by Mike Brooks
Zhanna nodded again, and showed her teeth in a flash of nervous excitement. Then she was away and running, heading for Saana’s house where her blackstone axe waited on the wall.
“Leave some people here in case they send warriors around by the river!” Daimon told her. “Your husband will send Darel and his mount. Lavit! Nadon! Stay here, but come running if the gate is attacked!”
The two Naridan boys who’d been handing out strips of cloth nodded at their lord, their eyes wide.
“Will you ride with your husband?” Daimon called down to her.
Saana eyed his dragon. She’d laughed at her own clan when they’d screamed, but there was a difference between not being alarmed by the thing appearing and actually getting on it.
“That is not Bastion,” she said.
“No, this is Silverhorn,” Daimon said, slapping his dragon’s neck. “Your husband has ridden him for nearly ten years, now.”
“Your wife does not know how to fight from a dragon,” Saana admitted. “She will use her own feet today.”
“Very well,” Daimon said, and replaced his helm. He looked down at her, two dark, worried eyes regarding her from over the snarling metal war mask that now hid most of his face. “Take care of yourself, Saana Sattistutar.”
“And you, Daimon of Blackcreek,” Saana replied. He nodded once, then hauled on Silverhorn’s reins and kicked its flanks. The dragon huffed and turned, lumbering in a half circle before trotting away.
As he disappeared, Saana heard the roar of a Tjakorshi charge coming from the east.
“I want a dozen of you here!” Saana shouted to the rest of her clan. “Get up on that wall, and sing out the moment you see movement on the river! Send one of the Flatlander children running for help! Tsennan, you’re in charge. Everyone else, with me!”
“But how will they understand me?” Tsennan demanded, gesturing at the two Naridan boys, and the handful of Naridan men and women handing out weapons.
“Work it out!” Saana snapped, exasperated. Where was Nalon when she needed him? Then she turned and ran.
RIKKUT
THE FLATLANDER WALL was well over the height of a man and built of regularly shaped blocks of stone, much more imposing than the chest-high piles of rocks that formed defensive rings on Tjakorshi hill-forts. Rikkut thought he might just be able to grab the top of it if he jumped as high as he could, but wouldn’t have made any wagers for the safety of his fingers, given the defenders atop it. His raid had no ladders, nothing else they could use to easily scale it, and the shield jump he’d tried against the Seal Rock clan would probably break his knees on the stone if he tried it here.
All in all, it would have given him quite the pause—had the wall not had entire blocks missing, and a gaping hole a short distance from the shoreline.
“Could it be a trap?” Kovra the Fair asked, settling her shield on her arm. She was as fierce as she was fair, but she had no objection to the name that had found her, as it made her enemies more likely to underestimate her. “Are they trying to lure us in?”
“That’s no trap,” Rikkut said, peering out from behind the deckhouse. The Flatlanders had no slingers, but were launching lengths of metal-tipped wood with great accuracy and force: arrows, according to the Stonejaw, who’d seen their like in the Drylands. Three warriors had fallen hauling the first yolgus up the black mud of the river shore to prevent the rising of the tide from sweeping the ships away, although an answering hail of stones from Rikkut’s slingers had discouraged the Flatlanders from showing their faces for a few moments. Now he waited, taking cover as the last of the raid made shore.
“How can you tell?” Rodnjan of Kotuakor demanded.
“Some of the stones are a different colour,” Rikkut pointed out. “They’re newer. They’ve been trying to repair that gap. It’s no trap, it’s a weak point.”
“Did Sattistutar breach that wall?” Olja asked warily. Few of the raid had heard much of the Brown Eagles’ chief, and Rikkut had found to his annoyance that ugly rumours had spread of how perhaps she had the favour of Father Krayk, to have braved the Great Ocean with her entire clan. The last thing he needed now was for them to believe she was capable of knocking a wall such as this down by herself.
“Far more likely it was already damaged, she used it to get in and take the town, then has tried to repair it,” he said. “We’ll do the same.”
“There must be an actual gate in the wall, though,” Zheldu Stonejaw pointed out.
