The largest open area inside the city walls that were about to be smashed on by a legion of the dead happened to be near the Guild rail station, and the secretive doorway Marcus had built. The same doorway the two scouts he sent south escaped through. No word or sign of the scout’s success had appeared since their departure in the dark of night, and he feared the worst for them.
The Knight Major, dressed in all his heavy armor with his shield and sword in hand, went from horse to horse, man to man and made sure each and every person who was about to go to war with him knew his face, and his voice. He hid the soreness in his body from the spell that ravaged his flesh just an hour before. He could afford no sign of weakness. They fought not for their country in this moment, but for each other, and for their mutual survival. All would fight, or all would die, and he wanted them to know that he intended to fight at their side.
Marcus made his way up to the train platform and surveyed the scene of the Darisian 2nd’s mounted men and women. Their discipline showed in how they lined up, how they were dressed and armored, and how none looked to be in panic. Concern showed on their faces, but concern sharpened the mind, and that pleased him. He turned to comment on his pride to Sergeant Dunwood, and remembered with a painful stab that his Sergeant was dead already.
No one stood at his side on the platform, though he knew he was not alone.
One of his archers came running up to him. The archer couldn’t be less than thirty, with a grizzled beard and tanned leather skin. His armor had been worn for days just now, and years before. Marcus knew his name: Uriah.
“Uriah, what say you?” he asked as the man came to a stop.
Uriah saluted. “Sir, the gateway is surrounded by Twenty-Five undead, one wearer of purple, and several foot soldiers. They appear to know that the gate is a way for us to try and sneak out.”
“Unfortunate. I’d hoped to keep that little secret a bit longer. I suppose we shall have to exit with a bit more flair, and force. Thank you. Return to your tower and take two archers from the ground with you. On my command I want you to rain down a dozen arrows on the soldiers and the necromancer. Ignore the undead.”
Uriah saluted again, “Yes sir.” The older archer gathered support as he was ordered from the gathered soldiers, and they scrambled up the ladder to the shooting position of the tower.
When they were ready, Marcus turned to his gathered warriors and addressed them with his booming officer’s voice. “Men and women of the Darisian 2nd. Ghost-Makers, one and all.” They hushed and turned to face him with practiced precision. “We have little time, so I will be short. This stand has come to a turning point: we now ride to them, as they come to us. We shall break through their line, and hit their flank as Ulysses’ Spear pierced the side of the Traitor King seventy-six years ago, freeing Varrland from his evil grip.” They cheered. Referencing the Traitor King was a sure way to build the fire inside the engine of a Varrlander. Marcus continued, “And so now we do the same, to prevent the same. We fight now to cripple The Empire’s advance. To stop the spread of their wicked ways. To give our nation a chance at further freedom and to give our children and families back at home a chance at happiness, and life.”
“Kill ‘em or die trying sir!” One of the unit corporals screamed out.
Marcus had to smile. “I’d prefer the first, but no matter the outcome, many of us will suffer. But remember, our suffering has made us invincible. Men and women, I ask you again... Will you ride with me?”
The Darisian 2nd were elite, and they boasted talented riders, though they numbered few when compared against larger units like the 1st or 4th. As leader of the entire regiment, Marcus made the command decision to move some of his less skilled cavalry soldiers into the archery platoons when they left Daris. The trains could only move so much, and leaving a fifth of his horses and all their tack and barding behind freed up a considerable amount of space. He also felt the bow would be his best weapon in the siege, not the horse. He was about to find out if he was right or not.
Marcus had forty mounted soldiers at his back as he gave the signal to Uriah and the archers atop the western tower that soared above the rail platform and the exit gates. Six soldiers stood at the ready inside the wall, three to a door, hands on the bars and handles, ready to rip the door open and then shove it closed when the cavalry dashed out to war.
