Over the course of the day, Bryden undertook a series of scouting flights over the valley to look for sign of enemy movement in the hills. He reported on the progress of their self-slaughter as it slowly petered out, one tribe or another proving themselves victorious. It finally died all together when a group of halrúna accompanied by their daemons and a powerful war-leader bearing the boar banner arrived to put all who resisted his orders to the axe.
Come nightfall we knew the enemy would resume their assault, and they had the numbers to keep it up until they exhausted us. I took the task of carefully placing a few wards at key points amidst Cormac’s forest of razor-sharp spikes. I kept half of the wards back to deal with a future assault, and I took two of the most deadly crafted by Vincent and Bryden for myself – a little backup plan if everything fell into the crapper or a fucking huge daemon got a hankering for a tasty haunch of Walker-meat. Even a ravak would be hurting after one of those wards to the face.
We prepared as best we could with such limited time and resources. Rest and recuperation would likely prove as much a boon as any devious plan we could possibly come up with.
Darkness fell swiftly, and my coterie gathered around me, grim and ready to dish out pain. With the last of the light our archers uncoiled waxed bowstrings from around their bodies to keep them from freezing and snapping, and strung their weapons. We strapped on damnable cold armour, readied weapons, took up position on the foot of the hill and began listening for the first signs of trouble. Eva had abandoned all subtlety for a massive war hammer almost as tall as she was. Its haft was thick ridged steel, and the head shaped into a spiked corvun beak. Only a knight had the inhuman strength to wield such a brutal weapon, and only such a weapon could hope to withstand a knight’s strength for long. I couldn’t wait to see it put to good use.
It wasn’t long before the enemy reached Cormac’s forest of pain. We couldn’t see their advance, but at some point a number of them must have cut themselves on stone spikes. Any muffled cry of pain quickly escalated to unearthly agonized screams that gave away their position.
Diodorus nodded in satisfaction. He appreciated a job well done. With the screams came a feeling like we were being watched from afar, a nebulous itch at the back of my head that said somebody, or something, was paying me attention and that it didn’t much like what we were doing.
In deep darkness, Eva was the only one capable of seeing the enemy creeping through the snow towards our defensive position on the hill, shredding themselves against razor-sharp stone and spikes. She leaned on her war hammer and kept up a steady narration as the enemy came onwards, relentless and grimly trampling over the fallen bodies of their own side.
An hour passed, two, and then Bryden and I both stiffened and looked up at the same time. “Flying daemons!”
Vincent threw a burning ball of flame into the night sky to reveal a swarm of them. A dozen different breeds plummeted towards us, including two-headed bone vultures, chitinous insects with razor-sharp limbs, a single large flying lizard and a bunch of flitting translucent things I could barely catch a glimpse of.
With enough warning our bows and spears were readied and Clansfolk slings set whirling. A barrage of death met the first wave. Daemons fell across the valley: eyes and carapace shattered by stones or pierced by arrows. Dead or dying. Of those that reached us, many were impaled on spear tips, claws and beaks snapping in futile attempts to kill even as they squealed their last.
Diodorus and Adalwolf took aim at the largest target, both arrows striking deep into the flying lizard’s soft belly, bringing it down with ease. The impact of its fall shook icicles free from the hillside.
Some made it through, steel and talon clashing as they went for eyes and faces. A single strange daemon made to attack me, a thing akin to the giant mantis found in the hot damp forests of The Thousand Kingdoms far to the south. Jovian and Coira leapt up to meet it, spear and sword bringing it down at my feet, crumpled and leaking fluids. I looked into its bulging green eyes and saw a measure of intelligence there, enough at least to know fear. I plunged Dissever through its armoured head, killing it instantly. It wasn’t their fault they had been ripped from their home realms by blood sorcery and forced to serve this vile bunch of bastards. I supposed the same could be said of many of the Skallgrim themselves.
The flying daemons were no match for a forewarned and heavily armoured foe. We finished them off and then turned to meet the first ragged remnants of the Skallgrim advance arriving in disorganised groups, their clothes and bodies torn and bloodied by Cormac’s traps.
