a double purpose of providing defense and holding back floodwaters. Sharpened stakes stuck out from the earthen wall, there to impede and impale any attackers. Atop the berm rose a fifteen-foot stockade made of large logs sunk vertically into the berm. The tops of these logs had been sharpened into points. Though he could not see it, Gunnar knew a fighting platform collared the inside of the palisade. He could see the chests and heads of guards as they walked along the palisade. There weren’t many, only a half-dozen, but he figured that if danger reared its head, dozens of archers, javeliniers, and warriors would appear on the wall to protect the town.
The oxbow lake nearly connected to the river in two places. In both spots, only one-hundred-foot-wide spits of land connected the clover-shaped town to the surrounding plains. There, small breaks in the berm appeared, where large wooden gates rose to give entrance to the town. Tall, wooden towers flanked each side of the wooden gate, protruding twenty feet above the berm, higher than even the earthen wall. These were manned, each with a pair of archers. Even from across the river, Gunnar could see the curves of their bows. Near each gate, a free-standing third tower rose twenty feet from the ground, also manned. He’d seen more elaborate fortifications amongst the Langal kingdoms and their enemies, but out here, this was enough; an effective death trap for anybody who approached the town with bad intentions. Both spits of land fell within bowshot of any defender on the wall, and rows of obstacles lined the paths in. You’d either need to starve the town out or bring in siege engines; the type the semi-nomadic tribes of the Great Grasslands did not possess. Gunnar wasn’t surprised the surrounding tribes had remembered this little town as being here since time immemorial. It was unique amongst the near endless expanse of grass surrounding it in all directions.
“I did not know people could build like this,” Kamith declared, her eyes wide with awe.
“Don’t be too impressed,” said Gunnar, hating to dim his lover’s amazement. “The people in there are no better or worse than those out on the plains.”
The town itself was not nearly as impressive as its defenses. Two-story wood buildings rose from the flat land beneath, all with steep roofs to shunt off winter snow. Some had windows, a few made up of small panes of glass. Most were open to the air, with hinged shutters for when harsh weather came. Many small signs hung before the doorways of the homes, though he couldn’t make out the symbols from this distance. A large marketplace dominated the center of the city. It backed up to the largest building in the town; a great hall twice as tall as the others. Massive boards, twice as tall as a man, made up its walls. Large logs buttressed the upper floors. The great hall was clearly the center of the town, where the headman, whatever he called himself, would be living. Gunnar paused, looking up and down the valley that the Slow Trade River had carved from the surrounding grasslands. Small lines of trees clung near the shores, giving shelter to the squarish fields of corn and wheat that lined the river’s course for miles in both directions.
But the small patches of wood weren’t enough to have built this town. Lumber must have been brought in at great expense to make Harlonth.
Money was what the town had. For two weeks’ ride in every direction, tribes spoke of this town as the place for trade. They rode in every year to trade bison pelts and meat, along with the few crops they managed to grow on the dry grasslands, for metal and weapons and luxurious trinkets from far lands. From the north, goods and metals arrived, by canoe and bateau, from distant northern forests and mountains. They all came here, people and goods, and the locals made a fortune from it.
He and Kamith were here for the same reason as everybody else; they needed goods. Specifically, they needed weapons – Kamith in particular. Like all of her people, she’d grown up on the horse, able to fire a bow while riding since the age of ten. But, up close, she was nearly helpless, having only a long knife to protect her. He needed to get her some sort of sword or axe or hammer. Maybe a spear, too, and some chain-mail, which would probably be the priciest part of the bill. Since she was a woman, it would have to be made from scratch and tailored to her size. He wanted to see if he could increase his own protection as well, and he needed another bow. Kamith’s skill with the weapon had convinced him to give his bow to her, but he still wanted to know how to fire a bow from horseback, so he needed to buy another. They’d probably also need a third horse, since their trusted pair, Dash and Thief, were already loaded down with the gear they had. All the new acquisitions would be too much for them.
All told, he looked to spend a good deal of money. He had it; before fleeing the army of Harmon, he’d robbed his lord and made off with enough gold for two lifetimes. Kamith was worth spending it on. He didn’t like to think of Kamith as vulnerable, especially since her bow had taken down several men already, but the truth of it was undeniable. As a woman, she stood at a disadvantage. Weapons, armor, and training would reduce that risk. She’d never have the strength of a man, but with enough skill she would certainly be able to take them down and protect herself. He hoped.
