“This is some polished healing. Thank you, sir.” Natteo reached out and took the watching healer’s hands and squeezed them tightly. May as well find out the young man’s predilection before they moved any further, he thought. Also. “More?”
The young man held his hand shorter than he would have liked. He did not squeeze in reply. He did, however, offer a smile, and sometimes a smile was all it took. Perhaps his new friend was a young man unprepared to admit that fathering brats was probably not in his future. Natteo would very much love to father a child. Perhaps down the road, with enough loneliness burdening him and even more ale consumed than usual, he might take a rather bulky young lady to bed and see what might happen. Where did that thought come from? he wondered, shaking his head.
“Any more and you could collapse,” his healing friend—who may or may not heal his other urges—replied. Natteo sighed in mocking defeat. He still had pain; he intended to claim more syrup.
“Please?”
“No.”
Natteo dropped his feet on the cold tiled floor and stood up, stretching magnificently, displaying all the nudity that he could. Perhaps his confused healing friend hadn’t noticed when he’d stripped him during his surgery, or perhaps another healer had the pleasure of preparing Natteo before surgery and recovery. As it was, the smooth shave Natteo performed upon his lower regions every third or fourth day, served him well.
“You should not be up walking,” the healer cried, and Natteo shook the bruising from his body, shook the sleep from his limbs, shook the different appendages to life, and his young healer did not look away, until he realised he had not looked away, and then he swiftly looked away, taking a healthy interest in the brightly burning fire in the corner. Natteo took this exact moment to liberate a little bottle of corked loveliness from its place on the shelf.
“No, no, no, you can’t take that,” cried the healer, and Natteo spun around offering his most charming grin.
“Would you like to wrestle me for it?”
“Erm… no?”
Natteo popped the cork and drank. He knew the risks. He’d spent a lifetime and a half in servitude in Castra, so he knew pleasure; he knew excess; he knew how to dance between them easily enough. He swallowed the milky potion and involuntarily shook and growled as it hit his system. His vision blurred from the earlier doses, the room began to spin, and he adjusted his stance to compensate.
Not enough to be fatal yet.
He took another mouthful and duty brought the healer to him, but Natteo kept his prize behind his back playfully. It didn’t matter that they might die in the next day or so; what mattered was having fun between then and now.
“You shouldn’t be up,” the healer hissed, reaching from a safe distance, and Natteo suspected the young man might not be interested at all. Not that he would have done anything; he was already in love.
What would he think of me, behaving in such a way?
All’s fair on the march, Natteo thought. Besides, his love didn’t even know how much he truly cared for him. Maybe it wasn’t even love. Maybe he was just the first man to consume Natteo’s every waking thought. Every night as he lay down to sleep, in fact. He really spent far too long imagining his love coming to him, taking hold, kissing him, and so much more.
Is that love or excessive desire?
Maybe that was all love could be. He shook his head again and ran his fingers through his lips. He made a satisfying sound, and he wondered if he hadn’t taken a taste more of the poppy juice than he’d meant to. Oh well. He’d probably die tonight, but not in this room, Natteo decided.
“This is mine now,” he whispered, and he spun away from his new friend, searching for his clothes.
He wondered whether he was late. They curtained the windows over, and the light coming from beneath the doorway worried him for there was none. The stitches were many hours old, and he suspected a full day had passed since the demons had breached the wall. He suspected there was more fighting coming. Perhaps his friends were fighting this very moment. Panic cut through his delirium, and he reached for his ruined clothes at the foot of his bed.
“I’ve got to go.”
“You will die if you leave,” the healer cried, but Natteo pushed him away and began dressing. As he did, a rasping hiss of wet air distracted him, and he stopped for a moment to take the hand of the ruined man in the bed beside him. The demons had destroyed his face, his body more so, but he had one working eye, and he was staring at the bottle.
