by T. O. Munro
A movement on the ridge caught Xander’s eye. The Royal cavalry moving through the ranks to make one last charge down the slope. “You fools,” Xander murmured as four hundred horsemen charged towards the heart of Maelgrum’s army.
It was a magnificent sight, desparate heroism as the royal banner streamed out from the head of the wedge shaped formation. Gregor himself must be riding with them, abandoning the protection of the hill for a suicidal dash into the centre of the enemy. Xander cackled. “Get ready to embrace death brother, it will become you.”
However, the laugh died in Xander’s throat as he realised the direction of Gregor’s charge. It was not directed at some nebulous centre of the enemy. It was personal. The cavalry were charging straight for him all four hundred of them.
With a cry of alarm Xander spurred his horse to action, and together with his outlander escort fled for shelter behind the advancing legion. There was a cry of “Morsalve” as the wedge of cavalry crashed into the lurching creatures of the night. The momentum carried them well into and almost through the enemy ranks, but as they slowed the creatures gathered around. The riders hacked with axe and sword, carving away through, but Xander heard the shouts of alarm as the horsemen found their opponents fought on even when limbs were lopped off. There was the frantic neighing of horses as teeth sank into fetlock and hamstring.
The traitor Prince paused in his flight and looked back. Gregor’s horsemen were surrounded by the cloying leering creations who fought with teeth and bare hands, hands that fought on even when separated from their bodies. But even as he watched the vanguard of the cavalry hacked their way through the dreadful legion the royal standard fluttering still as a hundred or more knights came through into open country beyond the legion a mere four hundred yards from Xander’s refuge. Shaken by, but shaking off, the frightful experience of Maelgrum’s legion the cavalry gathered their wind and resumed their personal charge after Xander.
Although his escort of a hundred and twenty now marginally outnumbered the king’s still Xander fled from his brother’s furious charge. He screamed at a division of resting wolf mounted orcs to come to his aid. The orcish cavalry needed no encouragement to repay the insult of their early repulse by the Royal Guard. With a howl they charged towards the flank of Gregor’s diminished force. The king did not hesitate or deviate. At a shouted order half the king’s men peeled off to meet the wolves head on. Outnumbered as they were, the detachment could only buy the king time, but that it seemed was all Gregor wanted as his fifty knights closed in on Xander and his outlanders.
At last Xander deemed it right to make a stand. He wheeled his company round and ordered the charge. With grim determination the once exiled horsemen spurred their steeds towards the remnants of the royal guard. Xander watched them go, watched them close the hundred yards gap and heard the clash of steed and steel as the forces collided. He had kept his half-dozen personal body guards about him, and waited with a mix of impatience and fear lest Gregor and his men should break through this latest layer of defence. But they did not. The screams rang out, outlanders fell, but so too did the King’s men as Xander’s troops hacked and carved their way towards the King’s standard.
Xander spurred his horse into a trot towards the fast fading battle, the crash and clatter of steel diminishing as the number of combatants fell. “Hold,” Xander commanded when he saw the King’s standard fall. Then he pushed his way though to the centre of the melee.
His troops had formed a circular enclosure, about twenty yards across and there, in the centre stood Gregor, surrounded by his fallen knights. The king’s armour and shield were dented in a dozen places and blood ran down from a puncture in his thigh. Yet the sword he swung was blood red and the bodies of a dozen outlanders were testament to the threat posed by this cornered lion.
“Xander,” Gregor cried. “Come out, face me!”
“I am here brother,” Xander urged his horse forward into the circle.
“Aye an’ if it did not dishonour our mother I would call you a bastard as well as a traitor.”
“Oh, I am wholly of your blood and you of mine,” Xander replied drawing his own sword, the twin to the one Gregor carried. “As this weapon which I recovered from that prick Prince Thren bears proof.”
“You murdering bastard.”
“I gave your son the same gift I will give you brother. A quick death!”
Gregor laughed. “You think you can kill me, little brother?!”
