Then the gate burst open and the nightmare forms of ogres came into the inner sleeping fort. It was the first time one of the Silver Run Army’s fortifications had been breached, he thought to himself, and tears sprang into his eyes at the thought. Inwardly he cursed the way he was made, and wished he could be stoic and strong like Eskeriel.
Tuchek saw the inner gate crash open, and he watched as the ogres came through, a mass of nightmare shapes roaring and screaming as they surged onto the parade ground. A few unlucky engineers were caught out there, and the ogres ran them down.
The last of the women and children had entered the wooden building beside which he stood, and only a score of die hard Cthochi and a half dozen Mortentians stood beside him, waiting for their turn to pass into the door and the tunnels it concealed. Among them was Allein-a-Briech, and he was holding a spear. “I was a warrior once.” His father said.
“The people will need your leadership, father.” Tuchek replied. “Get inside and go.”
Allein-a-Briech’s eyes were calm as he surveyed his son, and he smiled. “I don’t think so, Rakond. Some will need to stand here. I will stand with them.”
“Come father, we can escape still.”
“You go, Rakond. The people need you, they don’t need me anymore, if they ever did. Take these men and go. Guard the narrow places and make them fear to pursue you.” Tuchek shook his head, but other Cthochi came up, and Allein-a-Briech gave them the same command. They took Tuchek by the arms and led him reluctantly inside the wooden structure. He could see the ogres clearly, and several were now looking toward where they were.
He watched his father as the old man screamed out a challenge and ran toward the advancing ogres, iron-tipped spear in hand. Several other warriors went with him, and it was the last he ever saw of them. He turned and entered the passage to the tunnels below.
The soldiers and engineers had placed brackets along the walls for the hanging of lamps or torches, and Tuchek pulled them down or extinguished them as he walked down the winding and treacherous tunnel, for he was the last of the people to leave this way, and he didn’t want to leave the ogres a clear trail.
Above him he heard the door to the wooden structure that had concealed this place break, and he heard the sound of ogres snuffling and calling out to each other. The path he took was no man-made tunnel, but a series of caverns and passages that had been cut into the rock by the action of water or the whim of some ancient god of stone. He came to a place where the path grew narrow, with a wall at his right hand and a pit of unknown depth to his left, and there was no kerb or rail. A voice called out to him from the shadows. “Fare thee well, Rakond son of Allein.” It was a Cthochi warrior, and he had a naked sword in his hand.
“Come with me, warrior.” Tuchek said, for he did not know the man.
In the dim light of the torches he saw the flash of white teeth in a face that was otherwise in shadow. “I will guard this turning, Rakond. It is a good place to defend. The people below need time to escape and you will need time to close the doors behind them.” Tuchek nodded.
“What is your name, warrior?”
“I am Dances in the Falls.”
“You will be remembered, Dances in the Falls. Thank you.” He passed the warrior and continued down the narrow path, and when he reached the next narrow way, a bridge of stone that passed over a dark and bottomless pool, he encountered Mighty Spear, one of the Sons of the Bear who had survived Walcox, standing astride the bridge. To him he made the same promise.
When he reached the bottom of the passage, he found that a crowd of Mortentian engineers and the last of the Cthochi warriors were massed behind the great door of rolling stones, and he heard the sounds of battle behind him. “Hurry!” He shouted. “Run through!” He heard a deep-throated scream coming from the place where Mighty Spear was, and the booming echo of one splash, then another.
As the last of those packed in front of him pushed their way through the passage, Tuchek heard the sound of heavy footfalls and the clank of armor behind him. Two ogres, undoubtedly the advance guard of many, came blundering into the room as he drew his sword. By the flickering light of a single torch he looked them over.
They were armored in black plates of some kind of armor, and where the plates did not protect them, a skirt of scales of the same substance did. In the distant past he had fought ogres, but only the one time, and they had not been in armor. He had not fought them alone, either, but with the help of a gigantic Thimenian warrior named Otten, who had truthfully done most of the killing.
