“They’ll hunt us down for sure now lad.”
“Aye. And if they leave this place those in the town may be able to escape. How many do you think they’ll send after us?”
“Maybe ten, p’raps twenty.”
Levin’s face half-smiled in the dark. “Good. I know of a place where we can meet them.”
“You’re mad. They will kill us all.”
“Aye, most likely. But I mean to mark them for it. If any of you lot feel strong enough to fight or use a bow, take a weapon.” He pointed to the spears, swords and bows of the Auligs. “We must be away now quickly.”
“I’m Antor from Walcox, sir. I can shoot.” The man who approached was one of two men who looked younger, fitter and the least affected by the pox among the group. His hair was long and hung over his eyes, casting them into complete shadow under the cold moon. He had a strong jaw and broad shoulders.
“Good. I’ve a place in mind, and I will be needing at least two bowmen. The rest of you gather what things you can find, jackets, boots and blankets, and hurry.”
They walked for most of the night, although the stone church in the ruined village lay not far off, no more than two leagues. The three men who had to be carried slowed them down considerably. Levin, Kuljin and Fyella had passed the night in this church, a converted hundred kingdoms temple, and Levin had seen potential in it for defense. The walls were thick and old, and the tower had a balcony from which one could watch all approaches. They laid the very ill out among the benches, and they slept on scavenged blankets while the few who were well enough to work prepared a reception for their guests.
“The prisoners have escaped.” Kheri said to the tarl.
Redblade woke to these words and was greatly displeased. “How did this happen?”
“Someone helped them. Eaglewatches, Bullwalks and Nardin are dead. They put their heads into the pox cage to provoke us.”
“You have scouted. How many are they?”
“Three. Two men and a woman or boy, I think. They left on foot with the prisoners, but they are moving very slowly.”
“Assemble fifteen horse.” Redblade replied angrily. “We will ride them down. I shall command.”
Antor Appleman peered through the space in the tower’s balustrade without lifting his head, being careful to stay very still. He had only five arrows and Thowsak had six. He did not know Thowsak’s last name or town, for he had only just met him that day in the box. At twenty-five, Antor was no soldier, just a broad shouldered orchard man from Walcox, but he’d heard the call to arms and answered, for he was good with a bow and his people needed him. The muster in Holdberg had never materialized, however, and they had only perhaps fifty men together ready to sign but no company to sign to when the Auligs came.
Holdberg had been under siege for three weeks when Antor decided to try escaping from the pox and the hunger. The side of the town closest to the wood had seemed unwatched, for there were no tents of the raiders there, but they had caught him easily in the sheep’s pasture before he even reached the trees. With ten bows on him, he’d had no chance at escape, and they had beaten him and put him in the box with the sick.
He did not know the purpose of the box, but they could see it from the town, and he knew from rumor that many died in it, and later would be found floating in the creek that fed Holdberg, with the marks of murder on them, as well as the pox. When he’d first contracted it in Holdberg he’d been terrified, but the coughing and fever lasted no more than two days, and the dreaded black-centered blisters never materialized on his skin. In Holdberg it was learned that none of the Walcox men got the pox, and Antor thought that was strange, although he’d heard a story that long ago the Red Death also had passed Walcox by without harming many.
Thowsak was not from Walcox, and the man was sick, with blisters on his hands and face. Still, Antor hoped the man was competent with this kind of bow. The pull was good, even if the compact design of the recurved bow was different from the long bows he was used to. His job here was simple, to stay alive, and to prevent the Auligs from burning the place. “Stay low, take what shots you can, but mainly stay low so they can’t shoot you.” The one-eyed man had said through his ruined mouth in his raspy voice. “Force them to come inside to get you.”
Antor waited and shivered inside of his stolen sheepskin coat while the sky lightened and the sun appeared, an upside-down red smile grinning with the promise of a bloody morning. He did not have long to wait.