A few stepped on wards and were blown to bits, body parts and blood showering those following them. And having your friend’s intestines hitting you in the face wasn’t great for morale.
It was not a fight, it was more like casual slaughter, or a drove of human cattle that kept walking headfirst right into the abattoir. If their only goal was to wear out our sword arms and chip spear tips then they were doing a great job of it. Eva didn’t even bother using her great hammer – her fists were more than enough. At first I thought them stupid, but then I began to think the Skallgrim’s plan was to blunt Cormac’s defences by sheer numbers alone, stone tips and jagged edges breaking off against armour and bone, allowing the next warrior to get a little further each time until more and more reached us without wounds. It was working, but at horrific cost. A cost they could easily afford to pay.
At first light we stared in silent horror at the utter carnage all their stumbling about in the darkness had left behind. The valley floor was red ice, dirty brown snow, and carpeted with corpses. Hundreds of men were dead, some impaled on stone spikes and gently swaying in the breeze, others still feebly moaning at the head of red trails of gore smeared along the frozen earth.
With the coming of dawn the situation changed in their favour. The war-leader of the Boar Tribe arrived accompanied by a strange pack of six halrúna walking in step like they were one. They were still well out of bowshot but Vincent lobbed a hopeful ball of fire anyway. They countered and caused it to fizzle out long before reaching them.
Utilising a combined assault of fire, air and water magics their Gifted reduced the field of spikes to cracked rubble. I tried to interfere but the moment I touched the mind of one I found all six huddled behind a shared mental defence like layers of a spiked metal onion. Somehow they had found a way to join their minds together to resist me. Or more likely, Abrax-Masud had linked them with the Gift-bond, as I had once been linked to my old friend Lynas. Their Gifts might be weaker than mine, but six Gifted linked together was almost my match.
I could break them given time, but the effort would be enormous and straining. After a quick discussion of tactics, Eva decided I was best keeping my strength in reserve. At least this way I was kept fresh while their Gifted used themselves up against mere rock instead of human flesh. If we could push them into succumbing to the Worm of Magic then they would turn and ravage those closest to them.
The Skallgrim came on in a long shield wall, beating axes against wood, hide and steel. Horns blew and war drums began their ominous beat, booming faster and faster as they approached our lines under a hail of arrows and slingshot. Eva hefted her war hammer and I almost pitied the corpses about to face her.
Their war-leader and his halrúna stayed back to watch how we dealt with this first attack. Vincent and Cormac took a dreadful tithe of their warriors, blowing holes right through the shield wall, but more grim-faced Skallgrim stepped forward to link shields and take their place. Bryden and I kept ourselves fresh for bigger prey like the halrúna themselves, while Eva took charge from the front line.
The first clash began with a bang like a hammer hitting an anvil; sparks flew along with blood and corpses and shattered shields as Eva’s war hammer demolished the vanguard of their left flank. A vicious melee erupted as she waded through them. Never, ever get into hand to hand combat with a knight. Somebody should have warned them what the fearsome woman with the steel mask was capable of –
and if they had heard then they still wildly underestimated her. The left flank of their shield wall immediately buckled before her fury. Axes and spears clanged ineffectively off Eva, and they appeared clumsy oafs compared to her dance of death, every movement crushing skulls or sending two or three broken men to the snow with a single brutal blow.
A horn droned thrice and the enemy began an orderly retreat. We could do little but let them go. If we broke to give chase then some might slip through our lines, and with their numbers we couldn’t afford any disruption.
While sweat-drenched wardens caught their breath, I nipped ahead and laid a few more wards, including some of my own unique creations. Cormac grew another line of stone spikes ahead of us. A scant defence but better than nothing.
The next assault came on quickly and it was a scramble to ready ourselves to meet the charge. Vincent laid down a barrage of fire.
