They had set out of the east. Some of the men of Ebor went to Cintarra to seek their fortune. Others slipped away to turn bandit or poacher. Halfway to Tarlion, along the coast road, they were attacked by the red orcs. The orcs had been tall warriors with skins the color of blood, clad in chain mail and spiked helmets, and they had borne strange curved swords. The orcs had expected the men of Ebor to be easy prey, but desperate men with nothing to lose were dangerous men.
Niall had killed his first man that day.
In hindsight, he was surprised by how easy killing had been. He had struck the orcish warrior in the head with a club. Orcish skulls were thicker than human ones, but a club to the skull would stun anyone. The orc had fallen to his knees, and another swing of the club had killed him.
The battle had been over by then, and Niall had taken the orc’s dagger. He needed a weapon.
They had continued their journey and came to the town of Castarium at last. The men of Ebor had decided to rest for a few days before continuing to Tarlion. The monks refused to have anything to do with them, but Bishop Belasco at least had been willing to provide them with some food. A few days to recover their strength, and they would continue.
And then Rhiain fell sick.
Niall knew what it was. He had seen it before in lean years. His aunt had an iron constitution and an even stronger will, and she could drive herself far, far past her limits. But no one’s strength lasted forever, especially since Rhiain had been forgoing food to make sure all the younger people had enough to eat. Some rest and some proper food, and she would recover.
But finding that proper food was a challenge.
He had gone through Castarium, seeking anyone who would offer him meat in exchange for work. No one had. Finally, Niall decided to steal a few animals, admit what he had done, and then offer to work until the value of the cattle was repaid. The people he had taken the cattle from would not be happy, but likely they would accept what was done was done, and half a year’s free work was hardly something to refuse. Niall decided to take two sheep and a pig from the flocks of the monastery, figuring that the monks would be more likely than the townsmen or the nearby villagers to show mercy.
He’d been wrong. He had been very wrong.
Later, reflecting in his cell in the dungeons of the castra, Niall wondered what he could have done differently. If there was another choice he could have taken, some path that would not have led to his death on a gallows. Obviously, he could have chosen not to steal the sheep and the pig. But he could not have watched Rhiain waste away and die. Perhaps if they had pressed on. Or maybe if they had gone to Cintarra to seek for work, instead of setting out to the east.
Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.
And then Niall had stood before the Comes.
He hadn’t known what to expect. Ridmark Arban had a towering reputation, but Niall had come to assume that all noblemen were fat, greedy, lazy, and none too bright. Yet the Shield Knight had looked lean and strong, his blue eyes cold and hard and clear. He was somewhere in his forties, yet he seemed to have a peculiar, restless vigor. Something about the Shield Knight had reminded Niall of a wolf holding itself motionless to strike.
To Niall’s surprise, Lord Ridmark seemed disgusted by the greed and intransigence of the monks. For the Comes to pay for the stolen animals…Niall had expected to hang, not such generosity from a noble. He vowed that he would not make Lord Ridmark regret his mercy, that he would work diligently until the debt was repaid. Niall would have food and drink so long as he was in Lord Ridmark’s service, so he needn’t fear on that account. And the castra’s cook was getting old and looking for helpers, so Rhiain would have a job as well.
Niall felt a little guilty that such good fortune had come his way. He had done nothing to deserve it. Still, the rest of the villagers of Ebor would benefit as well. Lord Ridmark would write to his friends in the Northerland, asking them to find a place for the men of Ebor to settle. They would have a chance to build a new life in the Northerland, serving lords who needed strong backs and appreciated hard workers.
Perhaps once Niall’s indenture was up, he and his aunt could travel with them.
Once his first day of work in the stable was complete, Niall slept in the loft, content and at ease for the first time since the enclosures had gone up around Ebor.
Then the explosions woke him.