But Xander had already stung his horse to action, charging at his weary siblling. Gregor parried the first blow with his shield and, when Xander turned and charged again the King ducked to the side and drove his sword into his brother’s horse. The animal collapsed in a heap and Xander just managed to roll free of the flailing body before Gregor was upon him, swords locked hilt to hilt.
“You struck my horse. ‘Tis against the laws of chivalry,” Xander rebuked him in genuine surprise.
“What do you know of chivalry?” Gregor spat.
Xander managed to snap an elbow up into his brother’s face and jerk a knee into his midriff. As they rolled apart, both men scrambled to their feet, but Xander, unencumbered by any wounds was faster. Gregor was on his knees as his brother swung a blow at him. The king got his battered shield in the way, but neither it nor the armour beneath could withstand the ancient enchantment of Xander’s blade. The sword clove through shield and armour and into the flesh and bone beyond.
Everything stopped.
Xander looked at the sword buried to the hilt through his brother’s shield and announced simply, “you are dead, brother. I am now King.”
Gregor, his skin a waxy white, his eyes already dulling, gave a bitter blood specked cough. “I will see you in hell, Xander.”
Enraged, Xander pulled the blade free and whirled it above his head to strike again at his dying brother. But even as the king fell forward with a bloody cough, his body turned to dust and it was but an empty suit of armour on which Xander rained down blow upon furious blow.
***
Hepdida pretended to rest against the cartwheel, eyes half closed as though asleep. The handful of weak and wounded orcs who had been assigned to guard the baggage train were gazing towards the distant battle, some clambering onto the carts laden with Grundurg’s booty to better see the unfolding carnage. The top of the ridge was a seething mass of bodies from which roars and wails of combat drifted on the light wind. Hepdida’s guards let fly with guttural cheers and whoops at their army’s moment of victory. She took advantage of their distraction to bend her head and once more set to the task of chewing through the rope that tethered her to the heavily laden wagon. It was thick hemp, but her furtive gnawing had scraped away the surface threads to expose the fresh white cable beneath.
A sudden nervousness overcame her orcish companions who hastily dismounted from the cart or busied themselves tending to the lowing oxen. Hepdida hid the scarred portion of rope beneath her legs as Grundurg and a dozen orcs rode their baying wolves into the baggage camp. As his steed reared and whirled, the orc chieftain used both hands to wave his latest trophies at those who had been kept from the fighting. Hepdida did not look, but the frenzied cheering of the non-combatants suggested Grundurg had scaled new depths.
She heard the jangle of stolen jewellery on battered armour as he dismounted and drew near, but still she feigned an exhausted sleep, until the kick in the belly forced her into a coughing wakefulness. “Look! See what Grundurg did.” The orc was waving two severed heads in her face, fine featured, dark skinned and sharp eared. “Grundurg kill elves, drink their blood. Plenty dead elves.”
Hepdida wanted to shut her eyes, but knew that would only earn another kicking. She tried to look without seeing, not letting the image on her retina register in her mind. “Battle won. Tonight Grundurg celebrate.” He bent close exhaling his foul breath in her face. “Grundurg celebrate, with you.”
Drunk with his part in the triumph, the Orc breathed in the heady scent of her fear
.
“You are to keep me safe, the Lady said,” Hepdida stammered. While the orc had made a point of making her witness all manner of atrocities he had not yet physically harmed her. But now there was a deeper menace in his manner and she could not help but tremble as she repeated, “the Lady Dema told you not to harm me.”
Grundurg grinned. “Snake Lady not coming back, not now, not soon. Snake lady forget you by time she comes back, if she comes back. Grundurg not going to wait. Grundurg going to celebrate.” He shook the severed elven heads for emphasis. “Grundurg has plenty to celebrate.”
***
To the victors came the spoils. The undead Lord stalked the corpse littered ridge in company with Xander, Haselrig and an orcish escort. Haselrig nervously noted the thin trails of condensation that drifted from Maelgrum’s presence, testament to some displeasure despite the total victory.
“Our lossesss are greater than they ssshould have been. The Lady would not have been ssso profligate with our troopsss.”
“Yet even those who have died may be made to serve us once again.” Xander, distracted by his own concerns, ventured an unwise opinion. A cloud of vapour condensed immediately in Maelgrum’s wake.
