by Dan Abnett
The defenders, many injured, all weary to the point of sleep, had lost Le Claux, and old Swale, and nineteen of the other villagers: four women, three boys, twelve men, all of them fighters.
Yet, by any standards, they had won another extraordinary victory. Maltane had become the Tilean’s curse. But it had also become a place of fatigue, of spurting wounds, of broken weapons.
Nithrom called his troops and the villagers back into the inner mound. They had done all they could. They had waged an immortal defence. If Maura now continued, they would have nothing left in them but the pride of denying him the first time. They had nothing left to give.
As dawn rose, true to his nature, the unforgiving Maura began his second assault.
IT WAS A distant sound at first, like a stick being snapped, then a splash of mud. Fithvael and Vintze were outside the megaron’s portico, binding the wounds of the villagers, when they heard it.
Vintze cursed.
Again it came, a sighing cough-crack, far away, then a wet thud below down the slope.
Fithvael grabbed up his crossbow and ran to the wall. He was in time to see two of the nine great cannon on the distant northern scarp puff white smoke. A second later, that cracking sound. Fifty yards below the inner ditch, plumes of wet mud vomited upwards.
‘Has he not the range?’ asked Fithvael.
Brom was on the wall decking next to him, using Vintze’s scope to spot.
‘No, he’s just getting his aim.’
The man leapt down, tossing the scope back to the Reiklander. ‘Get them inside! The villagers all! Get them inside and down into the scarcement!’
Motion seized the throng. Clutching bewildered children to their skirts, the womenfolk hustled them into the main hall. The surviving menfolk of Maltane, some thirty in number, picked up their makeshift weapons and shields. Amongst them were at least a dozen boys who looked too young for combat, and twenty women who refused to hide. Nithrom’s warriors, meanwhile, were assembling on the wall.
The first cannon shell hit home, punching through the tower of the old temple behind the inner hall. There was a growl of punctured stone and part of the tiled roof fell in.
A second later, and another shot hit the outer wall, cracking the boards and making the ground shake. One of the Maltane men was thrown off his sight-deck and fell into the mud below.
They have the range now, gods help us, Fithvael thought.
He turned. The gate exploded in, crushing the water butt in a powerfully outflung sheet of stone and water, and killing several goats. The smashed gateway looked so open and vulnerable.
Two more shots screamed in, one tearing through the roof of the inner hall, the other slicing low through the top rails of the wall. Part of the decking collapsed, spilling two more Maltaners. One clambered up. The other, just a boy, lay still in the marl, his left side sheared away.
Gilead and Nithrom ran to the open gate and looked down.
Skirmish lines of Tilean horse were cantering in across the outer ditch and through the lower town. Behind them were infantry files, bearing pikes, halberds and bows.
More shells whistled down, over-shooting the mound and falling in the lower ditch behind.
‘We cannot fight this!’ Gilead cursed.
‘No, we can’t.’ Nithrom gazed out again and then turned to the defenders. ‘Inside! Into the scarcement. They will have to stop shelling before their get up here. We can ride it out. I ask for two to stand with me, to give the call.’
All the defenders volunteered. Nithrom paused a moment, then made his choices. ‘Bruda, Dolph. The rest of you below. Gilead will lead you out when the time comes.’
Even the Maltaners hesitated at this. Nithrom had always given the second command to Cloden. Gilead himself was surprised. If not Cloden, then Caerdrath, surely, before him.
‘Do as he says!’ Cloden roared, dismissing the slight. ‘Get below!’
The defenders scrambled inside and down the ladders into the scarcement. More cannonballs hissed down, smashing the megaron roof and the chancery of the temple. Some struck the wood fence, shattering sections of it.
Nithrom, Dolph and Bruda struggled into cover.
IN THE TIGHT, cloying air of the scarcement, Cloden called for calm. The earth around them shook with the impacts outside, and dust and mud dribbled in between the beams. The Maltane villagers were terrified, and with good reason.
Harg rose, a hefty shaggy bulk in their midst. He opened his arms. ‘I’ve known worse’n this, friends! Much worse! Let’s lift our spirits and sing a song!’
He started to sing a phlegmy Norse battle hymn, singing slow so they could learn the words and the return, clapping his meaty hands in time to the song and to the impacts above.