Niall’s eyes shot open, and he sat up. Lord Ridmark had taken the curved dagger, but in compensation, he had received a dagger from the castra’s armory. No one could walk around without a dagger, after all. Niall reached for the weapon’s hilt, looking around. Nothing seemed amiss. The stables were a long, low building that stretched along the castra’s southern wall, with dozens of stalls for the horses of Lord Ridmark and his men. Hay lofts occupied the eastern and western ends of the building, and Niall had been sleeping in the western one. He heard the horses snorting and stamping in their stalls, but horses hated loud noises, everyone knew that. The explosions must have awakened them.
Explosions? No, that must have been thunder. There were often violent storms along the coast, with torrential rains and lightning. One must be approaching. If there was too much thunder, some of the more skittish horses might panic and injure themselves in their frenzy. Niall decided it was time to get to work. If he soothed the horses before the noise awoke Titus, perhaps that would please the irritable old stable master. Or, at least, Titus would talk less, and Niall had come to suspect his time in Lord Ridmark’s service would be more pleasant if Titus talked much less.
He tucked the dagger into his belt, slid down the ladder into the stables proper, and then froze as he saw a multitude of strange sights. The red-skinned orcish warriors had been the strangest thing that Niall had seen in his nineteen years.
But today, they were surpassed.
A hole in the air writhed and flickered just outside the western doors of the stables, the blue glow spilling into the horses’ stalls. At least, it looked like a hole in the air, like someone had fashioned a doorway from nothingness and eerie blue fire. Through the hole, Niall saw a dense forest and a burning sky.
Then he saw the dragon.
The great green creature swooped low over the northern half of the courtyard, breathing a plume of roiling green mist. Niall had never seen a dragon. No one had. Rumors claimed that the men of Owyllain had fought dragons, but Rhiain had dismissed that as a fanciful tale. Niall had seen fire drakes flying over Ebor at a distance, though thankfully the dangerous creatures had not stopped to consume any cattle. The green creature looked like a much, much larger fire drake, though it was breathing a strange green mist instead of flame.
And there was fighting in the northern courtyard. Niall saw men in Lord Ridmark’s colors struggling against peculiar blue-skinned creatures with swords in their hands.
For a moment, Niall did not know what to do. The only battle he had ever seen in his life had been the fight with the red orcs on the road. But strange as the red orcs had been, in the end, that had been little more than bandits attempting to attack travelers. Niall had never seen holes in the air, or dragons, or…
“Boy!”
Titus staggered into the stables, his eyes wide, his face shocked.
“Sir?” said Niall, relieved. Titus would know what to do. “What should…”
“The horses!” said Titus. “See…see to the…”
The old man pitched onto his face, a few bits of straw thrown up by the impact. A half-dozen sword wounds marked his back, and his tunic was drenched with blood. The coppery smell of it filled Niall’s nostrils, and the nearby horses whinnied in fright, kicking at the sides of their stalls.
Two of the blue-skinned creatures came into the stables, their short swords red with Titus’s blood. Up close, they looked even more fiendish. They had yellow, snake-like eyes, clawed hands, and mouths full of fangs. Their ears came to a point, and their features were harsh and alien. Perhaps the creatures were monsters that the dark elves had brewed up with thei
r black magic in ancient days, like the urvaalgs and the urshanes. Thankfully no such creatures had ever come to Ebor, but Niall knew they existed.
And now such things were here in Lord Ridmark’s castra.
“You killed Titus,” Niall heard himself say.
One of the creatures grinned a fanged smile. “And now we shall kill you, human whelp, and we shall take your horses as spoils.”
The two creatures advanced on him.
Once, when Niall had been a child, soon after his parents had died, a larger boy had picked a fight with him. The affair ended with Niall sitting atop his opponent’s chest, raining methodical punches on his foe’s face. By the time the village men had pulled Niall off the larger boy, his foe had a broken nose, a broken jaw, a swollen left eye, a broken arm, and three broken fingers. Rhiain had been furious with him. She had been pleased that he hadn’t started the fight, that he had only been defending himself, but she said that he ought to avoid violence. When trouble came, a man had to choose whether to fight or run, and the sensible thing to do was run. Fighting was for nobles, not commoners. Niall had obeyed his aunt, and since then, he had avoided fights, though there had been a few he had decided not to mention to her. (He had decided it wasn’t technically lying if she didn’t know about it and didn’t ask.)
