Dragonhammer: Volume II

by Conner McCall

  We have plenty of food. The vaults of the fort are full of barrels of wheat and ale, and some apples. We even find a shelved room stocked with dried or salted meats, fresh and ready for cooking.

  Many of the guards make themselves merry and I intervene when one of them almost tumbles out of the window while trying a trick that had something to do with a stool, a wooden plate, and a burlap sack. After that I severely cut their ration of ale.

  I have no time for merriment. My empty heart won’t allow it, and neither will my distant mind. There is too much at stake here. I have come too far to suddenly fall into stupor.

  That day passes uneventfully.

  Ullrog finds me in the room beside the armory the next day, fighting a stuffed scarecrow soldier. He watches for a moment, and then says, “Khuar.”

  I stop. “What?”

  “Test,” he says.

  I face him and ready my stance, expecting him to pull his sword. He stares at me with his arms folded across his chest. It takes him another moment to realize what I am waiting for, and then a smile tugs at his lips and he says, “Rü. Khuar thiem shrakna.” No. Test my language.

  I lower my hammer, feeling a little silly I had made the mistake, and reply, “Shkem, blaknie. Thien tum’kha.” Sorry, brother. I am ready.

  He only nods.

  He does not allow me to use my notebook of cheats, but he doesn’t keep track of which ones I get right or wrong. He simply says a word, whether in the common tongue or in orcish, and asks for the translation in the other language.

  “Thom’kha, Khroll’verar,” he says. Good, Dragonhammer.

  “Rheyoth, blaknie,” I reply.

  Again the day is otherwise uneventful.

  “Jarl Hralfar has made it to Poalai by now,” I say to Commander Magnus. She has returned to herself. Every once in a while she cringes because of her back, though she never complains. “We should be expecting a messenger soon with Lord Archeantus’s orders.”

  She nods. “We should also expect an attack. The enemy has had long enough to hear of our victory here.”

  “They have,” I agree. “And I fear the ferocity they may bring. We will take casualties.”

  “We always take casualties,” she says with her brow furrowed.

  I look at the north horizon, covered in an orange forest. “Not this many,” I reply.

  The Defense of Fort Rocksabre

  The next day drags in anxious tension. Everyone knows there will be an attack; why else would the Jarl have left us stationed here?

  I wear my armor during all of my waking hours. Most of the soldiers do as well; we need to be ready when they arrive.

  I stand on the roof of the fort and watch them near the next morning. My hands are clasped behind my back and I watch their approach with little more than a furrowed brow. “Get the tar,” I command a nearby soldier. “Make sure there’s enough up here. And leave a full pot of it there.” I point to the far corner of the fort, by the gate.

  “Yes, Captain.” The soldier scurries off with a couple of others to perform the task I have assigned him.

  The enemy approaches by ship, which doesn’t surprise me. Ships travel faster than the army is able to walk, but it is more difficult to get your force back to shore quickly. The good news is that their ships are more barge-like than ours; with such construction, few of them have proper weaponry.

  “Swing the catapults into position,” Commander Magnus dictates, emerging from the lighthouse tower. “Archers ready yourselves.” Our men do as she commands without hesitation.

  The mist has cleared from the gulf and seems to have reformed in the sky, as there is hardly a spot of open sky to be seen. Little light finds us; it must hardly be dawn. The spire of rock sits between the fort and the sun anyway, so when it does rise, shadow will fall over the fort until around noon.

  Solders rise from the door that leads down into the fort, each carrying a small pot of tar. The pots are distributed evenly around the south and western edges of the fort, beneath the crenellations, and the soldiers set to lighting small fires underneath them. The torches along the fort stay lit.

  We do not light the ammunition for the catapults. It takes too much tar, and I’d rather keep it for other uses.

  I unsheathe my hammer restlessly. They are taking their time, and it frustrates me. I walk within earshot of the catapults. “Fire as soon as they get within range,” I command.

