“The field is lost, we return to fight another day, long live Chazzrynn!”
Another order came, from the east wall now, this time the doppelganger had the Chazzrynn banner waving, the order sounded real. It was not Mikhail, but it might as well have been. The timing of the false orders caused confusion in the ranks, in the men already outnumbered on a bloody field of battle. In that confusion, there was a momentary lapse of confidence and action, and the soldiers of Valhirst were merciless. Black masks and armored men cut into the forces of King Mikhail in the chaos, arrows rained, panthers ripped and shredded man from horse, and men fled the gates on false orders from imposter kings. The creature with the banner screamed and hissed as Lord Alexi T’Vellon plunged his sword through it, over and over, then kicked it off the catwalk. His Knights of Southwind kept moving above, trying to silence the shapeshifting imposters.
Clank,Clank,Clank
Slam,Slam,Slam
Then the portcullis gates on three sides slammed shut. Already outnumbered three to one, the odds just worsened as nearly half the soldiers were now outside the walls, unable to assist unless they went round the south side of the castle. At that south end, the panthers circled, half a legion of Valhirst waited, and the archers gathered on the catwalks. Mikhail was now trapped inside with his fearless captains of Chazzrynn. He looked across to the southern wreakage of the blasted and burned gate, and saw Johnas Valhera. No black eyes, no false orders, and his grin was genuine as he gave his men and beasts and creatures the order to form up around him. Mikhail knew it was truly Johnas this time.
“Men under Mikhail Salganat, stand down now, and you may be given quarter and mercy!” Johnas yelled out over the courtyard. He had his doppelgangers, his agents, the panthers, and well over two thousand men in all. He estimated Mikhail had less than a legion left, scattered inside his castle walls, trapped like animals in a cage. The blades still echoed, the battle raged on all around him, yet he knew victory when he saw it.
Mikhail finally saw his enemy, his own nephew, and for one moment he thought of retreat. He thought of his numbers, his position, and his men. In that moment, he thought of Bryant and his future kingdom. The king blinked and raised his broadsword to the dark sky, then lowered it and pointed it at Johnas across the castle.
“Men of Chazzrynn, charge!”
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Aelaine did not listen to the voices yelling retreats nor charging commands. She rolled over and stood as the black panther tore the throat out of her horse and hissed. Two more of her personal guard fell as black cats descended from broken walls and rubble. When the rolling was done, the panthers roared with faces covered in blood. Her wand drew out in a flash, her staff broken back with her horse, and she summoned an intense fire of white heat at the tip.
“Succora sancul vishra vuuhn!”
The flame became a large ball of swirling heat, then it elongated, and soon her wand whipped a cone of pure fire around her in a dancing circle. Aelaine backed up slowly, panthers leaping at her and turning to shrieking ash as they passed her defenses. Her hand raised into a fist, then lowered quick. The flames hit the ground and an incendiary wall ten feet high surrounded her and the four men still near their lady.
Aelaine’s senses were focused, she saw through her wall of fire, and began unleashing furious bolts of electricity into the approaching prowling cats. There were so many, and her men were now so few.
“Canciur dorres nicshuul!” Her finger erupted in purple lightning that smoked a hole through a black cat, then arced at her command to the head of another, then a third through the mouth, and a fourth died trying to leap her flaming wall.
Her men lay in disarray, covered in arrows, ripped by claws and fangs. Aelaine summoned light over the field and the south gates, and conjured a field of arcane force to prevent further flights from hitting true, and then levitated up out of reach of the black beasts. Her flames dwindled and they were finding ways around and over. Just as she went to unleash another barrage, she did a second glance. There on the field was Kendrynn Shilde, her four men, and three others. The rest of her forces were dead. Her black robes fluttered above the ground, she stifled a cry, never had she seen such brutal war and carnage.
Tink, tink, chink, thewwwmm, thewmm, click, click, tink…
The lady of Vallakazz felt not the arrows shattering against her magical field of energy held upon her skin. In anger and perhaps sorrowful rage, she pointed her fingers toward the massing soldiers and panthers that followed Lord Dimitri through the bloody field. She could do so little with the men mixed in with the enemy so close. One after another, she targeted her bolts of flame, her wisps of acidic mist, and her crackles of lightning into the killers of Valhirst, yet they kept coming. Aelaine heard orders again, archers this time, so she unleashed a ball of flame toward the south wall.