Seeing his efforts, most of Nithrom’s band made the effort to join in - Cloden, teaching the children how to clap in time; Vintze, over-enunciating the gristly Norse words; Erill, whispering the words and conducting the womenfolk.
Brom sang too, but Fithvael saw how he kept glancing up at every missile hit. He should be with his brother, the elf thought.
Gilead saw the gunner’s nervousness too, and winced. He knew all too well the pain of separation from a twin. He paced through the huddled mass, clapping his hands in time, encouraging them all.
Madoc sat at the back of the chamber, near the steps, his broadsword across his knees, clapping time, mouthing the verse.
Fithvael stepped over to Gaude, who was hunched over the cloak-wrapped corpse of his lord.
‘What are you doing?’ he asked delicately over the song and the impacts.
Gaude looked round. He had taken Le Claux’s sword from his dead hands. ‘What I should have been doing.’
Fithvael hunched near to him. ‘You’re no fighter…’ He let the implications hang between them.
‘Not now, perhaps.’ Gaude cleared his throat, as if nervous. ‘I was once… Sir Gaude. I was a champion of the blessed Lady. At Alesker’s Field, I lost my nerve and my honour. Since then, I have followed this poor, drunken fool as his squire. Poor Le Claux - he was never made to be a knight.’
‘He did us proud.’
‘Maybe. The Lady rest him, he never had the spirit.’
‘And you too?’
Gaude rose, drawing the beautiful, knightly sword from its scabbard.
‘I did. I think it has become time I found it again.’
Fithvael was almost shocked by the squire’s raw bravery. He half-expected angelic choirs to begin singing. When they did, he had to shake himself.
But it was Caerdrath. He had brought out an elven lyre, and was strumming and singing along with Harg’s rough chant. The Norseman blinked and looked around, but found a smile in Caerdrath’s eyes and continued. It was the oddest, most plaintive sound ever heard on the surface of that world. A forlorn high elf of Saphery, with the purest golden music in his voice, singing along with a sour, brutal northman’s epic.
They sang it together, in a harmony that none present would ever forget, and now, drowning out the deathly pounding of the enemy’s cannon for a few moments, every voice in the scarcement joined in.
THE REPETITIVE THUD of the impacts, always intermingled with the crunch of breaking stonework, the crack of sundering wood and the smash of falling tiles, fell suddenly silent.
They had been holed in the scarcement for two hours. In the gloomy cellar, all fell silent and turned their faces up to look at the roof. Gilead, Vintze and Cloden lifted their blades. Caerdrath wrapped his lyre and put on his helmet. Brom moved to the foot of the ladder, his mace in his hand.
They heard a voice, from far outside. What it said, they could not know. But Gilead, Fithvael and Caerdrath knew at once that it was Nithrom who had called.
‘Now!’ cried Gilead, pushing up the ladder after Brom, who was already monkeying up to the hatch.
The fighters followed - Cloden, Caerdrath, Harg, Vintze, Fithvael, Madoc, young Erill - and Gaude on their heels, still dressed as a squire but bearing the broad
sword and shield of his dead master.
After them, came the warriors of Maltane, the men, women and youths who were able and prepared to fight, farm implements and rusty weapons in their grips.
Gilead and Brom climbed up through the hatch and hurried down the dust-choked hall of the megaron in advance of the others. From without came shouting, the sound of sporadic combat. They barely noticed that the great hall’s roof was broken open to the sky and that they ran over shattered tiles and slumped beams.
Outside, the inner fence was a vestige of its former self. The entire north-facing wall and the gate was a splintered ruin. In truth, the entire inner mound had taken a heavy beating, but the north wall had seen the worst of it. Smoke plumed around and livestock loosed from the stables by a series of cannonball strikes ran wild.
Nithrom, Bruda and Dolph filled the gap, ranged side by side, hacking at the Tilean foot troops who even now were forcing entry up the ditch. Nithrom had taken the inner bridge down, but sheer weight of numbers welled up and into the inner compound.
Gilead was with Nithrom in an instant, his sword slicing and slashing a deadly pattern. A moment later, Dolph was joined by Brom and Vintze, and Cloden dove in to support Bruda. Like sword-wielding daemons, they hacked and slashed and thrust and threw the baying Murderers back on themselves.
