Weight of the Crown

by A. C. Cobble

  When they did find the opening to the square, Ben paused involuntarily. Arrayed in a solid line and blocking the street was a wall of spearmen, the sharp tips of their weapons lowering in unison at the sight of Ben’s force.

  “Now those are tips,” quipped Lloyd.

  No one responded.

  “Like Rhys said,” explained Lloyd. “Tips of the knife because there are two of them… There are a lot of those spears… It’s a joke.”

  “I think we got it,” responded Adrick.

  “Well, no one was laughing,” complained Lloyd.

  Adrick looked at him blankly.

  Rhys slapped the blademaster on the back. “We tried.”

  “There’s no point in waiting,” said Ben, gesturing for Adrick and Rhys to lead the way.

  Their eyes met. Then, their longswords flared to life, Adrick’s burning pale blue, the rogue’s flashing in sparkling silver. Lloyd joined them, taking the middle, the light from their weapons clearly illuminating him.

  “Arrows,” cried Adrick, spinning his sword in front of him and pulsing out light.

  To Ben’s relief, the wall of arrows smacked against an invisible barrier and fell harmlessly. The mages had come to their aid. From such a distance, in the night, with attacks from the Coalition coming constantly, they hadn’t wanted to count on the support. It came at a critical moment, though, and allowed the swordsmen to begin their charge unmolested.

  Mage-wrought blades shining brilliantly, Rhys and Adrick escorted Lloyd toward the Coalition forces. Ben, Prem, and a screaming horde of soldiers followed close behind.

  The Coalition troops were well-trained and ready. They held their line, spears extended, waiting for the attack. Against normal opponents, they would have skewered scores of Ben’s men before anyone made it through the forest of spears. The destruction to the front line of the charge would be catastrophic, and a stall could lead to slaughter. Ben’s forces were not normal soldiers, though, and they had no intention of being slaughtered.

  Adrick and Rhys twirled their blades in front of them as they hit the line, and spear tips were sheared away by the mage-wrought steel, leaving the defenders holding nothing but short sticks. Short sticks did little to stop the onslaught of steel and muscle.

  Pulsing blue light strobed through the night as Adrick’s blade passed in and out of flesh. Swirling silver smoke spilled over the line of men as Rhys churned his longsword through the first rank of Coalition soldiers. Lloyd stood in between the two long-lived warriors and cut his former countrymen down with elegance and ease.

  Ben stood half a dozen paces behind him, ready to sweep by and begin his own attack, but his three friends shoved the entire Coalition front line back and kept them stumbling in retreat.

  Fear, Ben saw. Unlike the waves of demons which they had faced, men felt fear. The flashing mage-wrought blades, wielded by strong arms with millennia worth of experience and practice, struck fear into the hearts of their opponents. These men weren’t hungry for lifeblood. They weren’t angry and eager. They were just following orders, and that wasn’t enough to keep them glued on the front line against opponents like Adrick Morgan and Rhys.

  Adrick, Rhys, and Lloyd punched into the gut of the Coalition line, scattering them and burrowing a hole right through their center. Ben and Prem followed, striking down anyone who slipped by the first three. The first rank of Coalition soldiers fell back, and Ben’s forces spilled into the gap in the spear line, spreading out, and pushing their way into the square.

  “Not too far!” called Ben to his friends, nervous they’d plunge too deep into the Coalition ranks and find themselves surrounded. They needed to give time for more of their soldiers to pour into the market square and form their own line, which could apply pressure against the Coalition and prevent them from slipping around Ben and his friends.

  Stepping back from the action, Ben began shouting commands to the handful of men he’d selected as captains. They relayed it to their companies as best they could, and step by step, Ben’s forces shoved their way deeper into the market square, a carpet of bodies already underfoot as they hacked and slashed forward. Arrows whistled overhead, and screams filled the air.

  Ben stood in a clear space behind his companions and watched as more men spread out on the flanks. He used his longsword to gesture where they should go, sending them to strengthen his line as it ground ahead.