The narrow path they had taken into town passed beneath several large oak and maple trees, and through the few sparsely placed red and orange leaves that remained on them, Antor watched the Aulig scout approaching on a small pony, leaning over its neck to read the story written in their tracks. Antor took a deep breath and drew back the bowstring, laying the weapon flat across his body as he did so. He nodded to Thowsak, who had also bent his bow and nocked his first arrow. Thowsak nodded back, and Antor whispered a slow count. On three they both stood, loosing their arrows in the same second. Antor ducked back down straightaway, so only Thowsak saw that one arrow bounced harmlessly off of the scout’s helmet while the other hit him in the body, piercing the sheepskin and parting the ribs high in his chest. It was not a fatal shot, at least not right away, but it put the scout out of action. The man turned his horse and galloped back down the path, yelling in the language of the Auligs. Auligs had worked the Appleman orchards during some harvests, but Antor had never learned their language. Still, he could imagine he knew what the man was saying.
He found that with the short horse-bow he could shoot without standing, so he knelt instead, for the balcony here was decorative and only about a pace tall, and had no crenellations to hide behind. The lower bend of the bow could just fit behind the balcony when drawn. He noted that Thowsak remained standing, undoubtedly more used to the longbow. He waited for the rest of them to come, for he knew they would.
The escapees were hiding out in the stone church, and Redblade was not happy about it. One of his men had been wounded by a Sparli arrow, undoubtedly shot from a Sparli bow, and he was none too happy about that either, for the man looked likely to die. There was no good approach to the church that was not covered by the accursed tower the archers were hiding in, and Redblade did not see any part of the slate-roofed structure that would burn, unless he could get flaming arrows into the windows, but there was no way to do that without putting his men at risk from the archers. He ordered six of his men to take up their horsebows and cover the Mortentian archers, he was certain that there were only two, while he called his six vitya, his picked warriors, forward. In his view the vitya were the equal of any armored knights under the sun, although he had yet to put them up against Mortentian godsknights.
“They are in the church. Ride up to the front of it with your shields up and dismount. You will have to take the archers from below. They will have the pox in there. Keep your shields up, for they’ve two archers on the roof. They may have armed the prisoners below.”
“Yes, my tarl.” Kheri said, bowing. Kheri was his best swordsman, and his breastplate was made of thick hammered iron plates sewn together with sinew to cover his shoulders and waist. Together with his shield and helmet, it would protect him from all but the luckiest of shots, even from a Sparli bow.
He led the troop of six vitya at a gallop while his archers appeared suddenly from behind buildings or the corners of walls to launch arrows at the bowmen in the tower. The knights dismounted and lined up beside the church’s heavy door, three to a side with their swords drawn, and the angle of the roof protected them from the archers above. Redblade risked an arrow by stepping around the wall of a burned out cottage to watch.
The tall double doors were arched at the top and heavy, but not locked, and the six went in together in a rush, slamming the doors shut behind them, which Redblade found odd.
Kheri shouldered open the right hand door forcefully, and it opened hard, hitting some kind of wooden column, while his sword brother Amigar
hit the door on the left. Both doors opened only about halfway before hitting the poorly placed columns, but with broadswords in hand his full squad leapt through, instantly forming a protective box behind shields.
In the dark interior of the church it was difficult to make out the rows of long wooden benches that lined the broad stone paved path to the altar, but through some trick of construction the sunlight, weak as it was, shone through a window and fell full on the altar, a large white stone block with a flattened surface.
A naked woman lay on the polished marble, and her skin was ghostly white, the same color as the stone. The haft of a spear, decorated with a Sparli woven banner, protruded from her stomach. The doors of the church slammed suddenly shut behind them and the dead woman sat up in the same instant. Covering her face was a burial shroud, tied at the neck, and her pox scarred torso was covered in blood. She began to chant in a flat, hard voice.
“The mother of plagues!” Amigar shouted from beside him, and when all of his men turned to look, steel longswords appeared from the shadows. Buckskinner and Garanis, the two knights at the rear of the formation, were cut down instantly and never saw what hit them.
