by Neil Beynon
She held her blade point first at his chest. Vedic did not move.
‘I will not,’ Anya said, and lowered her blade. ‘For the slim chance I will trade with you, demon.’
‘Your blade did not shake,’ said Vedic, his tone approving.
Anya looked down at her hands. They weren’t trembling. The fury she felt towards Vedic, the utter righteousness of her anger, had bound them in steel.
Vedic gestured at his robe. ‘This is to help us get through the camp, to weaken Cernubus. They will, at worst, mistake me for one of their own, and at best, they may simply flee before us, thinking me a ghost. Of course, I am neither ghost nor demon, just a man.’
‘No more damning words did any demon speak,’ said Danu, stepping from the trees.
Anya shifted her gaze to Danu. ‘And you, how can you bear to be in his presence, let alone lie with him?’
Danu smiled. ‘Ah, little Anya. Do not rush to judge what you do not understand.’
Anya flushed. She looked at the goddess. ‘Maybe you and I will have a reckoning when this is said and done.’
‘The Shaanti are nearing the Kurah,’ said Danu, ignoring the threat. ‘You must go soon, or the moment will be lost.’
Danu did not require pipes or chanting to realise her power. The goddess stepped forward from them, sweeping her right arm in a high arc, and where the limb passed, the world folded. The Kurah camp flickered; men ran for the lines; alarm bells rang; fires were spreading; and all around was the sound of people dying. The battle raged.
‘Time for me to go home,’ said Vedic. ‘Sword.’
Danu threw the sword in its scabbard. Sheathed, it looked like a wooden staff to the untrained eye. ‘Go with luck, Vedic.’
Vedic dipped his head in acknowledgement. He seemed on the edge of speaking, but Anya was relieved when he appeared to think better of it.
‘Remember what I told you,’ said Pan.
Vedic nodded.
Anya said nothing to either god. She couldn’t trust herself to speak with care, and she felt little in the way of gratitude. Her heart thumped like an angry fist. She could feel the adrenaline pumping through her veins and the whispering of her ghosts at her shoulders. She stepped forward, and together they walked into the camp.
Hogarth rolled under the swinging sword, severing the man’s arm with a smooth back-swing, blood hot in his mouth from where the warrior had caught him with his fist.
The king wiped the dead man’s blood from his eyes, taking advantage of finding a brief pause to look back across the field at the battle. His men were cutting down more of the enemy to each of their own casualties – their night-time vision was an early advantage over the Kurah. It wasn’t enough. The reinforcements weren’t panicked: their own king had made his presence known and calmly reorganised the line, the coming dawn lighting the way. The Kurah had begun casting their own arrows at the edge of the forest. He ducked under another swing from an opportunist Kurah who fell to the Tream’s riposte, and he was back in the battle: slash, block, kill, step. Slash, block, parry and roll – and kill.
‘We must pull back.’
Hogarth looked over at the warrior who had spoken to him. A man he had trusted since boyhood, and for a moment he was Akyar, but Hogarth remembered Akyar was with the archers at the forest’s edge. They had barely spoken since his return. Hogarth felt his resolve harden even as his own archers unleashed another volley. Akyar had increased the range to avoid Tream, pushing the archers to the edge of their ability, and the arrows fell with devastating effect on the newly reorganised Kurah line. Hogarth looked back and saw the archers moving out from the trees in order to reach the reinforcements. Akyar’s warriors were now exposed to the Kurah’s returning fire.
The Kurah king could be heard barking at his own archers to take their Tream counterparts out.
‘To me!’ shouted Hogarth.
The realisation that the Shaanti had not arrived at the battle had fallen on him like a felled tree, and his only thought was to save his people. They were in danger of being surrounded, of being wiped out completely. Unless …
‘Form up! Wall!’