A tear fell to her cheek, she saw the flights almost at her, hundreds now hand been loosed as she was in view. Her hands went up, the barrier summoned, but not before three arrows pierced her robes. One in her right shoulder, one in her left thigh, and one through her raised left palm. The rest shattered into pieces as her arcane wall lifted, yet Aelaine Lazlette fell to the ground, surrounded by her fading fires. The south wall resounded with her late arriving blast of flame, she heard the screams, then she was on her back.
She heard the growls and hisses, her vision was a blur of black and white haze, then she heard a yell of pain from someone. Feline eyes were over her, mere feet away, and Aelaine struggled to summon something through her hand to fend it off. Her body ached, the spell produced but smoke and a flash of color, nothing more.
Kendrynn dove through the fires, broadsword raised, shield low. His face and head burned, his hair was smoldering, yet his blade took the head off of the panther over Aelaine in one vicious chop. She smiled up to him, pain ripping through her body from the arrows imbedded in her, and her eyes were wet with tears and her face was splattered with blood. She looked as the decaptitated body returned to that of a naked man. Then Aelaine looked to her fires, now smoldering into small flames she could not bring back, and lastly to the burned and bloody captain of Vallakazz, also with two arrows in his chest.
“Retreat, Captain Shilde, retreat to Vallakazz.” Aleaine’s eyes closed. She felt herself being lifted onto a horse, she felt the horse riding fast, and the growling hisses of panther men faded as weakness forced her to sleep.
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Alexei T’vellon was on the east wall, on foot, thirty of his knights in tow. He saw the charge of his king, and he matched in step from above. His blade plunged into the exposed neck of a Valhirst soldier, then pulled back and swung down arcoss and through the chainmail and chest of another. His shield blocked an arrow, then another, and he rushed the archers in black. Just as they reloaded, his broadsword took the blackmasked head of one, then he spun and drove the point through the stomach of the other. The scream was silenced as he kicked ahead and forced the dark clad archer off his blade and to a thirty foot fall to the courtyard.
The Lord of Southwind did not stop, he looked to the stairs leading down to his king as they filled with soldiers. A charging halberd was blocked, then another, his blade had not the reach to counter. At least one hundred blocked him from the king, blocking his men with long reaching polearms and driving them back. His knights locked their shields and gave one hard push, it did little to move such a force in tight quarters.
“To the north wall, around the other side! To the king!” Alexei roared, his men doubling back around to reach a set of stairs down. They had killed the doppelgangers on the walls, taken out most of the archers on the north and east sides, yet they were now being corralled like cattle. The Valhirst army had them all divided, separated from the main force, and even some locked outside the castle walls.
The Lord of Southwind ran along the catwalk, his men killing and being killed as black clad assassins emerged from hidden passages and plunged shortblades in the night. The br
oadsword cut down another soldier through the flank, then one more that charged him lost his leg above the knee as Alexei lowered in swing. His steps moved faster, almost to the stairs on the north wall, fifteen Southwind men behind him remaining. Fifty halberds stomped up the stairs, halfway up, the soldiers led by a man in torn ragged clothing. A patch over one eye and a wicked smile preceeded him as he twirled a longsword and a dagger.
“Kill the trrraitor, and his men.” Farrigus purred out his orders as whiskers sprouted on his face and he stepped with the Valhirst soldiers toward Alexei T’Vellon.
The only way to Mikhail was either a thirty foot drop onto cobblestone, or through this man and the soldiers that blocked the stairs. Alexei looked back, fourteen knights behind him now, against fifty armed halberdiers. He smiled, pointed his blade at the man with the feline eye and the patch, and charged him.
“Aaahhhhhh!” The Lord of Southwind saw the field, dark as it was, right before the clash of steel on the stairs. King Mikhail had charged in gloriously, yet was surrounded in the yard. There was no escape, the Valhirst army held the only exit south, and the arrows and cats began picking off any stragglers from the main force. He saw his king reach Johnas Valhera though, blade to blade, and that was all he needed to see.