‘Alarm! To the left!’ Erill screamed as he and the rest flooded out of the inner hall.
More Tilean mercenaries were pushing in through a splinter in the curtain of timber to their left, where a cannonball had staved in the fence.
Erill rushed to it, Fithvael and Gaude at his heels. The trio laid into the first intruders. Fithvael saw how the lad handled the elven shortsword well, like he was born to its grip. But he lacked skill and experience. His wild, untrained strokes left him open to the dog packs raging in through the fence break, and his wounds did not help him any either. A thrusting halberd mashed into the side of his face, and Erill fell.
Fithvael was surrounded by a thicket of Tileans, swinging his sword savagely. ‘Gaude! Get the boy clear!’ he yelled.
But Gaude was occupied too. He had cast Le Claux’s shield aside and engaged the foe, his borrowed broadsword glinting. It was the most extraordinary display of swordsmanship Fithvael had ever seen from a human. Whether driven by grief or a need for vengeance, Gaude parried, ducked and swung like a master, his sword moving like fluid metal.
Harg and Madoc slammed into the melee from behind, and as Madoc laid in with his own sword, Harg dragged the bloody form of Erill clear. Other Maltaners ran in, joining the fight at the wall’s breach.
SWOOPING IN AND out of consciousness, Erill came round to find himself lying clear of the fight by the steps of the ruined hall. He pulled himself up, then passed out in a savage explosion of pain, and then came round and pulled himself up again. The left part of his face was numb and cold, and he knew by the blood on his collar and front that he had a dreadful wound. He couldn’t see out of his left eye at all, but he dared not touch it with his fingers, lest he not like what he found.
But through his right eye… by the gods, what legends were being forged.
At the main gate breach, Nithrom, mighty elf ranger, towered over a pile of corpses, his blade slicing back and forth, misting the air with blood. To his left, Cloden, slicing the greatsword of Carroburg into the armoured heads of the scrambling foe… the twins of Ostmark, Dolph and Brom, reunited in combat, maces smashing… Vintze and Bruda, Reiksword and Kislev sabre, laughing as they faced the endless tide of blue and white liveried soldiers, bathed in blood… Gilead, a daemonic blur, raging his longsword into the foe…
At the gap in the fence to the left, the grizzled elf Fithvael, side by side with Madoc and Harg, slicing and chopping in bloody abandon. Harg’s great axe circled and spun as it did its work, Fithvael’s sword stabbed and thrust, and Madoc - well, he seemed to use his weapon as if it were a warhammer, spinning and flexing and turning it down at each stroke, trying to use his boundless mastery of the hammer to good effect with a sword.
And Gaude, was that truly him? Almost lost in a thicket of Tileans, revealing a skill with a blade that a humble squire could and should not possess.
Drunn and the impromptu warriors of Maltane were in the thick of the carnage too, jabbing and slicing, pummelling and stabbing. Erill saw several fall beneath the experienced skill of the Tilean dogs, but none died without honour.
He rolled sideways and saw Caerdrath. The elf had seen another hole in the timber fence and had raced across to close it. Four Maltane villagers went with him, spurred on by his cries.
What came through the breach was not a man. Not an elf. Not something Erill ever wanted to see again.
The ogre was three times the size of the largest and most crudely put-together human. He was dressed in rags, tattered blue and white, and he swung a flint-bladed adze in each of his huge fists. Tileans squirmed in through the ragged breach around him, urging him on.
‘Klork! Klork! Klork!’ they howled to goad him.
The ogre killed the first two Maltane warriors that reached him with a single slice of one blade. The beast bellowed, spittle flying from his broken teeth as his sinewy neck turned his misshapen mouth to the sky.
Caerdrath was there in three paces, a golden blur. His sword prismed light it flew so fast. One of the massive stone adzes fell to the marl, still gripped in the ogre’s clawed hand. Black blood fountained in all directions.
The ogre - Klork - howled, and smashed at the elf in return.
Caerdrath dodged the mankiller adze, and as he dived ahead, raked his blade down the flank of the monster.
Klork turned slowly, striking as he went, his remaining adze blade dinting the side of Caerdrath’s beautiful silvery armour.