Uriah and the five archers with him atop the guard tower drew and fired their first volley at nearly a straight angle down outside the gate. Marcus heard screams of pain as their broad-tipped shafts pierced living human flesh as he’d instructed. Another signal given to the men at the door just as the second volley was drawn and the doors were yanked open. The small group the Empire had sent to hold what they thought to be a small secret gate stood just outside. They thought the wooden wall was a permanent structure, but now it opened, and spewed forty horses, a Gvorn named Calamity, and forty men and women on them. They expected a trickle, and instead were about to drown in a flood.
“Charge!” Marcus bellowed, holding his sword high. Calamity, his massive beast of war, needed no spurring. She knew his body, she knew his words, she knew the scent of blood, and the sounds of battle. She’d been bred and trained her whole life to serve Marcus and his cause, and this was her home. Surrounded by enemies, living each moment like it was hers and her rider’s last. The Gvorn coiled into over a thousand pounds of pure muscle, and launched through the gap in the walls, trampling over a handful of undead and thoroughly surprising a tall blonde man who wore a purple robe.
She hooked the center of his chest with one of her sharp, curling horns and threw him up into the air. He landed in a heap on the ground ahead of her. The massive spike shattered his sternum and had to have pierced a lung, but that wasn’t enough for Calamity. One of her hooves crushed his skull as if it were no more than an eggshell a second after he hit the ground. Marcus paid only enough attention to the moment to ensure that the necromancer cast no spells, and didn’t get up after Calamity smashed him to bits. Positive that the death mage posed no further threat, Marcus pressed his heels into the side of his mount and slashed down with his long sword, cleaving the heads and shoulders of living and dead alike, sending them to the dark abyss of death.
He rode hard, and his cavalry followed suit.
After he and his charge left, before the doors swung shut, apostles walked slowly to the fallen bodies and prayed over them. Even with hatred and fear in their hearts, they saw to it no soul festered and rotted. Their duty finished and the cavalry gone around the perimeter of the city, the only sign of their continued existence being the sound of their thunderous hooves on the plains, the apostles returned inside the gates, and they were shut and barred again.
The cavalry would make their stand at a run on the plains, alone against the entire Empire army.
Yefim Gneery had more bravery in him than he wanted anyone to know. It suited him for his rivals and his enemies to think he skulked like a plotting coward. He didn’t worry about friends. Someone in his position had none of those to fret over. For him now to stand at the very front lines of the assault on the tiny speck of a Varrland village would have been unthinkable for his fellow necromancers in The Queen’s Guild in Graben.
He liked that idea.
Yefim stood in his regal purple robe with the bottom stained brown from mud and red from blood. He kept two undead imbued with more intelligence than most on each shoulder. Both held a tall tower shield bigger than he in front and above him, preventing the raining arrows from reaching him, as if he had a turtle’s shell. He couldn’t see the village or its walls, but he had no need to. All he required was a clear view of the zombies and Wights under his control, and the ability to command the other necromancers who served their Queen through him.
“Fill the moat with the weakest of your dead,” Yefim called out to the wearers of purple. He didn’t even have to yell, such was this battle. The commands the undead heard came not from mouths but from the minds of their necromancer handle
rs, and the living soldiers were far to the rear, waiting on their mounts, or firing their bows into the village, trying to pick off the archers doing the same to his necromancers. The sound of shuffling feet in the mud and grass, and the steady—thwip—noises of passing arrows and the occasional—thunk—of one hitting a shield were the only noises happening. Yefim could hear distant calls of the Varrlanders behind their wall, his force was so silent. War as it should be: silent, organized, and efficient. Dalibor could have his cavalry charge, and his bellowing screams of madness and rage. Yefim would take this every day.
The undead Yefim and his minions employed for battle came in various levels of usefulness. The armored and semi-intelligent undead served as guardians for the casters, and were the closest thing to a valued warrior asset they had. Below that were the whole and weapon-using dead. They were expendable, expected to kill one or two enemies before succumbing in battle to a skilled opponent. Below those were the wretches, or the dead who had already taken damage in battle. They had no residual intelligence from The Way, and many were missing limbs and huge chunks of flesh. They were arrow magnets, labor, and now; they would use their bodies for the glory of The Queen by filling the shallow moat the Varrlanders had dug five paces in front of their meager wooden wall.
