“Milady, we don’t know that—” began one of her captains, but the rest of the words were swallowed. His name was Thorkil, and he was known for his outspoken nature, even among the Kindred. She had raised a palm to him, and Thorkil had frozen. She did not look at the captain, but everyone there knew she did not need to. From her palm she could release a gush of heat like dragonfire, a broad cone of flame that could consume many irritants at once.
“Yes,” she said, lowering her palm slowly. “Yes, we do know. We know they are down there, awaiting the signal. If you don’t know it, you are a fool.”
Thorkil stepped from boot to boot, frowning, but he kept quiet.
“We will move,” said Gudrin, coming to a final decision. Many of the assembled Kindred whistled and thumped their breasts with their shields. This they understood. This they yearned for with all their hearts. Hiding inside their mountain fortress was fine, but not when their brethren died at the cold stone feet of these same mountains, only a few miles away.
“I will send out a regiment of heavy foot. They shall be accompanied by an auxiliary force of three scout companies, armed with crossbows. The last and most important element of the expedition will be the steam-driven bombards. All of them we have built will be deployed.”
“What’s this?” dared captain Thorkil, who had spoken before. Thorkil was tall for one of the Kindred and had a wild froth of orange hair that stuck up in every direction. From the center of the frothing hair blazed eyes as orange as lava.
Gudrin turned to face him. She smiled slowly. “I like your fire Captain Thorkil. You will lead the expedition. Bombard the elves and allow them no peace. If our people attempt to retreat from Gronig into the mines, blast any elves that follow them.”
The captain sputtered, but lowered his frowning face under the gaze of his queen. “As you will, milady. But what if they slaughter the town?”
Gudrin tilted her head, pursed her lips. “If they see we are content to bombard them, and all they are gaining is more time under our heavy bombards, they will soon tire of their sport in my town.”
The captain shook his hoary head. “You are a cold one, milady. Despite the fire that whispers over your palms.”
Gudrin glanced down and noticed Thorkil was right, her hands were indeed running with crimson flames. She drew in a breath and nodded.
“It is the job of a monarch to make the hard decisions,” she said, surprised at how calmly her words sounded. She was back in control of herself, now that the initial shocking news of the war’s beginning had sunken in. She had known for months it was coming, but somehow the reality of it was worse still than the anticipation. “I will not leave Snowdon undefended. I will gladly forfeit one thousand lives to avoid losing ten thousand more. The elves will be in an uncomfortable position. Rapine and frenzy will be theirs, but they will be under fire and they will know another force marches up behind them. If they want to defeat us, they must advance onto the cliffs quickly or be caught between two armies. Oberon will see that and come up to silence the guns.”
“And what are my orders then, milady, when he does come for the guns?”
“Withdraw, firing as you can. Spend the lives of your troops to cover the bombards.”
The captain nodded. Thorkil looked anything but happy with his new command. He turned to go.
“Captain,” said Gudrin.
“My queen?”
“Bring everything you can back intact.”
Thorkil nodded. He shook his frothing orange mane of hair and grumbled as he stumped down the spiraling stairs to the Great Gates below. A dozen pair of eyes followed him, and everyone wondered as to their futures.
Chapter Eighteen
Twists of Flesh
Oberon’s forces soon surrounded Gronig and drove its pitifully few defenders back into the circle of blocky stone structures. Fortunately, the town had no walls. Crossbow bolts, well-placed, found the throats of a dozen merlings, but more poured forward. The elves stood in a rippling line behind the light merling infantry, shooting their bows with careful precision. Kindred chests and eye-sockets sprouted arrows. Often, the Kindred still fired and reloaded several times, cursing and working their weapons furiously. At last, however, the ensorcelled arrow tips worked their way too deeply and stilled their pounding hearts or severed their raging minds from their bodies.
Then the merlings were inside the town and the fighting became house-to-house. The heavy stone walls and small cut windows served the Kindred well in defense, channeling the enemy attacks through tight doorways. Vicious fighting erupted at each threshold as small knot of Kindred struggled with a pick, shovel or axe against a wave of croaking, hooting enemies. Hundreds perished on both sides.
