by T. O. Munro
The dead animal slumped ontop of Jay its mouth spilling blood and spit across his chest. He tried to pull his sword free as the orc slipped easily from its dead mount’s back and raised a bloodied scimitar to strike at the trapped boy.
A shape flashed across his vision. The orc dropped its sword clutching at its neck as black blood spurted from between its fingers. A strong hand reached and pulled him from beneath the wolf’s corpse. “Thank you,” he mumbled.
“Do you believe I am the Dragonsoul now?” his rescuer cried, eyes twinkling beneath his battle helm. Jay looked at the tall warrior with the bloodied sword. He nodded dumbly. The long dead king clapped him on the shoulder. Then he sped away, stepping over elven and orcish bodies to where the press of battle had grown thickest as the fresh soldiers had pushed the enemy a dozen yards back with the weight of their charge.
Jay knelt to pull his own sword from the dead orc’s throat. There was a flash and a roar to his left as Tordil worked systematically down the line of stranded chariots. The tall elf was setting explosive spells within each iron shell, which turned the hard protective armour into splayed petals of twisted metal like a flower blooming long past its prime. The heavy chariots would provide no protection to any fresh mages who came to use them, assuming always that Maelgrum had more wizards to comit to the cause.
Orcish archers had joined the wolfriders in hand to hand combat at the seething shifting line where the battle raged most fiercely. It was not a cohesive front, more a rippling sinuous thread that bucked and swayed as a localised weight of numbers pushed back one side to create a salient which then got pinched off breaking up the line of battle into a series of individual group combats.
Jay squelched over sundered zombie body parts and leapt onto the shaft of a broken chariot. The few feet of height gave him a view over the lines of battle into the heart of the enemy. A score of yards from the nearest elf an oval window was opening in the air. His heart quickened. He knew what that thing was. More importantly he knew who made them and how he used them. His hand tightened on the hilt of his sword, he swallowed dry spit and waited for the first sign of Maelgrum’s appearance through a window on a simple forest scene.
But it was not the Dark Lord. Instead a dozen red robed wizards flung themselves through the opening, dispensing lethal sorcery left and right. The last to arrive was a tall red bearded man who surveyed the the space his acolytes had cleared with imperious disdain. Then the gate shrank to a point and disappeared and the anguished cries of flame seared men were added to the grunts and clangs of desperate battle.
A bubble of combat evaporated from the line. Three orcs a man and an elf, circled up the hill as they strove for position in a deadly fight, blind to those around them as they sought an advantage over their immediate foes. The man fell skewered by an orc who leaped round to try to get behind the sorely outnumbered elf. The move brought him within reach of Jay and the boy thrust his blade into the unwise orc’s neck. The spray of blood and the grunt provided a fatal eyeblink of distraction to the orc next to him who fell clutching at his belly to withold his insides as a slash of the elf’s sword opened him up. That made it one on one and it was but seconds before the last orc lay dead at the elf’s feet. The elf gave a curt nod of gratitude, “much obliged, Jay.”
Jay gave a brief smile of recognition and then Elyas was plunging back into the fray. Jay looked over to where the tall figure of the Dragonsoul could be seen swinging his sword so forcefully that none of the enemy could come within two yards of its whirling edge.
A flicker of movement drew his eye. The red bearded sorcerer was also watching the historic champion, victor of Muagmela. The mage lurked behind his lines unthreatened by any foe, his hands working in some invocation that could bring no good to the Dragonsoul. Jay turned to call out a warning, knowing it would be too late.
***
The tide of battle had carried Gregor steadily north with every ebb and flow. He had lost sight of his original companions, as the swelling combat had swept away some allies and gifted others. Only Danlak stayed with him, pale faced but carving and casting with grim determination. They broke into a patch of open ground, a trio of orc bodies lay crumpled at the foot of a broken chariot. A boyish voice was calling shrill above the dull notes of unceasing battle.