  “Right, Captain.”

  I’m already turned and heading towards the western section that sits right above the gate. The pot of tar is heating nicely, but is not yet ready.

  “I can’t stand the anticipation,” James mutters. “I just want to get it done with.”

  “Same here,” Percival agrees. “The wait is worse than the fight.”

  Their ships encroach on the shoreline ominously, staying just out of range of our catapults and archers.

  Ullrog growls deeply, his sword weaving a pattern into the air. Aela stands still but for her head, which twists on her neck nervously as if she is looking for someone hiding behind her.

  Their ships turn towards the shore.

  “Good, we’re one step closer,” James says between his teeth.

  The barges are smaller than the ships we had used, and so are better able to get in closer to the shore.

  “Ready arrows!” Magnus commands. Our archers each ready an arrow and nock it into their bows. Most of them dip the tip of the arrow into the bubbling tar and light it by sticking it over a flaming torch or into the flames licking at the sides of the pot.

  “Aim!” The archers draw their bows, the flaming points of their arrows pointing into the sky. Still the barges near, their sails billowing.

  “Fire at will!”

  Then our arrows come down in a literal rain of fire.

  With satisfaction I watch the sails of two catch fire, but their movement is not stopped. Holes begin to gape in them, devoured by the ever-hungry flame. Their soldiers shout and yell as the wood beneath their feet begins to catch fire.

  A large stone flies through the air, flung by our catapult. It narrowly misses the mast of the nearest ship and plummets into the water several yards from the stern of another with a tremendous splash and a pillar of water. A few of the men aboard the ship absorb the spray of water and fall backwards in surprise.

  The second catapult knocks a wooden statue from the bridge of one ship and hits a second in the side. The impact was slight but both ships rock in the water, sending out waves from their sides.

  Our archers let fly a second volley, unleashing fire onto the next few boats that come into range. Their men frantically try to collect water from the sea to put the flames out and some of them succeed, but only marginally. A couple of soldiers catch fire and take to throwing themselves into the salty water, coming up spitting and spluttering.

  Men hurriedly load another stone into the catapult and it takes flight, coming down right in the middle of one of the barges. Water floods the ship immediately, running up the decks. Their soldiers try in vain to bail it, but the hole is simply too big for them to accomplish anything; they are forced to abandon ship as the barge sinks and embeds its nose into the sandy bottom.

  Then there’s a yell from the forest, not two hundred yards from the gate.

  Confused, I look to the source of the sound and find another company of their soldiers is upon us, charging from the dark enclosure of the forest.

  “I’ve got the ships, you handle the gate!” Genevieve yells at me.

  “Got it!” I reply. Her attention returns to the gulf as I focus on the invading army.

  The soldiers charge with ferocious yells, holding their swords high. Our arrows bring many of them to the ground, but not enough.

  They have brought down a medium-sized tree, removed the branches, and tapered the end to a point, and they now run with it straight towards the gate. It takes several of them along each side to lift the heavy thing, but they run forward almost as quickly as the other soldiers
.

  “Bring them down!” I roar, directing my archers. They adjust their aim and three of the carriers fall with arrows protruding either from their neck or chest. Even more burst from the trees and I realize we have a long hard fight ahead of us.

  The tree hits the gate with a crash; the sound alone leads me to believe it is at least twice as effective as our rowboat.

  More of them fall, but there are always more to take their place. A few of their archers return fire, and one of my soldiers falls from the crenellations. Another falls backwards onto the stone when an arrow sprouts from his chest, and yet another struggles to stay alive but falls dead nonetheless.

  There’s another crack on the gate. “I thought you said you’d get the gate!” Genevieve bellows. I turn and see a ship completely aflame with men jumping over the sides. With no one to steer, the ship becomes the plaything of the wind and sea, and is dashed to pieces on the rocks by the cliff.

  “I am!” I return just as loudly. But I don’t know how. Then I look down at the pot of tar.