Still, what men could do he would do, and he gave forth the battle cry of his people, but they laughed. The ogres had heard this cry often at the battle of Big Elk Draw, and they thought that it meant nothing. Tuchek saw that their lower legs were not protected by the armor that they wore, and ducking the clumsy surprised thrust of a spear, he hamstrung the first of them, who went down on his back with a surprised grunt of pain.
The other ogre crouched and sprang forward, swinging an enormous sword that swept the air above Tuchek’s head, but the swing left him open, and Tuchek bulled forward, thrusting his sword like a spear into the gap in the ogre’s armor that lay beneath his armpit. The sword went deep, and the ogre coughed as his lungs were pierced, but he spasmed also, and his sword arm came down heavily on Tuchek’s head, knocking him to the floor and ripping his sword from his grasp.
He turned and scrambled through the gate, grabbing a heavy rope as he did so. The rope was attached to a line of wooden stops the men had put in place so that the great wheels of stone that formed the gate would not roll back into place, as soon as he pulled them loose two Mortentians jumped forward and pulled and yanked at a wooden beam that started the first wheel rolling back into its socket. Other ogres came into the room beyond, and several of them threw spears into the narrowing gap, but these bounced harmlessly around the Mortentians as they closed the first great stone wheel.
By the light of other torches held by men behind them, Tuchek and the two Mortentians, both of them heavily muscled men from one of the spear fyrdes, rolled the other three wheels into their places, then Tuchek hammered the long rod of strange and rustless metal into its socket, connecting the four wheels so that they could not again be opened. The tunnel to cross the Redwater was secured, and Tuchek joined the throng as they marched along that dark way, a passage of many leagues that led to the Wood Castle on the other side of the Redwater.
Anbarius was among the last of the engineers to leave the walls, and he was surprised at how fast he could run, for he was just a farmer, and he thought his legs more suitable to the slow pace behind a plow or standing at his little forge. He had not run at his full speed in decades, but the grunts and howls of the ogres behind him gave him motivation, and his legs remembered that he had once run footraces for wager. He ran toward the bridge to Redwater Town, and he ran for his very life.
Behind him a small band of ogres gave pursuit, but there were other engineers running, and some of them were slower. He heard Dander O’Maslit scream as they caught him, and he was sorry, for the man had been a steady friend. He crossed a line of Cthochi, standing with spears braced, and moments later he heard the crash of bodies and the screams of men and ogres behind him. He little doubted that the Cthochi had fallen, but they purchased another two or three precious seconds.
At the suspension bridge Celdemer was waiting, but he was not looking at Anbarius or the three men with him, but rather behind them. “Hurry up.” He said simply as Anbarius passed him, then he reached behind his back and removed an enormous scabbard, pulling out a massive steel sword that was as tall as a small man. “Get on the bridge.”
Anbarius looked and saw that the bridge was hopelessly overloaded, and he heard the ropes groaning with the strain of the weight of at least fifty men, crowding and thrusting forward across the Redwater. These were engineers and soldiers of the Silver Run Army, and they moved quickly, and Anbarius was relieved to find that the bridge could bear their wei
ght after all. He was halfway across the bridge when he heard Sir Celdemer call out his challenge behind him.
“Come on then, you big brutes!” Celdemer’s voice was a clear tenor above the roaring of the ogres, the straining of the men on the bridge and the sounds of battle and slaughter within the fallen fort. “Dare this passage if you like, but I will stop you if Lio wills it.”
Anbarius could not help but turn to look over his shoulder, even as he continued his hasty crossing of the bridge of ropes and planks that he himself had designed and overseen the building of.
There stood Sir Celdemer, looking every bit the godsknight, despite the light armor and his lack of a shield, and facing him stood three grinning giants in black armor, each of which carried a sword as long as the knight’s, terrible weapons with blades that glistened blackly in the torch light, for night had fallen and full dark was upon them. One ogre roared and crouched, taking a step forward, and Sir Celdemer carefully retreated, taking sure and graceful steps onto the bridge.