Hogarth brought his people into his surrounding area, where they began to lock up their shields. The king had steered clear of open-battlefield tactics in order to disrupt the Kurah line, but the time for stealth had passed, and he needed the strength of the shield wall to slow his casualties. This wasn’t about breaking the Kurah but about surviving to get back to the forest, and to attack again when they didn’t expect it.
‘Ready!’
Kurah troops poured towards them, seeking to cut off their route to the forest, but once the shield was in place, they would find the Tream hard to stop. Hogarth signalled to the warriors as Akyar brought the archers forward again, comfortable with a shorter range now their people were protected. The stink of blood mingled with that of bodies and other, more putrescent scents as the flow of death turned the ground to mud that tripped and clung. The initial flurry of swordsmen had given way to larger Kurah pikemen used to standing down Delgasian cavalry. Hogarth cursed. The Kurah pikes were strong enough to break through the Tream shields.
‘Hold!’ Hogarth hissed as the pikemen broke into a charge, leaving it to the last minute before he let his line break.
Most of the Tream warriors rolled out of the way of the pikes and took many of the Kurah down with swift sword thrusts, but the damage had been done. They were exposed once more. Hogarth saw the Kurah advancing and fancied he saw their king turning his back on the battle, secure in his victory. We are going to die here. Where are the clans? Have I been betrayed after all? He grabbed his sword tightly as his anger built in his chest. If they were to die here, then he would make such an end that his people would live on forever in the legends of the Kurah.
The world erupted in light brighter than the rising suns, blinding the Tream king and driving him to his knees. Was this death?
As Hogarth adjusted to the glare, he saw that warriors on both sides were down from the force of this new magic. The light had subsided a little, allowing him to try to look at where it was emanating from. Through the burn, he thought he could see shadows moving – two of them – drawing closer: one tall and one shorter – both armed.
The Kurah cried out, ‘Who are you?’
‘Do you not recognise me?’ came the answering call, in Kurah. The voice was very familiar to Hogarth, but was he coming as friend or foe?
‘I, who have returned fifty years after you betrayed me. Do you not recognise Laos, the King’s Eagle?’
The thain pulled her horse from bolting and looked down on the carnage ahead of her. The battle spilled in all directions, appearing out of control to the untrained eye, but she was pleased to see her warriors smashing open the southern line. The brief advantage would not be enough, of course. Even now, in the distance, she could see the Kurah signals going up to bring the northern line, off chasing the phantoms of the ‘retreating’ Shaanti. It didn’t matter. By the time they returned, the Shaanti would be gone.
The Shaanti warriors were forcing their way towards the gateway with the unrelenting fury of people with nothing left to lose. Montu had gambled on the thain running her people to the forest, a prolonged march that would give him plenty of warning and the easy option of mopping them up at a place of his choosing, but if she could take the portal … Well, a surprise attack was one thing; one in the heart of your own camp was another.
The challenge would be to close the portal after they were through to prevent them being flanked. She wiped the rain from her face in a pointless gesture. The weather was awful, serving as an ally, evening the field of battle and preventing the Kurah, in their heavier armour, from moving with ease. Lightning forked and scorched the ground up ahead, electrocuting one of the Kurah.
The thain looked at the portal and back at the corpse. She laughed. Finally she felt like the world was turning in her favour as she saw a brief glimpse of Atos, one of the sentinels, in the sky.
The Shaanti formed up ahead and behind her, moving with the seasoned practice of a well-drilled army, and they cut through the bewildered Kurah, who had expected a broken force, with surgical precision. The thain galloped to the edge of the portal and waved her army through. Some of the warriors were wide-eyed as they went into the wavering portal and into the Kurah camp, but most of them were nodding at their leader with grim determination. They understood. This was no longer about survival. This was about revenge.
The thain took a brief look round before wiping the metal spear, and as she stepped through, she drove it into the ground by the portal. On the other side of the magic, all was dry but just as battle-strewn, and far away a Kurah warning horn was ringing. Lightning flashed back on the plains side of the portal, striking the spear.