The broadsword chopped down with all his force, met by two blades crossed, yet it scratched the face of the man with the patch. It sent him back, nearly into the approaching axeheads on poles held by his own men. Alexei continued his attack, his remaining men behind him. He thrust ahead, dodged by his opponent, then slashed left, met by the longblade, then right, and he ducked under. His foe was quick, yet the stairs were held in stalemate now as his knights engaged the Valhirst forces.
Farrigus feinted a lunge with his blade, then stabbed his dagger toward the lord of knights, three times in rapid succession. Each time a shield stopped the attack. Then Crimson of the North slashed low to cut the legs out from under his enemy up higher on the stairs. Not willing to give ground, the lord sidestepped, spun round, and met him face to face, avoiding his longblade. Their breath could be felt on each others’ faces.
His whiskers ached to change form, his fingers felt claws sprouting as the melee surrounded him and his opponent on the north stairs, yet Farrigus resisted. He hissed as his longblade twirled in constant feint, then slashed diagonal at Alexei. It was blocked with a ready broadsword. His dagger slashed low, then high, then stabbed into the swordarm of his adversary. Before he could purr or smile, the shield cracked his face and knocked him to his knees. Then a hard boot resounded the pain in his face and took his patch off with the blow.
Alexei dove his broadsword down to finish the man that had cut him, but his blade met stone as his opponent rolled under the attack. Suddenly, the man was ferocious. His white eye covered in scars now revealed, the other looked green and feline in shape, and his skin darkened with fur. The blades came fast, too fast for a human to unleash. The lord of Southwind parried the longblade twice with his shield, then blocked the dagger, and then parried another two slashes of steel with his sword. He could not counter, could not riposte, the assault was too fast. Back up the stairs he went, his men in desperate battle, yet he had no choice. Step by stair, he withdrew under the blurring blades he barely defended against. He was on the catwalk, fell to one knee near the battlements overlooking the castle, and the steel kept coming closer.
Farrigus knew he had him, he backed up one quick step, fighting the change in the night, and lunged at his exhausted and kneeling foe. His shield arm was low and tired, his swordarm bleeding, this lord was finished. He felt his teeth elongate as it was time for the kill. He leapt, blades in perfect lunge, yet a sudden broadsword crosscut them away. Then a shield raised under his chin, and over the edge he went.
Alexei T’vellon grinned at his little ruse, then felt his shield strap tighten. He looked, claws hung onto his shield, then pulled him over the wall. Falling, struggling with a man that was now covered in black fur and sprouting a tail, he fell thirty feet down. His arm locked with the dagger, his broadsword disarmed the longblade, and he held on to the man as the world whipped toward them. He passed ladders with dead men upon them, arrows flew by and fires colored the night sky in orange, then he hit bottom.
Sploosh!
Moments went by, only his gurgling made noise. For those few moments, he felt peace and quiet from his battle weary mind. His chest ached, and Alexei crawled and struggled over sunken bodies and wooden spikes. His enemy was nowhere in the dark waters, he did not care, his only ally was air right now. He reached up, grabbing a boot, and pulled another corpse to the depths. Then another, and finally there was air. He gasped as quietly as he could, climbed through the mud, and then to his feet. His blade still in hand, bleeding from his arm, he looked around to see where his foe was. He saw him, but it was not him anymore.
Farrigus paced the moat from the castle side, his urges to finish this lord were strong, yet his instincts would not let him clear the water. His enemy was on the outside of the water, just twenty feet, but his body would not let him cross it. He looked for a way around, but the bridges were up, the enemy siege bridges sunk, and he would have to go around south to get across. Fear prevented him, an instinct he could not overcome. He hissed and roared, glared with his feline eye and pale dead eye at Alexei of Southwind, then ran to the south to find his way across, and to kill him.
