"Help me!" Koren pleaded. "I can't get Arteman onto my horse."
"Damned fool you are, and damned fool I am too, but-" The man waved to another soldier, and together the two men quickly picked up Arteman and flopped him face down on Thunderbolt's back, then they were off.
Jamming his sword back into its sheath, Koren climbed up into the saddle, and this time, dug his heels into the horse's side and loosed the reins. Thunderbolt moved, surging forward so fast that Koren almost fell off backwards, the horse's hooves digging clods of dirt out of the ground and flinging them backwards in his headlong flight. In less than twenty strides, the great horse had passed the horses of the two soldiers who stopped to help Koren, their mouths gaping open as Thunderbolt, nostrils flaring, passed them as if they were standing still. Passed them while carrying two people on his back. If Koren had time, he would have fairly burst with pride about his horse, but all he could think of then was to get Arteman to the bridge.
And with a clatter of hooves on wood, they were on the bridge. Some instinct caused Koren to hop off, and hand Thunderbolt's reins to a passing rider. "Take Arteman across the bridge, he's hurt badly!" He shouted, and the man took hold of the reins and guided Thunderbolt across the bridge at a trot.
Koren ran over to the royal army men guarding the bridge entrance, who were now seven soldiers, including three archers. Leaving his sword in its sheath, Koren asked breathlessly "What can I do? Can I give you arrows while you shoot?"
One of the archers nodded, and indicated his quiver of arrows on the ground. But another archer held up his right wrist, which lay at an unnatural angle to his arm, it was sprained badly. "Not much use I am with this bow." The man said with disgust, and spat on the ground. "Can you use a bow?"
Before Koren could answer, another soldier snapped "Don't waste your bow on a boy! I'll take the bow myself before-"
"Shut your mouth, Teegan." Answered another of the archers. "Koren here is the wizard's boy, and if you haven't seen his archery lessons with the weapons master, I have. Wizard skill he has with a bow, never misses, and he can shoot an arrow further than any of us. Hedris, give him your bow."
Koren felt much better with a bow in his hand. Calmer. With purpose. The injured soldier called Hedris handed him an arrow, and Koren sighted along it, then realized he was insulting a royal archer, who of course would have checked his own arrows. "Sorry."
Hedris shook his head side to side. "Don't be, I'd do the same. Always check weapons you're not familiar with. If you have the time. I think our time is about up." He pointed toward the village. The surviving royal army soldiers, with Captain Raddick and two of his lieutenants at the rear, were past the village and riding at full speed toward the bridge, pursued by the enemy. To the west, more of the enemy were riding to cut them off, and the enemy was ahead. "Hit the lead riders. Koren, you take the right." The head archer ordered, and the two royal army archers, and Koren, nocked arrows to strings, and drew back. The enemy rider Koren sighted on would be colliding with the royal army men in a few seconds, and the shot was at extreme range. Koren steadied his aim, stilled his breathing, and-
-hesitated.
The enemy soldier's face was scrunched up in an angry grimace, and his spear was held forward, reaching out toward the royal army.
Koren had never killed anyone, never fired an arrow, or swung a sword, in anger. Seeing the enemy's face, the face of a real person, he hesitated. The two other archers let their arrows fly, and either missed, or their arrows fell short.
"Koren." Hedris hissed in a loud whisper. "You've probably never killed a man, I know it's not an easy thing to do. Shoot. Shoot now, or more of our soldiers die."
Koren blinked, feeling his eyelids sting from the salt of dried tears, tears that had welled up in his eyes when Dartenon died. Thinking of that brave woman, Koren aimed slightly in front of the enemy rider, pulled the bowstring back as far as it would go, and waited a couple heartbeats. Paedris may have given him magical fighting powers with the sword, but Koren had always been deadly accurate with a bow, as far back as he could remember, hunting rabbits and deer around his parent's farm. He always knew just when to let an arrow fly. When he sensed the moment was right, he released the bowstring. "Another." He said to Hedris, while selecting another target, not needing to watch the arrow. The arrow would hit its target.
Koren never missed.
The enemy rider leveled his spear at a royal army soldier, and opened his mouth to let out a battle cry. Koren's first arrow impacted right in the roof of his mouth, cutting off his scream.