  The movement slowed as the Coalition forces finally recovered from the initial shock and began to put up serious resistance. In front of Adrick and Rhys, they set a bristling semi-circle of spears, the weapons thrusting and pulling back, the spearmen trying to avoid leaving their weapons exposed where the swordsmen could chop off the tips. When a spearman did lose their weapon, they would retreat, and another would take his place.

  The spearmen couldn’t advance far enough to truly threaten Ben’s friends, but their new tactic was slowing the swordsmen down. They were well-trained, Ben saw, and even with the skill of his blademasters, it would be a close call on which side would win the battle. On the outskirts, the equally matched forces dug in, pounding against each other, both fronts turning into grisly meat grinders.

  Suddenly, a small group of Coalition fighters broke through the line and ran across the blood-slick cobblestones, attempting to come behind Adrick. Ben and Prem leapt forward to engage them. Ben swung high with his longsword, drawing parries from the men. Prem ducked low, sliding underneath the longer weapons and slashing across the Coalition soldier’s bellies, spilling their guts.

  Shouting orders to his captains, Ben fell back. Prem hung by his side, studying the line, looking for any other gaps she could help to fill.

  Over the raging tide of the battle, Ben thought he heard shouts of recognition and surprise. He was growing hopeful their strategy was working. By placing Lloyd in between the lights from the mage-wrought blades, they hoped he would be obvious. All eyes would be fixed on Rhys, Adrick, and Lloyd, but it had been six years since the blademaster had been in Irrefort. It was possible the soldiers wouldn’t recognize him, or have time to send word to Jason if they did. It was a risk they’d thought worth taking.

  Ben yelled encouragement to his captains to push harder. If they could force the Coalition men into the streets, separating them, then they could pursue smaller groups and keep them on the run. If the fighting was on the move or man to man, the swordsmen could gain an advantage. Bunched together tightly, though, the Coalition’s spearmen were able to keep Ben’s men back without risking entanglement.

  Then, the left flank flexed, and Prem shouted a warning. Ben rushed to assist, dodging around the backs of his own men, worming his way to the front. Ahead of him, his line was crumbling, and the Coalition forces were shoving forward.

  Ben frowned. The front line of the Coalition was focused on the battle, but past them, he could see heads turned. They were looking at something behind them that was jostling the front line, forcing those men closer to Ben’s forces. It wasn’t so much that the Coalition was pushing Ben’s men back. It was that Coalition men were being pushing into his soldiers.

  “Hold the line,” barked Ben, finally wiggling past the last of his men. He set his feet and swung wicked strikes at the spears of the Coalition soldiers in front of him. By shattering their weapons, he took them out of the fight, he thought, until one of the spearmen lunged forward and cracked him on the side of the head with the shaft of a broken spear.

  Ben blinked, shaking his head to clear the stars and to silence the ringing bells. Then, he stabbed the man in the face.

  Another spearmen thrust at him and Ben stepped back. All around, the spearmen were being jostled forward from behind. Ben’s troops were cutting them down furiously, but they couldn’t stop the wall of flesh and steel from advancing. The spearmen in front didn’t look any happier about it than Ben as they were forced onto the blades of his men.

  “What’s going on back there!” yelled one of Issen’s men as he hacked down a Coalition soldier beside Ben.
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  “Somethings coming behind them,” called Ben over the din of battle.

  “Pivot, pivot!” screamed a voice deep in the Coalition ranks.

  Sensing an opportunity, Ben jumped across the gap between the two opposing lines and chopped down two Coalition soldiers as they glanced around in confusion. Their line began to turn, and Ben caught a glimpse at what had startled them.

  Coming down a street leading into the square was an unbroken wall of white tunics – Alliance forces, arrayed shoulder to shoulder, holding crossbows.

  They raised their crossbows and fired. A score of bolts punched into the Coalition troops. Then, the first rank of crossbowmen dropped to a knee, reloading their weapons, and revealing another rank behind them. The second rank fired, and another score of the deadly bolts smacked into the Coalition. The second rank knelt, revealing a third group. The third aimed, fired, knelt, and the first rank rose up again. The three groups fired, loaded, and fired again, rank after rank, bolt after bolt, they slaughtered the Coalition troops in front of them with a constant hail of high-velocity crossbow quarrels.

