Scouting parties were not necessary. Neither was chasing the barbarians. The barbarians came to them. A sentry raised the alarm shortly before dawn. The sky was a cold murky blue hinting that the sun was not long from breaking the distant horizon when a lone rider approached the walls of the small garrison. The sentries watched him ride in, not concerned by the threat posed by a single man, but curious as to his intentions nonetheless. He threw a brown sack high into the air and over the wooden palisade, landing in the yard with a dull thud.
Soren groggily roused himself from his pallet in the hut at the sound of the alarm and stumbled outside into the pale light to be greeted by the ghostly shapes of the men’s tents in the enclosure. Dalvi had gotten outside before him, and was sounding the all clear, as the guard in the small tower on the northeast corner shouted down that the rider was galloping away.
Dalvi approached the sack and poked it with the tip of his sword. Satisfied that it posed no danger, he used the tip to pull the material back from its contents. Although the object that rolled out was bloodied and disfigured, it was clearly the head of the rider that had been sent back to Fort Laed the previous day.
Dalvi looked at it with a frown.
‘I only hope that Thomas took my advice and headed to Laed with his family,’ he said grimly. ‘I think we can forget about any help coming. Under the circumstances it is best if we break camp and return to Laed also. I’m beginning to suspect that the attack on the Androv stead was intended to draw us out here. Perhaps they’ve decided that they want more than a few slaves and some cattle.’
C h a p t e r 3 5
UNWELCOME VISITORS
It took less than an hour for the men to break camp and get ready to leave, their haste added to by the fear that all the men, even the seasoned campaigners, felt at the prospect of being slaughtered by the barbarians. Dalvi gave the men a very brief inspection before they all mounted. He had his hand raised to give the command to open the gate when the lone sentry remaining on the rampart, about to climb down to join the column, called out the alarm. Soren could feel his heart drop and there was a collective groan from the men.
‘To arms! Man the ramparts!’ yelled Dalvi.
In response, the sergeants started barking orders. The horses had to be corralled again, travelling kit had to be stowed and the men had to fit out for combat.
Dalvi beckoned for Soren to follow him as he clambered up the ladder to the rampart. Soren followed him, and once he had hauled himself up onto the narrow walkway he found himself looking down over the trader’s shack, and out onto the plain. A large body of horsemen and several wagons moving slowly toward the fort broke the otherwise featureless grassland.
‘I suppose it would be too much to hope for it to be a trading caravan?’ Soren said, without much conviction.
Dalvi just nodded. ‘We have an hour, maybe two before they get here. I’ve never seen that many on the move before. More than one tribe must have united for the season’s raiding. They’re not in any hurry either. With our dispatch rider dead, they know we’re cut off.’
‘Do we have time to make a run for it?’ Soren asked. He did not have any hope for the fact, but felt the question should be asked nonetheless.
‘Look behind you,’ Dalvi replied.
Soren turned and looked to the west. A smaller, but still large group of horsemen were approaching from that direction.
‘Surrounded then,’ Soren said.
‘They’re masters of the ambush. They’re jumping merchants, prospectors and caravans as soon as they’re old enough to walk. An outpost like this is no challenge for them. I’m sure they’ll love to go home with our colours and the tale of slaughtering soldiers rather than just women and children,’ said Dalvi.
Arrows that were stored in wax-sealed barrels were passed out among the men, the majority of whom were on the rampart trying to improve the meagre protections it afforded. Soren watched the slow progress of the advancing barbarian raiding party until it halted just out of arrow shot. One of the troopers tried a shot, but as Soren expected, it fell short by a dozen or so paces. Some of the barbarians shouted something in a language that Soren did not understand, but you rarely need to understand a language to recognise an insult.
The group that had approached from the west had skirted around the fort and joined with the main body of the barbarians at the front of the outpost. Enclosed within the walls, there was only one way out for the troop, and that was through the barbarians.