Since then, Niall had come to realize that most men preferred running to fighting.
He had also realized that his instincts ran in the opposite direction.
So, he stepped forward, seized a horseshoe from a hook on the wall with his left hand, and swung his fist. One half of the horseshoe curved over his fingers, which protected his hand. It also meant that his fist struck the side of the nearest creature’s head with the force of a hammer blow. There was a crack of bone, and the creature wobbled to the side, yellow eyes going wide. The second creature bellowed and thrust its sword, and in the same instant, Niall kicked with his right foot. His heel struck the injured creature’s leg, and it stumbled to the side just in time to intercept the second creature’s thrust. The sword plunged into flesh, and blue-black blood welled from the wound.
The creatures must be things of black magic, a distant part of Niall’s mind noted. No natural creature had blood like that.
The rest of his attention was focused on his right hand as it drew the dagger from its sheath. The blade flashed in the blue glow from the gate, and the second creature started to turn, trying to kick the first one off its short sword. Niall didn’t know much about fighting with swords and daggers, but he thought stabbing his opponent until his foe stayed down seemed like a good tactic.
He did that. Once, twice, three times, his strong arm driving the dagger like a hammer. His blows punched through the chain mail on the creature’s chest, and then twice more into its neck. His first or second stab must have found its heart, because the creature went down and stopped moving, that strange blue-black blood spilling into the earth. The poor horses went wild, screaming and kicking, their stalls shuddering as they tried to break free. Niall wondered why, and then realize it was the smell of the creatures’ blood. Likely the horses had never smelled anything like it before.
Niall looked towards the stable entrance, and a hulking monster caught his eye.
The thing was huge, standing at least seven or eight feet tall, its body broad and heavy. It had wide shoulders and arms that were slightly too long for its body. The head was ugly, with craggy features, pointed ears, harsh yellow eyes, and warty grayish-green skin. The creature wore heavy steel plate armor, and in its right hand, it carried an enormous steel war axe. The crescent-shaped blade of the axe looked too heavy for a human to wield in battle, but the creature bore it with ease.
Niall froze in surprise, and the big creature glared at him, the smaller blue-skinned devils clustered around it like mushrooms around the foot of a tree.
The big creature rumbled something and pointed its axe at Niall, and a half-dozen of the blue creatures turned to face him.
Niall had taken two of them in a fight, but he was pretty sure he had no chance against a half dozen.
He snatched up a fallen short sword and shifted the dagger to his left hand, preparing to make the enemy at least pay before they killed him.
###
Ridmark raced around the base of the drum tower and came to a sudden halt.
The castra’s stables were extensive and took up a considerable portion of the southern part of the courtyard. Another rift had opened before the western entrance to the stables, and more goblins poured out, swords and shields in hand. With them came a hulking creature of a sort that Ridmark had never seen before. At first, he thought it was a jotunmir, one of the mountain giants he had met in Owyllain. But this creature was much broader than a jotunmir, almost ape-like in its proportions, though it stood upright. The jotunmiri had gray skin and black hair, but this thing had greenish-gray skin, almost like the color of a bad bruise, and a ragged mane of white hair. Its venomous yellow eyes looked a great deal like those of a goblin, though the pupils were round instead of vertical.
And it looked much stronger than a jotunmir, though the mountain giants were already quite strong. The creature wore steel plate armor, and in its right hand, it carried a steel war axe. It pointed at the stables with the weapon and said something in a rumbling voice, and then its head snapped around to look at Ridmark and the others.
The creature’s expression was alien, its features too rough to be human, the jaw too heavy and the brow ridge too thick. Yet Ridmark nonetheless saw its thick lips spread in a smile of pleasure, and the creature lifted its axe and rumbled another command.
“God and the saints,” said Valmark, lifting Hopesinger. “That’s a big one.”