I grinned in satisfaction as wards detonated, ripping off legs and opening holes in the charge, the disruption growing wider as my own wards broke. Men went mad and started slaughtering their allies. Despite the confusion, their shield wall was long and the enemy were many. After another vicious, exhausting melee the enemy again retreated, dragging their wounded with them.
Healers rushed to our lines to do what they could and Clansfolk boys ran past handing out fresh skins of water. The wardens in heavy armour lay down in the snow to cool themselves – battle was hot and thirsty work even in this frigid weather.
Another wave of Skallgrim charged, their fresh warriors facing ours who were cold, quickly tiring and thinning in number. I was inside the heads and hearts of our army, feeling muscles burn from swinging steel, the mounting bruises and burning wounds, and with it the rising fear that we were going to lose. The enemy sensed a moment of weakness and pushed hard.
It was going to be a long and fraught day. I took a deep breath and got to work on our tired wardens and wounded Clansfolk. It was time for me to become what I was always meant to be: a tyrant.
CHAPTER 30
Eva plunged into the centre of the shield wall, her huge hammer smashing through shields and the men behind them, launching warriors through the air like they were nothing more than dolls. Axes and spears bounced off her armour and the magic-reinforced skin beneath, earning their wielders an early grave as elbows, fists and feet staved in chests and shattered bones even if they managed to avoid her hammer. She opened a hole in their line and her heavily armoured wardens took full advantage, shields up pushing through, swords swinging in the front, spears stabbing from behind. The gaps widened as more Skallgim fell. The enemy began to waver as casualties mounted and men pulled back from facing Eva.
Vincent loosed a roiling fireball into a clump of Skallgrim. It exploded to consume half a dozen men in an instant, and set as many more alight, their screams echoing across the valley. Their army’s morale crumbled, axes drooping, feet shuffling backwards in what would soon turn into a rout.
Horns sounded and a war-leader armoured in mail and a cuirass inlaid with a golden boar pushed forward to hold their line. His rune-etched axe trailed purple sparks of arcane energy as it destroyed swords and split shields. A warrior behind him thrust the boar banner into the air and roared. All resistance stiffened.
“Fight harder!” I shouted. “Push! The Free Towns Alliance will be here in only a day. I expect them to be greeted by a carpet of Skallgrim corpses.”
At my words the wardens and Clansfolk I had influenced threw themselves forward, heedless of personal safety, swords hammering down, boots lashing out, and teeth ripping out throats. I slipped into the minds of some of our wardens, directing them to attack where the enemy morale was weakest. Their fury and fear flooded through me.
“Kill them!” I snarled, sending my warriors into a frenzy fiercer than any berserker the heathen Skallgrim could offer. The snowy battlefield was a churning mass of heightened emotions. Bloodlust. Panic. Rage. Pain. Fear. I rode the swell, experiencing it from behind the front lines while resisting flinging myself right into the midst of it. The rising exultation of our approaching victory was intoxicating. Every mundane human I touched had a Gift, and small and stunted as they were, each of them seeped a little magic into me – I took it as my own and threw it against the enemy. My power was swelling.
I gathered all the additional magical might offered by my army and struck at the six linked halrúna. My blow smashed into the mind of the nearest like a charging bull. He reeled back clutching his head and the others followed. These fools thought the Gift-bond was a strength, and it could be, but what hurt one also hurt the other. I burst him like rotten fruit and the other five fell to the snow drooling and senseless.
I laughed and lifted my arms wide. With one wave of my left hand a line of wardens smashed through the enemy, and my right sent maddened Clansfolk charging to their deaths, taking three times their number down with them.
I stood there directing the battle with my coterie guarding me, being strong where the enemy were weak and inflicting them with panic wherever I desired. I saw through every eye and directed every hand. In that moment I was the greatest general who ever lived – because I cheated. “Victory is mine!”
Behind me: killing intent!
I spun, Dissever clutched in my fist. My guards shifted around me and Jovian peered back to see what I was looking at. There was nothing there. It had to have come from my own people. They were taut and ready for a fight, hearts hammering as they watched the conflict below. I shrugged it off, obsessed by the play of life and death enacted on the fields below me.
