Swordmage botm-1

by Richard Baker

  “Geran, I don’t know if this is wise,” Grigor murmured. “Sergen’s men are trained warriors, well armed and armored-”

  “Forgive me, Uncle Grigor, but we’ve got no choice. Sergen and his council have declared war. The Spearmeet’s the only army remaining to you.” Geran lowered his voice and leaned closer to his uncle’s ear. “I hope it won’t come to that. No mercenary really cares to fight a pitched battle if he can help it; there’s little reward in it and lots of risk. I think the Veruna men and the Council Watch might have a change of heart once they see there’s an army to take the field against them, especially one that outnumbers them.”

  “I hope you’re right, Geran,” the harmach said.

  “A message for the harmach!” called one of the Hulburgans by the tavern’s door. Several other voices in the throng took up the call, and Geran looked up from the table as the crowd swirled around a young woman in a tall silver helm. She wore the white surcoat and blue griffon of the Shieldsworn, but her coat was splattered with blood and dirt. The commoners crowding around her held her motionless for a moment, and then several of the men nearby her pushed a path clear. “Make way for the messenger!” they shouted.

  “Harmach Grigor?” the young woman called. “My lord?”

  “Over here,” Grigor answered. He pushed himself to his feet and held his walking stick up in the air.

  The Shieldsworn soldier finally caught sight of him and hurried to his side. “My lord,” she said. “I thought to find you in Griffonwatch, but when I passed by on the road the militiamen outside told me you were here. I have dire news.”

  The harmach visibly steeled himself. “Go on, then,” he said gently.

  “Lady Kara’s been defeated at the Vadarknoll post-tower. The Bloody Skulls and their monsters overwhelmed the army of Hulburg. Many lives were lost. Lady Kara is retreating down the east bank of the Winterspear, fighting to slow the horde with all her strength, but she told me to tell you that she expects the orcs to reach Hulburg by sunrise.” The young soldier bit her lip, but continued. “She recommends that you direct the people of the town to take refuge in Griffonwatch, Daggergard, and the best-fortified of the merchant compounds and make the strongest defense you can. She doesn’t expect her army to survive the night.”

  The taproom fell silent. “Disaster compounds upon disaster tonight,” Grigor said quietly. He sank back to the bench with his head in his hands. “It seems that Sergen chose the worst possible moment for his treachery.”

  “Or the best,” Geran said darkly. But perhaps Sergen had not anticipated the ferocity of the approaching horde. It would be more than a little ironic if his cousin managed to dethrone the harmach just in time to preside over the destruction of the city. More likely Sergen had simply recognized the Bloody Skull ultimatum as the opportunity to put his plans in motion, never imagining that the threat from the north would actually materialize. He looked at the men and women who filled the Troll and Tankard. Their fierce defiance had vanished in an instant at the news of the defeat. They might succeed in preserving their lives by taking shelter behind strong walls-excluding Griffonwatch for the moment, he reminded himself-but their homes, their workshops, their storehouses, and their livelihoods all lay exposed to destruction. Assuming that the orcs chose not to reduce strongholds like Daggergard or the fortified compounds, they’d still be ruined.

  “It would have been wise to wall the city,” Harmach Grigor said with a sigh. “We always knew this day might come, but now that it’s at hand, I wish doom had chosen some other hour to fall upon us.”

  Wall the city… Geran frowned, thinking furiously. Hulburg had been walled, once. In ancient times, when it had been a much larger city, its wall had passed right over the spot where the Troll and Tankard stood. When the town had been resettled a hundred years ago, his ancestors Angar and Lendon had faced constant orc raids against the fields and farms of the Winterspear Vale. They had raised a simple dike across the Vale to protect the closer farms.

  “What about Lendon’s Dike?” he asked aloud. “If we brought the entire Spearmeet there and combined our strength with whatever’s left of Kara’s army, we might be able to stop the Bloody Skulls before they sack the town.”

  “That’s a deadly gamble, m’lord,” Durnan Osting said slowly. He whistled between his teeth. “The dike’s not much o’ defense.”

  “We’ll have a few hours to improve it if we begin right away,” Geran pointed out. “Yes, it might be safer to find whatever refuge we can now and give up the town. But maybe it’s not too late to save Hulburg.”