“Probably,” Rikkut replied. “But we have an opening right here, and I’m going to take it.” He waited for an argument, but none came. “Rodnjan, I want some slingers back here to keep the Flatlanders’ heads down, and make sure no one gets around us to take our ships. Everyone else; we’re going through that gap.”
“Trap or no trap, that’s going to be a killing ground,” Akuto remarked.
“That’s what the Unblooded are for,” Rikkut replied with a grin. He drew himself up to his full height and slammed the butt of the krayk spear on the deck three times, then raised his voice again so all the raid could hear him.
“Chosen! I want the stones of their houses painted red! I want the Brown Eagle clan either dead, or on their knees swearing fealty to The Golden! And you leave their chief for me!”
“And the Flatlanders?” Olja asked.
Rikkut shrugged. “Kill ’em.”
He stepped out of the shelter of the deckhouse with his weapons in hand, ran over the wood and leaped off, landing in the black mud. It was thick and deep, and the steps he took to reach the high tide line were laboured, but he made it before any of the Flatlanders’ arrows could take him. One whistled overhead as he took his first strides through the thick grass, then another, and another. Rikkut cursed. The footing wasn’t as sure as he’d hoped, and he was left with the choice of watching his step or watching for arrows.
“The Golden!”
Warriors charged past him; perhaps two score of Unblooded, hot with battle lust, thirst for glory, and probably a decent helping of fear. The Flatlander arrows shifted their aim, firing at the youths. Rikkut saw two fall, with several more taking the shots on their shields.
There was a simultaneous grunt of effort from behind him, and a hail of slingstones answered back. Many clattered against the wall and several more flew well over it, but at least three of the figures atop the wall fell out of sight as if struck, and most of the rest ducked down.
Rikkut laughed. Even with a wall to hide behind, these Flatlanders were soft and craven. But where were the Brown Eagle clan? No matter. He’d find them soon enough.
The rest of his warriors were with him, roaring battle cries. The defenders had tried to plug the gap in the wall with a wagon, but that wouldn’t be much of a barrier. His raid was halfway there now, the Unblooded a little further ahead.
The defenders poked their heads up again, and more arrows rained down, but many flew wide. Another Unblooded fell with a wooden shaft protruding from his chest. Furs were no protection, and Rikkut had no shield. He laughed again. Perhaps this was how he should be fighting anyway, with nothing between him and the Dark Father except his own skill.
His slingers loosed, and the defenders dropped out of sight once more. Three figures jumped up into view on the wagon, and Rikkut recognised the clothes of Tjakorsha. There they were!
The Brown Eagles had slings, and they loosed at the Unblooded, but the stones clattered off shields with no damage done. The Unblooded were nearly at the wall.
Defenders rose up again with bows, and now Rikkut was close enough to make out their individual features. His eyes met those of one man as he drew back the string on his arrow-sling. He looked afraid.
The man released the string and Rikkut ducked as he ran. He heard the thrum of the arrow in flight, heard a scream behind him, then heard one more chorus of grunts and the man whose arrow he’d just ducked took a stone in the forehead and fell backwards. A warrior just in front of Rikkut was struck in the back of the head as well,
and pitched forwards, but the rest of the stones had flown true, more or less. Rodnjan had timed it well: the defenders were in disarray just as Rikkut’s warriors reached the wall.
The three Brown Eagles had stowed their slings and lowered their shields to protect themselves, readying their spears to strike, but Rikkut’s Unblooded slammed shields-first into the wagon on which they stood. One Unblooded fell with a spear in her neck, but the force of the others’ charge drove the wagon back across the ground beyond, and sent the warriors atop it staggering. Several of Rikkut’s warriors slowed in the last moments of their charge to hurl their spears, eager to take the first blood of this fight. Off-balance and unsteady, two of the Brown Eagles were struck before they could get their shields up again, and the Unblooded’s weapons finished them.
Rikkut hefted his harpoon and lunged at the third.