The elf fell, rolled and came up facing the ogre square on. Erill stiffened as he saw the high elf spit crimson blood down his fine breastplate.
Ignoring the pain that lanced through him, Erill clambered to his feet, and found his sword. Giddy, he ran towards the fight, towards the ogre. A Tilean charged him and somehow he side-stepped, slicing the Tilean’s head clean off in a single move he did not even think about.
Klork was chopping at the darting Caerdrath, but Erill saw how the elf was slower than before. Blood wept through the cracks in his ithilmar plate mail.
Erill threw himself forward, his sword held ahead of him. The superb elven blade smashed into the ogre’s back and the point came out through the huge beast’s throat.
Klork vomited blood and fell, crashing down into the ditch like a felled tree.
Erill swayed. He saw Caerdrath smiling across at him. Then four Tilean pikes ripped the wounded elf apart, spitting him from every angle.
Erill dove upon the Tileans, yelling, his sword, stained with ogre blood, flying. He was vaguely aware of Madoc and Cloden reaching him, driving into the breach.
Then the pain of his head wound became too much and the world span about him. Rushing sounds, ghosts in the air, the dying sigh of an elf, darkness.
FOR THREE HOURS straight, until noon had passed, they held the inner mound of Maltane against the hordes that swarmed up from below. Only foot troops could reach the top of the mound, for the ditch and steepness of the slope made cavalry access impossible. Many Tilean riders dismounted and joined the infantry push. The mercenaries harried the space that had once been the gate, and clambered in through punctures made by cannon shells in the stockade. Some even tried to scale the fence. The climbers and the clamberers could bring nothing with them longer than a sword, but at the fallen gate, lines of long pikes and halberds thrust in at the defenders.
Yet at least, as Nithrom had predicted, the shelling had stopped once the Tilean foot had moved into range.
Twice the Murderers broke clear into the inner yard and defeat seemed to be about to overtake fragile Maltane. On the first occasion, at the main gate soon after Klork and Caerdrath had fallen, Cloden, Vintze and Gaude waged a maniacal counter-push from the left side of the shatter
ed entrance, cutting off the harried group of Tileans already inside and closing the breach, driving further attackers back with flailing swords that were so wet with blood they glowed dull red. At their backs, Harg and the twin gunners from Ostmark engaged and destroyed those who had got into the compound in a brutal melee played out on the marl in front of the megaron’s portico.
On the second occasion, just short of midday, a new force of Tileans none had seen skirted round the inner mound on the outside of the timber fence, and brought a section of it down with axes. This was round to the west, almost behind the temple, a direction not yet assaulted. The din of the raging combat covered the sounds of their axe-strokes, but a small boy, one of those who had helped Gilead sharpen the blades, saw the incursion from a window of the temple where he was hiding. His wails alerted his mother and an old woman, who darted out through the inner hall and screamed the news to the defenders’ line.
Three Maltaners managed to break off and were first to hurry round the mound yard and meet the attack. One was a ploughman called Galvin, tall, with shoulders like a barn roof’s tie beam. The other two were a herdsman and a weaver.
There were eight Tilean dog-soldiers already inside the fence by then, and dozens more pushing through the hole behind them. They were all shieldless, and most just had axes and shortswords, all they dared bring on the treacherous circuit of the outer fence. But two had crossbows.
The herdsman dropped, a quarrel through his neck, before the trio had even got within sword-reach. The other crossbowman buried his dart in the meat of Galvin’s left thigh, but the doughty warrior did not slow. He killed both bowmen as they tried to reload, with savage blows of his halberd. It was a Tilean weapon he had taken from a corpse earlier in the battle, and he laughed at the justice. Then he and the sword-wielding weaver were in the thick of them.
Two Tileans brought the weaver down with axe-blows, their seasoned experience bettering his fevered eagerness. Then they were all on Galvin, and more came in the breach besides.
By then, Gilead had freed himself from the main fight at the gate mouth, and he ran to the second front by the most direct route: through the shattered megaron hall, leaping out through a broken window at the west end where it met the crumbling wall of the temple. On his way through the hall, he managed to scoop up his black longbow and quiver from the equipment stacks they had carried in on their arrival.