by Joseph Malik
“Your people do,” said Akiel. “Mind if we survey the ballroom?”
“Please,” said Jarrod. “And let me say, I’m open to suggestions.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant, but the day belongs to you.”
Peric offered to take them to the lookout, which was a lightly-wooded point on the promontory above the rock shelter.
Akiel and several of his knights crept to the edge of the woodline and looked out onto the bridge, where Lord Elgast had hung his banners and deployed his men to either side. Elgast stood in the center of the bridge, arms akimbo, the sun gleaming from his polished helmet, clearly in command of the day.
Peric was concerned that the brilliant hues of the elves’ armor would give them away, but what he didn’t know was that from a distance, the elves would appear like a field of wildflowers up on the wooded rock.
Akiel looked back at Peric, his eyes flashing behind his visor. “How I love a surprise party.”
Elgast couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Atop the northern promontory, a huge purple banner unfurled along the cliff face. In a moment, the breeze caught it and it blew in the wind like a streamer.
“There!” he shouted, at sight of two figures above the banner.
Something impacted in the dirt on the near side of the bridge. An arrow.
“One arrow?” said Elgast. He laughed.
One of his officers, on horseback, brought it over to him.
It had a note attached, which he unrolled.
The first thing he noted was the handwriting. The script was gorgeous, literate, definitely highborn.
The elegant lettering went on to lay out an accusation of questionable parentage involving his mother’s fondness for whiskey, her poor impulse control, and a pack of warthogs with nothing better to do that night.
“Is this a joke?!” Elgast boomed at the cliff.
He could clearly see one of the figures pantomiming an obscene gesture against the cliff face.
“Go get him!” he yelled. “Bring them to me so that I can kill him right before her eyes!”
“God bless those guys,” said Jarrod to no one as Elgast’s men scrambled up the mountainside. They quickly had to ditch their horses and proceed on foot. He could see them slowing down, even from here, where they were just specks struggling up the hill. That far slope was steep as hell.
He envisioned the two elves who’d pulled off the ruse, no doubt laughing their asses off. They’d have a story to tell for a hundred years.
He gave Elgast’s men another ten minutes or so to get good and tired. Lamellar armor, over mail, was like wearing a thirty-pound pack on your back, and a second one on your chest. It was exhausting. It was solid protection but it was hell on the shoulders, quads, and lower back. Jarrod couldn’t imagine running up a hill in it. He couldn’t imagine crawling up a hill in it.
He let them suffer until it wasn't funny anymore, until the first specks were about halfway up the hillside and the ones behind had slowed to a crawl. He could feel their legs aching and if he squinted he swore he could see them gasping and stooping over for breath.
Jarrod stepped to the edge of the southern promontory, fully exposed, his breastplate gleaming in the sun.
He whistled as hard as he could, waving his arms.
“Hey!” he shouted. “Up here, assholes!”
“Bastard!” Elgast exploded. “What is he, a sorcerer?” he grumbled.
“You want us to go kill him, sir?” asked one of the knights.
“No,” said Elgast. “I’m going to do it myself but I’ll let you watch. You,” he pointed to two officers, “Go and bring half the others back, and form a second echelon behind us. Leave the rest in chase, in case this is some kind of trick.” The officers saluted and rode off in a tangle of dust and vulgarities.
“On me,” said Elgast to the others. “Watch and learn.”
Jarrod stood at the top of the bald knob, watching Elgast and his team abandon their horses not halfway up and take to leading them on foot.
He counted eleven knights, scrambling and panting up the hill, resting every few steps with their hands on their knees. There were probably more that he couldn’t see.
He waved again. “I haven’t got all day! Hurry up, fat ass!” he yelled.
“Come down here!” Elgast boomed. His voice was ragged; he was clearly out of breath.
“Why would I come down there?” shouted Jarrod. “Your mother’s up here! We’ve been at it all morning! Gonna give you a baby brother!”
Elgast turned to his second in command. “I am not going to stop at killing that man.”
Elgast’s first tranche of men, haggard and worn, had found the rock shelter. The fire was still going. Most pulled off their helmets. A few sat down, gasping. One retched.
Jarrod, Saril, Bevio, and Peric galloped down to the edge of the campsite, thundering like gods. In his plate harness, with the fully-visored helmet and his massive greatsword, and atop the leviathan blue Perseus draped in mail and plates and Gateskeep green, Jarrod was the military might of the mountains, personified.
Elgast’s knights scrambled for weapons and helmets. Those on foot swung onto their horses, putting themselves together and trying to look organized and dangerous as they did so.
Even their horses looked tired, Jarrod noted.
“I am Sir Jarrod, The Merciful, Knight Lieutenant in the King’s Order of the Stallion of Gateskeep,” said Jarrod as his men’s destriers stamped and snorted. His greatsword gleamed in the sunlight. “I will accept your surrender.”
“Thirteen,” said Saril to Jarrod, quietly.
One, broad-shouldered and beefy in lamellar armor with a long, single-bladed axe, stood by his horse. “I am General Elgast, Lord of Skullsmortar,” he said, swinging up with an ease that surprised Jarrod, considering his size. His horse was sturdy but small. “I’ll kill you now.”
