by Vox Day
The next morning was cold and grey. She forced herself to eat a little oatmeal, but her stomach was bound up in uncomfortable knots. If it were not for the knowledge that she would be at Prince Karl’s side, she didn’t think she would have had the courage to ride out with the Savoner horsemen. But her spirits rose when she saw the knights lined up in their ranks, their polished silver armor brighter than the faint rays of sun that occasionally broke through the mass of clouds above.
She herself wore a borrowed leather jerkin from a small squire whose knight was not in the ambushing force, and she’d even tucked an oversized dagger that would serve her as a sword into her belt. It wouldn’t be of much use against the powerful jaws and sharp claws of the wolves, but at least she would have the ability to avoid capture if need be. In fifty years of brutal struggle throughout the islands, no man, woman, or child had ever been known to escape aalvarg imprisonment, and it was widely believed that they devoured their captives rather than enslave them.
“You’re very brave to ride with us, Lady Fjotra,” Patrice told her as she climbed into the saddle. “But don’t you worry, Blais and I will keep you safe. We have very strict orders from the Red Prince that your survival and safe return to the castle is our paramount duty today.
She smiled at him. He was sweet. But she couldn’t take her eyes away from the commanding figure of his prince.
The Red Prince sat astride his giant warhorse as if he were a god. His shield was painted red, and he wore a long red plume set jauntily atop his visored helmet. White teeth flashed at her, and he raised a mailed fist to her in a royal salute before ordering his men to move out.
The Dalarns whose feigned retreat they would cover had departed at sunrise, but since the wolf people usually preferred to fight by night, her father was confident that they could launch a convincing attack on the aalvarg camp before falling back and drawing the enraged wolves onto ground where the Savoners could easily ride them down. It wasn’t a perfect plan, he had told her, but it had the advantage of being simple enough that not even the language barrier between their allied forces were likely to pose much of a problem.
They rode slowly in order to spare the horses, so it took them nearly an hour to reach their position. The Dalarn warriors led by Steinthor Strongbow were to begin their attack when the sun reached its zenith. So, after stationing scouts at the top of both hills, the prince allowed everyone to dismount and eat what Fjotra feared for some would be their last meal.
The combination of riding in the company of so many fearsome knights with the careless, confident chatter of Blais and Patrice was enough to keep her fear in check, and so she had little trouble eating the bread and cheese that was distributed to everyone.
Prince Karl, she noticed, broke off pieces of the same bread and helped himself to hunks of the same cheese that his men ate. The way they treated him as he walked among them was strange. It struck her more like the familiar affection a man might have for his older brother than the healthy mix of respect, fear, and awe that was due a chief or warleader.
“He is much-loved in the ranks,” Patrice commented as if he had read her thoughts.
“They’re not afraid of him the way the clans fear my father,” she said. “Is he not a true warrior, then?”
The battlemage laughed in disbelief. “The Red Prince? No, he is most certainly a warrior, and a valorous one at that. Battle is the sport for which he lives. I daresay that if your father had not given in to him, he’d have led us out here even without your men-at-arms. If we’re going to fight these ulfin, and it appears we may have to whether we want to fight them or not, then our officers have to engage them in order to learn how they make war. This little battle today, as small as it is, could very well lay the foundation for regaining the entire chain of islands for the king on behalf of your people. I have no doubt the wolves can be deadly. But then, I doubt they have ever seen the thundering fury of a royal cavalry charge. It is truly marvelous to behold!”
“This is what you call a small battle?” She looked around the huge mass of armored knights and their giant steeds, more than twice the size of the horses her people had ridden before the aalvarg had killed and eaten most of them. “Before my father bring together what is left of the tribes, I don’t think he ever bring more than one hundred men to war at the same time.”
“The king has more than one hundred royal battlemages alone at his disposal, my lady. Blais and I are but two of the younger and less skilled ones. And there are another fifty acolytes of varying abilities, as well as a number of elderly adepts who no longer take the field but are some of the most powerful sorcerers at L’Academie. And, as you can probably imagine, he has ten knights and a hundred men-at-arms for every mage. The scale on which the king makes war is several orders of magnitude greater than is the case with your people—or, we can hope, the wolf-people. Although I doubt that was always the case.”
“Why do you say that?” Even though she’d seen the wealth of Savonne and had travelled across nearly half of its extent, Fjotra was still a little shocked at the idea that the Savoner king had so much military might under his command. While it confirmed for her that they had done the right thing in appealing to him, for surely he had the ability to crush the cursed aalvarg if he so desired, she began to realize that subjugation to the throne of Savonne might only mean a slower and more gentle form of extinction for her people.
“That giant black monstrosity of a castle in which your father has been hosting us wasn’t built by one hundred men, or by men who feared an attack by a hundred, or even a thousand, men. I imagine it must have been a great redoubt during the time of the Witchkings. Many men fled their cruel rule, and those who crossed the White Sea would have been able to escape them. It’s not inconceivable that Raknarborg was built by men who later returned to settle down in Savondir.”