That they were in no hurry to attack was clear. The only question was why they waited. There was plenty of food in the fort. The patrols always carried more than they needed in case of emergency and it seemed unlikely that the barbarians would want to embark on a siege when they had such an obvious advantage in numbers. Dalvi’s description of the usual tactic employed by the barbarians spoke against a siege also. They attack, they grab everything they can carry away, they disappear. Simple and effective.
The day dragged on, and still nothing happened. In all the excitement of their approach, no one had thought to bring the merchant into the fort, but nothing had been seen of him, so they assumed that he had hidden away somewhere in his shack. The tension in the fort visibly increased. Soren made slow circuits around the ramparts with Dalvi, who offered encouraging words to the men. Despite this everyone was on edge. The barbarians had set up a large fire, and while most of them remained in fighting array, a group were huddled around it. Dalvi and Soren stared out at them, waiting and wondering.
As they watched, Soren felt strange suddenly. An electric tingling ran through him. It reminded him of how he had felt in the presence of the belek, but the feeling was far more intense now. While it was not an entirely unpleasant feeling, it was unsettling.
Storm clouds had begun to gather on the horizon, rolling down from the unseen mountains in the north. Great, heavy, dark clouds covering the blue sky like a blanket. While the weather in the marches was known to change quickly, there was something unusual about it this time. Dalvi and Soren watched as the group that had gathered by the fire began what looked like a ritual of some form.
‘What are they doing?’ Soren asked.
‘Magic. We may have outlawed it but the barbarians haven’t. They always defer to their shaman before an attack. I wouldn’t worry about it though; it’s little more than a parlour trick to frighten their enemies. I’ve yet to see anything that comes close to the descriptions of the magic done in the days of the Empire. When it’s done they’ll attack,’ Dalvi replied.
They brought a bound man into view. It was the merchant. How they had managed to take him from his shack without being noticed was anyone’s guess. They pulled him to his knees, and the one who appeared to be officiating stepped forward, staring directly at the forty odd frightened eyes on the rampart. He pulled a large knife from his belt and pushed it into the merchant’s back until its tip protruded from the front of his chest after having cut through his heart. For a moment nobody moved an inch, entranced by the horror of the ritual sacrifice that they had just witnessed. After a few moments, the shaman became animated and starting leaping about the place shouting and screaming. As soon as he did, Soren felt like he was about to burst with energy. His entire body tingled and he felt the pressing urge to run, jump and throw things about, anything to burn off the excess energy. It was all that he could do to stop himself from jumping down from the ramparts and attacking the barbarians single handed.
The clouds had brought a premature darkness to the day, such that no one had noticed that the day had in fact worn on and night was fast approaching. Smaller campfires lit up in the gloom, surrounding the fort. It appeared the attack would wait until the following day. Soren was unsure if this was a blessing or a curse. None of the men, he concluded, had experienced this type of fighting. Small skirmishes on open ground was all they knew. Now though, they were trapped inside this ill kept fort and surrounded by a large hostile force.
Added to his already touchy state of mind, the
energy coursing through him burned at his veins and pushed him to the point where he wanted to grab the nearest man and beat him to a pulp. He took a deep breath and tried to calm himself, but it was to no avail. This was far stronger than anything he had experienced before though, even with the belek’s hot breath on his face and its drool dripping into his eyes. He took another breath, but it was becoming too much to bear.
They stayed in battle array all that night, pairing up with another man and taking turns to sleep. Soren slept feverishly, his slumber tormented by vivid dreams that woke him in sweats. He tried to conceal this for fear that the men might think that he was afraid. He was, but not to a degree that would cause that type of behaviour. Despite his fitful sleep, when dawn finally broke, he did not feel at all tired.
The barbarians had brought back their picketing troops, and reformed in front of the fort. With a guttural cry that seemed to resonate across the plain, they moved forward, beginning their attack before any of the men had time to break their fast.
