by Winfred Wong
“Any last words?” Barnett questioned coldly.
“No.” Haddon’s reply was curt.
He even craned forward his neck defiantly without flinching and waited for the final blow that never happened with his eyes shut when a flock of ten eagles, which looked like the one Dulais met in Ayrith, swooped down on Barnett one by one with their beaks forward and then soared away, getting ready for the second assault, and Dulais rushed to Barnett, who was busy fending off the birds, and visioned to conjure up a pair of water daggers.
“Didn’t you say he loves his birds?” Dulais scoffed, propelled the daggers toward the flying animals and only killed one of them, which then plunged down, and then kept creating new daggers to hunt them down endlessly.
“Well, I really thought so, but I guess he loves his men more than his birds,” Barnett sniggered, lifting his sword skyward, and swiped it insanely, as the Knights all hurried to Haddon, and some of the eagles suddenly began diving in on the Knights, abrading Nuada’s neck.
“Why are they attacking us?” shrieked Nuada, trying to punch the eagles away.
“Pancho is coming,” Levi said.
“It seems our consul really wants us dead,” Rogen said, feeling the same bafflement about who his real enemy was, as four eagles spread out their wide wings and dove down toward Haddon ruthlessly.
Seeing them, Rogen ran to stand in front of Haddon and drove them away by slashing the air fiercely, then helped Haddon up, but somehow one of the eagles managed to slip through his defence by coming from his blind spot and scraped Haddon’s face with its talons, and, as Rogen was about to fling it away, a water dagger that appeared out of nowhere pierced through it’s wing and slammed into Haddon’s throat. It went so deep that an ooze of warm blood was seeping out like water from a sponge, and he grunted and spit out plenty blood for a few seconds. It all happened so quickly that no one could tell what happened.
Wiping gore off his chin, Rogen grasped Haddon’s shoulder to prevent him from falling and rested him on the ground with the slightest of movements as the others encircled them to protect them.
“No,” Rogen lamented, realizing the wound would probably kill him, and sucked in his lips, as grief surged up within him, though, for an unknown reason, he didn’t feel like crying. “No...”
“Don’t be...like us,” Haddon said, with his last breath, eyes wide open like he was tremendously amazed by the breathtaking view of the aesthetic heaven he was about to reach.
“What do you mean?”
But his question will forever remain unanswered as he floundered, not knowing quite what to do. To him, it was very bewildering. A mind-wielder, who just saved his life from a comrade trying to kill him, now sent one of his best friends to the heaven. It just didn’t make any sense to him. Doubts began creeping into his mind, undermining his faith, as he wondered what he was really trying to accomplish by joining the Knights.
After a moment of pulling himself together, he then stood up and picked up Haddon’s body, as the others were relentlessly deflecting the magical water daggers soaring toward them like arrows while defending themselves from the annoying animals from the sky, which deterred them from pressing onward.
“Barnett, go get our horses,” Dulais said. “It’s about time to go. I will stall them until you come back. Hurry.”
Then, Barnett called, cupping his hand around his mouth, with his chin raised, projecting his voice as much as he can, “Galahad!”, and gestured at him with both hands, instructing him to give the order to retreat, before sprinting to the stable.
“Levi, we have to go! It’ll be too late when Pancho arrives,” Nuada said, thrashing an eagle in its head, as the resistance soldiers holding their ranks began pulling back and more eagles emerged in the sky. “Now, or we’ll all die!”
After punching an eagle, flailing his arms wildly, and a slight delay, “Follow me!” Levi ordered and turned to run in the direction Chavdar went, and the rest followed, but not the eagles.
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
* * *
Toppling scores of enemy soldiers in front of him off with his spear, “Hold them off as long as you can!” Galahad yelled amidst their ranks after casting a look at Dulais and Barnett, who were busy engaging the Knights behind him, though his voice was greatly deadened by the tumultuous din of the battle.