“Aye,” said Ridmark. “You and I will have to take it. The rest of you, follow us, and deal with the goblins…”
A half-dozen of the goblins lifted their hands and began gesturing, fire and lightning dancing around their fingers.
“They’re casting spells!” said Ridmark. “Valmark, with me!”
He sprinted forward, drawing on Oathshield for speed, and Valmark followed him. Ridmark just had time to wish that he had donned his armor, and then the goblins unleashed the spells, throwing fire and lightning. He slowed as he called on Oathshield’s power to protect against magic, and the fire and lightning shattered against him. Oathshield had withstood the power of mighty dark elven lords, and it had no trouble resisting the elemental spells.
Then Ridmark crashed into the goblins, once again calling on Oathshield for speed and power. He hewed his way into them, killing with every step. Next to him Valmark carved his way into the goblins, cutting down foe after foe. A few seconds later Kharlacht, Caius, Vegetius, Sir Longinus, and the rest of the men-at-arms joined the fray.
There was a furious roar, and Ridmark found himself face to face with the armored giant. The creature pointed with its free hand, and jagged arcs of lightning appeared around its fingers. Like the goblins, the giant could cast spells. Ridmark called on Oathshield’s power to protect, and a whirling sphere of lightning leaped from the giant’s armored fist and shot towards him. It shattered against the soulblade, and the giant followed with a roaring attack, the massive axe sweeping towards Ridmark’s face. He danced aside, the wind of the axe’s passage tugging at his hair, and thrust Oathshield. The blade bit into the giant’s right arm, and the creature roared, exposing rows of jagged yellow fangs. Valmark stepped towards the creature’s left side and stabbed, his soulblade finding a gap in the giant’s armor. The creature bellowed, whipping its axe around to aim for Valmark’s head, and the other Swordbearer dodged.
The battle raged around them, the men-at-arms struggling against the goblins, Ridmark and Valmark fighting the armored giant. He saw Kharlacht behead a goblin with a single massive blow of his greatsword, the blade of dark elven steel shearing through the creature’s neck. Caius’s mace crushed skulls, and Vegetius and Sir Longinus fought with sword and shield. More goblins rushed from inside the stables, joining
the fight in the courtyard, and Ridmark thought he heard steel clanging on steel within the stables, but he dared not turn his attention from the giant long enough to look.
Ridmark kept up the attack, and his blade punched through the gap in the giant’s armor and sliced deep into its chest. The giant staggered back, dark blood leaking from its wounds, the steel axe still clutched in its hand. Ridmark stepped back, knowing better than to close with an opponent so much larger and stronger than himself. Better to keep his distance and wear down the creature until its strength failed. He expected Valmark to launch another quick attack and stay out of the giant’s reach.
Instead, Valmark stepped closer, taking Hopesinger’s hilt in both hands for a massive swing.
“Valmark!” said Ridmark. “Don’t!”
He never did find out what Valmark was thinking. Perhaps Valmark thought he could overpower the wounded giant and kill it with a single blow. Later, Ridmark realized that while his older brother had been a Swordbearer for a longer time, Ridmark had more experience of actual battle against foes that were stronger and faster. He would not take the risk of closing with a wounded creature that was stronger than he was.
But Valmark was willing to take that risk.
It was a small mistake, one that lasted only a second, but in battle, a second could be as long as a thousand years. And in that second, before Valmark could finish readying his massive blow, the armored giant whipped its axe around with a bellow of fury.
The axe’s blade took off Valmark Arban’s head in an instant. Blood jetted from the stump of the neck, and Ridmark’s brother fell with a clatter of his armor, Hopesinger dropping from his fingers. The giant snarled and heaved itself back to its feet, trying to lift its axe for another strike, but Ridmark was already on the creature. He hammered Oathshield down with a two-handed blow, shearing off the creature’s hand. Both the hand and the axe fell to the bloodstained ground, and the creature bellowed and stumbled to one knee. Ridmark killed it with a quick slash of his sword and then sidestepped as the armored body fell.
Dragontiarna: Knights Page 16
