Beyond the Bulwarks

by K. J. Coble

  “I’m alone,” she said without looking at him.

  “No, you’re not,” Anzo replied. “Heathen and I are here. We won’t leave you. I promise.”

  “Thank you,” she said with a fragile smile, looking at him at last. “But that’s not what I meant.”

  Anzo glanced at the priests. They remained in their circle but had knelt as Theregond dismounted, stepped into their midst and knelt to share their prayers. “What do you mean?”

  “Whatever power it is that they claim to hold, it will not help us today.” She straightened in the saddle and stared down into the valley. “I will face this Grondomagnus alone.”

  “You sense him?”

  She nodded. “It is much as I felt in the Elder Tyrant’s tomb. Old magic...old gods...” She shivered. “It may have been his agents who disturbed that creature’s seals and that re-birthed other things into this world.”

  Anzo tried to think of something comforting to say, could think of nothng that wouldn’t sound stupid, and settled on, “What can I do for you, lady?”

  She smiled at him, warmth now behind fear. “It will be two battles, today, Anzo Severnus: one of the flesh, of the material, and one of spirits and of things that feed on them.” She leaned over to reach out a hand that he took, was surprised to find it was his that shook and hers that settled him. “You must focus on the former and keep it away from me. I must have all my concentration. Can you do that?”

  “I think so,” he replied, realized suddenly he wasn’t so sure. “They’re good lads. But—” he pulled her further down so that only she could hear and slipped into Aurridian “—if things do go against us, you must flee. Don’t look back, no matter what. You have to survive and tell them in Aurid.”

  She tensed. “I won’t leave you.”

  “You must, if it comes to that.” He released her hand and forced his most roguish, lop-sided smile. “But we won’t let it. We’ll keep them back.”

  She brushed his whiskered cheek. “This is the end of the road, do you realize? This is what we came for. Defeat those barbarians and destroy Grondomangus and we will have completed our task.” She straightened again. “It’s something to look forward to, isn’t it?”

  Anzo let her horse go and drifted back a step. Watching her, he wished suddenly, fiercely that she wasn’t here, that it had been someone else left to stand alone and freezing on this field.

  “It is, indeed,” he said.

  ***

  Heathen was watching the hosts as Anzo rejoined the battle line. Catcalls and displays of bravado were tapering off, the Hamrak shifting behind their shields, fingering weapons, puffing out tight breaths. The feces-urine stink of before soured further with sweat on leather and begrimed metal. “Easy, lads,” Anzo called to the men around him. “It won’t be long now.”

  “Lot of skulls out there waiting to be split.” Heathen hefted his axe into both hands

  “You won’t be bored.”

  Anzo unbuckled his shield from his shoulder and refastened it to his left forearm. The fear was settling on him now, chilly in limbs gone heavy, cooler still in his bowels where it threatened to spasm free. He ripped out his sword and gave it a shake, worked it in a couple tight arches to give his mind something else to ponder. He felt eyes on him, the Hamrak of the shieldwall glancing his way, looking to him for courage.

  The cadence of Grondomagnus’ horde crashed to a halt. For an eternity silence fell across the valley, was disturbed by the chatter of crows beginning to gather in their wheeling masses high above. Breaths hissed through clenched teeth. Armor pinged. Someone laughed. Someone prayed.

  A great bellow rose from the center of the Faces and they lurched forward into the sludge of the trampled creek. To either side, the mismatched host followed, trudging forward in fits and starts, the entire line spreading upwards onto the hillside in a churning, uneven stain. Gaps opened and closed, men stumbling in snow drifts, ankles twisted in unexpected holes, cowardice seizing hearts until men from behind shoved their predecessors forth again. Cries rose at random, clumps of men pausing to reform or to steel each other with renewed battle cries. The cadence resumed, pummeling without uniformity, a shuddering din felt in the guts.

  “Bows!” Durrim hollered from the rear.

  Spaces opened in the Hamrak wall, knots of men darting through into the field below. Archery was not the preferred way of the Hamrak, but they had a modest leavening of huntsmen for whom men could be as easy a prey as elk. Similar swarms of bowmen issued from the other tribes, dashing out in ragged lines between the hosts and loosing thin clouds at the oncoming force. Faces began to drop and their pace slowed, shields up against the spray of arrows. The bowmen of the Free Cantons altered their aim, firing at flat trajectories, pricking thigh and shin, dropping more of the foe squalling to the ice.