“The power to raissse my legionsss isss not a sssubsstitute or excussse for poor generalship,” the wizard snapped; his icy tone alerted Xander to his peril. “There are more battlesss to be fought ‘ere thisss land fallsss wholly into my power and the legionsss are not sssskilled in the sssiegecraft that we musssst yet undertake. True ssservantsss should not presssume upon my power to make good their own manifessst failingsss.”
Xander looked up into the flame red pits in Maelgrum’s skull. The traitor Prince’s mouth dropped open in fear and he backed rapidly away from his Master’s displeasure, stumbling over a heap of elven bodies as he did so.
His Master strode towards him as Xander scrabbled kicking backwards over the fallen, fleeing away from the undying wizard’s wrath.
“Master,” Haselrig cried, seeing a sudden gleam of silvery gold amidst the pile of corpses. “Look. He lies here.”
Maelgrum too had seen and stopped at the glint of ornate armour. A barked command brought the orcs forward to shift the dead elves and uncover what lay beneath. It was the work of a few moments to reveal the tall full visored figure of an elf Lord stretched out in his battered finery.
Haselrig, painfully learned in interpreting his Master’s moods, detected something new in the undead wizard’s manner. Maelgrum’s skeletal skull was tilted to one side, his red glowing eyes throbbed gently and there was a crackling of static around the swirling tendrils of mist. “Isss he….. dead?” There was a thrill of trepidation in the wizard’s enquiry.
The orcs kicked the body and, despite the powerful dent in the back of the helm, there was a cough and splutter through the carved bearded face on the visor. “He lives, Master. The lord Feyril lives.”
“Ask him where the Ankh is, the royal Ankh,” Xander demanded. “It was not on Gregor’s remains. The bastard would not have trusted it to anyone but Feyril.”
Maelgrum flung out a finger and a crackle of lightning snapped out and engulfed the unwise Prince in a twisting stinging spiral of electric blue. Xander howled and collapsed on the ground in a senseless heap. “Sssilence,” Maelgrum commanded. “I would ssspeak with my old friend the lord Feyril without the interruptionsss of mere humansss, who would do well to remember their own mortality.”
At the slightest inclination of the wizard’s fleshless chin two orcs hauled the stunned elf upright. “Come, let me look into hisss eyesss. It hasss been ssso long and there is ssso much I mussst dissscusss with him while he diesss.”
The throbbing of Maelgrum’s flame pit eyes quickened and deepened and there was a hiss, as of an intake of breath when the wizard’s lipless mouth opened in concession to the conventions of speech. It was a state Haselrig had not witnessed in seventeen years of his Master’s company and, at last, the ex-antiquary identified the emotion as excitement. The undead wizard was close to trembling like an expectant child before festival day.
The left hand orc ripped off the ancient elven helmet and cast it aside. Instantly Maelgrum’s eyes flared into the brightest red and an icy stream of fog flooded from his shoulders. “Thisss isss not Feyril,” he cried in a voice that made all tremble with fear for having played some part in their Master’s disappointment.
The unmasked imposter, straightened his dazed body. “No, my name is Findil. I have been honoured to wear the Lord Feyril’s colours these last few days.”
“You lie,” Maelgrum cried. “The sssmell of Feyril on your sssuit isss not ssso faint asss that. Tell me where he hasss gone, for I have waited centuriesss to ssspeak with him again. Tell me and I will let you die in mere daysss, but try to withhold the truth and I will take pleasssure in extracting it from you and sssending you to your afterlife in monthsss of painfull ssstages.”
The Captain faced down his fearsome opponent. “Do what you will you rotten mocking husk of life, your presence is an insult to the living, your death’s work an abomination that affronts even your own foul god. The smallest flower of Hershwood in its blooming is a greater wonder than you ever have or ever will achieve in a thousand years of haunting this world.”
Icicles formed and fell around the furious wizard, the ground froze beneath his feet and his eye sockets blazed like torches. The orcs holding Findil loosed their grip anxious to avoid being caught as collateral damage in the explosive anger that was about to be unleashed on the foolish elf. In a trice Findil had flung them aside, snatching a dagger from the belt of one as it fell. With this modest weapon the elf Captain faced the undead wizard.