Five hundred of the most wretched of the northern nation’s undead shuffled forward, mindless of the fate that awaited them. They knew only that they must move forward, into the pit that their masters ushered them into. The first row of walking dead toppled forward and fell into the five foot deep moat, their bodies twisting and cracking as they made no attempt to soften their fall. The second row fell atop them and the third row the same. When the sixth row of mindless dead reached the edge of the pit they could walk atop the still bodies of their brethren before falling into the pit.
In less than ten minutes a fifty foot wide spread of the moat had been filled to the top with a small percentage of Yefim’s undead legion, and there was but ten feet from there to the wall.
The Wight sorcerer smiled and turned. He found the face of a young necromancer who had control of a few special undead. “Bring up the bridging,” he said as arrows smashed into the shields his escorts carried.
The young necromancer—a Graben-born prodigy by all measures—instructed his six mammoth undead to march forward. Each of the half dozen brutes carried a giant construction of wood above their heads, balanced on their wrought iron skull cages. Six boards were suspended over the bodies, each a foot wide, attached by crossing planks to build a makeshift bridge, doubling as a carapace as they marched forward. As the first of the six dropped his sheet of wood over the zombie bodies filling the moat, the rear-most giant was felled by a particularly well aimed arrow. The shaft hit his lower leg straight at the knee and sheared of his kneecap, causing the leg to buckle. The bridge he carried fell hard awkwardly on its corner, and busted apart like a house of cards swatted by a child. It was no longer usable. A trio of arrows plunged into the fallen undead, killing him.
“Push them, child,” Yefim said to the dark haired necromancer who looked panicked beneath his own pair of shield guard undead. The young death mage furrowed his brow and concentrated hard, sending the remaining four up in chorus to drop their plank across the backs of the undead in the moat. The platforms of wood shifted as the bodies underneath moved to their master’s wills, forming a strong and stable base for the army of the dead to walk across. The loss of one bridge for a time would hurt, but the pain came at the expense of the destruction of undead, and that was a resource that never truly dwindled in battle.
“Take down the wall!” Yefim hollered in exultation to his army of the dead, and his necromancers gave the command to charge. I think I understand why Dalibor yells so much now. It does have a... savage allure to it.
Wordlessly, without passion or fear, thousands of undead funneled forward across the narrow covered portion of the moat and smashed into the wall, hacking at it with weapons, teeth and nail alike. The thick logs bent in slightly as the pressure of all the dead pushed against them. Yefim looked to the rear where thousands more undead streamed in like a torrential flood of rotten flesh, ready to smash like a wave upon the rock of Ockham’s Fringe.
Then he heard the sound of thunder, and felt it shake the ground. He looked to the sky, but no clouds heralded a coming storm.
Far to the rear of the battle, atop his own undead Gvorn, sat General Dalibor Hubik. He still wore his gleaming purple armor, the color of the amaranth flower, the symbol of The Empire and its Queen. He and all his cavalry belonged to The Order of the Flower, the esteemed and elite knightly order of the Queen, and they and their mounts were all bedecked in the same purple and violet flowery ornamentation. Like their leader, dead or alive they sat on their mounts, hands gripping the reins tightly, anxious and excited to spill Varrlander blood.
But the time had not yet arrived. The walls still stood.
Dalibor watched distantly with one eye through a hand held telescope as a hulking brute of a zombie holding one of their bridge platforms was felled by a lucky shot. The corner of the platform came down hard as the zombie fell and must’ve hit something hard in the earth, for it burst apart and shattered back into several pieces. They had spare planking to bring up, but with all the zombies moving forward, it was a wasted effort to try. They would move what they could against the wall, and it would do.