“It’s a trick!” Kheri shouted, but then the large wooden structures he had first taken for columns were suddenly toppled onto his men, revealing themselves as upturned benches of some heavy dark wood. Two men in the shadows pushed them over while two swordsmen in black chainmail struck viciously from the flanks. One killed Thardos while he tried to rise to his feet from under one of the benches, a well-aimed blow that found his neck through the gap in his armor.
Kheri’s attention was suddenly all on the swordsman in front of him, a thin man with an eyepatch over one eye and a nightmare face, a gift of the pox that must have been truly horrible to receive. The steel blade in the man’s hand spun and danced impossibly fast, running through forms that Kheri had never seen, and the vitya was forced to parry and back away from him, toward the goddess on the altar. Kheri’s mind knew that she was just a woman playing a part, but she was advancing with a spear and continuing to speak in her dreadful flat way.
The three surviving vityas formed a triangle in the space between the benches, which had seemed wide before, but now constrained them in their movements. They faced the two swordsmen who, although outnumbered, remained on the attack. There was no way to flank them with the benches in the way.
The false goddess screamed and lunged forward, stabbing Oljeni in the lower back. When his guard fell the one-eyed blademaster pierced his throat deftly, returning his sword to guard before Kheri could take advantage.
The black-clad swordsmen fought in silence, although the ringing of blade on blade was loud, but it was the false goddess who was truly to be feared. The two remaining vityas could not turn to face her and continue to defend against the swordsmen. She was naked and did not use the spear with any skill, but she screamed with rage and stabbed at them, and the spear was a horseman’s weapon with very long reach.
Kheri could see that the blademaster with the straw colored hair was weakening. He quickly took advantage, leaning his attack to the right, but before he could capitalize on the stronger position he felt the spear, the points sliding along the iron plates at his back and forcing him forward and out of position. The half glance he spared the plague goddess was all that the one-eyed blademaster needed.
Curiously, the blow to his neck was no more painful than being hit with a small stick, but the results were dramatic. He felt a hot wetness spreading across his chest and soaking the top of his sheepskin jerkin. He looked down and saw a waterfall of blood coating his chest, black in the poor lighting of the church’s nave. He turned in time to see the one-eyed demon’s blade cross that of the yellow-haired man’s in a pincer, laying open Amigar’s neck to the spine as if with shears. He thought Amigar might have already been dead when they got him, for the goddess of plagues had pierced his back near the heart.
He had not known the goddess’ form was so beautiful, in a pox ravaged way. Maybe he would meet her in the afterlife. His sword, already too heavy to lift, fell from his hands and clattered on the floor.
“More coming!” Antor shouted from the tower above their heads. “They’ve killed Thowsak.”
“Quickly.” Levin said. “Use their blades.”
Eudo O’Walcox and Jarro O’Vhent, the two Mortentians who had stood behind the benches and toppled them onto the Sparli, quickly joined Kuljin in hacking off their heads and dragging their bodies into the spaces between the benches. They lined up the heads so as to face the door, and Levin threw the white funeral powder they had found in a small room behind the altar onto the heads, giving them an unearthly look, like bizarre and bloodied statues.
“You ready for another acting job?” He asked Fyella, who was still naked, and still coated in the same white powder. She nodded. “This time stand like a statue and don’t move or talk until we are hard at it. Don’t attack, either. I don’t want to see you get shot.”
Meanwhile Kuljin was asking Antor how the Auligs were armed. “Spears and swords, that’s five. Three bowmen.” After a moment he called down from the tower again over the sound of galloping horses coming to a stop in the street below. “Make that two bowmen. I got one on his horse.” A difficult shot, Levin thought, and Antor seemed proud of it.
The two swordsmen stood just outside of where the doors would open, with Eudo and Jarro behind them holding spears. Their backs were against the walls in the darkness.