It was soon after that Oberon saw the skies light up with orange glare to the North. Every elf and every merling who wasn’t in melee gazed up toward Snowdon. A few seconds after the orange glare came a booming report like thunder. The hearts of the Kindred who heard it leapt with glee. They struggled with the merlings in their own doorways with renewed ferocity. They grinned and howled, throwing off a score of slimy, grasping hands.
Oberon and the oldest of his children knew the sound. They had not heard it for many, many centuries, but it wasn’t something that one could forget. There was no time to signal for his troops to take cover, so Oberon simply dove against one of the Kindred houses, putting the solid stone walls against his back and crouching down. He watched the skies, as did a thousand others.
The first of the stones fell upon a Kindred brewery in the eastern quarter of Gronig. The roof had been built to withstand many things, but a direct hit from a bombard was too much. It stove in and a great explosion erupted. Fire and body parts flew everywhere. Kindred and merlings died, their bloods staining the ground and mixing like two shades of paint.
More stones fell and more explosions geysered up earth, stone, fire and flesh. This shock, combined with the renewed ferocity of the Kindred defenders, proved too much for the merlings. They broke at one threshold, then another, and soon were humping and croaking in all directions, screeching and clawing over one another in a desperate panic.
Oberon straightened, brushing his fine vest after the first volley ended. It would be a minute or two before the next volley fell among them. He heaved a great sigh. The merlings were second rate troops at best, worthy only of slaying peasant girls, and perhaps not even that task was within their power.
Gudrin had surprised him. She had overcome her fury at his attack, and worse, had cunningly fired her guns on his army when they were most exposed and embroiled in combat. She cared not a whit for her own folk, and planned his destruction with cold precision. He had hoped she would respond with the fury of Pyros and march to meet him, leaving Snowdon weak to the secondary attack from below. But that was clearly not to be.
Oberon gestured impatiently for his bloodhound. The creature’s head swiveled slowly, to look at him. It could smell the blood in the air and its tongue lolled. It watched its master, its ruby eyes knowing.
Oberon nodded to the little monster. “Yes. You will drink well this day.”
He had hoped to hold back his little secret. He had hoped that the enemy would know nothing of his command of the Red, and that he could use it at a surprising moment to gain advantage. But it was not to be. He needed the power of the hound now. He needed its thirst, if only to keep disaster from overtaking them.
He sprinted for the nearest flattened house. Gallons of blood soaked the cobbles of the street and the formed mud with the dusty yard. He summoned up a great rotating sphere of blackened blood over his head. Using the power of the licking hound, he caused a score of limbs to come together, to grow together. A thing formed under his direction. He sculpted it with his waving hands and his mind. With caressing motions, his arms slick to the shoulder with gore, he pushed a dozen legs downward and two score arms upward. Nine heads with gaping mouths sat atop the abomination, the eyes popping open with sucking sounds.
Knowing he had not much time, he
ran toward the nearest concentration of Kindred. They had holed up in Gronig’s finest inn, the Shepherd’s Rest. Behind him, the abomination ambled after, tottering and lurching on pumping feet, each angled in a random direction.
To the Kindred defenders, it seemed as if a living giant with countless limbs came at them. Some of the limbs bore axes, splinters of stone and shafts of broken pipe. Merling heads, scarred in a dozen spots, croaked with mad glee. Kindred heads, mouths sagging open, gargled and howled incoherently from the fleshy mass.
The abomination tore the double doors off the front of the inn and strode into the common room. Some of the heads were slammed into the stone roof ten feet above.
Screaming in fear and horror, the troopers and patrons slashed at the thing, but it felt no pain. It knew no mercy, nor fear. It shambled amongst them, reaching for them, beating them with three arms while holding them with two more. Some of the Kindred were thrown down and flattened by the churning feet. Others were chopped to bits by thrashing weapons. A few unfortunates were sucked into the mass and consumed, becoming part of the fleshy mass and adding their own limbs to the monster.