As soon as the other near seven-foot-tall zombies dropped their bridge pieces in place, they too were felled by a downpour of arrows. No matter. After that, Yefim signaled from under his twin shields for the assault to begin, and it did.
Three thousand strong, the first wave of undead spilled forward like a ball rolled down a hill. They crossed over the ramshackle siege bridges and pounded into the logs, biting, scraping, and hacking, pushing hard against it, beginning the process of knocking and pulling pieces down. It would take a few hours, and the losses would be substantial, but the wall would come down. The Queen would accept nothing less.
Through the eyeglass, Dalibor watched as his Lord Necromancer turned and looked to the sky. He then looked to the north, and Dalibor felt and saw what alarmed his spellcaster.
To someone uneducated in war, the giant cloud of dirt kicked skyward might’ve appeared to be a dust storm, or a cattle stampede, but Dalibor knew what came. He smiled, and his appreciation for the leader of his enemies grew.
“This man has courage,” Dalibor said with praise, lowering the telescope from his eye.
“They charge our flank with half our number,” Dalibor’s Wight attendant said from under a thick helm that had been crafted to look like the petals of a steel flower.
“Very bold. Their charge will annihilate a thousand of our undead in minutes. For the Queen, we shall ride into their flank,” Dalibor handed the fragile brass telescope to the female who worked in his tent and she disappeared with the expensive piece of technology. He roused his Gvorn and spun it so he faced his knights. “Members of the Order of the Purple Flower, now is our time! We ride into their kind, and not a one of us will return without blood soaked hooves and weapons! For the Queen!” As his men ripped out guttural undead moans and living screams of joy he spun again, and put his own heavy helm atop his head.
They stampeded in their own charge over a hundred undead who couldn’t get out of the way in time.
“We are still miles distant,” Captain Harold Sarkett said from his position at the wheel of his ship in the sky. He and the second seat of House Kulare watched as the first moments of the massive battle began. A cloud of dust and hooves burst from the western side of the tiny village and swept around to the east where the Empire horde marched. They charged into the sun.
Samrale Overfist nodded. “Yes we are. But look, their charge is hitting the lines of undead, and the counter charge of the Empire won’t be able to hit them cleanly without killing hundreds of their own number in the process. We’ve minutes before the purple knights are a true threat.”
“I hope you’r
e right. You know there will be no way to help secretly, right?”
Samrale laughed a deep laugh and looked around at the waymancers who came with him to do what the world required. Students and teachers alike, they prepared their spells for war. “When this ship left Davisville Captain Sarkett, I had no intention of going unnoticed in the world. What must be done will be done.”
Sarkett laughed and rubbed his stubble ravaged chin. “I had a feeling about that. There’s a reason I’m doing this with you. It wasn’t because I thought you were coming to watch.”
“Let them watch us.”
Marcus’ cavalry charge naturally formed into the shape of the spear with him and Calamity at the razor sharp tip. She charged in her armor and he rode in his, her horns spearing and throwing undead and the occasional living soldier alike as he slashed and hacked at those lucky enough to get out of the way of her hooves.
Each rider in the ever-widening column of horses at his back did the same as he. They too smashed down with heavy blows from hammers, axes and swords. The rear of his march had his most gifted riding archers, who fired as fast as they could with short bows into the massed clumps of undead where they saw the purple bull’s eye of a necromancer’s cloak. When needed, they fired arrows into the distant rows of living archers to give them something to remember them by.
He stole a glance over his shoulder and saw that all of his men and women still rode, still fought. None had been unseated by the dirty, bloody hands of the dead war host, yet. Only a minute had passed, and the battle was far from over.
Marcus took the head off a zombie and pushed his Gvorn deeper into the mass of seething undead. For his soldiers to survive this, they would need to smash straight through to the other side and escape with their speed.
The Echoes of Sin (The Kinless Trilogy Book 3) Page 30