In a glance Gregor took in the swelling scene. The boy shouting out an alarm. The tall figure of the Dragonsoul laying about him with glorious abandon. The red bearded wizard, hand outstretched in the final gesture of conjuration, fingers pointing right at the oblivious warrior king.
A lethal streak of lighting shot from the sorcerer’s hands straight at the heart of the Dragonsoul. It flashed and then fizzed into nothing as a shimmering shield of many hues appeared just inches from the king’s side, intercepting the cast. The noise belatedly alerted the Dragonsoul to his danger, he glanced across past Gregor to the pale face of his brother, himself caught in the moment of casting. Gregor saw his eyes widen in surprise and then a brief twisting nod of acknowledgement and a smile at Danlak.
The redbearded wizard spun another spell and in a blink disappeared from view to reappear a few yards away, peramabulating by stages further west. There were shouts and a clash of arms. Gregor could see horsemen wading into the rear ranks of the wolf riding orcs.
“We might just get out of this, Lord Danlak,” he said.
“And my brother will have acquired a greater appreciation of my craft,” Danlak replied, wiping distractedly at a thin trail of blood at the corner of his mouth. He coughed uncomfortably and the trail grew fresher, stronger, spilling over his chin. Gregor caught the low crouching orc as the creature pulled his blade from Danlak’s side. His foot crashed into the orc’s face and his sword pinned it to the ground. Danlak slipped silently to the earth.
***
The cavalry were spreading out along the rear of the orc lines. Niarmit glanced down the slope to check how quickly the enemy’s infantry and zombie re-inforcements were closing up. It was swifter than she had hoped. They had minutes at most to destroy the orcs they had ensnared and then recover their position.
She turned with renewed vigour, setting about wolf and orc with the gleaming blade of The Father. The ancient sword carved a swift and bloody path through the nearest orc riders, cleaving limbs and necks with scarcely less ease than it sliced through the air. A red robed wizard turned at the orcish shouts of dismay, scarlet beard and eyebrows bristling as he launched a spell at her. It fizzed into impotent nothingness against the Helm’s defences and Niarmit spurred her horse onwards to close with the sorcerer. She recognised him, he had stood second to Quintala when the half-elven traitor had taunted her with the threat of the dragon.
He recognised her too, fear showing on his face as he flung another useless spell against her. Only this was not aimed at her. The Helm’s protection did not extend to her horse which stumbled and fell struck by a bolt of lightning that carried it away in an instant.
Niarmit rolled and rose. The second blade was in her off hand, she did not recall reaching for it, but she could feel the eager tug of Eadran’s will desparate to work her body in his own manner of combat. A wall of orcs confronted her and then disappeared in welter of black blood as the blades slashed through armour, flesh and bone in rapid strikes.
There stood the red bearded sorcerer mumbling some spell his arms stretched out towards her. Eadran had her now, she surrendered to the Vanquisher’s battle lust and her body ducked and rose and the twin blades shot up between the outstretched arms and scissored outwards.
Surprise hit the wizard’s face before the pain as his severed forearms dropped to he ground. He did not even turn to run, so shocked by his ruination and then with a sideways swipe of The Father, Eadran trimmed his red beard all the way to the back of his neck.
As the headless corpse fell back, Niarmit saw Gregor her father and the Dragonsoul kneeling on the ground. The raging battle was nearly done. The surrounded orcs destroyed, they must escape before the re-inforcements co
uld trap them.
She ran to them. “Come, we must get back on the ridge before we are caught in the open again.” She stopped. Danlak lay between the two monarchs his usual pale face was paler still, apart from the red flow from his mouth.
“See brother the value of my craft,” he coughed.
The Dragonsoul squeezed his younger brother’s hand.
Danlak smiled staring blankly at the sky. “At last, brother, there is something where I will be first and you second.”
“Wait for me, Danny,” the Dragonsoul said. “I will see you at sunset.”