  Ullrog catches my gaze and understands what I mean to do immediately. We cannot touch the pot directly, but that’s the reason there are handles.

  He takes one side and I take the other, and in one motion we lift it and dump the tar over the side.

  I feel sorry for the men beneath me.

  The black bubbling tar steams as it spreads with an explosion of black just in front of the gate. Men scream and run, trying to brush the hot tar from their faces and armor, dropping their weapons in a mad attempt to reach the gulf. Only some are willing to brave the slippery black mess to pick up the tree.

  Then I drop a torch.

  One would think I had summoned a Fire Giant. A pillar of flame ascends initially, but it dies down almost immediately with a loud whoomp! The tar catches fire and soon there is a literal pool of flame only a few feet in front of the gate. The tree is dropped and begins to burn as its carriers flee from the hungry inferno.

  “Nice,” James says lowly, watching the men below scramble like ants. There’s a bit of a disgusted tone in his voice. Most of them are burned badly, red streaking and dripping from their bodies and black scarring their armor.

  “It’ll keep them out,” I reply darkly. “If only for a few minutes.”

  Our arrows continue to rain upon them brutally, and we receive very few in return. They evidently planned to get through the gate quickly and drive us out, but they underestimated us.

  One of the ships gets close enough to the shore that the men leap from the deck into the knee-deep-water and run up the beach to assist their allies at the gate.

  “I thought you had the ships!” James yells at Genevieve sarcastically with a small smile.

  “She could give you a stripe for that,” Percival mutters. “Talking to your commander in that way.”

  Magnus ignores the comment.

  “Or she could not,” James says with a small shrug.

  The smell of tar and roasting flesh rises to the roof of the fort and I wrinkle my nose. Percival and James each offer a cough, but Ullrog breathes in deeply. I think it makes him hungry.

  Slowly the tar burns down until parts of it only flicker, leaving an enormous black stain on the otherwise green ground. The tree, about a third of it now black and weak, is lifted back into the air and thrown at the gate. Black chunks of the tree shatter and fly in all directions like shrapnel.

  “Don’t stop firing,” I command the archers. “I’m going down.” Then I turn and, with Percival, James, Aela, and Ullrog on my heels, make my way through the door, down the stairs, and into the fort.

  Our men stand ready in the entrance hall. I watch the gate bounce inward a last time, and then burst.

  The tree is dropped and weapons are raised in its place.

  I stand at the top of the stairs in the back and watch, but only for a moment. Enemy soldiers raid the hall and too many of my men fall in only the first few seconds. Then I run forward.

  A swift uppercut from my hammer almost decapitates one of them. He flies backwards and lands on one of his allies, who looks at me just as I bear down upon him. He makes an attempt to block my strike, but my hammer knocks his sword away with ease. It clangs to the ground and I smash into his breastplate, flooring the soldier instantly.

  Ullrog cuts clear across the torso of a rather unfortunate soldier, and then decapitates the next in the same swing. Another freezes at the sight of his ally’s head flying through the air, and the orc kills him quickly.

  I wonder what an army of orcs is like.

  Percival’s shield absorbs a bash from a warhammer and he staggers underneath the blow, but as the hammer rises above its wielder’s head, James’s sword firmly plants itself just under the ribs of the enemy. There is hardly time for words, so all James can expect to receive as thanks from Percival is a brief grunt.

  One of my soldiers has his sword batted away, but I am not fast enough to save him. He is bleeding on the floor before I reach him, but I avenge him by quickly dispatching his killer.

  “How many are there?” James complains, lifting his sword and shield yet again.

  I actually had been thinking the same thing.

  There are always more of them, and our numbers are limited. We are being pushed back.

  Percival bashes his shield across the helmet of his newest assailant, and then stabs his sword into the back of his spun opponent. He withdraws it and the corpse falls to the ground without a sound.

