The Path of Ashes [Omnibus Edition]

by Parker, Brian

  “Box formation!” Frederick shouted.

  The men responded with the city’s battle cry, “Aaah Uhh!” as he guided Ash inside the square of militiamen that began to form around him. Along the column, he could hear his order repeated as other Guardsmen called to their formations to do the same.

  He dismounted and looked around at the men and women that he found himself amongst. Rolf’s platoon was mostly fishermen and laborers from the poorer side of the city. Truth be told, even though it was purely coincidence, Frederick couldn’t have picked a better group to fight with if it came to a battle in these woods.

  Skirmishers streamed quickly back toward the road, filling in the ranks. Their tales of crazed half-men began to drift back to Frederick, who had to put an end to the rumors before they spread and softened the militia’s minds. Then, the sounds of individual battle died away beyond his line of sight, replaced by guttural shouts and animal noises.

  “What happened?” Frederick demanded as the last of the skirmishers came stumbling in, covered in blood.

  “There’s a whole bunch of crazies out there,” the woman replied. “We interrupted them. They were cutting down trees to make battering rams.”

  The rams are to take down the city gates, he surmised. The hoots and whistles also began to come from behind them and Frederick saw the wild men emerge from both sides of the wood line. They were surrounded.

  “Prepare yourselves,” he told the troops.

  “Aaah Uhh!” the men cried once more. The front row knelt behind their shields and tried to secure the end of their spears against the ground.

  The pavement that had made travel through the countryside easier would work against the phalanx since there was no way to get the butts of their spears to bite into the ground. If the men couldn’t use the ground to add to the stability of the weapon, then they’d quickly tire from holding the spear. Frederick’s mind processed the information quickly and he calculated how far the closest enemies were. They had time, but it would be close.

  “Phalanx, move off the road. Fifteen paces.” He made an exaggerated gesture toward the direction that he wanted them to go so everyone could see.

  The formation surged along the course that he’d indicated and then set themselves. The ends of the outer rank’s spears buried in the dirt and the second rank settled their shields over their companions, sliding their spears along the shields of the first rank. The third rank fit their weapons where gaps in the wall allowed and the fourth rank prepared themselves to fill in if anyone fell or relieve those who needed a break.

  Then the Vultures hit the bristling wall of Homelake’s militia.

  It was chaos. Spears bucked in their owners’ hands as the wild men impaled themselves against the metal tips, driven mad by whatever drug they’d taken. Soon, the first rank’s spears were loaded with corpses, too heavy for them to hold any more and they switched to the short swords, thrusting around their shields to cut deeply into anything that got within reach. The deeper ranks stabbed outward with their spears, hitting the attackers high in the face, neck and torso.

  Frederick relied on his training to keep the phalanx together, rotating personnel in a controlled manner. Off to the side in his periphery vision, he saw several of the other boxes collapse. They’d stayed on the road, so their spears weren’t held in place by the ground like those of the men in his formation. The enemy seemed to be everywhere, swarming over the other boxes and taking the superior weapons from the dead militiamen.

  Spears began to appear in the hands of the Vultures fighting against his box as they jabbed inward awkwardly, unfamiliar with the Homelake spears. Frederick’s men began to take casualties as blood from both the defenders and attackers mingled freely with the cries of the dying.

  The savages who’d killed the rest of the militia renewed the attack against the side of Frederick’s formation near the road, threatening to break his lines. The mêlée raged, each man fighting an impossible individual battle to the death, while at the same time relying on the person to his left, right, front and rear to defend him. The militia had spent hundreds of hours perfecting their carefully choreographed dance of death on Homelake’s parade field.

  Time became meaningless to Frederick. His single focus was controlling the troops to plug the gaps with men who were marginally healthier than the soldier they replaced. Even in the center of the phalanx, he wasn’t immune to combat and had to surge forward to kill the Vultures seeking to break the formation on several occasions.

  Frederick began to be dimly aware of a lessening of the battle around them until, finally, it ceased all together. Far away, near where Nicholas had been at the head of the column, one phalanx remained. “Aaah Uhh!” the other box cried in celebration of their victory as they broke up to sanitize the area around them.

  The dead and dying lay scattered around his own box, hundreds deep. During the course of the battle, the formation’s position had shifted several yards from where it had begun. They’d trampled across the dead and hadn’t even realized it.

  Frederick ordered Rolf, who’d miraculously survived, and his fellow militiamen to begin killing the wounded enemy—it was the only way they could be sure that they’d never have to fight these same men.

  The militiamen spread out to follow his orders and he had a moment to relax, Frederick noticed the disgusting filth that filled his boots, leaving his feet slimy in places and sticky in others. The ground was a churned up mess of mud, created by the blood and gore from the battle. His boots sunk deep into it and the liquid seeped over the tops, filling them with the ghastly mixture. He retched and then vomited, adding to the filth on the battlefield.

  The sergeant struggled to free himself from the mud and puke and made his way toward the other box.

  “Thank the gods you survived,” Nicholas called to him as he walked up.

  “I’m glad I survived as well,” he muttered and clasped hands with the Captain of the Traxx Guard.