At the moment he stabbed an enemy in his chest and grinned cheerfully, he thought they were going to win as his men were putting up an exceptional fight and actually pushing the fierce enemy back in spite of their collapsed morale, but he instantly changed his mind when he caught sight of a centaur that emerged from the edge of the slope, ploughing toward him unstoppably fast, with a curved, red blade in his hand.
Aiming to stop the beast, the soldiers around gathered in front of Galahad, their spears, swords and shields all facing outward, creating an impenetrable shieldwall, but, when Morph crashed into the shields with tremendous force, making a thunderous clamour, the soldiers all tumbled down in all directions like shards of shattered glass hitting the ground hard and wriggled in pain, losing their grips on their weapons and shields.
Incensed, “You monster!” Galahad muttered and held his sword vertically and tightly.
“Where is the staff?” Morph bellowed, shoved his sword into one of the vulnerable soldiers’ gut and maliciously twisted, inflicting more unnecessary pain, and the man gave a grimace of anguish helplessly.
Such a detestable act filled Galahad with loathing. Uttering a blaring war cry, he rushed forward and thrusted his sword at the centaur with a downswing. Morph quickly clashed his sword with his and intentionally slid his blade down to the cross guard of Galahad’s weapon along its edge, causing sparks, and Galahad was inexorably hoodwinked into thinking it was his chance to overpower him. Rashly, he pressed his sword forward strenuously, grinding his teeth, however, right at the instant he applied every ounce of his own strength on his sword, Morph abruptly disengaged his sword and hauled it back to his left shoulder, causing Galahad to lose his balance, forward momentum making him stumble, exposing his defenceless back.
Taking advantage of it, Morph then struck him with his sword, targeting at his backbone, when he caught sight of a spinning arrow racing squarely toward his head from the trees. Hissed, he gave up on the attack and tilted his body to the side, and the arrow streaked by below his arm before disappearing into a yurt.
Realized that he just escaped a horrendous death magically and was still in one piece by rubbing his back, Galahad immediately restored balance with a stride forward to offset the momentum, turned to the centaur and held his sword up in defence position steadily as he didn’t want to be rash any more, and, soon, he found out that enemy soldiers were all around him, glowering at him with glowing eyes like they were craving blood, shaking their keen weapons, and, even more unnervingly, he was cut off from his fellows, which was the worst-case scenario during a fight, thus his stomach churned in anxiety and lurched in excitement. Seeing him isolated, his comrades tried to plough their way through to rescue him, but, being outnumbered two to one, they were unable to spare enough men to do so.
Then, as his glance was sweeping around to size the situation up, he heard a voice, Ernald’s voice, calling out his name, and some of the enemy soldiers on the outer side behind him began falling as Ernald was sprinting toward the tail of the mob of soldiers bravely while kept shooting arrows, three at a time, using all four fingers of his left hand except his thumb to pull out three arrows at the same time, and he never missed. Each time a twang of the bowstring sounded, three fell down, cleaving through the enemy ranks from a distance, and when he finally joined Galahad after slipping by the men he killed, he said, “Need some help?”
They stood back to back, with their weapons facing the enemy, Galahad joked, waving his sword, “Well, you shouldn’t have come here. You are supposed to be on the branch covering us with arrows.”
“Yeah, I’m regretting it now. I should have stayed up there and watch you die,
” Ernald said.
“Yeah, you should’ve. I don’t think I need help.”
“Are you sure? Because I saw enemy reinforcements marching toward us from the castle.”
Swallowed his dismay with a sullen face, Galahad rolled his eyes and said, slightly stuttering, “How many?”
“I don’t know. I’m not sure. About five thousand, all foot soldiers, heavy armored, and one thousand lightly armored at the foot of the slope,” Ernald answered, as a soldier started to charge at him with his spear, and he swiftly let loose the arrow already loaded in his bow into the oncoming man, puncturing through his breastplate to his chest.
“So you’re saying that five thousand enemy heavy armored foot soldiers are coming to slaughter us, and one thousand have already arrived! That’s the best news I’ve heard in a while, beautiful,” Galahad remarked, not pessimistically grumbling, but sarcastically, and busted out laughing, which oddly startled the men surrounding them, but not Morph, who began rushing over, his four horse hooves hurling up dust and dirt.