“But that would make your people the same as my people!” she protested. “That doesn’t make any sense. We don’t even speak the same language or look anything alike.”
The young battlemage didn’t respond to her. He was cocking his head to the side with a strange expression on his face. He glanced at the older mage, who nodded. “Come on, our orders are to climb to the top of that hill there. You’re to come with us. But don’t crest the summit. Once we get close to the peak, we’ll get down on our bellies and crawl. We don’t want to expose ourselves and give them the chance to see that we’re waiting for them.”
She hadn’t heard anything herself, but she had no doubt the mages knew what they were doing. Fjotra dutifully began following Patrice after first checking to make sure her horse’s reins were securely tied to the rope that was pegged to the ground. If this allied effort went awry and they had to retreat to the castle, she wanted to be sure she had a horse waiting for her.
On that terrible night’s flight from Garn, they had all learned the hard way about how fast the aalvarg could move when they were running down their prey. She belatedly realized that her father’s men had no chance of reaching the safety of the castle walls on their own. If the ambush were unsuccessful, or if the Red Prince’s courage failed him at the sight hundreds of great ravenous wolves rushing toward him, every single Dalarn warrior would die.
“You had better not abandon them, your Royal Highness,” she muttered to herself. “Or I swear by the All-Father’s crows that I’ll kill you myself.”
“What’s that?” Patrice looked back at her. He was clambering up the steep hill behind Blais, occasionally using his hands to help him manage the slope. A squad of archers followed the three of them. Another squad was just beginning to climb the other hill. Below them, the knights were putting on their helmets and sliding on their gauntlets, while their men-at-arms prepared their mounting stools.
“Nothing.” She winced as the uneven edges of the rock poking through the cold grass made her palms ache. Once, she caught her knee on an exposed stone, and the unexpected jolt of pain nearly took her breath away. But it faded after a brief pause, and
after taking a deep breath to gather herself, she continued climbing after the others. It didn’t take them too long to reach the crest, but once they had crawled to the top and concealed themselves there, she was surprised to see there was nothing in either the valley below them or the treeline that followed the curve of the river. “Where are they?” she hissed.
“We started climbing when they began their attack,” Blais told her without bothering to whisper. “You needn’t keep your voice down, my lady, just your head. Ulfin ears may be keen, but they can’t hear us from here. We’re downwind. And they won’t scent us, or the horses either.”
The cold from the ground rapidly penetrated her body despite the leather armor she was wearing over a heavy wool tunic that belonged to one of her father’s men. She lay there, shivering in silence, for what seemed like an age.
Patrice finally nudged her with his elbow. “There,” he said, pointing toward the far end of the valley.
She could just make out some movement at the edge of the treeline. Then Patrice passed his hand in front of her face. She jerked her head back and stared at him, which drew a pleased smirk from him and a chuckle from Blais. She scowled and looked back at the strange circle which floated unsuspended in the air in front of her face. When she moved her face close to it and looked through it, it made the distant trees look much closer. Startled, she jerked her head back, then frowned and looked through it again.
By moving her head slightly and changing the angle, she could see not only the figures of the lightly armored Dalarn men running toward her, with axes in hand and their shields slung on their backs, she could even make out two or three faces that she recognized as young men from her father’s retinue.
“How you do that?”
“It’s a simple water spell,” Patrice told her in an annoyingly condescending tone.” Arrayed properly, it reflects the light and expands the vision. Quite a useful little trick, but entirely harmless.”
“Like young Savoner mages?” she snapped, irritated. She was already on edge, knowing that good men were likely to be dying soon right before her eyes, and she had no patience for this poorly timed male tomfoolery. Blais’s chuckle turned into an open guffaw. “Lord Patrice, sometimes Dalarn men play knife game before women. They think to impress us but only stab their hands. Maybe even cut off finger. Is no good. You want to impress me? Win the battle. No play water games.”
The battlemage wasn’t abashed. He grinned at her and shrugged. “I did not mean to show off for you, my lady. I only thought you might like to see better. Sadly, His Royal Highness has not ordered me to win the battle, but perhaps I can hope that to be granted an opportunity to impress you if events proceed differently than we anticipate. In any event, my lady, if you don’t wish to use the lens, simply pass your hand through it to break the spell. Your hand will get wet, but touching it will not do you the slightest harm.”
She didn’t favor him with a response, instead she returned her eye to the suspended disk, watching as more of her father’s men emerged from the trees. She tried to count them, hoping that too many had not been lost in the attack on the aalvarg encampment, but it was impossible. Still, the fact that there were too many of them for her to count easily struck her as a good sign. The men were running easily too, without any frightened looks backward, and they ran together in loose groups that seemed to indicate that this was an intentional and disciplined retreat rather than a panicked rout.
Fjotra recognized the last group of men as some of her father’s most renowned warriors. She saw Steinthor, Glammad, and Asmund Hairy-Arse. Unlike the others, the rearguard was carrying their shields on their arms. Several appeared to be wounded, and she could see that their axes, in some cases still dripping blood, had been recently used.