  “What of the Veruna brigands waiting outside Griffonwatch?” Mirya asked. “What’s to be done about them?”

  Geran frowned. As much as he wanted to use the Spearmeet to storm the Veruna merchant yards and put an abrupt stop to Sergen’s designs, the threat of the Bloody Skulls simply dwarfed his cousin’s treachery. “Sergen will have to wait until tomorrow,” he finally said. “We’ll ignore them. They can’t do much harm that can’t be undone in a few days.”

  The harmach looked dubious. “Yours is a counsel of desperation, Geran. You know what it is to stake your life on chance, but most of the rest of us do not. It’s harder for us than you might think.”

  Geran lowered his voice and leaned close to his uncle. “I understand, Uncle Grigor. But consider this: Either we tell our folk to hide in cellars and scatter to the Highfells, or we try to fight off the orcs. If we fight and lose, well, how much worse can that be than if we hadn’t fought at all? Hulburg’s sacked and our people enslaved in either case. Will the Bloody Skulls show us any more mercy if we spare them another battle? We might as well die fighting.”

  Harmach Grigor weighed Geran’s words for a long moment. Then, slowly, he stood and turned to face the assembled Hulburgans crowding the tavern floor. The townsfolk awaited his words in a hushed silence. “You’ve all heard what I’ve heard,” he said. “We failed to stop the Bloody Skulls at the head of the Winterspear. My nephew believes we may have one more chance to break the horde before it drowns Hulburg in fire and steel. I need every last man of the Spearmeet to march at once for Lendon’s Dike. If we can hold off the orcs until dawn, then perhaps daylight will show us better reason to hope than we can find tonight.” Grigor seemed to stand a little taller, and his voice grew stronger. He struck his cane to the floorboards. “I want word sent through all the town for women, children, the infirm, the elderly, all those who cannot bend a bow or hold a spear, to seek refuge immediately. But tell any man or woman who can carry an axe or a hunting bow to come to Lendon’s Dike-I don’t care whose colors they wear!”

  Geran drew his sword and thrust the point into the air. “For Hulburg!” he shouted. “For the harmach!”

  “Hulburg! The harmach!” a dozen voices shouted in reply. Then a hundred more joined in, until the tavern trembled with the thunder of their shouts. “Hulburg! The harmach!”

  “Captains, gather your musters!” the harmach called, his voice carrying through the din. “Sons and daughters of Hulburg, take up your spears and stand together! We march!”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  11 Tarsakh, the Year of the Ageless One

  The hour after moonset was the worst of the night. Somehow in the darkness the small mercenary contingents of House Marstel and the Double Moon Coster became separated from the rapidly diminishing army of Hulburg and simply vanished into the night. Kara sent her best scouts to find the missing detachments and lead them back to the Vale Road, but she dared not wait for their return. The Red Claw wolf riders snarled and darted at her army’s heels at every step, and behind them came the great mass of the Bloody Skull horde. Now that the Bloody Skulls were in the Vale, she had no real hope of stopping them short of Hulburg. All she could do was try to beat the horde to the town and pray that her battered and bloodied soldiers could hold the castles and the fortified merchant compounds. The orcs would tire of their sport and withdraw after a few days, leaving those lucky enough to find shelter behind strong walls
and locked gates alive to rebuild… but if she allowed the wolf riders to surround her and bring her to bay, she would not even be able to manage that much. Without her soldiers, Griffonwatch and Daggergard would fall, and then nothing at all would be left of Hulburg.

  “Stay together, stay in good order!” she called to the weary companies around her. “If you fall out of ranks, the wolf riders will have you! They can’t drag us down if we stay in ranks and keep to our places as we march!”

  So many have fallen already, she thought dully. Kara was exhausted herself, bruised and nicked in a dozen places from the furious cavalry skirmishes of the last few hours, but she couldn’t allow her soldiers to see her flagging or giving in to despair. She wheeled Dancer around and patted the big mare’s neck, studying the dark vale behind her retreating army. Half a dozen fires blazed in the blackness where outlying farms and homesteads had already been overrun by bloodthirsty savages. There will be many more of those before sunrise, she told herself.