  Arrows stormed over the Faces from their rear, began to fall amongst the Cantons’ archers, arched further, began to litter the snow before the main line.

  “Watch it!” Anzo barked as he and Heathen crowded behind the massed shields of the Hamrak.

  Banded wood, leather, and steel clacked with impacts, arrowheads smacking through in razor sharp dimples. A flabby warrior in poorly-fitted mail flinched out of line with an arrow in his shoulder and a torrent of high-pitched curses. All along the line, similar incidents played out, men dropping out with wounds, many simply dropping, crimson stains spreading beneath them. Beyond the line, Anzo could hear pained shrieks as the enemy endured the same.

  At Durrim’s side, a Hamrak raised his horn and let out a blatting series of notes. The archers fell back before the oncoming tide, comrades side-stepping to allow them through, white-faced and blowing hard. Their quivers empty, the huntsmen gathered to the rear as a reserve, scrambling to refill and await their next chance.

  The arrow shower relenting, the Hamrak lowered their shields, festooned with the black fletching of the Faces. Anzo could see again. The enemy host had slowed to a cautious walk, tribal divisions lost, Face and Gevruum and lesser tribes intermixing as the whole compacted together behind shields and men sought the protection of their neighbors’ mass against further harm. They were no longer a line but a trio of lumbering wedges with their points sliding ever closer, trampling bodies left between the lines, some still twitching. On the left, the Arriaks continued their disinterested trot, slowly sidling out beyond the flank.

  Howls and horn blasts shuddered from the right. The Face cavalry, maddened at the pinpricks of the pre-battle archery, shivered and broke loose, galloping up the hill. The mixed tribes allied with Grondomagnus slowed to watch, further disrupting his advance, bowing it back on the right.

  The Codir erupted from the Thrungi’s flank and hammered down against the riders. For a moment, details of armor, flashing swords, clods of snow dashed airborne by hooves, and Orlek’s dancing black hair were obvious. Then the two bodies met with an unspeakable crash. Horses squealed, twisted, and flopped to the ground with the crackle of their riders’ splintering bones. Steel flowed through the roiling mass, liquid-like amongst writhing, slashing forms. The tribes rived in amongst one another, tore, battered, and mixed. Blood showered to the snow.

  The massive wedges of Gevruum and Face kept coming, even as the mixed tribes fell further behind them. Ardegant had dismounted but was obvious amongst his nobles at the fore of his traitor tribe. Their howled threats and promises of torment were met with screams of treachery and cowardice from the Erevulans. Theregond’s folk bobbed in place, trembled with pent-up fury, straining against the bellowed orders of their king.

  The Faces drew to within fifty paces of the Hamrak and a shiver went through the warriors around Anzo as the horror for which the enemy tribe had acquired their name became obvious.

  Every one of them, from helmeted noble at the fore to callow, poorly-equipped youth bustling from the rear wore over his features the face of another. Inexpertly-stitched, leathery, flaking flesh hung tattered and terrible, wild eyes glaring through holes through which so
meone else had once stared. No Face could claim his place in the battle line without killing first and taking their victim’s identity as an indelible, hideous part of their own.

  “The sons of bitches are so damned ugly they have to hide themselves!” Anzo snarled to the brittle laughter of the Hamrak. “They’ll be even uglier when we’re finished with them, lads! Remember the line! Hold the line!”

  A monstrous Face dashed out ahead of his kin and flung a throwing axe. It hadn’t struck before a hailstorm of others was following it, darkened the air, fluttering, whistling and crashing into packed shields. Metal, wood and leather ground together, the Hamrak tightening as impact after impact merged into indescribable racket. Men fell with axes in shoulder or face, blood jetting in fans that speckled the sky. But most held, some with steel in their bodies, driven mad with fear and hatred, waiting for the terrifying moment all knew to be practically upon them.

  The Faces roared. The ground shook with the hammering of their feet.