As Morph extended his long arm and clanged his blade against Galahad’s, Ernald, only a couple of steps behind Galahad, turned, nocked an arrow rapidly, pointed it at Morph, who was temporarily frozen by Galahad’s force, with deadly precision and pulled the bowstring back with full strength. He didn’t hang back to release the bowstring at the moment when he can picture the arrow piercing through his head as he thought no one could dodge an arrow shot from such a close distance, and the unleashed arrow flew a fiery path squarely toward his head at a very fast speed, so fast that no one can catch a glimpse, so fast that no one can react, but, as it was about one inch from smacking into him, Morph paranormally evaded it with a deft, agile sidestep just enough to avoid it as if he teleported himself away, though he didn’t really vanish and appear again, but in a way that, for a split second, there were some deluding ghost images trailing behind him when he moved.
Deeply staggered by Morph’s ghostly inhuman move, Galahad gaped at Morph and became wooden and rooted to the spot, letting his guard down, with his sword arm down for just a very brief moment only enough for a drip of sweat to slide down from between his gaping eyes to the tip of his nose, but, regardless of the briefness, Morph still noticed that and responsively thrusted his crimson blade straight at Galahad’s left flank, aiming at his ribs.
As Morph swiped out, Galahad immediately had the nightmarish feeling that he had just made the biggest and most fatal mistake of his life. He clearly knew there was no way to survive it without a scratch, so, in order to at least stay alive, he hurled his left arm toward the incoming sword in an attempt to ricochet it off with his vambrace, and, as the two things collided, the vambrace shattered into seven pieces with a sharp clonk, though his forearm was unavoidably lacerated badly, blood gushing out the gash like melting snow, and the fragments showered to the ground as the curved red blade of Morph rebounded off.
“Are you all right?” Ernald said while shooting arrows after arrows at Morph and the enemy soldiers around to drive them away.
“It’s a bad wound,” Galahad replied, as his pain escalated, his right hand grasping the wound that was soaking it tight, and it gurgled like simmering water.
He began to feel cold and shivered as the leaking blood was snatching his warmth away.
“You need to staunch the bleeding,” Ernald said, reaching his hand into the quiver slung on his back to pull out three arrows.
Slashing his sword around with his blood-stained right hand, Galahad said, “I can’t. I think I need stitches. We have to fight our way back to our men first.”
“But how? We can’t just charge at them and try to cleave through!” Ernald said, as they stood back to back again, staring at the enemy soldiers that formed a ring around them.
Then a sudden thought reminding him of Ernald’s tailor-made quiver sidled into his mind, and Galahad suggested, “Create a diversion with the bag of black powder in your quiver, and then we’ll run.”
“How do you know that I have a bag of black powder in my quiver!?”
“I just do.” Galahad, panting dizzily, barely dodged a spear strike, counter-attacked by chopping the spear in two, then ducked down to avoid a sword thrust and lunged forward to stab the attacker’s stomach, as faintness and weariness were replacing his valour and endurance. “Just toss the bag up and shoot it. We can’t hold them all back forever! We’ve got to do it right now.”
Hastily, Ernald reached his hand back to the secret compartment installed at the bottom of his quiver and twisted in clockwise until it separated from the main quiver, and there was a tiny, seamless woolen bag in it. He then grasped it, tossed it up high, loaded his bow and discharged it toward the falling bag in the sky.
As the keen broadhead banged into the bag, tearing it into small pieces, the black powder in it immediately exploded with hellish effect, causing a deafening boom, wisps of haze smoke curling up and down before it had the chance to puff around, and the unexpected blast captured the attention of every soldiers, including Morph, whose eyes were riveted on another flock of eagles flying this way, and they all reared up their heads.
“Run,” Galahad whispered and began scurrying toward the ranks of his comrades in the flurry of smoke.