  Caught between Ben’s forces and the rows of crossbowmen, the Coalition’s men began to panic. They were falling back from the crossbowmen, only to find they were held in place by Ben’s swordsmen. They had nowhere to run, no way to get out from in front of the deadly rain of steel.

  Ben watched open-mouthed as soldiers fell by the score. There was nothing they could do, as long as they kept falling back. The crossbowmen had coordination and range. Ben’s men would face the same problem. Another volley of crossbow bolts plunged into the Coalition ranks, and Ben made a snap decision. It was obvious. He spun to find a captain and called for the man to prepare a charge.

  “Right into that?” exclaimed the captain.

  “It’s better than letting them hang back and empty their quivers into us!” declared Ben. “We wait until they fire into the Coalition side. Then we rush them. If we’re fast, they’ll only get one or two volleys fired before we hit their line. Up close, they’ll be helpless.”

  The captain nodded grimly and began forming his men up.

  For now, they were blocked from the crossbowmen by a thin group of Coalition soldiers who were scrambling to find a way out of danger. The confusion on the Coalition side gave Ben’s men the time and space they needed to organize.

  Ben felt a momentary twinge of sympathy for the Coalition troops. He was trying to save them, to prevent the war. These individual men had done no wrong. Their leaders had, but it was the rank and file who were paying for it.

  “Ready, captain?” asked Ben, eyeing the progression in front of them.

  “When you are,” replied the man.

  “Now!” cried Ben as another flight of bolts felled a score of Coalition soldiers.

  His force surged forward, startling the few remaining grey-clad troops between them and the Alliance. Giving up, those men dropped their weapons and fell to the ground or turned and joined Ben’s assault. Ben found himself running next to a Coalition soldier, the man’s eyes bulging with panic, until the snap of firing crossbows filled the air.

  Ben swung his longsword up on instinct, refusing to twist out of the way of a bolt that he could feel coming. He knew if he dodged it, it would impact one of the men behind him. Instead, he caught the wood shaft with the side of his longsword and knocked it down. The Coalition man beside him wasn’t so quick, so able to listen to his intuition, and a steel-tipped bolt exploded through his neck, blasting a trench of flesh and blood.

  Then, they were on the crossbowmen, and Ben swung furiously, cutting the helpless men down. The rank of Alliance crossbowmen behind the first loaded their weapons and raised them to fire, but their aim was fouled by the scrambling men in front of them. The crossbowmen were panicking, and their timing was thrown off. They tried to use their crossbows defensively, but the heavy wooden weapons were no match for sharp steel.

  Without discipline, suitable weapons, and well-executed coordination, the Alliance forces dissolved in front of Ben’s assault. He let his men stream past him, pursuing the crossbowmen down the street, and then shouted to the captain, “Stop after a block and fall back. Don’t get caught down there!”

  The man nodded and raced after his men, yelling for them to slow down, to take their time.

  Ben trotted back into the square, looking for Adrick, Rhys, and Lloyd. The three of them were easy to spot. They had moved forward several dozen paces but were still faced with a wall of Coalition soldiers in front of them.

  From a distance, it was obvious to Ben the strategy was to contain the superior fighters. The Coalition had recognized the three men were the threat, which meant Ben’s plan might be working. Now, they needed to ensure Lord Jason walked into the trap. Ben hurried up behind his friends.

  “Rhys, Adrick, split off and support the men on the flanks,” instructed Ben, pitching his voice so his friends could hear but not the Coalition soldiers nearby. “I’ll stay here with Lloyd and hold the center.”

  “You think Jason is nearby?” questioned Adrick before darting ahead like a swooping bird and taking a Coalition man in the neck.

  “They’re trying to pin you down,” said Ben, holding a ready posture, watching the wall of spearmen in front of them. “Not even Lord Jason may be bold enough to face all three of you. If we split you up, we encourage him to engage.”