The magic detonated, throwing the thain through the air as if she weighed nothing. She thought about her mother, the previous thain, throwing her up in the air and catching her again, and she wished someone would catch her now. There was only the cold, painful slap of the mud. Her last thought before she lost consciousness was she hoped the catacombs would keep her people safe.
On hearing the woodsman’s voice, Akyar lifted his eyes from the mud where he lay hiding from the burst of light that had blinded his warriors.
He looked to see what magic had brought them this distraction at the moment when all seemed lost. Tream and Kurah alike were scattered in confusion, the battle forgotten, all staring at Vedic.
Akyar could see the Shaanti warrior at his side was Anya. Vedic lifted a staff that looked familiar to the vizier, but Akyar had no time to tarry. The Tream were recovering faster, cutting down Kurah where they were able to, despite the mesmeric effect of the woodsman’s words on the crowd.
Vedic showed no signs of wanting to leave or attack. Akyar forced himself to face his men and order the archers to line up.
‘You’re not Laos!’ screamed one of the generals from the line. ‘You’re just another Shaanti warrior. Kill him!’
‘I am Laos,’ said Vedic. ‘How else could I walk through the forest and out here to stand in front of you? Does your new god not control the forest?’
The Kurah responded in their own tongue. The tone was a mocking one that you didn’t need to speak the language to understand.
Vedic replied in the same tongue with a tone as cold as the general’s. At the end of his diatribe, the woodsman drew his weapon and concluded in Shaanti.
‘Who but I could wield this weapon?’
Akyar couldn’t understand why the woodsman wasn’t getting out of the way. The Tream on the field were trying to form up, but they were still cut off, and Akyar feared that they were going to be massacred, along with Hogarth. For now they had breathing room, thanks to Vedic, but the lull would not last. The vizier racked his brain in search of a solution.
In the distance, the general advanced on Vedic with his own sword drawn. A challenge had been issued; the general couldn’t back down and was now attempting to throw the woodsman off by talking at him incessantly.
Akyar ignored it. An idea was forming. He moved the Tream with him into a different position, as close to the battle as he could get without being drawn into the fighting. He turned his attention back to Vedic once they were ready.
‘I don’t think you need worry about me, General,’ said Vedic, smiling. ‘But the Tream horde behind. Hogarth, down!’
Akyar was relieved to see the Tream on the field drop to the ground as the woodsman pushed Anya down. This was a moment of pure flow like he had read the ancient scholars talked of, a moment where the vizier was in full control of the field, and he felt his arm fall to his side as he shouted the release command. The archers let their arrows fly. They were close enough to loose their bowstrings at an almost horizontal angle, giving little to no warning. The Kurah fell in droves. The first wave of Tream archers dropped, and the next released in the same way, devastating the Kurah line and causing chaos as they scrambled to pull up a shield wall. Akyar didn’t allow himself the time to enjoy the moment: the whole attack had relied on surprise, and that was gone now.
Akyar drew his sword. ‘Attack!’
The vizier ignored the instructions the king had given him, and led his force in a charge of the Kurah line. Hogarth looked like he grasped what Akyar was trying to do, and scrambled to his feet, forming up the survivors of his own warriors to join the charge. He couldn’t see Vedic or Anya. The Tream prayed to the trees that they were safe as he tightened his grip on his sword and the two lines collided.
All was steel, blood and fire.
In the distance, horns went up in a rapid wave of alarm across the Kurah camp, and the Kurah shield wall broke, lines scattering, and Tream poured into the camp as the battle degenerated into pockets of fighting.
‘I can’t believe that worked,’ said Akyar, looking at the changed field.
His guard looked at him. ‘We were lucky. Did you hear the horns?’
‘Yes – we frightened them,’ said Akyar. ‘They will be gathering their reserves to counter. We must withdraw.’
The guard shook his head. ‘No, sir, we don’t have to withdraw, and we didn’t cause the alarm. The Shaanti are here, at last.’