  Anzo felt rather than saw the instant of contact. Impact slammed through armor and flesh, sent the shieldwall grinding backwards, flexed legs and pointed toes tearing furrows in the snow as the Faces piled into them. Anzo stumbled as the warrior before him jolted back a half step. Recovering, he threw his weight into the press, could feel the bones of the unbalanced warrior creaking under the pressure.

  Moments of horror followed, a tossing, suffocating, blind flurry, more like a wrestling match than battle. More men fell, gasping, pleading, crushed between their own shields and their comrades. Hand axe and hammer crashed on shield, warping metal, splintering wood and bone. Spear and short sword darted through brief gaps, birthed shrieks and spurts of gore. Anzo could see nothing but bodies in front of him and bodies piling about his feet.

  The pressure against him flagged and suddenly there was room to move, room to breathe. A kind of shuddering equilibrium settled. It was time.

  “Forward now, lads! Push!”

  Anzo flung himself forward. Around him, the Hamrak did the same, grinding forth, throwing the Faces back on their heels. Hamrak swords and spears plunged into them as they stumbled, dozens cut down, more slipping in the blood of the fallen to take thrusts to unprotected torsos. The Hamrak waded into the carnage, stomping the wounded into a pulp, hacking, stabbing, bashing mindlessly. A muddy ribbon of dead and dying formed at their back as they advanced, step by step, stroke after stroke.

  A Face vaulted up onto the packed shields as though it was a battlement, a whirlwind of limbs and crazed eyes. Heathen’s axe streaked to meet him, cleaved his neck in a fountain of gore and sent the head bouncing across Hamrak helmets and shoulders. A second barbarian stumbled through a brief gap in the shieldwall. Anzo’s sword shafted through his chest before he could recover. Two more thrusts to the back guaranteed his end.

  Another part opened in the shieldwall, let two Faces spinning through to Anzo’s left. Both were nobles of some sort, armored and with shields adorned with golden icons. Anzo took the first’s axe swing on his shield, ground his teeth as the blow jolted the feeling from his arm, and thrust under the rim. The other’s shield deflected his point into the muck before it could savage an exposed thigh, locking them together. Panic knotted behind focus on the struggle, Anzo knowing that another instant would put the Face’s companion on his flank.

  Something whipped past Anzo’s head, a flicker of broad steel lightning. Warm wetness freckled his cheek. A familiar roar drowned out a gurgle of pain. Shadows bunched in his peripheral vision before another flash, another wail, and another bawl of triumph told Anzo that Heathen was with him and the Face’s companion was a memory.

  The Face noble, seeing the odds turned against him, tried to disengage, backpedaling as he dragged his axe loose of Anzo’s shield. Anzo followed, wouldn’t let him get the balance. The barbarian fumbled to raise his weapon for another blow, his shield low and covering what would have been the obvious thrust at his legs or vitals.

  Anzo flipped the lower rim of his shield up at the last second and sawed it into the man’s throat. Eyes bulged and air rasped from his savaged trachea. The Face yanked his shield up reflexively. The saber of Enu Mbawa darted under into his groin. He screeched, folding over the blade as Anzo drew it free and plunged it into his hunched shoulders. Heathen’s axe followed, shattering spine and driving the barbarian into the snow.

  Anzo pivoted away, sucking for breath as he took in the melee around them. The shieldwall was fraying, was coming apart as more openings appeared, worsened as Hamrak pulled out to deal with the breakthroughs. Vhurrian instincts of the charge, of Orkall’s Test were taking over. The Hamrak had advanced only a dozen or so feet.

  A dozen more would be their undoing.

  “Reform!” Anzo’s voice came out a croak. A deep breath returned some strength. “Damn you all, form the line!”

  Durrim’s cornicern was blowing wildly at his instrument, no call that Anzo could understand. But between that and his shrieks, the Hamrak were slowing, were settling back beside the file closers they’d known and some—replacing fallen kin—they didn’t. Shields clacked together, legs locked, men who Anzo had drilled—Durrim’s partisans or warriors smart enough to see the obvious—carried the call over the ranks.

  The Faces didn’t fall back. Rather, they boiled before the Hamrak, thrown into momentary disarray by the unexpected release of pressure. Catcalls and maniac laughter built to a communal roar of fury and disgust. What kind of coward’s fighting was this? The corpses of kin piled behind and before the Hamrak had not taught them. They surged forward again and the terrible crush and press resumed.