She stifled a scream as the man behind Glammad abruptly disappeared. One moment, he had been running alongside the big black-haired warrior and approaching the open ground, and the next, he was gone, pulled violently to the ground by something she couldn’t see.
The men preceding them had already turned and formed a shield wall about a hundred paces from the treeline. They walked slowly backward as a unit, awaiting the rush of the still-unseen enemy.
Steinthor, easily recognizable with his long, waist-length blond braid, shouted something. In response, ten of the men at the forest edge suddenly stopped running and whirled around, while the rest of the warriors in the final group sprinted as fast as they could manage, weighed down as they were with their weapons and armor, for the relative safety of the shield wall.
“What do they do?” Fjotra cried out in dismay.
“They can’t all reach the others, my lady. Those who stay behind will slow the wolves long enough for the rest of the rearguard to join the main body.”
Steinthor had no sooner given the command than the aalvarg burst from the trees like an dark and monstrous river overrunning its banks.
They ran low to the ground, using their long-claw like hands in much the same way she had used them when climbing the hill. They were every bit as dreadful and ugly as she remembered from those terrible days of flight. The ulfin were perhaps one-third man and two-thirds wolf—a demonic abomination with none of man’s nobility nor the wolf’s canine grace, seemingly created to do nothing but kill and destroy. They were somewhat smaller than they appeared in her nightmares. It was actually hard to tell exactly how tall they were due to the way they ran on all fours, but they were certainly shorter and lighter than the Dalarn men.
Many were unarmed. Those few that carried weapons bore either clubs, rudely sharpened stakes, or, occasionally, a weapon that Fjotra recognized as being of Dalarn origin. Fortunately, for the sake of the men arrayed on the field, she saw none carrying the bows that, however crude, had proven sufficiently lethal at Garn.
Their armor, to the extent they had any, was of equally poor quality. One large beast missing its left eye wore a man’s leather breastplate on its back as if it were a saddle.
Poorly armored as they were, they howled like demons as they leaped upon the ten brave men who were sacrificing themselves for the sake of their brothers-in-arms. Six of the monsters fell at the first exchange, their skulls cloven and their breasts shattered by Dalarn axes. But after a moment’s hesitation, the grey flood swirled viciously around the small circle of doomed warriors as if they were a few small stones attempting to dam a winter-fed river.
First one man fell, his leg bitten through. Then the next was overpowered by a huge beast that leaped over its fellows and knocked him down, tearing at his throat.
Horrified and sickened, Fjotra lifted her hand to banish the sorcerous lens. But Patrice reached out and stopped her.
“Look away for a little while, if it troubles you,” he urged her. “It’s dreadful, I know, but so far, everything is going exactly as planned. And you may want to see what comes next.”
“Where is your prince?” she demanded. “Why don’t he come out to help them?”
“It’s too soon,” Blais said with a growl. “If he attacks when they’re too close to the woods, they’ll simply fade back into the trees where our horse can’t follow. We have to draw them out, get them entangled with your infantry. The Prince doesn’t seek to merely drive them from the field, he wants to smash them utterly.”
So did she, Fjotra realized, as she felt impotent fury coursing through her at the sight of the foul beasts that had killed half her friends, slain her mother, destroyed her village, and forced her proud people to submit to the rule of a foreign king. In less than thirty years, the aalvarg had done what neither the Witchkings nor generations of royal Savoners had managed in five centuries: They had defeated the northern tribes and forced them to the very edge of extinction.
But they have not defeated us, she reminded herself, for we still stand and fight! And, with the aid of the southerners and by the grace of the gods, one day we will kill them all, every single one, for what they have done to us!
Even so, she did not know if she could have the
ruthless patience of the Red Prince who could wait so calmly, watching his allies fight and die. Steeling herself, she looked back through the magical lens and saw to her horror that part of the monstrous pack was tearing at the unmoving bodies of the ten fallen men while the leading line of wolves was now loping toward the Dalarn shield wall.
The warriors there had stopped retreating and were arrayed in a semi-circular fashion with the ends farther back than the center. It was three men deep and about sixty wide, which suggested that about twenty warriors had fallen in the attack and subsequent retreat. Twenty men was a pittance in comparison with how many men, women, and children had died in Garn and the nearby villages alone. And yet the bravery of their heroic deaths made her want to weep for them.
The shield wall was not such easy prey for the wolf-people. Fearsome as they were, they were not fearless, and they shied away from hurling themselves upon it. It was easy to see that they had experience of such formations before.
From the hilltop, the shield wall looked like a single great creature, bristling with spears and axeheads. Despite their greater numbers, the aalvarg facing it seemed reluctant to pay the price in blood required to attack it. They prowled back and forth, snapping at the Dalarn, whom they outnumbered at least two to one, but after one scrawny beast ventured too close to the shield wall and was promptly dispatched by an axemen who bravely darted out from the line, they refused to get any closer.
“Undisciplined cowards,” she heard Blais grumble. “Come on, you bastards, get yourselves stuck in now!”
“What’s that?” Patrice responded, pointing to a small group of wolf creatures emerging from the forest. “Sacre bleu, this could be a problem.”