  Her broken companies filed into a narrow cut where the road passed through a belt of beechwoods. She peered into the gloom, searching for danger. Her spellscar-changed eyes, so brilliant by daylight, shimmered with the greenish-blue radiance of glacier ice in darkness; she could see as well as a cat by night, a small consolation for the havoc the Spellplague had wreaked in her. The woods offered little as a place to make a stand, but she had to do something to keep the wolf riders away from her troops.

  Kara tapped her heels to Dancer’s flanks and cantered over to the Icehammer company, her standard-bearer and her adjutants following her. The mercenaries trudged along in grim silence in the middle of her force. Kara reined in to walk alongside the rearmost ranks. “Where’s your captain?” she asked the dwarves there.

  “I’m here, Lady Hulmaster.” The black-bearded dwarf Kendurkkel pushed his way through the marching files of his company. He carried a heavy crossbow over his shoulder and a battle axe with its haft thrust through his belt, but still he gripped his pipe between his teeth. “What d’you want?”

  “We need to teach the goblins not to follow us too closely,” Kara said. “You’ve got crossbowmen among your company, and most of them are dwarves who can see in the dark better than the rest of us. I want you to set up a skirmish line here in these trees and greet the goblins with a volley or two when they follow us in here.”

  “You’re wantin’ me lads t’take a turn at rearguard, you mean.” Kendurkkel frowned. “If those wolf riders go ’round the woods, they’ll catch us here neat as you please, and me poor mother won’t ever lay eyes on her foolish son agin’.”

  “I’ll be waiting with all the riders we have left just on the other side of the woods,” Kara answered. “If the goblins go around you, we’ll hold them off and give you a chance to get clear.”

  Kendurkkel looked up at her, taking her measure. “I don’t doubt you’ll do as you say, but this sort o’ extra work ain’t in me contract, Lady Hulmaster.”

  Kara restrained a sudden impulse to simply ride the Icehammer captain down under her hooves and leaned over her pommel to fix her eyes on the dwarf’s face. She lowered her voice even further. “You may not have noticed, Captain, but this is now a question of survival, not contracts. If our hodgepodge army breaks apart in the next mile because the wolf riders cut us apart from behind, there’s an excellent chance that none of us will reach Hulburg alive. It’s in your own best interest to give the goblins a bloody nose or at least make them ride around the woods.”

  The dwarf chewed on the stem of his pipe, staring coldly up at her. Then he sighed and said, “All right, Lady Hulmaster. We’ll do as you ask. This whole business is sourin’ fast anyway, so I s’pose we ain’t got much t’lose.” The dwarf turned away and shouted to his mercenaries. “Icehammers, off the road! We’re t’lay a little ambush right here for any goblins or worgs stupid ’nough t’ stick their heads in a noose.”

  “Three good volleys are all we need,” Kara told him. She watched the Icehammers scramble into the woods on each side of the road and left Kendurkkel pointing with the stem of his pipe and barking orders to his men.

  She cantered a couple of hundred yards farther on to the place where the road broke out into open fields again, and collected all the cavalry she had left-twoscore Shieldsworn and about twice that number of men and women called out from the various merchant contingents. She sent pickets out to each side to watch for wolf riders coming around the small belt of woods then settled down to wait. She would have preferred to stay close to the Icehammers, but it was simply too important to make sure that the hundred riders she had at this spot went in the right direction when the enemy appeared. She was afraid that the merchant armsmen would simply ride off for home if she didn’t remain to hold them in place.

  One of the young Shieldsworn waiting next to her-Sarise, her standard-bearer-leaned close and asked softly, “M’lady, what’s going to become of us? What’ll be left of Hulburg when this’s all over?”

  Kara felt the stillness of other riders nearby. They were listening for her answer too. She considered her words before answering. “Sarise, I don’t know,” she said. “But I know that our castles can shelter hundreds of people for a long time. Many others will escape by ship or by the coastal trails. I don’t think the orcs can take Griffonwatch without a long siege, and I doubt that they’ll have the patience for it. In time they’ll leave, and the town will be ours again. But for now, the longer we hold off the Bloody Skulls, the more of our people will live. It’s not what I would’ve hoped for, but it’s the best we can do.”