  Nicholas looked around forlornly. “I was dreading that I’d have to tell the king his daughter’s love slave was dead.”

  Frederick folded his hands across his chest in mock anger. “I’m not a slave.”

  Nicholas laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. “Yes, you can’t imprison the willing.” His eyes hardened once again and he continued, “This was a terrible price to pay for our victory.”

  The younger Guard looked around, nodding. “They formed up on the road. Couldn’t use the ground to hold their spears.”

  “I know. We did the same thing and when I saw you move I had my box do the same thing. It’s the only thing that saved us.”

  “How many do you think we lost?” Frederick asked. His voice sounded distant and childlike to him.

  “Too many,” the captain appraised the men who methodically walked amongst the injured, every so often stabbing downward with their spears or swords. “We only have about fifty men left.”

  Frederick blanched. They’d set out from Homelake with more than two hundred militiamen. It was a terrible price to pay for their victory against the Vultures. “Surely, we’ve beaten the Vultures.”

  Nicholas shrugged. “We’ve beaten this group, but we don’t have any way of knowing if that was every one of them.” He paused and then, “What I do know is that we can’t remain outside the walls. If there are more of them, this tiny force is done for. We’re going back to Homelake.”

  *****

  Smoke on the horizon near Homelake was the first indication that something had gone terribly wrong while they were out hunting the Vultures. Frederick stood in the stirrups in an attempt to see further.

  “We need to hurry,” he called to Nicholas. “The city is on fire.”

  “I can see it for myself,” Nicholas sighed. “What do you want us to do about it? The men can’t walk any faster and they sure as hell can’t run—they’re barely standing.”

  “Let me go on ahead then.”

  “And do what? Get yourself killed is what you’ll do.
”

  “I’ve got to do something. My family is in Homelake.” Frederick snapped.

  “Everyone’s family is there, Frederick. We’re going as fast as we can, but we’re not going to stumble blindly into a trap.”

  “Then I’ll see you there,” he hissed as he dug his heels into Ash’s flanks. The horse shot off quickly, opening the distance between the remaining militiamen and his commander.

  “You won’t be able to do anything by yourself,” Nicholas shouted after him. “I’ll have you hung for insubordination.”

  The miles disappeared quickly underneath his horse’s hooves and the cloud of smoke billowing above his home city grew. As he got closer, he realized that the column of oily black filth pouring into the air came mainly from one giant fire. The Keep!

  He kicked Ash harder and the horse surged ahead, threatening to unseat him. The sound of metal horseshoes hitting the ancient pavement echoed off the trees lining the road, pounding into his brain like a blacksmith’s hammer. Is The Keep gone? What of Tanya and the twins, did they escape?

  He reached the spot where the trees opened up to the farmland around the city of Homelake and pulled hard on the reins. Ash skidded to a halt, sending Frederick flying over his neck. He landed hard on his back and his head smacked against the road.

  His vision began to go dark at the edges as he sat up to gaze across the fields. Several of the buildings outside the walls had been burned, but the city looked mostly intact. The sand-colored façade of The Keep rose high above everything, seemingly safe behind its own set of walls.

  Several blocks off the main road, two lines of carts deposited their loads in a pile before returning for more of their cargo. The first of the lines stretched off toward the tree line, where they were loaded with wood for the massive fire burning outside of the city’s walls. The second line of carts carried the bodies of the dead. Both were added to the flames that belched the dark, greasy smoke he’d seen from miles away.

  Frederick groped blindly behind him for Ash’s reins without luck. Finally, he tore his eyes from the scene around the walls to find his horse. Ash was only a few feet away. He rushed to him, climbing awkwardly into the saddle in his haste, and spurred his mount toward the city.

  Up ahead, a pair of men stood beside the road holding spears. They were members of the militia and Frederick recognized the men’s position. They were far away from the walls, just out of bowshot from the tree line, with horns that they could blow in warning to secure the gates. Ash thundered up to them and Frederick reined him in mere inches from bowling them over.

  “What happened here?” Frederick demanded.

  “Sergeant Hanson!” squeaked the man on the left, a merchant if he remembered correctly.

  “I asked what happened here.”

  The merchant’s partner recovered from the shock of seeing the Guard emerge from the woods by himself and answered, “The Vultures. They attacked when you and the captain were off searching for them…” His eyes drifted back up the path to where it disappeared in the trees.

  “Nicholas is fine. We were ambushed by the Vultures, but we won the battle. He’s about half a day’s march behind me with the remainder of the militia. How many of them were there?”

  “The Vultures, Sergeant?” the merchant asked.

  Frederick decided that the man was entirely too stupid to be trusted with such an important task as being an outpost guard. “Yes. How many Vultures attacked Homelake while we were gone?”

  The two men conferred with each other before the merchant replied. “It was a few thousand, Sergeant. We kicked their asses good though.”

  “Yeah, they came out of the woods four or five days after you left,” the second soldier added. “They blocked the gates so we couldn’t get out and shot thousands of arrows over the walls, killing a lot of people inside the city. They tried everything to get past the walls, but couldn’t get through the gates, so it was a standoff.”