Chapter Thirty-Four
‘Don’t run, you whoresons!’
The Kurah king was not impressed as he arrived at what was left of the northern line. The Tream archers had reversed the tide despite the odds. Hundreds of Kurah lay dead, and in the chaos, his men were either running or lashing out at each other. The generals had lost control, with only one or two calling down for additional troops. Cernubus had returned in a hurry, refusing to see the king, and was hidden away inside his tent, conducting more rituals. Montu didn’t care what the god did, as long as he kept his side of the deal, but an attack from the forest had not been part of it. The king grabbed one of the men, pulling him away from the line he had been moving towards. The man blinked in shock.
‘You – go get the signallers to move the archers down.’
Men fell all around. The king’s thigh burst with sharp, burning pain. A forest of arrows had sprung up all around, and one of them sprouted from his left leg. He cursed, snapping the arrow off and tearing cloth from a less fortunate man to tie off the wound. He felt fizzing in his belly despite the pain. This was his chance: no Kurah king had faced the Tream in several generations, and despite their weaker numbers, they were a sharp, challenging force. If he could defeat them without killing them all, they would make a strong addition to his own forces.
‘Sire, you wanted archers?’
The king looked at General Inci, the man who led his bowmen and the larger force beyond. He nodded.
‘The Tream are overrunning our line. Deal with them.’
Inci looked confused. ‘Our men are in the way—’
‘We have allowed the enemy to get a toehold. Now do as I say. People we have in abundance.’
‘Yes, sire.’
The king drew his own sword and made his way to the line.
‘Form up,’ he shouted. ‘Three lines. Get me damned cavalry! We need to end this and concentrate on the Shaanti attack.’
There wasn’t time to think.
The fury she had trapped in her belly had stopped the shaking of her hands, and her mind was focused on getting to the prisoners. A Kurah burst from the tents, cursing and swinging his blade with rage at spotting Shaanti so far behind their lines. She parried the blow that would have taken her head, and swung round, cutting his legs off. She did not finish him but continued on.
Anya put the next man down with the hilt of her sword, smashing it into his face before he even thought to swing. She ran on. There was no need to check whether Vedic had her back, because she’d realised she had no choice but to trust him. If he wanted to betray her, he could – at any time – and she would die. They were somewhere in the north of the
camp, moving amongst tents that looked like they were being used for supplies, and the number of Kurah had fallen to manageable levels.
Five Kurah swarmed at them from different directions. Anya swung her leg round in a sweeping arc, knocking the first unconscious. She sliced off the next man’s arm and dropped under the third’s swing. She looked up in time to see Vedic break her attacker’s neck. The two he had killed lay bleeding behind him. She had not seen how he’d killed them. The woodsman’s blade was still in its sheath.
Vedic led them steadily south into the rising sunlight. In the distance, the siege towers were being pulled into new positions; one of them had been toppled by the Shaanti and was now on fire. Anya could see men struggling to load the ballista against her kinsmen, who swamped the camp even as the Tream made their way in behind her. The Kurah were regrouping, but they were taking large losses.
‘What is it?’ she asked.
Vedic had stopped at the edge of the line of tents they were moving along, his large limbs stretched wide as he pushed his left ear as close to the side of the tent as he could without revealing himself to whoever he was listening to. Anya dropped her bow round, an arrow sliding into the string without conscious thought as she moved to the woodsman’s side. He held up a hand to stop her, without looking round.
‘I see all is going well.’
The king turned at hearing the voice. Cernubus stood leaning on his spear with casual interest. Fresh blood stained his robe, but he did not appear hurt or worn out. The Kurah ruler turned back to the battle. He would make no attempt to enter the fray: his men were finally holding, and several of his generals were moving amongst the battle, leading by example.
‘No thanks to you,’ he replied.
‘You wanted a battle,’ said Cernubus, gesturing at the surrounding carnage. ‘I have given you a battle.’