  “Be careful,” added Lloyd to the party. “You are both good, but he is unlike anyone you have faced.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Rhys through gritted teeth as he swept a spear away and lashed his blade at the man who wielded it. “If I see him, I’ll send him your way.”

  “Also, keep the men tight,” advised Ben, “and watch out for the Alliance. We just had a scuffle with some of their crossbowmen.”

  “It’s getting interesting,” murmured Adrick, falling back and allowing Ben to take his place.

  “A quarter bell, then we have to retreat,” said Ben. “If we wait too long, they can gather enough men to cut us off.”

  “Got it,” called Adrick.

  Then, he loped off behind the lines toward the left side of the square where Ben had just been facing the Alliance troops. Rhys was gone as well, and Ben found himself side-by-side with Lloyd, facing row after row of Coalition soldiers. The grey-clad men were cautious and only offered tentative jabs at them.

  “We scared them when we first hit,” explained Lloyd, “but without those two and their mage-wrought blades, it won’t be long before they gain a bit of confidence and press us.”

  Ben grunted and launched an attack, hacking at spears, trying to clear a space between them where he could slip into range and strike someone. Other spearmen jabbed at him, and he had to pull back. He and Lloyd danced amongst the spear tips, not giving ground but unable to press further into the square without the mage-wrought blades clearing a path. All around, men fought and died, but progress had ground to a halt.

  Ben sensed the tide turn, and from the left, a shudder went through the ranks of battling men. Over the din of the fighting, Ben heard shouts. He guessed the Alliance had returned with more troops. In the dark, over the heads and shoulders of combatants, he couldn’t see a thing except the occasional flash of Adrick’s lightblade.

  “We can’t risk staying out here much longer,” growled Ben.

  “I know,” muttered Lloyd, twisting to narrowly dodge a blow. With his free hand, he gripped the neck of the man who had missed him and flung him back into his fellows, impaling the poor soldier on the spears behind him. Lloyd followed right after, his blade darting over the man like the tongue of a snake, licking Coalition soldiers and sending them reeling, trailing fresh blood.

  The battle shifted again, and suddenly, both Ben’s men and the Coalition forces were staggering to the side.

  “The Alliance!”

  Through thrashing arms and legs, Ben saw the white tabards in the moonlight. Rank upon rank of swordsman pushed into the square.

  “This is goi
ng to get ugly,” muttered Lloyd, taking advantage of a swirl in the battle which left them temporarily unengaged. “We should pull back.”

  “I’m not sure we can,” said Ben, watching the scramble as fresh Alliance troops advanced rapidly. They were only a few dozen paces from Ben and Lloyd’s position. Adrick had moved further toward the side of the square, away from where the Alliance push was coming.

  “Lloyd!” thundered a voice.

  Both Ben and his friend spun. In a pocket of clear space in the Coalition line, a lone swordsman stood. His hair was swept back into a neat, blond ponytail, and a gloved hand was gripping the hilt of a mage-wrought blade. Glowing yellow geometric patterns pulsed along the length of the bare steel.

  “Jason,” said Lloyd, his voice barely audible over the fighting.

  Between the two brothers, time stopped, but all around them, the battle raged on.

  Ben began frantically signaling his captains to retreat. The plan had worked, and Lord Jason was exposed. The three-way scrum in the market square would be a complete blood bath, and he couldn’t afford losing so many men with no further tactical gain. A thousand men for either the Alliance or Coalition was a tiny fraction of their force. For Ben, those men were irreplaceable.

  “I wondered where you had gone when you disappeared from Venmoor,” called Jason, stepping between his men, striding closer to his brother. “That’s right, little brother. I’d been watching you, waiting for the moment I could face you again.”

  “I’m here now,” growled Lloyd.

  Ben only half-heard the conversation and missed Jason’s response. The Alliance forces were getting closer, and he was nervous his men’s retreat would break into a route.

  Suddenly, the left flank of his men staggered back, and a swordsman burst through, his blade spinning, slicing into flesh, ruthlessly cutting Issen’s soldiers down. Behind him, a wedge of white tabards shoved Ben’s line back.