After that first shot, the battle was a blur for Koren. Take an arrow from Hedris, fit it to the bowstring, select a target, draw back the bowstring, wait for the right moment, and release. Again, and again, and again and again. Koren was having an effect on the battle, after five of their fellows died from arrows fired at such distance, other enemy riders veered off, trying to keep at longer range. The royal army took the opportunity to break through, and then Koren and the two other archers had to be careful, for their own men were blocking their shots. They switched their focus to the enemy soldiers riding in from the west, charging the bridge directly. Koren had time only to fire two more arrows, then Raddick's horse pounded onto the bridge, and the Captain shouted for his men to retreat. Koren followed the soldiers, running fast as he could, turning to fire another arrow. One royal army soldier was hit by an enemy arrow, and fell over the side of the bridge into the rushing water below. When Koren reached the far side, completely out of breath, he ducked aside to clear a path for the archers who had taken up position across the end of the bridge, blocking the enemy's path. Two archers were using flints to set fire to the oil-soaked rags they had wrapped around their arrows, as Koren and the last of the royal army raced safely past, they let the flaming arrows fly, aiming at the middle of the bridge. The arrows hit, and started small fires in the dry old timbers of the bridge deck. But enemy soldiers were charging fast across the bridge, led by a very large man on a massive war horse. The man was entirely clad in black armor, as was the front of his horse. As Koren watched, two royal army archers shot at the enemy, but their arrows glanced off his armor. The war horse did not shy away from the flames, but leaped over, and suddenly loomed before them. The enemy soldier raised a blood-stained battle axe, and even the most battle-hardened royal army soldier felt fear.
Without asking, or much thought, Koren pulled an arrow from another archer's quiver, nocked it, aimed and fired in one smooth motion. The arrow took the enemy soldier right in the one gap in his armor: his throat. A cheer went up from the men around Koren as the huge man crashed to the bridge deck, and his panicked horse wheeled around, riderless, to leap back through the flames.
Two, three, five more flaming arrows hit the bridge, and it was ablaze, effectively blocking the enemy's path. The enemy sent arrows through the flames, and shouted insults, but Raddick had gotten most of his force safely out of the ambush. The battle was over, for the moment. He left a guard at the end of the now flaming bridge, and gathered his remaining lieutenants to discuss what to do next. Koren ran over and removed his helmet. "Captain, sir, what about Paedris? Lord Salva is in danger!"
"What the-?" Captain Raddick was startled to see Koren, startled and then angry. "What are you doing here, boy?" Raddick had lost track of Koren after the enemy emerged from the treeline, the last he had seen of the wizard's servant was of the boy riding back along the army column. When the wizard jumped the fence and rode away across the fields, Raddick had assumed Koren would have followed. "You didn't follow the wizard?"
"No, sir, I-"
"Your place is with your master, boy!" Raddick angrily waved his hand for silence when Koren tried to explain. Part of the anger was because Raddick had considered Koren to be an honorable person; he knew that the wizard and most of Raddick's soldiers liked Koren. Now Koren had disappointed him severely. "Lord Salva used his magical powers to give you lightning speed with that sword, so you could protect him, and you run awa
y at the first sign of trouble? No, I don't want to hear excuses! Go see if you can help with the wounded, and stay out of my sight, you coward." The Captain dismissed Koren with a disgusted look, and turned to bark orders at his lieutenants.
"But, but I-" Koren stammered, totally surprised by the Captain's reaction. "Sir-" The words died in his mouth, as he realized only three people in the world knew he wasn't a coward, that Paedris had ordered Koren away. Dartenon lay dead, on a field across the river. Arteman was with the wounded, unconscious and uncertain to survive the day. And Paedris himself? Paedris was on his own, pursued by three enemy wizards. On the other side of the river, where there were hundreds of enemy soldiers.
"Come with me." Said an older soldier Koren didn't know, who had overheard Raddick's disgusted outburst. The man's clothes were spattered with blood, some of it was his own, from a ragged cut on his forearm, and one side of his beard was crusted with blood. He looked no worse than most of the royal army men. "Name's Porten, and you're Koren, right?"
"I'm not, I'm not a-" Koren self-consciously wiped at the drops of blood on this own face, blood that belonged to Arteman. Koren himself had not gotten even a scratch during the battle.