With the halrúna dead, or as good as, this battle was as good as won. Eva made it certain by blasting through another knot of axemen to reach their war-leader. His guards might as well have been cloth, and she swung her war hammer upwards into his cuirass. His chest crumpled. Blood exploded from his mouth as she launched him clear across his battle lines to land on one of Cormac’s spikes, stone piercing through metal. He hung there impaled, his heart’s blood spurting across his own men as they looked on in horror.
The boar banner fell into the snow and the will to fight vanished. The dam burst and thoughts of flight flooded the panicked minds of the enemy. This battle had been won. I was already plotting how I would control my forces in the next one.
I didn’t see the knife until it plunged between my ribs. I felt a punch to the chest, and looked down to see a horn hilt jutting out just below my heart.
“Fuck a pig!” I cried, staggering back. The front of my coat was already darkening with blood. “Who…” My coterie were all around me and scanning the area, but we were totally alone. Nobody else had been close enough to stab me, and I had enforced the former prisoners’ loyalty when I chose them.
That killing intent…
I searched. Again, I felt that distant attention watching me, but that presence withdrew before I could seek it out. The presence didn’t seem directly malevolent, so I disregarded it and instead searched for minds in my immediate area. I discovered somebody right in front of me despite the area looking clear, their thoughts quiet and calm as a mouse. “No you fucking don’t,” I gasped. They were disciplined and highly trained but not truly prepared for the likes of me. Few were. I hammered my way through their defences and started to crack them open.
Light wavered and shattered right in front of me. A line of footprints appeared in the snow, then Secca’s oddly familiar face, her black and white hood pulled back and a feral snarl twisting her lips. A second dagger was in her hand, raised and ready to plunge into my chest.
Secca? I… I had thought she liked me.
Jovian intercepted her with a shoulder charge and slammed her to the ground. He sat atop her, the point of his sword pressing into the soft flesh beneath her chin. Blood welled up in the hollow of her throat.
“Hold the traitor there!” I gasped as the pain suddenly hit like a red hot poker to the chest. “You maggoty cunt! Why the fuck did you do that?” I was deep in her head and I would rip out why she had bet
rayed us before I killed her.
“Monster!” she hissed, squirming in Jovian’s grip. She was stronger than she looked and Coira, and then Vaughn, had to pile on to hold her down.
My Gift was stronger than hers, and with her discipline and defences broken I cored her like an apple and held her secret seeds up to the light. A man’s face was forefront to her thoughts. It took me a moment to recognise the heavily built older man wearing a flat cap, a clay pipe clamped between rotten brown teeth.
Her father was the man I had left mindless in a ditch outside a gambling den in the Warrens while investigating Lynas’ murder.
“The fucker tried to rob and kill me!” I protested. “And you stab me for that?” By The Night Bitch, it really hurt… ah shite shite shite, it was getting harder to breathe. The bitch had punctured a lung. I dampened down my sense of pain and tried to ignore the length of sharp steel in my chest.
“Liar!” she snapped. “My father was no murderer; at most he would have demanded his coin back. After cheating him at cards you burned out his mind! I know you were there. You were seen, but as usual nobody cared about what happened to a poor dockhand. Especially not with you being some kind of big deal now.” She spat at me, but it only landed on my boot. “You left him drooling and pissing himself on the street.” She sobbed and tears glistened in her eyes. “You did worse than murder him.”
Visions of her father blankly staring at a wall in a room that reeked of piss. Secca trying to feed him porridge and it dripping down his chin. The pain, the loss, the rage as her investigation found the culprit. Her coin drained away by the costs of constant care and helpers, her from a background as poor as my own…
Oh fucking Night Bitch, had he really not meant to kill me? I remembered that hard calloused hand wrapped around my throat, the panic of being caught unawares and then lashing out. Was it murder or was it self-defence? I… I wasn’t sure.
God of Broken Things Page 25