Oberon crouched outside the doorway, stroking his hound, which licked desperately at the blood that flowed out of the doorway as if from a sluice.
The second volley came down then, and smashed more stone buildings, elves, Kindred and merlings. One of the burning strikes was very near. The damnable Kindred would destroy their own town and his army with it, he realized. Gudrin was annihilating her own folk to destroy his army.
With a hiss of fury, he jumped up after the second volley had fallen. He would not wait for a third. He had to get his army out of this trap.
He summoned his heralds, and silver horns were raised to thin lips. The horns pealed, sounding the withdrawal. They would head up the Black Mountains. They would destroy the bombards and leave what was left of Gronig behind.
Oberon looked back into the common room, where the abomination he had summoned now tore open one room of the inn at a time, consuming the screaming occupants. He shrugged, and left the monster to its work. It had already swollen so large with consumed flesh that it could not exit even the double-wide doors of the Shepherd’s Rest. He smiled to think that Brand would meet it soon. Perhaps the experience would expand the boy’s mind and outlook. He liked the concept so much, that he ran from house to house, finding those that had been flattened and were thus filled with fresh gore. He raised up a pack of smaller abominations, and set them loose upon the remaining inhabitants of Gronig. Leaving the tottering monsters to their grim work, he ran with his army toward the looming peaks of the Black Mountains.
As he ran, Oberon summoned up a great ball of blood. He passed among his troops, who recoiled in horror from the floating cloud of dark, sticky liquid. Everywhere he ran however, cuts closed, eyes were drawn back into sockets from where they hung out in the dry air, teeth regrew in mouths and bones unbroke themselves. Soon, horrified or not, his army followed close behind. The wounded in particular hobbled as fast as they could to hug up to the swirling funnel of blood mist that trailed behind their lord and his trotting hound.
* * *
Brand’s first day in the Deepwood was an uneasy one. No one liked the place, with the possible exception of the Wee Folk, who were not bothered by leaning trees or unnaturally clinging thickets. Brand, for his part, was more concerned with the length of his column. The road was very narrow and the forest very dense. This forced his troops to stretch into a narrow line that could march no more than four abreast. A long narrow column was vulnerable to attack from the flanks, and even he with his limited knowledge of tactics he could see the danger clearly.
He ordered the grumbling contingent of Wee Folk out into the forest on either side of the column. While the militia army marched westward toward the Black Mountains that rose up on the far side of the Deepwood, the manlings worked as reluctant scouts. They hopped and scrambled through the trees and thickets a hundred paces to the north and south of the column, with orders to sound the alarm if anything important was contacted. This caused serious delays at first, when various Wee Ones came shrilling and hooting to the line of stern-faced men. When the alarms had turned out to be things such as the sighting of a stag or the cry of a six-clawed raven, Brand had insisted upon a firm discussion with Tomkin. His scouts had to behave sensibly, or they were worse than useless to this army.
Tomkin was rankled, naturally. “Easy enough for a lout like you to say,” he complained. “You march sedately along in your festival best like a king on parade, while we hop about the forest like lost hares!”
Brand took a deep breath. It had already been a difficult journey. He’d never had to organize and march an army into a forest before. To allow Ambros its head in battle, to go mad with fury and slay the enemy, this was something he had become accustomed to. But cajoling allies into a cooperative mood was not his strong point. The presence of the axe, always strongest in his mind when adventure was near, made it hard to be diplomatic. He tried to keep his words civil, which he managed with difficulty.
He paused, closing his eyes to think clearly. The manling tapped his foot impatiently, but Brand ignored him. After a moment’s reflection, he felt he had an answer. “Very well, Tomkin, here is the new order of the day. I want all of your scouts to report directly to you when they spot something. You can decide if the news is worthy of relaying to me and the army in general.”
Tomkin blinked at him. “You trust my judgment over that of these others?”
“Absolutely. You are a most sensible member of your folk. Tomkin is no one’s fool! You know the difference between an attack and a flight of owls.”