Maelgrum stretched his mouth wide in a mocking laugh. “You think you can hurt me with that unwissse elf? It would amussse me to sssee you make the attempt.”
“Oh I will hurt you, foul one, in the only way I can. You will get no secrets from me.” So saying Findil grabbed the knife two handed, turned it inwards and drove it up under his breast plate deep into his own chest. He slumped forward with a groan, holding the incredulous gaze of the undead wizard in his own dimming grey eyes and then fell dead on the ground.
A howling cloud of mist descended on his body, shredding his remains in a meaningless fury for Captain Findil had found his sanctuary well beyond Maelgrum’s reach.
***
Twenty leagues South East of the battle a lone rider paused in his gallop to pull the strange jewelled Ankh free from his jerkin. Feyril looked once more into the throbbing heart of its gem. He had known and wept at the moment Gregor fell, his loss announced with a flash of sound and light from the ancient jewel in the palm of his hand. Now the steady red glow had become a pulsating light that switched between white and red. Feyril held the ankh by its neck and slowly turned round, pointing it to the different corners of the compass. As he did so the beat of the throbbing gem quickened and then slowed.
He frowned at the results of his experiment and checked a second time to be sure, the beat was fastest when it pointed due East.
The elf patted his horse’s neck and hauled the reigns round to head in the direction the Ankh had selected. “No, Sharkle, we are not going home, not yet.” With that the elf clicked his tongue and the faithful horse resumed its frantic pace across the quiet plains of Morsalve.
Part Three
It was a grey afternoon on the outskirts of Dwarfport. On the porch of her one roomed shack the thief counted again her stack of gold crowns and silver pennies. Satisfied with the result she leant back in the wicker chair and gazed into the hinterland whence in a few days time a dwarven caravan was expected. The wooden boards beneath her creaked and bowed at the shifting of even her slight weight. It was not a house fit for a princess or a priestess but it served the thief’s purpose well enough. She knew not what fate had befallen its original owner, but it had been vacant when she arrived and the few locals who had challenged her for possession had quickly regretted making a claim.
A move
ment on the Western horizon drew her eye, a solitary horse and rider. It was an unusual sight for the marshland which lay between the Hadrans and the lush plains of Medyrsalve was unpopulated and rarely travelled. Her attention was held by this diversion from the dangerous monotony that was everyday life in Dwarfport.
The horse trotted briskly, but not too brisk, for the rider sat slumped in the saddle, arms down, hands resting, no leaning on the horse’s neck. The white steed coated in the dust and grime of a hard ride, picked its way with intricate steps along the twisting path through the saturated marshland. The fatigued pair were working their way unerringly towards her shack, but she felt no apprehension and only an incidental curiosity.
As they drew closer she recognised the elven make of the rider’s armour, picked out the grey beard streaked with dirt. A murmur of recognition crossed her mind. Ten yards short of her doorstep the elf stopped and dismounted. Shielding his eyes to see into the shade he drew closer, returning her visual scrutiny in kind.
Incredulity was mirrored in their faces as he perceived the loose leather garb, the sword in a shoulder scabbard, the trappings of a common foot pad. In turn she took in the battered armour and a familiar face suddenly wearing its years with uncomfortable honesty.
“The Lord Feyril?” she doubted.
“The Lady Niarmit?” he echoed.
***
The trees that sheltered them from wind and rain could not ease the raging hunger in their bellies. Kimbolt shivered involuntarily. The never ending ride and the privations of the last few days had eroded his stamina. He could feel his teeth chattering, but was aware of little else but cold and hunger. Something was thrust into his hands but he could not take it. Instead the item, a gourd, was lifted to his mouth, forced between his lips and fiery alcohol trickled down his throat. He coughed and spluttered.
“Captain, what day is it?”
He nodded and then stammered as far as the ague would let him “M-M-M-Morwensday, M-m-m-aybe Th-Th-Thrensday ?”