  And so it went in an agonizing crimson blur of flashing steel, darting bodies, blood, terror, and atrocity. Yet the sun was hardly over the horizon, its trek slowing, it seemed, as fresh clouds roiled in from the southwest and went red as its rays lashed their undersides.

  From the left, Anzo heard a savage yet familiar bellow. Over the toss and grapple of the Hamrak line, he could see flashes of Theregond, a head taller than most, plowing through into the Gevruum. His sword rose and fell, kicking up plumes of gore like a cyclone skipping over a field made of packed bodies. A glimmer of armor swept into his path—Ardegant—and their cries of mutual hate merged. Anzo saw an upraised shield, saw a sword lash down into metal and wood and the pair was lost in the press.

  Through the ripe, spilt bowel stench of violent death wafted a new odor: gagging bite of ozone, burnt blood, and heated rock. The Faces seemed to intensify their push, battering the Hamrak back, one inch at a time, whipped into a frenzy that had less to do with breaking them and more to do with getting at something, anything to rend and slay. Anzo could feel a quiver in the line, a knifed-gut thrust of panic as the Face’s numbers began to play against the rapidly-wearing Hamrak.

  And more.

  Anzo looked down, saw a weird haze lapped about his ankles, cooling his feet like the wash of a brook purling over his shins. A strange whisper seemed to buzz in his ears, voices that were almost chanting, otherworldly promises of torture without end. Cool sweat washed into his eyes and he couldn’t say for certain that the azure glimmer working its way forward from behind the Faces was an illusion of fatigue.

  Hoofbeats. Varya was behind him, fighting to keep her mare under control as wide eyes focused on something that could not be in the field before her. Her already pale features whitened and her lips worked. Purple light eclipsed her eyes and a hand rose from the reins, snakes of power writhing about her fingers. Her shaken mount stilled suddenly, frozen in place by her will and something more.

  “Anzo...”

  He was spared further thought by a tremendous din from the right. Shoving a younger Hamrak into line to take his place, he stalked back a few paces, to Varya’s side. His gaze went to the Thrungi’s place in the defense and found...

  ...nothing.

  No! Damned fools, no!

  With Reisdack and his nobles still mounted at the fore, the Thrungi were charging.

  The mixed
tribes, still lagging behind their allies, took the weight of the assault on their shields. But disorganized by the cavalry fight on their left—still raging down the slope, across the creek and into the woods as the Codir pursued their broken opponents—they shivered, fell back a few steps, and broke. The Thrungi streamed amongst them, a bloody, howling flood boiling over a broken levee.

  Grondomagnus’ left disintegrated into a thousand desperate fights that swirled and bled all the way down the hillside.

  And left the Free Cantons’ right an empty hole.

  Movement behind the Faces betrayed the play Grondomangus had waited for. A block of men peeled around the right of the melee and surged for the open hilltop on the Hamrak flank. The Face reserve moved for the kill, otherworldly fog playing about their heels.

  With a cry to his father’s shade, Durrim unsheathed his blade and led the mounted Hamrak out of the woods and charging into the gap.

  “You fool, wait!” Anzo shrieked, though there was no way he’d be heard. The little mounted troop would stand little chance against the tide.

  Anzo spied the archers, filling the last of their quivers and forming in the woods behind where their chieftain had been moments ago. He dashed up to them and pointed his sword to the gap. “Follow me!” When they didn’t respond, he stalked to the nearest, a grizzled, gray-streaking huntsmen who the others seemed to defer to. “Follow me or sit back and watch your lord die!”

  That seemed to shake away their funk and they followed Anzo, scurrying along the rear of the line. He thought he heard Varya shout his name, but he had no time for it, led the others to the trees on the far right of the shieldwall, where hard-pressed as they were, their Hamrak kin still held on.

  “Form up here!” Anzo jabbed his blade into the snow, barked and cajoled as the huntsmen scrambled to compose a ragged line among the trees with the trampled field before them. “Get ready!” They fumbled to knock arrows and cringe in amongst undergrowth. Clad in only leathers, a few with bucklers and short swords strapped at their backs, they’d do little better than the mixed tribes had done against the Thrungi, if they didn’t keep their cool. “They’re not getting past this point, lads! The Weasel is with you!”