Tomkin nodded sharply in agreement. It seemed to Brand that his nose rode somewhat higher in the air than it had previously. “Just so. Naturally, I accept your arrangement.”
Afterward, the scouting went on as before, with an excited manling running in from the forest every hour or so, as if the Wild Hunt had somehow resurrected itself and come after him. On each occasion, Tomkin listened to the scout’s frantic news of feral badgers and rutting warthogs, then cuffed the messenger and sent him back, bitterly cursing, into the dank forests.
By nightfall Brand felt sure they had made it over a third of the way through the forest. In fact, they had to be near the spot where he had once built a cairn of gnome heads for a certain lost boy. He felt a pang, thinking about that day, but he could not bring himself to regret it. The slaughter had been one barbaric act in response to another, certainly. But a thousand such ignominies had been heaped upon his people for a thousand years.
He called a halt for the night an hour before dusk. He had his troops use the dying daylight to hack reaching tendrils of the forest from the road. They used the area thus cleared for a camp. There wasn’t time to put up proper defenses, but he mounted a heavy all-night guard in shifts and let his men rest and eat well. They would meet battle within two days, possibly less. They had to be in the best shape they could be.
In his tent, he took council with Corbin and Tomkin. A few of his captains weighed in. He had placed Corbin in charge of the cavalry, and his cousin seemed anxious to deploy them.
“The battle ahead can’t be going well,” said Corbin. For once in his life he seemed eager to get to the fight. Brand wondered if all his stories of adventure as the axeman had rubbed off on his cousin. “The cavalry could ride ahead and strike a day earlier.”
They all looked expectantly at Brand. The Riverton Council had seen fit to send him out as the sole commander this time. Tylag and Thilfox had stayed behind to build up defenses and recruit and train more militia. Brand was, after all, the Champion of the Haven and the only Lord amongst living humanity. He had led them to victory before, and without his wielding of Ambros, they had no army to speak of that could stand against the other races. Making him the commander, but with the advice of militia captains to lean upon, was the best arrangement they could come up with. Everyone knew that once battle came upon
them, it was Brand who would lead the charge and he was the only one the troops would follow. The influence of Ambros, with its flashing amber light, would goad every man of them to charge after Brand in any case, orders or no. It was an important part of the Amber Jewel’s power.
Brand took a deep breath. He eyed Corbin. “I would dearly love to arrive sooner to help the Kindred,” he said.
“Then give the order!” Corbin urged.
Brand shook his head. “I would do it, but we simply don’t have enough horsemen. If you are ambushed by the enemy before you get out of this accursed forest, they will cut you down. A light cavalry force is useless in a thicket.”
“Then perhaps you should lead the cavalry, Champion,” said another captain.
Corbin looked at this man with some degree of annoyance. But he considered for a moment, and warmed to the idea. “That would change things. You and I could lead an advance force. The infantry could come up behind a day later. If we run into serious resistance, all we have to do is wait for reinforcements.”
Brand considered the idea. It had merit. For all they knew, a small force now would do great good on the field of battle, and delaying could be disastrous for the Kindred. On the other hand, splitting their forces might result in disaster for the Haven.
The axe, for its part, liked Corbin’s proposal. Anything that made battle come faster, or better yet provided greater intensity, had its blessing. The thing shifted on his back, the handle sliding from the right side of his head to the left. Several of the assembled captains eyed the thing, trying not to stare. Brand knew it made them all nervous and yet provided them with comfort at the same time. They were like men who followed a frightening giant into battle, gleeful that they were not the ones to face the wrath of the monster, but wary all the same.
Brand thought for a moment, while others voiced their opinions. Finally, he spoke and everyone fell silent, even Tomkin, who wanted to know if his scouts were going ahead or staying with the column to protect its flanks. “This is a good debate. Both plans have merit. But I’m going to put my faith in Gudrin. She knows how long it will take the forces of the Haven to reach Gronig. She and the Kindred are no weaklings. They, with their fine fortress, might hold off the elves and their allies for months.”
Haven 5 Blood Magic BOOK Page 19