Danlak’s mouth moved wordlessly. He blinked, perhaps in acquiescence and then was still. Gregor cradled his fallen ancestor. The body began to sparkle with a bright yellow glow and then crumbled to dust.
“We must get back,” Niarmit repeated. “Sound the retreat.”
The Dragonsoul straightened up, brisk and authoritative. “You’ll not make it,” he said waving towards the advancing orcs. “They are too close.” He flung his arm back towards the ridge. “And that is too far away.”
“We must try.”
He smiled at her. “You must try.” And then he was away calling for men of the Salved and waving his sword. Thren the Fifth came to his side sending blasts of fire towards the approaching enemy and then there was the other Chirard. The Chirard who was neither Kinslayer nor Dragonsoul, overlooked by history yet now he stood with his more illustrious peers and dared the enemy to approach, and they dared not.
Gregor pulled at Niarmit’s arm. “Come on my girl,” he said. “Retreat you ordered and retreat you must.” Yet Niarmit could not take her eyes from the three monarchs and the knot of a hundred or so veterans who flocked to their call and then flooded down the hill at five thousand orcs, and the orcs stepped back.
Her father pulled harder on her arm and at last she looked away just as the desperate charge flung itself into the orcish lines and was swallowed by them.
***
Jay leapt from the shattered chariot and turned to run. Tordil was urging the elves north back towards the chateau where they had left nearly a third of their number to hold the position. The garrison of Salicia were scrambling eastwards back towards the defences they had so laboriously created the night before. Jay ran with the elves until a severed zombie arm chanced to grab his ankle. He maintained his pace for a couple of strides but then tripped over the elbow of the flailing limb. The peeled shell of an armoured chariot lay ahead of him, strips of jagged iron splayed out horizontally. His helmet caught the edge of the iron, the impact driving the nose piece hard into his face. His eyes were watering, blood was pouring from his broken nose, the sharp dent in the nose guard was digging into the shattered cartilage beneath his brow. He shook his head and spat blood and tried to get some focus to his swimming eyes.
Light hands scooped him up by his armpits. He was tossed with careless ease over an elven shoulder and carried with speed if not dignity across the raging battle field. The pain and the discomfort obscured any clear vision. He had a vague sense of elven heels kicking beneath his swaying head as his rescuer accelerated despite the burden he carried. There was a roar to his right and a fetid smell of death. The orcs and the undead were on the move.
A noise that he had mistaken for just a change in the note ringing in his ears, revealed itself to be the hum of arrows in the air as he was carried within the covering bowshot of the comrades left in the chateau.
And then they were vaulting over a low garden wall and charging through the ornate doorway to the chateau with a handful of other elves flitting in past them. There was a thump as the door was flung to and barred and then a shuddering thwack as something crashed into the other side of it.
He was laid gently on the polished oak floor, its surface now dusty with dirt from the hillside. “Are you all right, Jay?” his rescuer asked, it was Elyas.
“I dink so,” Jay spluttered. “By dose is broke dough.” He had to break off to breathe for not one scrap of air would get through his blood caked nostrils.
Elyas laughed and eased the helmet off his head. “Well, we have no priests with us, Jay, so you’ll have to trust to my healing prowess.”
Jay blinked and in that blink Elyas gripped his shattered nose between his knuckles and gave a sharp sideways jerk to straighten it. Jay screamed and then found breath was coming a little easier.
“What are you doing, Elyas,” Tordil strode over. “First you pick up and carry a boy too clumsy to keep on his own two feet and then you start ministering to his wounds.” He scowled. “That last orc was barely feet behind you.”
Jay blinked a little. Tordil was looking reprovingly at Elyas. Jay was discomforted at the idea that, in the tall elf’s mind at least, rescuing Jay was a risk Elyas should not have attempted.
“I was returning a favour,” Elyas said. “He saved me from some orcs when I was outnumbered three to one.”
Tordil sniffed. “You mean the orcs were outnumbered one to three,” he said. But he still gave Jay a curt nod of gratitude and cast no more aspersions on the wisdom of Elyas in rescuing the boy.