‘Ready arrows!’ Soren had shouted without even thinking, the command training given at the Academy rushing back into his mind, the practicalities of what had seemed a pleasant diversion from the classroom now all too evident.
‘Loose!’
The sound of a dozen bowstrings thrumming was far less impressive than the hundreds or even thousands he had imagined commanding when training on the drill square, but seeing as he had never heard it for real, perhaps this was as impressive as it got. The arrows whistled through the air, most punching noiselessly into the turf, with only one or two hitting a barbarian shield. None took a life. One of the men vomited over the rampart, the futility of the volley of arrows pushing his terror to the point where he could no longer contain it.
‘Loose!’ Soren shouted once again. The second volley had much the same effect as the first. The arrows were too few and spaced apart to provide any real threat at this distance. The barbarians continued on relentlessly.
‘Save the rest of the arrows until the men can make aimed shots,’ said a voice behind him. Dalvi stood behind him looking down grimly. The barbarians had formed a wall of shields in front of them, wide discs daubed in a variety of colours. Soren wondered briefly if they represented different barbarian tribes, the way the different noble houses of Ostenheim had different colours and banners.
‘They haven’t got anything to tackle the walls,’ Soren said.
‘No, you’re right,’ Dalvi replied, a hint of puzzlement in his voice. None of the barbarians carried ladders, rams or anything else that could tackle the wooden palisade at the front of the fort.
Just as the shield wall reached the trader’s shack, two men ran out from the rear rank with flaming torches in their hands. The dry timber from which the shack was constructed took the flame up eagerly and it was only a few seconds before thick black smoke was billowing up from the opposite side.
‘I don’t see what that will achieve,’ Dalvi said, with a grunt. The shield wall had halted its advance. As flames began to leap skyward and reach around the shack with their consuming embrace, Soren felt a tug, not at his body, but at his very being. The burning sensation in his body that he had managed to force into the background returned with a renewed vigour. A breeze began to blow.
The flames, which had stabbed skyward, were now leaning toward the fort, and its wooden palisade. The wind increased steadily and the flames crept ever closer as more of the shack became engulfed in flame. Soren felt his skin tingle with energy.
‘How the hell are they doing that?’ wondered Dalvi aloud. ‘Bloody magic. I’ve never seen them use it for anything more than tricks to try to frighten their enemies. But blowing up the wind like that? The flames are going to set the palisade on fire. Pull the men back from that part of the rampart.’
Sergeant Smit reacted immediately, barking out his orders.
‘I won’t have them using their filthy murder magic on any of my men,’ Dalvi said to Soren. ‘We fight to the very last breath, Cornet. No man is to be taken alive. Do you understand?’
Soren watched the sap leak out of the backs of the wooden posts as the flames began to lick the palisade. His eyes stung from the first wisps of smoke to reach them.
‘I understand, Lieutenant,’ said Soren.
The posts began to blacken and smoke as the fire charred it, grasping for a hold on the young timber, until finally they ignited. The men watched them burn, transfixed on what seemed like the countdown to their deaths.
‘I’ll take some men down into the courtyard to hold them back for as long as we can. You stay up here on the wall and keep the men up here firing into them,’ said Dalvi.
One of the posts exploded in a loud crack and shower of sparks. The barbarians let out a throaty cheer and began banging their shields with their weapons.
‘To the end, lads, no one to be taken alive,’ Smit shouted. While most of the men were quiet with fear, Smit seemed to be invigorated by the situation.
It took what seemed like an eternity for the wooden wall to finally collapse; all the while the men watched in silence, both those on the inside and outside of the walls. The small fort was filled with a tangy black smoke that clawed at the throats and bit at the eyes of those trapped inside. When the wall did finally give way in a crashing shower of sparks, Soren saw the barbarians move forward through a fleeting window in the thick smoke. They banged whatever weapon they had, ranging from clubs to axes to swords, against the back of their shields, creating a rhythmic thrumming that Soren was surprised to find quite intimidating.