He collided with the backs of the Unblooded, crushed up against the wagon as they were, but the great length of bone-tipped wood reached over their heads and plunged into the gut of the last Brown Eagle warrior. She gasped in pain and folded up around it, reaching for the weapon’s haft as though seeking to take it with her as she toppled backwards. Rikkut wrenched it out of her, and out of her grip, and heard the dull thud as her body hit the ground beyond.
The town’s defences were breached.
“In! Kill them all!” Rikkut roared as the rest of his warriors poured into the gap. Other defenders were appearing now around the ends of the wagon, but they were already being pushed back. Members of his raid were scaling the tumbledown sides of the breach in the wall, looking to get onto a level with the panicking arrow-slingers. One warrior fell from the wall with an arrow through his throat, fired from a few arms’ lengths away, but the woman behind him sprang forward to cut down his killer before he could take another shot.
The Unblooded flowed around the wagon like the rising tide around a rock, eager to close with their enemies, and Rikkut was able to take a quick glance at his surroundings. The Flatlanders made their houses of wood, it seemed, fenced around them with wood and wattle, and raised them up off the ground for some purpose he couldn’t imagine. He clambered up onto the wagon and wet the teeth of his axe with the throats of the two Brown Eagles who still lay there bleeding, mercy killings to send them without further suffering to Father Krayk, or whatever foreign god would take their souls. Then he raised both his weapons to the sky.
“Saana Sattistutar! Come out and fight me!”
He was answered by a sound like nothing he’d heard before. It was as though the very ground itself had screamed, stunningly deep and shockingly loud, but still unmistakably a living voice. Rikkut whirled towards the noise, his palms suddenly sweating, searching the narrow gap between the boundary wall and the first houses. His warriors were in there, pushing back and cutting down the defenders, mainly Flatlanders.
A monster appeared.
It was huge, nearly the size of the wagon he was stood upon, and taller along its back. It stomped on four huge legs as wide as him, and great horns jutted from its brow; not curled, blunt horns like a sheep’s, but long and wide and pointed, and… were they tipped with metal? And yet despite all that, the thing was covered with feathers like a bird, a mottled dun with a crest of longer blue at the neck.
He’d never seen anything near the same size walking on land.
Oh, krayks and leviathans were bigger, but they swam in the sea where Father Krayk would hold their great bulks up, as he did with even the mightiest of ships, until he decided otherwise. This thing was a walking impossibility, and by the Dark Father, there was a Flatlander riding it. Their face was hidden by a metal mask under a metal helm, their forearms and shins were cased in metal, and the rest of their body was covered by a thick coat that had to be some sort of armour. They bore a metal shield on one arm and gripped a broad-bladed metal-headed spear in the other hand, with two more spears held upright somehow behind them.
Rikkut glanced down at the fighting. The Flatlanders who hadn’t been killed yet were turning and running, blundering through fences in their desire to get away, and in doing so leaving a clear path between the monster and Rikkut’s warriors.
“Oh, fuck.”
The rider slapped their mount’s rump with the flat of their spear. The beast bellowed again, put its head down, and charged.
Terror transfixed Rikkut’s warriors, and the monster ploughed into them before they could flee or jump aside. It crushed two beneath its enormous feet, speared another on its horns and tossed him into the air, only to rise up and flatten him even more thoroughly than it had his fellows as soon as he landed. Olja Tillistutar was down there: the rider’s spear punched clean through her chest and out the back of her furs, then got lodged and left there as the monster thundered past. She went down clutching at her chest, dead meat that just hadn’t quite realised it yet, while the rider reached behind them and pulled out another spear.
Rikkut’s raid were some of the most ferocious warriors in Tjakorsha, a mix of battle-hardened raiders and eager young Unblooded. They’d followed him across the Great Ocean, they’d charged a defended wall for him and they’d not shy from battle against the Brown Eagle clan or the Flatlanders, but they couldn’t stand against this. Those that found themselves in the beast’s way turned to flee, only to discover their path was blocked by yet more warriors piling in through the breach in the wall.
The monster crashed into them all, lashing out with its horns and trampling them underfoot. The rider stabbed downwards with their spear, killing one, two, three. Some of Rikkut’s warriors found courage in desperation and struck back with their blackstone axes, but their blows simply rebounded from both monster and rider with little noticeable effect.