“How is it out dere,” Jay asked. “Are the edemy close?”
There was a thump of heavy on the door, and the bar laid across it bowed alarmingly. Tordil nodded. “Quite close, Jay, quite close.”
***
“Your Majesty.”
Niarmit looked up as the Master of Horse rode up with a spare mount for her.
“Here,” he handed her the reins. “You should not be afoot, quick you must regain the heights.”
Niarmit swung herself into the saddle but shook her head when Pietrsen tried to urge her to ride further uphill. From the horse’s back she could see over the heads of the battered remnants of the garrison of Salicia as they picked a way through their own traps and defences.
The enemy were streaming up the hill, recovering the momentum that the Dragonsoul’s charge had stolen from them. The men of Salicia were falling into line, raising their spears again to restore the formidable porcupine formation which had repulsed the wolfriders. But there were too few of them, the line too thin. It was virtually non-existent to the north where the orcs who had escaped the impact of the Dragonsoul’s sacrificial charge, were moving faster and more freely.
Orcs and undead milled around the chateau despite a withering loosing of arrows from its diminished defenders, while a huge mass of zombies was stumbling into the yawning gap between Niarmit and her elven allies.
“Guard the flank,” Eadran hissed in her head. “Guard the flank. If they once get on the flat end of the ridge then the advantage of our position is more than halved.”
Niarmit looked up the slope. “Lord Torsden is alert to our danger it seems,” she snapped. She had espied the Northern Lord’s towering figure atop the ridge leading a third of his division to head off the orcs who even now were working round the denuded northern end of the Salician line.
Eadran sniffed. “It will do,” he said. “For now. But this is a battle of attrition. Well as we have done we cannot continue to trade at this rate of exchange for we will run out of soldiers before he does.”
Niarmit swung back. “What of the elves, Captain Tordil is cut off.”
“He must fend for himself, girl. Half the enemy’s army lies between us and him. Do not get any silly ideas of charging to his relief in your head.”
“I cannot abandon him.”
“You cannot help him.”
***
“Stay with the elves,” that had been the seneschal’s advice. His order even. Sitting with a few hundred of them in a broken chateau surrounded by undead and orcs Jay was beginning to question Kimbolt’s wisdom. By malice or misfortune the elves had drawn a quite disproportionate weight of the enemy’s aggression.
Still they weren’t dead yet. With the late afternoon sun creeping towards the horizon, that was an achievement of some note.
“Sitting down, Jay? That’s the trouble with you humans, no stamina,” Elyas chided striding
into the long first floor receiving room. The elf was speckled with blood of various hues, none of it his own, and there was the grime and dust of battle. However, that apart he looked as rested as if he had just risen from his bed, rather than spent three quarters of a long summer’s day in continuous battle.
“I was going to count the arrows again,” Jay invented an excuse for his recumbent position.
“That won’t take long,” Elyas said. “They’re all gone.”
“All?”
“Every last one.” He smiled. “Don’t worry though, burying them in necromancers has been a very cost effective use of each arrow.”
Jay nodded. He had seen the impact. Kill one necromancer and a score of zombies would turn on the nearest warm flesh, which was more likely to be orc than elf. One arrow could cost the enemy forty of his footsoldiers.
But the enemy had grown wise to the tactic and had withdrawn the orcs, while the necromancers lurked beyond bowshot and despatched the zombies to home in on the scent of live elves driven purely by instinct.
The undead lurked now on the chateau’s ground floor emitting the low keening sound of hunger. It was not that they breathed or spoke. It was the shambling movement of their agitated corpses which put a mechanical pressure to force air over dead vocal chords. Jay had heard the same sound when his father had lifted his grandmother’s body from the bed she had died in. That had been the first body he had ever seen, and the sound had scared him witless. The last few months he had seen more dead than he cared to count and heard the keening sound of unbreathing corpses a hundred or more at a time.