“I doubt that,” said Jarrod. “Is your king here?”
“You’re lucky he’s not,” said Elgast.
“Says you,” said Jarrod. “Let’s do this.”
With a yell, Elgast and five of his knights charged Jarrod’s team, who spurred their armored horses into the onslaught.
Elgast had a lot of men with him, but there wasn’t much room in the clearing for everyone to fight on horseback.
There was a lot of yelling, screaming, clashing, and horse noise.
Elgast outweighed Jarrod by fifty pounds, but Jarrod sat higher. Elgast’s axe smashed off Jarrod’s big teardrop shield, his tassets, and then his shoulder, but Jarrod got the crossbar of his gran espée de guerre in the way of the last one to take some of the force out of it.
The axe skipped off Perseus’s crinet, at which point Perseus drove his head into Elgast and Jarrod smashed him in his face with the pommel of his greatsword, then punched him with his gauntleted fist, scarring the cheekplate with both blows. Elgast spat blood and Jarrod hit him in the face with the edge of his shield and drove his pommel onto Elgast’s gloved hand. Elgast dropped the axe and Jarrod hit him across the ear with the greatsword, leaving a crease in his helmet.
Elgast cursed and disengaged.
Two more tackled Jarrod from their saddles, not unhorsing him but holding him and stabbing at him with small, heavy swords. Jarrod kicked Perseus in a circle, then delivered a thrust of the greatsword through one’s lamellar, center mass. The sword sank several inches and he yanked it out again as the knight fell back.
Elgast, a sword in his hand now, urged his horse forward with a yell. Jarrod kicked Perseus, who knew this game. As the spurs dug, the roan launched hard enough to snap Jarrod’s head back.
The impact was terrific. Jarrod and Perseus wrecked Elgast and his little steed the way a freight train demolishes a stalled bus, buckling them in half, rolling them underfoot, and then continuing right over the top of them both.
Jarrod turned at the edge of the fray and surveyed the scene. Peric was down, his magnifi
cent mare was down, and three knights were on their feet, hacking at him. Jarrod ran them down from behind, bowling one into a tree and splitting another’s helmet with the gran espée de guerre. The helmet came apart at the riveted seam and the knight collapsed. Peric kicked the last knight’s legs out from under him and as he fell Peric went to his knees and drove his axe into the knight with both hands.
And that was that.
Jarrod spurred Perseus around. Bevio and Saril were shoulder to shoulder, and several of Elgast’s men, horsebound, faced them but wouldn’t engage. “Behind me!” Jarrod yelled at Peric. He pulled a warhammer with a long pick on the balance from its frog and handed it to Peric, who holstered his axe.
Elgast stumbled to his feet, dirty, bloody, and dazed. He had found his axe again, or one very like it. He rallied his men around him and called for his horse, but his horse had apparently decided that this whole thing was bullshit because he was long gone.
“Smart horse,” Jarrod muttered under his breath, patting Perseus’s crinet. “You, buddy, not so much. And I love you for it.”
One of Elgast’s men swung down from his horse, and Elgast swung up. “I’ve got fifty men behind me!” Elgast shouted at Jarrod.
“Not quite,” boomed Carter, riding into the clearing astride a horse nearly as big as Perseus with six knights of the Stallion behind him. He brandished his two-handed sword in one hand, monolithic in his demonic armor. “But it’s gonna feel like it in a minute.”
Elgast’s men spun as Carter’s troops rode up behind them.
“We still have the numbers,” said Elgast. “Give up now. Give us the princess.”
“I don’t see that happening,” Carter admitted.
Jarrod looked around. Three of Elgast’s men were dead, and a handful injured but still in the fight. They were certainly taking the worst of it, though. The bigger horses and heavier weapons of the Gateskeep forces were doing a number on the Uloraki, who were fighting like they were used to being the biggest dogs in the yard and now had no idea what to do.
Peric was on foot, which worried Jarrod, but the old guy was tough as hell and now he had a hammer specifically built to demolish the kind of armor the Uloraki wore.
Gateskeep had eleven men, with ten on horseback; Elgast’s forces had sixteen and fourteen, by Jarrod’s quick math, respectively. A few more had found their way up the hill, but all of Elgast’s men were in shreds. They heaved for breath, they sagged in their saddles, their horses foamed.
Jarrod wanted to keep them tired.
He kicked Perseus forward, and Elgast and five of his knights crashed into Jarrod, Saril, and Bevio.
Jarrod could tell that Elgast was exhausted; he wrestled him back and forth with both hands, then wrapped him up and bent him forward, setting all his weight on Elgast’s back, which had to already be searing from the climb. He felt the bigger man sink, and beat on his low back a few times with his pommel before shoving him completely out of his saddle.
Uloraki knights scattered and Elgast’s new horse again took off as he rumbled to his feet. Jarrod backed Perseus up and took stock since no one was attacking him. He figured Elgast had given one of those idiotic, “No one kills him but me,” edicts. Have it your way, bozo.
Saril killed one, jamming the big bastardsword right through the lamellar, getting a bite, and working it back and forth in a clinch as the others beat on him. He yanked it out, and turned to fight the others and drove them off, screaming.