“Take what you want, friend,” Natteo whispered and passed the opened bottle to the doomed man. The healer tried to recover the bottle, but after a moment’s pause, he thought better of it. They would need more beds tonight. Natteo nodded in appreciation. Sometimes mercy was a blissful departure. The man kept drinking until it was empty, wherein he placed the bottle carefully on the floor beside his bed and lay back to stare at the ceiling and remember beautiful things. “Where are my weapons?” Natteo asked.
“They are with your comrades,” his new friend said, before offering him his boots.
“Time to die.” Natteo took the young man’s hand and kissed it gently before stumbling out of the doorway into the night.
13
The Last Charge
There was no clamouring bell to alert the town. Its inhabitants already knew their routine. It was strange how swiftly bloodshed and horror turned wide-eyed farmers and uneducated miners into hardened warriors. Treystone only needed two nights of dreadfulness. Those who survived stood ready as darkness overcame them.
Though he’d slept a handful of hours, Derian felt weak and wretched. The people who’d laboured the entire day probably felt worse. Great tales never spoke of the exhaustion and the mundane. Always, defences were set. It was never how they were set.
If the first day’s preparations were inadequate, the second day’s were a considerable improvement. Derian suspected those who toiled in the treeline had steadied their nerve or learned the value to effective preparation. Perhaps they’d learned from the children’s boundless enthusiasm. From his solitary place at the gate, Derian could see the damage imposed upon the forest. Perhaps had they accomplished this the previous night, Derian would still have soldiers to command.
Lorgan addressed the gathered crowd only twenty feet away. “Hold your shields longer than you think you can. Do not be the first to collapse.” Twenty feet may as well have been a mile. Lorgan stood at the centre of the open gate with his shield drawn. On either side of him a dozen similarly armed warriors. At their feet, a long, reinforced beam. Lorgan’s plan would never work.
It might half-work.
In the distance, with little more than darkness to guide them, Derian heard a howl, and his heart began to beat. There was no more fear, no panic, but he tasted metal on his lips. His armour was heavy. It would suit a giant’s build, he thought. He didn’t understand why Lorgan had come to him with the freshly cooked metal piece, only that he commanded he wore it. The shielding was thick and bulky, heavier than any other armour he’d seen. Every step he took was laboured. He imagined it would take an army of canis a full night’s tearing to penetrate its thick shell, but that didn’t make him feel any better.
They’d strapped Rusty into his right hand and his new blade ‘Honey Blood’ to the other. The long sword was unusually wide. Its handle had a golden bronze finish with a blood-red wrapping at its grip. He liked the blade. Perhaps it deserved a better name.
Behind the thickly grated faceplate, he could make out some part of the battlefield. The children had cut every thin branch from every tree and sharpened them to some wonderful nastiness, before placing them along the walls leading out towards the tree line. Thousands, all jagged and uninviting. Guaranteed to do little damage to a rushing horde, but enough to sway them towards easier footing. A wall of thicker sturdy spikes stood clustered at every corner of the town. If the beasts circled like before, they would find their route obstructed.
Along the river, at the far end, a d
ozen more of the sharpened lines blocked the route, ensuring nothing but frustration would meet their vanquishers for the first charge. The fires were lit and spread out to twice the width of the previous night. The flames would be wilder, but they would also burn swiftly. It wouldn’t matter, for the fighting would finish long before they burned to ash. The town appeared impregnable, uninviting on all sides but one, and at this last side stood Lorgan with the rest of his army.
Kesta stood atop the platform over the front gate. “Do not fire until they breach. They must breach.” She was in her element. “THEY MUST BREACH!” Perhaps it was a death-wish or the scent of vengeance she savoured. Whatever it was, the smile suited her, and her determination heartened the defenders standing near. They did not know what horrors she had endured or that she had seen a town fall, and perhaps it was better this way. She was poised, waiting for the kill, and they watched in awe, desiring vengeance of their own.
“I am too far from any of this,” Derian muttered and sighed heavily in his armour. Ahead of him, in a handful of regimented lines, stood every warrior in the town.
Shame.