  “The battering rams!” Frederick exclaimed.

  “Whazzat?” the merchant asked in a jumble of words.

  “The savages we fought were cutting down trees for battering rams. They must have divided their forces.”

  “That explains the large group of them that left yesterday,” the soldier surmised. “Once the big group was gone, only about five hundred of them remained so the king took advantage of the smaller group.”

  The dumb one nodded his head and continued, “The king ordered us to make a big distraction at the front gates and then the militia broke out through the back gates. One company went one way, the other company went the opposite way and the king himself led the way as we swept around the back side and crushed the savages between the two companies. Only a few stragglers got away.”

  “The king led the charge?” Frederick asked incredulously.

  “Yup. The man is an animal! Your children have that same strong Traxx blood flowing in their veins.” The two men slapped jovially at his leg since he was still mounted. If he’d been on the ground, they likely would have pulled him in for giant bear hugs.

  Frederick ignored the comment about the Traxx family as he tried to do the mental calculations, the battlefield math. They weren’t entirely sure how many of the wild men there’d been in the first place, but if they’d killed five hundred here and the phalanx had killed about a thousand of them in the woods, it was enough to put a major dent in any size formation. “How many men did we lose?”

  The merchant and his companion grew serious. “We lost seventy-three men, Sergeant.”

  He worked the numbers for the militia. Seventy-three plus the hundred and fifty or so that died at the ambush point… That was almost three companies of militiamen gone, meaning there were only one, maybe two, companies left to defend Homelake if there were another attack. They needed to activate the Reserve immediately, if it hadn’t already been done.

  “What of the Reserve? Has it been called to duty?”

  “Yes, Sergeant. The king ordered them up the moment the Vultures came out of the trees.”

  If the Reserve was active and the Traxx Guard still secured The Keep, then he could allow himself to relax slightly. The city was secure, now he could go make sure that his family was safe.

  Frederick mounted Ash. “Thank you, gentlemen. Captain Nicholas will be along shortly with the remains of the militia force that we took out. Keep up the good work out here and be sure to sound the alarm if you see anything out of the ordinary.”

  “Of course, Sergeant,” the merchant called after him.

  He thundered down the road toward Homelake, dodging uncollected bodies further out and then the carts he’d seen from afar as he got closer. The king had enlisted the help of everyone it seemed. Residents of all shapes and sizes pulled or pushed the carts of grisly remains to the fires. The sooner the dead were burned, the less likely it would be for disease to spread.

  Frederick thought it was a smart move by Tanya’s father. They could keep the soldiers on the perimeter for protection while the population helped clean up from the battle. The common experience would connect the citizens to the army, show them the sacrifices that the soldiers had made, and the savagery the enemy would bring if they were ever allowed inside the walls.

  He continued through the gates of Homelake, racing past squads of soldiers cleaning weapons and impromptu aid stations where doctors and their assistants cleaned up from what appeared to be several days of hard work. Easily recognizable as the princess’ lover from the broadsides and his position as a sergeant in the Traxx Guard, Frederick’s return to the city was met with excitement. Men and women waved and a few of the militia even cheered as he rode by. He had to explain to people on multiple occasions that the rest of the militia would return by the end of the day to reinforce the city’s thin defenses.

  He finally made it to the gates of The Keep and was allowed to pass through quickly. Passing the reins off to one of the stable boys, he jogged toward the building and almost ran into the king and queen.

/>   “Frederick! Oh, I’m so glad you’re safe!” Peyton Traxx said, throwing her arms around him, regardless of the gore that covered his clothing.

  He brought his arms up hesitantly and hugged her back. “Are the princess and the children okay?”

  “Yes,” she nodded into his shoulder. “She’s been worried sick about you though. Hasn’t eaten since those savages showed up. We feared… We feared that you and all the militiamen were dead when the Vultures appeared.”

  Frederick disengaged from the queen’s embrace. “Sir, I have news to report,” he told the king.

  “Go ahead, then. Tell me quickly so you can go to Tanya.”

  “Yes, m’Lord. We were searching for the Vultures, as ordered, tracking them, but it always seemed like they were a few hours ahead of us—until this morning. We came across a group of them cutting down the large trees in the forest to the northwest to make battering rams.”

  “They couldn’t get past our gates without those,” Garrett said. “That’s probably where the group that took off yesterday went. Once I saw the reduced army, I knew that I had to take the opportunity and counterattack before they joined together once again.”

  “That was a brilliant move, sir,” Frederick agreed. “We were attacked this morning when we came across them. By our body count, it was a force of about a thousand men.”

  “Body count? So we were victorious, then.”

  “Yes, m’Lord. But fully three-quarters of our men are lying dead on the field as well. Nicholas is marching here with the remnants of the militia… Only fifty-six men survived the battle.”

  The king clasped Frederick’s shoulders with both hands. “You listen to me, son. The militia did its job—what I’d asked of you. Your mission was to track down those savages and wipe them out, and you did that. I’m proud of you.”

  Frederic smiled. “Thank you, sir. That means a lot to me.”

  Garrett dipped his chin slightly and then grinned. “You say that old dog, Nicholas, made it through, huh?”