  Ullrog whips out one of his throwing axes, but instead of throwing it, wields his sword in one hand and his axe in the other. The axe is quick, I realize, and does not require wide arcs to do sufficient damage as his sword does. He embeds it into the neck of one soldier, knocks aside a blow with his sword, cleaves a helmeted head with the axe, stabs his sword clear through a soldier, and then hurls the axe across the room to kill a soldier charging at one of our own. The soldier falls to the side, his raised battleaxe hitting the wall with a clang. Then the orc turns and withdraws the blade from the chest of his victim, who is staring mouth agape at the bestial weapon as it leaves his body. Only then does the soldier fall.

  A fresh wave of our troops charges down the stairs with a loud battle cry.

  “Oh good,” I say to Genevieve as she draws her sword. “I was beginning to think you forgot about us.”

  “You did say you had the gate.” She’s not being sarcastic.

  “We’ve still got it,” I reply. “We’re not dead yet.”

  “And we won’t be,” she adds.

  I shake my head. “Only some of us.”

  I duck and a battleaxe strikes the wall, whistling over my head. I lunge from my half-crouch and impale the spike of my hammer into his stomach, and he keels over groaning.

  Genevieve is trading blows with another soldier, who appears surprised to be fighting a woman. The commander can tell, and it makes her fight harder.

  Aela’s two swords thrash around her. Though she and her weapons are relatively small, she is very fast and her opponents don’t have time to react.

  She ducks underneath an incoming blow and sweeps the feet out from underneath two of them as she spins. On the way back up, each of her swords slashes across a different target, and then they come together and chop across the torso of yet another. Then she stabs the two lying on the ground.

  There’s no way you learned to fight like that in Kera.

  Even with the new soldiers, we continue to lose ground.

  “We need to stay together,” I voice to my soldiers. “Don’t let them isolate you!”

  At my words, my men begin to congregate towards me. James and Percival, as well as Aela and Ullrog, come in close.

  “Where can we go?” Aela asks. “We’re like a fox in a hole.”

  “We’ll fight,” I reply.

  “And if we die fighting?” questions James.

  “We will not,” I reply softly. “Jarl Hralfar charged me to protect this fort. And protect it I will.”

  “F
all back!” Genevieve bellows, gesturing wildly to make for the corridor in the center of the entrance hall. Rather than go up to the roof, she has opted for the vaults. “Fall back!”

  Men finish whatever skirmish they are dueling and run for the corridor as directed by Commander Magnus, followed by those who would seek our destruction.

  The head of my hammer clangs over a helmet and the body drops.

  A roar resounds from beside me and I see an arrow protruding from Ullrog’s enormous right bicep. Angrily he rips it from his muddy green flesh and stabs it through the eye hole of an enemy’s helmet so that the arrow’s shaft sticks out of the helmet grotesquely. The soldier writhes as he falls to the ground. Black blood drips from Ullrog’s arm, but he hardly slows.

  Genevieve grunts as a sword glances off of her forearm. Her gauntlet appears to have protected her flesh, but it has thrown her off-guard.

  James hacks the stomach of the soldier encroaching on Magnus, but he does not see the other coming up on his side.

  Though she was not able to defend herself from her own attacker, Genevieve has recovered and lunges forward, piercing the chest of the man charging at James. He kicks the body from her sword and she pulls it back to smite down yet another of them.

  The ground again becomes strewn with bodies of both sides. Blood splatters the walls and floors. Weapons, dripping with red, shining in the torchlight, lie scattered about. One of the soldiers slips in the blood.

  Still their line pushes against ours, forcing us further down the corridor and deeper into the fort. Then I remember what lies at the end of the corridor.

  Thank you, Magnus.

  “Fall back!” I raise the cry. “Fall back!” Our line suddenly drops and runs down the corridor.

  “Into the vaults!” I roar. The soldiers sprint into the open door of the vaults, filling the lower levels of the fort.

  I turn around and knock an attacker into the wall. His head hits the stone and he falls to the ground, but I continue to run towards the door.