Aelfric was watching from atop the stone walls of Redwater Town, and Anbarius heard his voice. “Sir Celdemer! Run for it!”
But the knight did not listen, not even when Aelfric’s voice was joined with those of Busker O’Hiam and others, all of them calling for the knight to turn his back and run. The knight seemed aware that if he gave the ogres his back, they would come onto the bridge and kill those attempting to cross it. Instead he backed onto the bridge one careful step at a time, taunting and threatening the ogres as he did so.
The first ogre roared, for although it could not understand Sir Celdemer’s speech, it appeared to understand that it was challenged, and it ran forward suddenly, swinging its massive sword in a powerful wide arc that should have hurled Sir Celdemer bodily from the bridge. But instead of encountering the knight’s body, only the war sword remained where it had been, and it swept up miraculously above the knight’s prostrate form and parried deftly, causing the overswung weapon of the ogre to glance away and above the knight. Sir Celdemer sprang from his crouch like some strange and graceful dancer, and his answering thrust went neatly into a gap between the ogre’s chestplate and his helmet, and the ogre dropped his great weapon and grasped at his throat, from which a very river of blood poured forth.
Anbarius turned to the men in front of him, and he saw that they were all standing still, watching the knight with fascinated eyes. “Move, damn you!” Anbarius roared at them, and they were shocked, for he was not a man given to swearing. “Move, move, move!” They turned and began hastening off of the bridge, even as Sir Celdemer backed further onto it.
The other two ogres were not the least dissuaded by the demise of their unlucky companion, for these were ogres of the Winter Mountain Band, although Anbarius never knew this. They roared and came after Sir Celdemer onto the bridge, swords in front of them, using their superior reach to force him back. Black God steel rang against Arker forged steel, and sparks flew about Sir Celdemer’s head, but he was unhurt. He was, after all, a master of the war sword such as had only rarely been seen before.
The bridge shuddered at the weight of the ogres. Fully armored, each of them weighed as much as six or seven men, and at each step the suspension bridge rocked and swayed dangerously. Anbarius pushed the men before him, damning them for their inability to turn their eyes away from the knight and attend to their business. It was his yelling and pushing that finally got them across, and he turned and yelled. “Sir Celdemer, the bridge is clear! Get over here!”
When Sir Celdemer turned his back on the ogres and ran they surged forward, for there were four of them now on the bridge, and their leader swung his sword recklessly, determined to have Sir Celdemer’s head. In truth the swing only narrowly missed, cutting into the collar of Sir Celdemer’s farmer’s woolens and taking a lock of hair with it, even as the blade severed two of the central ropes suspending the middle of the bridge above the Redwater River.
This occurred even as the fourth ogre stepped onto the bridge, and the loss of structural integrity combined with the mass of this ogre tore the far end of the bridge loose from its mooring on the walls of the expanded fort, and the whole structure collapsed, leaving only a mass of ropes and planks, dangling from the high stone wall of Redwater Town. Sir Celdemer dropped the war sword and grasped at the ropes, catching one with both hands as the ogres tumbled off of the bridge to fall screaming into the icy swirling rapids just ten paces below them.
It is a little known fact that ogres cannot swim, not the least little bit, and so that was the end of those four.
Sir Celdemer began to draw himself upward toward the town, pulling hand over hand, but the ropes were covered in ice and snow, and his hands were very cold. Anbarius saw a look like despair in the knight’s eyes as his hands slipped and slid backward, then the last little bit of rope slipped from his grasp and he fell into the Redwater River and was lost.
The ogres ran about within the fallen fort of the pigsuckers, and they looted the place, finding a few weapons and many valuables that the desperate Cthochi had been force to abandon in their haste to escape. Gutcrusher watched with satisfaction as they killed the last few hapless soldiers, engineers and Cthochi who had not been swift enough to get away. All in all he reckoned they had killed, well, a great many more than ten of the bastards. They spread the plunder about liberally, and none felt neglected, for every ogre there had a warbag full of swag, and all had full bellies and all had killed, if not here, then at the other big battle.