Lorgan no longer trusted Derian’s judgement. He had fallen short defending his side, and Lorgan had punished him for it. Derian reinforced the rear, and it devastated him. He’d argued and pleaded, but it came to nothing, so here he stood behind hundreds of lesser peasants, awaiting his turn.
As recently as a week ago, the prospect of fighting would have crippled him with fear. He would have gladly taken his place at the back. But anger was a glorious tonic. Now he only desired to stand at the front, bleeding with strangers he treated as kin. He wanted to bring the fight to those who hunted them.
Was this bravery? Was this madness? Was he a warmonger? What did it matter in this moment?
Even Seren had earned her place in the battlements. Standing along the top wall with a bow in hand, she was statuesque. Though the wall was heavy with archers, they stood away from her. The townsfolk had kept their distance, and Derian thought it typical. Fickle peasants. Maybe she’d scared them away with talk of prophetic nonsense; maybe she’d finally convinced them she desired privacy above worship; maybe they had finally realised she was no goddess.
She was still a goddess to him, though. She would be his goddess someday—regardless of what she suggested. If there were things like prophecies, he would defy them. Her eyes watched the forest, and he wanted to apologise to her for storming off, for fearing the unknown. He almost took a step forward so he could call to her, perhaps convince her to stay and talk a few moments, but the effort was too much, the distance too great.
In this spitting metal suit.
Lorgan was daring with his plan, and the defenders answered without question. If his first endeavour involved standing and waiting for an attack, this was the furthest he could get from that approach. The first part was lighting no fire at the front gate, having no spikes to block their route apart from a tight line on either side of the pathway leading up towards the gate; the second part was opening the gates, inviting the demons in, and then challenging them to a fight.
Not even the greatest storyteller could make this lunacy sound believable.
Derian felt excitement stir, and he gripped his weapons. Disappointment or not, he would do his part, and if this was the end, well, he would end it well. Somewhere in the forest, more beasts answered each other’s braying wail; their meaning was clear—fresh meat awaited them tonight.
Come feast, you thurken curs.
“Let’s play,” Derian whispered, and his tongue felt less than his own. The howling grew to a crescendo, it echoed out through the valley, and somewhere beneath it, he heard something else. He tried to listen closer, but someone distracted him.
“Hi, Derian. I almost didn’t recognise you in that horse armour.”
He spun slowly to see his best friend. Natteo looked a ruin. His face was pale, his hands shook, and his dilated eyes looked like a sea serpent’s. His smile was warm and endearing. He’d buttoned his shirt incorrectly, he’d left his laces untied, and he’d somehow fastened his leather armour on upside down. He’d ignored the shoulder straps completely, and now they dangled below him like matching tails. Overall, Natteo had looked better but didn’t appear to care. He raised a tankard of bubbling ale and sipped from it, missing most of his mouth.
Somewhere in the distance, Derian heard a man scream. Natteo may have heard. He raised an eyebrow but continued drinking.
“Why are you out of bed?” Further away there was a second scream, it may have been a curse.
“I’m here to fight. Got a pint first, though.”
“You are in no shape to fight. Get back to bed. Are you drunk? … Are you high?” Derian reached for the glass. His armour slowed him down, and Natteo pulled it into his chest like a new-born child.
Mine, his glare suggested. “Have you seen where my weapons are?” Natteo asked, mimicking a wrist bolt flying from his wrist with accompanying noises. Derian could now hear a few voices carried by the wind. Screaming, begging for help.
People hunted in the forest.
Natteo noticed them too through his bleary-eyed delirium. He stopped mimicking the weapon and looked into the night. The town had fallen to silence listening to doomed voices from somewhere in the forest.
“That’s my man!” Natteo suddenly exclaimed.
“That’s my man. Noooooo…” He stumbled away.
“Thaaaaaat’s my maaaaaaaaan.” He broke through the defenders like a fish through water. Panic earned him gracefulness, leaving a gap in his wake for Derian to see fully how his demise would occur.