"Best you stay away from the Captain for a while, and do what he says. Can you help with the wounded?" The man asked gently. He knew this was the young man's first battle, and the old soldier remembered his own first battle, how shocked, scared and disoriented he had been, all those years ago.
Koren nodded. He was in shock, but not so much from the battle, which was still only a blur, as if it hadn't really happened. His shock was from Captain Raddick calling him a coward. "I'm not a coward!" Coward? In his first battle, he had fought hard, and killed enemy soldiers, without any real combat training! If Raddick hadn't been so busy, he would have seen Koren shooting arrows, seen that it was Koren who stopped that last, huge enemy soldier. "I've helped Paedris when he's healed people, but I don't know about potions or spells or anything like that."
"Healer's got his own potions, whatever he could carry with him since his wagon's on the other side of the river. Do what you can, and don't you worry about the Captain. He just lost a battle, and a lot of our men, on our own territory. He's not in a good mood about anything, so best stay out of his way for while."
"We can't just leave Paedris."
Porten gestured toward the enemy troops across the river, troops who were still firing arrows, when they thought they had a good shot. "Long as the enemy holds that side of the river, and we're over here, there's not much we can do to help the wizard, but you can help our men here. Come on now, time's wasting."
Koren knew what it was like to be truly tired before, from long days on his parent's farm, or surviving on his own in the wilderness, or working as the wizard's servant; he found a new meaning for tired that day. Already worn out from the unexpected battle, he spent the rest of the day doing whatever the royal army's healer needed done, and the man had Koren running ragged. Finding and chopping wood for a fire, hauling water from the river (and dodging enemy arrows that still flew from the west riverbank), tending to the suffering wounded as best he knew how, which wasn't much. After Koren collected wood and got a fire roaring, and set kettles of water boiling to clean bandages, the healer asked Koren if he knew where to find bloodroot, which Koren knew could often be found growing along old stone fences and the cellars of abandoned homes. Riding frantically far around the countryside, Koren managed to gather two solid fistfuls of bloodroot leaves, and when he got back, even Thunderbolt was foaming with sweat, and unsteady on his great legs. The healer, without the magical skills of a wizard, and with most of his supplies in his wagon across the river, was doing the best he could to help the wounded.
"You found bloodroot? Give it here, give it here!" The man shouted excitedly. He wiped his hands off on a rag, then took a small pinch of bloodroot and crushed it between his fingers, inhaling deeply. "Ahhh, fresh! Good, very good, and more than a handful!" The healer had not expected Koren to find much, if any, of the rare plant, especially since Koren had no idea where to look, having never been in that part of Tarador before. "How did you find it?"
Koren gave a weary shrug. "South on the road, a quarter mile, I saw an overgrown lane, figured it used to lead up to a old farm. There's an abandoned farm house, the bloodroot was growing around the foundation stones." The bloodroot had been tangled with an old, thick rosebush, Koren's hands and arms were scratched and bleeding from being ripped up by the thorns.
The healer looked up sharply at Koren, with new respect. He knew little of the wizard's young servant, having never met the boy before Koren joined the army expedition. "Hmm. That was good thinking. Now, hurry, you know how to prepare a potion of bloodroot?"
"Sir, I've done it many times for Paed-, for Lord Salva. Wrap them in clean cloth, plunge into boiling water for a couple seconds, then gently squeeze the cloth to bruise the leaves, to bring out the juice, or sap, or whatever it is."
"Yes, yes, quickly, quickly! Only three leaves per cloth, we have too many wounded, and too few leaves. I only hope we are not too late." The healer glanced at the row of wounded men laying on blankets in the shade under a grove of trees. Koren saw that, while he had been searching for bloodroot, two men must have died; there were two empty blood-stained blankets in the row.
Bloodroot was very effective at stopping wounds from bleeding. It also stung the skin, by the time Koren had prepared all the bandages his thorn-scratched hands felt like they were on fire. He ran back and forth from the kettle to the healer, giving the man fresh bandages as needed. When all the bloodroot had been used up, Koren hurriedly tended to Thunderbolt, giving the horse water, and removing the saddle before brushing his glossy coat. The horse had eaten his fill of hay in the fields around the abandoned farm while Koren had collected the bloodroot, which was fortunate, considering that all the feed grain for the army's horses was in wagons across the river. The east side of the river was mostly woods and overgrown meadows, which provided little for the horses to eat. The soldiers all had field rations, of dried meat and fruit, in their packs, but their horses mostly went hungry.