The Lord of Southwind headed south as well, knowing it was his only way in. He looked to the ladders, most aflame or broken, the others made him an easy mark for archers. He ran to the south of Valhirst Castle, to rejoin the hopeless battle inside. He thought of his father, Arlinne, and smiled. He knew it was what he would have done. Ogre or troll, panthers or shapeshifters, a Lord of Southwind fears nothing more than defeat. So, he ran harder, because this surely looked like defeat, if ever he saw it.
The bodies moaned, so close to death as they lay dying in the blood and mud outside Valhera Castle. Alexei kept running, gathering no men to his side, as there were none to be seen besides the enemy or those locked in desperate combat. To the south, right as he went to turn past the rubble of broken stone that littered the only open gate, something caught his eye in the dark. Several somethings.
He saw a black robed woman across a horse, Kendrynn Shilde at the reins, turning and veering to get past soldiers and circling panthers. Arrows stuck out from he and Aelaine, even the steed. Past them, barely vivible with the low light of flames dwindling on the field, he saw someone sneaking east through the trees and hills. He saw a white tabard with a feathered cross, one of his men helping someone walk. Alexei squinted more, he saw Lavress Tilaniun in the moonlit shadows, helping the same ragged man with his knight. They headed northwest, while Kendrynn and Aelaine were trying to go southwest. He paused, they had rescued the prince, he was shocked.
The lord, like his father before him, felt what he must do. He knew it was the prince they had, the only heir. With the forces on the field, they would not make it an hour in their flight for survival, not without help. Or, without a distraction. He fought his desire to fight for his king, and concentrated on saving his future king. Alexei looked to a horse laying on the field, it was cut across the face and had an arrow in its side, yet it was alive. He grabbed the reins and helped it up.
“Easy girl, easy.” He rubbed the bloody mare’s face, then picked up a Chazzrynn banner. He looked north as he mounted the skittery steed. North was quiet, it was empty, and it had plenty of room to run. He raised his blade as blood ran down his arm and ribs.
“I am Alexei T’Vellon, Lord of Southwind Keep! Long live King Mikhail, true king of Chazzrynn! I challenge any man to try and match steel with me!”
He yelled as if it were the last breath he may ever take. He yelled for his kingdom, his rulers, and for the survival of a chance that some may live. To his hopes, he attracted much attention. Just as he whipped the reins, archers pointed and began to fire. Panthers raised their heads, growled, and started to give chase. Soldiers hunt
ing in platoons for stragglers locked outside the castle, charged and yelled for his blood, the hunt had begun.
His mare charged north and east, leading the forces outside the castle away from Aelaine Lazlette and Captain Shilde, away from the two brave men who had rescued Prince Bryant, and away from a battle that he desperately wished to rejoin. Alexei looked back in the glimmering night, hundreds on his trail now, and he sped faster north. Screams for mercy issued in the night breeze, swords clashed with shields, and many men were dying or dead. Thousands already ceased their breaths, and Alexei T’Vellon heard the enemy coming for him, and this time, he was alone.
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Falling, both of them, their spells of levitation head been dismissed by the wizards inside Southwind Keep. They had been caught off guard, surprised, and now their sure victory was a maddening array of explosive magical defeat. At the last moment, Vanessa Blackflame and Eliah Shendrynn unleashed arcane forces that stopped their freefall, and they hovered inches above the ground.
They could see nothing, nothing hopeful on the field of battle before them. Blasts continued to rain in every direction, ogre forces were scattered and retreating from the keep. Trolls were screeching and attacking the ogre. Avegarne was dragging three green savages with him as he fled. Mun Parr was on foot, her servants carrying her throne had been butchered by ogre soldiers. Troll and ogre fought each other, seemingly under a vicious enchantment, and those that did resist and approach Southwind were decimated by arrows and conjured fires.
“Class of three forty six, give them another storm of ice and hail!”
Vanessa heard the command, followed by a massive cooperative summoning that covered the field in a bombardment of freezing projectiles. She tried to stop it, but all she could manage against so many channels was to get a barrier of force over her head. Eliah did the same. The chunks of ice pummeled their barriers, forcing them closer to the ground.
The Exodus Sagas: Book IV - Of Moons and Myth Page 32