  Sarise frowned, but she nodded. “Thank you, Lady Kara,” she said softly.

  Kara started to say more, but the snarls and howls of wolves came to her ears from the dark woods behind her. Dancer snorted and shifted nervously as did the other horses; they knew that sound, and they didn’t like it. The ranger turned her mount and peered into the gloomy shadows beneath the trees. The woods weren’t thick, and she could glimpse a handful of the dwarves as they crouched and waited. “They’re coming through the woods,” she breathed. It was up to the Icehammers now.

  She heard the snap and thrum of crossbows, then scores of them firing almost as one, followed an instant later by a great chorus of goblin shrieks and wolves yipping in pain. “Steady,” she told the riders around her. “We’ve got to cover the Icehammers when they break off their fight. Steady, everyone.”

  More crossbows sang in the night, and the chorus of pained cries changed into the ugly, incoherent roar of battle-hundreds of voices shouting and screaming, some in pain, some in fear, some in anger, some in victory. The deep voices of dwarves, the high harsh cries of goblins, and the fury of worgs all blended in a long, rolling battle-thunder that seemed to echo from the steep hillsides cupping the Winterspear Vale. It went on and on, much longer than Kara would have imagined, until she found herself leaning forward in her saddle and peering into the woods to see if she could see anything of the fighting a short distance off. But after a time the shouts and ring of steel on steel faded again, and Icehammers began to trot out of the woods-human mercenaries groping through the darkness, dwarves jogging along with slower strides but a much better sense of where they were headed.

  “Lady Kara, the pickets to the right say that there’re goblin scouts on the eastern edge o’ the woods,” one of her adjutants reported.

  “Very well,” she answered. She hardly felt as calm as she tried to sound, but that was her duty, to act as if she had expected everything that had happened tonight. She looked at a Shieldsworn sergeant nearby. “Kars, take your troop and the Jannarsk men there, and go drive off the scouts. Keep them from coming around the woods for half an hour, and then rejoin the column. If there are too many wolf riders to handle, use your discretion, but make sure you send word to me.”

  The sergeant touched his knuckle to his brow. “Yes, m’lady,” he said. He gathered eight of the remaining Shieldsworn and a dozen of the Jannarsk Coster armsmen, and the small band rode off into th
e night. Kara wondered whether she would see them again.

  Dancer snorted and stamped suddenly, and Kara saw motion beneath the trees off to her right. The brush thrashed and an ugly chorus of snarls came to her ears, and then goblin wolf riders suddenly broke through the treeline, chasing after the Icehammers as the mercenaries fell back.

  “Take them!” she shouted, standing in her stirrups with her bow in her hand. She drew and fired, drew and fired again, and a goblin and worg went down together, each with an arrow in the throat. Her remaining riders charged at the enormous wolves, lances lowered and sabers high. The overeager goblins wheeled in panic and bounded back for the safety of the woods, but not before more fell under the steel of the Shieldsworn and the House mercenaries. Kara shot one more worg through its spine as it leaped away; the monster howled and crashed into a blackberry thicket, throwing its rider. The goblin dismounted was not much of a threat-but worgs could drag down men or horses. She searched for another target but decided to save her arrows. She might need them more before the night was out.

  Several other quick skirmishes broke out along the woodline as wolf riders blundered too close to the soldiers they were hoping to chase down. After a dozen slashing duels of wolf rider and cavalryman, the woods fell silent again. Kara judged that the Red Claws had fallen back to mass for a more deliberate attack; this would be the moment to pull back again. The Icehammers were already marching south off the field, falling into ranks as they hurried away. It’ll have to be enough, she told herself, praying that she’d bought her ragged army half an hour’s lead on the pitiless marauders who followed them.

  “Fall back!” she called to the riders nearby. “Stay with me!”

  Kara cantered a few hundred yards farther down the road, her small company of riders following her standard as best they could. Then she wheeled around again, searching the open space they’d just crossed for any sign of pursuit. If the Red Claws pressed too close, she’d have to lead her weary riders against them to give the Icehammers time to put another mile under their boots, but for the moment it seemed the wolf riders had learned a little caution.