They bent down and slinked like a wolf toward cornered prey and successfully reconnected with their men after bulldozing their way back laboriously, however, as they elbowed through their ranks into an open space behind the innermost of the lines of defence, hunched over and gasped for air, they came to a shocking realization that their ranks had shrunk a lot, and their lines of defence had been pushed backward.
Heaps upon heaps of dead soldiers, mostly men on the resistance side, lay strewn. Their black light armor had little effect against the refined spears and polished swords of the well-trained Austhun soldiers, not to mention the fact that some of them had actually never undergone proper training or only had limited war experience.
“Galahad, we need to pull our men back,” Ernald said, looking about the chaotic battlefield, as Galahad was delicately cutting out a piece of felt from the yurt right beside him with his sword, “Our front ranks are collapsing. There are simply too many of them.”
Wrapping up his wound with the felt like drenching it in blood and pressing it hard, Galahad drawled, expelling air through his nose, in a distraught tone, “I know.”
“I know you’re in pain, but you mustn’t be downcast, my friend. We still have a war to fight.”
Then, to damp down his feeling of pain by finding a distraction, Galahad looked over his shoulder for Dulais and Barnett, who was incompetently evading oncoming attacks from Haddon, when a flock of eagles was soaring over his head in the dim sky, emitting some piping notes.
“Do you have any more?” Galahad said.
“Black powder?”
Galahad nodded.
“I still have four small bags in my yurt.”
“Your yurt?”
Ernald smirked and pointed to the felt that Galahad used as a bandage.
“Very well, then. It seems we have a plan. Get the four bags. We are going to create some beautiful explosions to cover our retreat. I’ll also call the archers back.”
As Ernald flounced into his yurt, Galahad heard Barnett’s voice, very faint as muzzled by the metal crashing sounds, but still discernible, calling out his name, so he looked over again, and he saw Barnett gesturing toward him like trying to gather the invisible air before his chest, which was a signal to retreat.
“Do you hear Barnett’s voice?” Ernald walked out with four identical small bags in his hand.
“Yes, he ordered a retreat. Are you ready?”
“Are you ready?”
“Always.”
And Galahad yelled, his voice rang out above the sounds of battle then faltered, “Archers regroup!”
After a short moment, about less than five hundred men, all had long bows and quivers on their back like Ernald, gripping their blood-stained swords or axes tightly, s
tomped off of the battle line and marched toward Galahad wearily, and as they gathered around Galahad, he said, “I know it has been a tough time, but I need you to cover our retreat with your bows, to stop the enemy from advancing so that they can’t stab our comrades from behind. Now, nock the arrow on the string, aim at the heart of the enemy and wait for Ernald’s signal.” He turned to Ernald as the archers were changing their weapons. “Ernald, give the signal and create an explosion when one wave of arrows ends. I’ll go get our horses.”
“Fall back! Everyone fall back to the lake!” he then roared loudly, snapping his head around to extend the reach of his voice, but it was obviously weaker than the previous yell.
“Archers! Ready!” Ernald ordered when the soldiers began pulling back slowly but not tumultuously, moving on toward the lake while still facing the enemy. “Fire!”
Feeling safe with a multitude of arrows showering on the enemy, which didn’t really do much damage, the resistance men turned and began running for their lives. Most of them suffered from more than two wounds, of varying depth and damage; some were carrying maimed men on their shoulders while retreating, some were dismembered during the retreat, but most were hobbling haltingly and limping lamely away.
As the first wave came to an end, and the Austhun foot soldiers were about to chase forward to hunt their fleeing enemy down, Ernald immediately tossed one small bag toward them, and, before the bag fell, he shot an arrow at it, creating sparks to ignite the black powder, and it blew up like a firecracker during the lantern festival. The power of the eruption of it was not enough to penetrate their armor and harm them, but it was dreadful enough to deter them from pressing on precipitously.
“Fire!” shouted Ernald when the archers were ready to fire again.
The second wave caused even less damage, but, in terms of hindering, it was effective. By the time the arrows smashed into the ground, all their men had already gone behind them, and therefore, he hurled away the second bag and, again, shot at it, making a loud boom.