Somewhere in the midst of all the smoke Soren heard Smit yelling for the bowmen to fire. He fought down a sense of panic that he could feel stirring in his gut. He was virtually blinded by the smoke, and all he could hear was the sound of the banging getting ever closer. The thrum of bowstrings and the sound of arrows whistling into the air brought him to his senses. He drew his sword and looked around, trying to make some sense of the unfolding scene through the smoke.
The banging was supplemented by bloodcurdling screams and war cries and somewhere in the midst of it all he could hear Lieutenant Dalvi forming the men up to receive the oncoming barbarians. Mixed through with this was Smit barking orders to the men firing from the ramparts. It quickly occurred to Soren that this was his first battle, and he wasn’t doing anything other than stumbling around in the smoke and trying not to wet his britches. He would have taken a deep breath to steady himself, but the air was still chokingly full of smoke. All the energy that he had been filled with had manifested itself in a jittery nervousness that was proving to be useless at best and at worst threatened to overwhelm the wall he had built in his mind to keep back the fear of dying.
In all of the smoke, in all of the confusion, in all of the panic, a thought made itself known to him through all the chaos, or rather a memory. The memory was of all the days that he had woken on the street, so hungry that if he did not eat that day, he would probably not wake up on the one following. It had happened many times, and the memory of it now was calming. Despite all the opportunities that had fallen in his lap, all the comforts and luck that had come his way, he was still the same, still able to struggle through a day of adversity and still be living at the end of it. The thought gave him comfort. The thought directed the energy into a more positive form. His grip on his sword became firmer and he tried to clear some of the smoke from his face.
There wasn’t much he could do from the ramparts other than give the men words of encouragement, or point out targets for them to aim for when the smoke cleared enough to see them. Despite their best efforts, Soren could only confidently say three barbarians had fallen to their arrows.
The fire had all but consumed the trader’s shack and the volume of smoke blowing into the fort began to decrease, allowing a clearer picture of the scene below. Lieutenant Dalvi had clustered a small group of men as close to the breach in the wooden wall as the flames allowed. By doing so he also prevented the barbarians from using their great
er numbers to their advantage. Despite this, things were not going well. Two troopers lay in the dirt and the barbarians pressed forward with relentless determination. Soren’s men fired down from the ramparts, but all they hit were the shields the rear ranks of barbarians held up over their heads to protect themselves. If they fired at the front row they would hit their own troops, who were few enough as it was.
Dalvi cast a glance up to the ramparts, his face for the first time showing desperation. His eyes met Soren’s for the briefest moment before he plunged into the fighting alongside his men.
‘Smit!’ Soren shouted. ‘Form up the men, we’re useless up here, let’s at least die where we can do some good!’ Soren led the way, rushing into the melee, which was gradually pushing back from the breach, allowing more of the barbarians join in the fighting. As he rushed toward the enemy, everything around him began to slow. He welcomed and embraced the feeling as all of the anxious and turbulent energy he had felt tormented by since the arrival of the shaman flooded into him and focussed itself into a fine point. Then the Moment took over with a strength and intensity that he would not have imagined possible.
C h a p t e r 3 6
THE PURSUIT
Soren woke slowly, each sense returning grudgingly. First came smell, or what was left of it. His nose and throat burned and all he could smell was acrid smoke. Taste followed, but that was much the same. His mouth was bone dry, and smoke was all he could taste. He opened his eyes, the light stabbing at them causing his pupils to contract with painful speed. They were red and sore around the edges, and dry from the smoke. It was the worst Soren had ever felt, worse even than being cold and hungry on the street. He tried to make a sound but his dry throat wouldn’t let him. He tried to move and every joint and muscle in his body screamed in pain, so he relaxed and stayed still, just concentrating on breathing, which in itself was uncomfortable.
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