When the Sparli again forced the door they were warier than the knights had been, but the sight of Fyella, standing naked and looking like an embodiment of the goddess of plagues, captured their attention. The white powdered heads of their knights lying in a pool of blood at their feet drew the eyes of those not staring at Gaikan. Spear and swords struck at the distracted Sparli from the darkness by the doors, and the goddess of plagues began screaming at them from the altar.
Poghra was a Sparli archer from a small village of wooden houses near the Rocks of Sheol Mountains. His people had been reluctant to join this adventure of the Tarl of Tarls, for the trolls in the mountains were restless this year, and every warrior needed at home. Like all people in his devout village he feared all gods, and he knew all of their names, too. He saw the door open and he saw the statue of the mother of plagues, Gaikan, in her maiden incarnation, with blood on her belly to signify the sin of the Sparli peoples. He watched the men in front of him struck suddenly from the darkness, and he saw the six heads of the mighty vitya that the goddess had turned to stone. When the goddess became like unto flesh and screamed at Poghra, he turned and ran as fast as his feet would carry him, dropping his bow, forgetting his horse and forgetting everything else but his desperate need to escape divine punishment. The Sparli should never have tempted the mother of plagues, and unless he delivered that message, they were all doomed to die in this unhappy land.
Three of the Sparli escaped the church, but Antor killed one of them with a long shot from the tower. Kuljin was exhausted. Their chief had come with them on this last assault, a tall man wearing elaborate plates of iron in what looked like a flexible jerkin design. The man had charged directly toward the altar, seeking open space within which to swing his sword, and Kuljin had followed, the two of them fencing while Fyella escaped that part of the church and Levin killed the Sparli by the door. Kuljin had finally killed the man, but he could barely walk now for weakness.
He knew that the two Sparli who had fled would be long in returning. They had left afoot, which meant half a day to reach the other Sparli besieging Holdberg, then time to return. The Sparli had brought fifteen horses, and there were seventeen Mortentians here, but Kuljin could tell by the blood at the corners of Latton and Aylmer’s mouths that the two men would soon be dead of the pox. They would have horses enough, most likely by tomorrow. Until then two would have to ride double, although the high canted saddles didn’t suit the task.
Prior Hoggins was wounded and Thowsak was dead, for the Sparli
were skilled horse-archers, and they’d hit him in the chest. Prior Hoggins had been cut by a broadsword, a weak blow that caught him across the chest, leaving a shallow slash across his deltoid and bloodying his shirt. Still, the churchman was smiling while he scavenged for armor and a better weapon.
“We need to get out of here, Levin.” Kuljin told his friend.
“You look some better today, Kuljin.” The Mortentian replied, coldly picking over the body of the Sparli chief. “We have a little time.”
“Yes. It’s good to get the blood moving.” He said, feeling for the first time in a month like he might overcome this damned pox.
Chapter 76: Root’s Bridge Freehold, mid-Leath
L’nelle Waggoner wiped the sweat from her forehead with a rag and poured a flagon of ale for the stranger who sat by the door. He was an odd-looking man, with dark and brooding features set in a heavy browed face with a prominent chin. His wide set eyes were strangely intense, with the pupils too small for the whites, and altogether his face had something of a bulldog about it, but a young bulldog, and not unhandsome. His shoulders looked strong and his body compact, but it was a compactness that spoke of tenacious strength, like he might catch you with his thick hands and never release you. He was clean at least, and L’nelle had seen the silver he’d paid to Amar’s man Rook. Black-haired Rook was tall and broad-shouldered, and definitely not handsome, with a scar under one eye from fighting it was said, but the stranger had looked him in the eye when he handed over the silver, and L’nelle was sure that Rook had given proper change for once.
She tipped the flagon to let off some foam and fill it proper, then she walked over to his table, allowing herself a little bit of the sway that worked so well. He looked at her without expression, but she knew that he was watching. She knew she was the prettiest girl working at the Ferry’s Landing, the inn that was in the name of Estel O’klober, but that everyone knew Amar Stoneholt truly owned.
War of the Misread Augury: Book One of the Black Griffin Rising Trilogy Page 100