The healer next instructed Koren to make a vegetable broth, from a dried mix the man had, and give it to the wounded men, to up keep their strength. As the day wore on into evening, Koren sat with the men who had recovered enough to speak, trying and failing to reassure them that everything would be all right.
"Sir?" Koren approached the healer, who had his meager supply of potion bottles laid out on a blanket. The man was holding bottles toward the setting sun, trying to see how much was left in each bottle. "I gave everyone the broth like you said, everyone who would take it. Arteman hasn't awakened."
The healer didn't know that Koren was almost desperate for Arteman to awaken, as the old soldier was the only person around who could tell Captain Raddick that Koren was not a coward, that Paedris had ordered Koren away. If the wizard didn't survive his own battle across the river, Koren could never prove he wasn’t a coward.
"Arteman is an old soldier, veteran of many a campaign." The healer answered with great weariness. "This may be his last battle, and I fear he must fight this one alone. If he cannot recover on his own now, he'll need a wizard to heal him."
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Captain Raddick sent riders out north, east and south, to see whether the enemy was on the east side of the river also. Even the wounded soldiers struggled to sit up when the first of the riders returned as the sun was setting, everyone in camp was anxious for news. The news was good, as far as it went. There was no sign of the enemy on the east side of the river. Raddick, fearful the enemy would use small boats to sneak troops across the river in the darkness, but unable to move the wounded without wagons, ordered his men to cut down trees to create a makeshift barricade, and posted sentries along the riverbank. As darkness fell, Koren found himself with two soldiers on a bluff above the river, cutting down trees. Portis had seen Captain Raddick start making his rounds among the wo
unded men, and had pulled Koren away, to keep the boy out of Raddick's sight a while longer.
"You think the enemy will really try to cross the river tonight, Portis?" The other soldier asked, as he wiped sweat away from his eyes.
"Don't matter what I think, nor you; the Captain says we build barricades, then that's what we do."
"If I wanted to be a lumberjack, I wouldn't have joined the army." The other man grumbled. He looked down at the swiftly flowing, dark water. "Enemy'd have to be a fool to try getting across that, at night."
"You think so? And what would you have said the odds were we'd be ambushed this morning, huh?" Portis swung the ax, and it bit a shallow cut into the tree with a dull thudding sound, instead of a solid 'Thunk'. There was only one ax for the three men, and not even a proper wood-chopping axe. Raddick's men had to build barricades with the axe blade of the half dozen halberds that some men had carried as secondary weapons. The long pole handle of the halberds had been cut down to make it able to be swung as an axe, but the halberd blade was longer and thinner than a useful wood-chopping axe. Still, the soldiers needed to make do with what tools they had. The rest of their tools, food, supplies, medicines and weapons were in wagons left behind, across the river. "Koren, bring that stone, we need to sharpen the blade again."
"Sharpen it much more, and there won't be any blade left." The grumpy man grumbled, as he sat down on the ground.
"What're you sittin' for, Loxa, you lazy good for nothing? You sharpen it this time, maybe that'll learn you against complain' so much. Koren, you give Loxa the stone, I'm setting down for a rest."
Koren handed the sharpening stone to the grumpy Loxa, who sat down and began to run the stone over the axe blade. Koren's job in the three-man team was to drive two horses to drag the felled trees down to where they would be set into the barricade. Portis had put him in charge of two horses which usually pulled the cook's wagon; beasts that were strong and sturdy, not fast. If they had been cutting the trees for lumber, the branches would have been trimmed off before Koren hitched the logs to the horses. For a barricade, what Raddick wanted were trees with tangled, thick branches, which made them very difficult for the horses to drag through the woods. The trees were constantly getting snagged on other trees, rocks and pretty much everything, and Koren had to haul on the branches with all his might to get them unsnagged. By the time he had delivered four trees to the barricade, he had used up all the swear words he learned from the royal army, and started inventing new curses of his own.
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