There could be no disputing the power of the ogres in the lands of the pigsuckers now. They had all been killed or driven across the river, or they had run far away, and the land now belonged to the King’s Band. He danced and roared with triumph, and the mighty host of his people roared along with him, except for Ironspike, who stood at the place where the bridge had been and glowered at the people, not seventy paces away, who stared back at him from the other side of the river on the walls of their town.
“A great victory, Ironspike.” Gutcrusher offered by way of consolation, but the big Winter Mountain Chief was having none of it.
“Five of my boyos kilt here.” He growled. “Kilt by them bastards standing over there laughing at us. We needs to cross this river and do for the lot of them.”
Gutcrusher shook his head. “We ain’t crossing the river, Spike. This here is the meets and bounds of the land we taken for trespass. That other side, that’s shite to us. We’ve won what we was supposed to.”
“Who told you that, Crusher? The witch?” Ironspike’s tone was contemptuous. “Think about this here, king. We got the biggest and bloodiest bunch of boyos ever put together by anyone. ‘Member when you said we was going to smash the world?” He pointed across the river with his iron pick, and it was dripping blood. “That’s it. Right across the river there. They can’t stop us. We got this army here, but think about all of them boyos we left behind us. We can bust them up forever. When the river freezes …”
“When the river freezes we stay on our side of it Spike.” Gutcrusher interrupted. Wolf had come up, and so had Balls. “We done what was lawful.”
“I think Ironspike has the right of it.” Wolf offered, daring to contradict his chief. “That’s a fat rich land over there, and who gives a stinking crap what’s lawful? Didn’t we kill a god? We decide what the law is for us, not no ancient storytellings.”
“The king has spoke.” Balls said, and his tone made it clear that he meant for his to be the final word. “We stays on our side of the river. But I say only so long as they stays on theirs.”
Gutcrusher nodded. “Aye. That’s the word. If they come across over here, we’ll bring them hell for breakfast.” On this Balls and Wolf agreed, and even Ironspike nodded after a moment.
“They’ll come, king. When they do we’ll spike the lot of them.”
His captains turned away then, but Gutcrusher stared across the river at the men on the walls of the town. The wall was higher on the side of the town than it was on the wester
n bank, so he was looking up as they were looking down at him. He saw ballistas and mangonels drawn up, but they were not firing, as if they knew that the battle was over. The river would keep his people on this side for now, for it was a boundary they could not cross until it froze.
On the wall he saw a grim and determined face looking back at him, and he wondered who the fucker was.
Aelfric looked down from the walls of Redwater Town and he saw the ogre with the round shield and spiked mace, and somehow he knew that this was the leader of the monsters. For a moment they stared at each other, or perhaps longer than a moment. He saw cruelty written in that face, and bloodlust and evil. It was the face of a monster that knew neither law nor mercy. He knew at some level that he would face this army again, and already he was planning for that day, spinning out the tactical possibilities in a mind that would never admit defeat.
Epilogue
The City of Arker bustled and hummed with commerce and industry, and the people were a fine and happy mix of merchants and tradesmen, freemen and gentry. It was a walled city around a walled town, for Arker had begun its life in the days of the hundred kingdoms, and even then it had been a center of commerce, for many roads and trails crossed here, drawn by the shelter of its low hills and the clean pure water of a bountiful spring. Arker was blessed with many mines in the nearby hills, as well as large productive farms and an easy and straight road to the port town of Nevermind, and even in winter the cobbled streets were swept clean of snow.
Levin looked up at the thatched roof houses, all of which looked the same to him, and wondered how in the Seven Hells he was to find Mintner Street without asking directions. Surprisingly it was Kuljin, walking beside him, who solved the riddle, for the halfman could read Tolrissan letters. “It’s here.” The halfman said, speaking from the shadows of a deep cowl he wore to cover his cat’s eyes.
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