Catch him.
Before anyone could stop him, Natteo slipped right through the vanguard, pushing any in his way until he stumbled over the reinforced beam lying on the ground. He allowed himself a ‘who put that there,’ scowl, before jogging gracelessly out through the spiked walls, down from the town’s entrance towards the darkness of the treeline.
“Thaaaaaat’s myyyyyyyyyy maaaaaaaaan.”
Derian heard the battle cries of the monsters. “Stop him, Lorgan!” he screamed, but they’d already lost sight of Natteo. The strange voice in Derian’s mouth of growing anger gave way to sobbing pleas to the gods of the source they return his friend to him before the monsters broke through.
The gods are dead.
As if to spite his begging prayer, the demons broke through in their gnashing hordes; hundreds in a pulse of blood, and Natteo charged towards them, only for Natteo to see what it took Derian a moment longer to see. The outline of seven mercenaries sprinting for their lives towards the town.
Oh, no.
Derian realised the mercenaries must have attempted to reach the town before nightfall. So close. How cruel of fate to deny them salvation a few breaths out? How cruel to see an entire army standing at the gate unwilling to charge out and steal death from them? All except one.
“Booooooooooaaaaaab!” screamed Natteo, gathering momentum as desperation cut through the poppy disorientation, slowing his movements. The Army of the Dead cleared the trees and sprinted in one flat line across the battlefield. Free of armour, weapons, and supplies they sacrificed it all for one ill-timed sprint towards safety. With snapping teeth at their ankles, they tried, oh, but they tried, and Derian held his breath as though releasing it might release the wave of death a shadow behind.
Through tears, Derian watched Natteo careen towards them flapping his arms as though to distract the racing pack. Derian stepped forward, and the effort was almost too much. But for the armour, he could have followed him.
Saved him.
And then another shape appeared upon the battlefield. A beauty with flowing black hair. She carried her arrows in the same hand she held the weapon in, each draw of the bow loading the piece. Each reload a released shot. A technique fit for a god of war.
In a breath, Seren released five arrows, and five canis demons fell behind the sprinting mercenaries.
That’s impossible.
She reached for a second clutch of arrows and did the same again, and the crowd gasped as she struck death upon another five more.
She is a god.
All seven mercenaries might have made it through the battlefield, but for Natteo’s influence. He got one strike in as he reached the racing mercenaries, flinging his pint of ale, he struck one beast across the head and caused it to snort before resuming its charge.
Unfortunately, Natteo crashed into one of the seven mercenaries and both crumbled in a nasty heap in the middle of the battlefield. The six remaining sprinters left them both behind, and Derian wondered if he would have done the same.
Seren, however, did not leave the fallen behind. She roared as the monsters did. As Derian did—a guttural nasty cry of primal, animalistic hatred. The valley turned to day as a blast of light emerged from her body. Clear and blue like a droplet of rain, shimmering and vast like a lake. It spread out in an arc around her, covering the battlefield and knocking some monsters from her path and others high into the air. It passed through the two fallen figures, but that was all Derian could see, for in their excitement, horror, or fear, the crowd converged in front and blocked his view.
He roared what curses he could, willing his body to carry the weight forward through the crowd. With weak, laboured arms, he shoved some defenders aside until he spotted flashes of movement, and suddenly, the crowd separated as the charging mercenaries reached the gates and kept running unaware the demons were far behind. They fell through the lines of soldiers and collapsed at the rear of the defences in front of Derian.
They gasped and wheezed, and Derian wondered how many hours they’d run for.
“On your feet. There is no time for any rest!” Lorgan roared as he made his way through the line. Through the break, Derian spotted Seren and a mercenary carrying an unconscious Natteo back up the path towards the town. Behind them, injured and unconscious beasts slowly came to their senses. Puzzled from the assault they held their charge. They waited for whispered words from whatever commanded them.
The Crimson Hunted: A Dellerin Tale (The Crimson Collection Book 2) Page 10