The attack was about to turn into a rout, and not in the way Rikkut had hoped. How could he have planned for unkillable monsters?
Rikkut Krayk-Killer suddenly became very aware of the six cubits of harpoon he held in his right hand.
He didn’t stop to think about it. He simply dropped his axe at his feet, grasped the harpoon in both hands, took a quick two-step run-up and vaulted off the side of the wagon, screaming a wordless war cry.
Blackstone axes were unquestionably sharper than a kraken harpoon, but they lacked its heft, let alone the driving force supplied by a running jump. Where axe blows had achieved little, Rikkut’s thrust took the monster in its short, thick neck, just behind the fringe of blue quills, and plunged through feathers deep into flesh.
The noise of the beast’s pain-roar was incredible. It turned away from him, thrashing, and Rikkut just had time to throw himself flat before the thing’s spiked tail swept through where he’d just been. Someone else was hit and knocked from their feet with the cracking of bone. Rikkut scrambled back up to his feet again, lest one of the monster’s enormous feet crushed him, and found himself next to Olja. He put his foot on her chest and wrenched the Flatlander’s spear out of her dying body in a spray of blood, heedless of her screams.
The rider saw him, but was too busy trying to stay atop their thrashing mount to do more than make a clumsy stab with their own spear. The monster continued to turn, still dragging the harpoon from the side of its neck as blood leaked out onto the ground.
Rikkut set himself, and lunged as the thing whirled towards him.
The metal blade was far stronger and truer than the bone of the krayk harpoon, and it bit even deeper into the other side of the monster’s neck. The great beast let out a thunderously deep moan, trembled, and dropped to its knees.
The rider leaped off, stabbing at Rikkut with their spear as they did so. Rikkut, the battle-fever flowing through him, saw the blow coming as slowly as a playful tap from a lover. He swayed aside from it, grabbed the spear behind the head and wrenched it out of the rider’s grip, sending them sprawling into the mud.
The raid fell on them, blackstone axes rising and falling, terror turning to bloodthirsty frenzy in a moment. Rikkut saw his warriors crowding around, striking each other in their desperat
ion to land a telling blow.
“Enough!” He wrenched the metal spear out of the monster’s neck, releasing a pulsing river of blood. The beast let one out final sigh and collapsed sideways, nearly crushing him as it did so, but he managed to step out of its way just in time. His warriors pulled back from the downed Flatlander, revealing a prone body with its shield kicked aside. Their clothing was shredded, but that only revealed many small plates of metal beneath that were unbroken. The figure shifted, groaning in pain and misery. They had clearly taken a beating, but they didn’t look to have been cut, despite the multiple axe blows.
“Sorcery!” someone hissed as the rider struggled to push themselves up.
“Not sorcery!” Rikkut snapped. “Metal!”
He raised the spear that had slain the monster and brought it down two-handed. The metal armour parted with a snap, and the spearhead buried itself into the rider’s chest. They let out a howl of pain that tailed off into a bubbling gasp, and Rikkut pulled the blade out again. He looked the rider over as he did so, but to his disappointment could see no sign of a sword like the one he’d taken from Snowhair. Had the old man lied about that? Perhaps this warrior hadn’t had time to pick theirs up? Rikkut would just have to hunt down more champions and kill them.
“The monsters die!” he bellowed, raising the blood-slicked spear. “The Flatlanders die! The Brown Eagle clan will die! Kill them! Kill them all!”
SAANA
THE INVADERS WEREN’T hard to find.
The Naridans knew what this more frantic pealing of the bell meant, and they’d either run for the castle—to beg for a weapon or shelter behind its wall—or had taken up whatever they’d had to hand that could be used to fight off the attackers. Scythes and pitchforks weren’t the best tools for the job, but they were long and had metal blades or tines, which made them a match for much Tjakorshi armour. Saana, running towards the eastern wall, saw a Naridan swing a scythe double-handed and nearly take a man’s head off with it, but he and his two companions were outnumbered. The attackers flooded forward, screaming for blood, and blackstone axes were more than a match for Naridan clothing, too.