Peric used the long backspike of the hammer to pull an Uloraki out of his saddle, and flipped it around, driving the hammer into his helmet as he lay stunned. Gore sprayed through the soldier’s visor.
Jarrod felt Perseus hunch up and kick, looked behind him, and saw an Uloraki footman skidding through the dirt. He didn’t get up.
The groups broke again, riding to different sides of the clearing.
Carter’s greatsword was sheathed in blood. There were parts of Uloraki soldiers in the dirt, and wounded men screaming and sobbing and thrashing their way to the edges of the arena. Several horses were dead. One of the Uloraki knights’ shirts of lamellar was hanging open, cleaved at the shoulder.
Looking out over the Uloraki, Jarrod remembered how he and Carter had argued for hours one night, over pitchers of beer, plates of hot wings, and bar napkins full of scribbles, in regards to the merits of heat treatment versus materials for title of “best” swordmaking technology. Carter stood fascistically loyal to L6, his steel of choice, while Jarrod argued till his last breath that night that it was confirmation bias because Carter had thrown down a ridiculous five thousand dollars for his sword. Jarrod had maintained that there was no difference between tool steel and L6 if the material was properly heat-treated.
Now, though, Jarrod had to admit that Carter’s exorbitant purchase had been money well spent. Jarrod’s big sword could punch holes and crack helmets, but Carter was literally hacking the Uloraki to pieces right through their scales. Wielded from horseback, with eight feet of moment arm and a ton of mass behind it, the immaculately-forged greatsword was Death’s own scythe.
Elgast’s forces were now outnumbered.
One of Elgast’s men gave the general his horse and Elgast swung up.
“We can do this all day!” shouted Jarrod to Elgast.
Beside Jarrod, Peric straightened his helmet and hefted the hammer.
“I am General Elgast of Ulorak, Lord of Skullsmortar!” Elgast yelled.
“And you’re getting your ass kicked,” said Jarrod, “in case you didn’t notice.”
“I have fifty more men coming up this hill!” Elgast nearly screamed. “You are all going to die! You can give up now,” he said, addressing the Gateskeep forces, “and I’ll take the princess and let your men go. Except you,” he pointed at Jarrod with his axe. “You, I kill.”
“No deal,” said Jarrod, reining Perseus closer to Saril’s horse. “You wanna do this again?”
Elgast pointed at the trail leading from the bridge, exasperated. “I have HALF AN ARMY coming up the damned—”
His insistence was interrupted by the sound of worlds ending as Akiel and several more Faerie knights crested the path in floral-patterned armor that exploded and shimmered in twenty colors. The armor, however, wasn’t nearly as impressive as the grizzly bears they rode, foaming from their mouths and matted with gore.
“Holy fuck,” said Elgast, reining his horse back a step as one of the bears broaaared at them.
Dog charged across the clearing to Peric, his armor smeared in blood, and struck a threatening stance at the Uloraki, heaving and panting. Fighting beside Big Brother Bears had been the best day of his doggie life.
Jarrod wondered if the Faerie chivalry were broken down by genus. Gladiola Cavalry. Freesia Infantry. The Tulip Brigade.
And yet, insanely, they pulled it off. They looked murderous. Terrifying.
The bears really helped with the murderous part.
Perseus took a step sideways as one of the bears lit up again, and then the horse roared back, nails on slate. Jarrod patted the brave son of a bitch.
“Your forces have dispersed, sir,” said Akiel, pointing to Elgast. “You should surrender.”
“Who—the HELL—are you?!” Elgast stammered.
“I’d rather you not know,” Akiel said after a moment’s thought. “I will tell you, though, that my forces give chase and I don’t give your men good odds.” His bear wuffed in agreement. “Lieutenant, I relinquish our heavy cavalry to your command.”
Jarrod looked at Elgast. “You can leave now, General,” he said. “Walk away from this while you can. It’s gonna get real ugly from here.”
Elgast surveyed his battered troops. “We’ll leave,” he said, “but on one condition.”
“You’re not really in a position to make demands,” Carter pointed out.
Jarrod sheathed the gran espée de guerre on the saddle, hung his shield beside, and was already getting off Perseus. “I
know what you want,” he said. “I thought you’d never ask.”
Elgast leaped off his horse and handed the reins to one of his men, then swung his axe in a couple of loops to limber up as he strode forward.
Jarrod stopped well out of long attacking distance. “Win or lose,” he said, “your men leave after this. The princess comes with us.”
“You have my word,” said Elgast, loud enough for his men to hear. He choked up on his axe a bit. “I’d suggest you draw a weapon, sir.”
“Good idea,” said Jarrod. He unsnapped the Springfield from its holster on his swordbelt, punched it out in a textbook Weaver, and put a round through Elgast’s helmet.
The horses and bears jumped at the noise and the general went down in a crash of armor and dust, flat on his back.
Jarrod holstered the gun and whistled for Perseus while the knights on both sides steadied their mounts.
The glen fell quiet as he grabbed the knots of the saddle assist, swung up, and opened his visor.
“Tell King Ulo this!” he announced. “I am Sir Jarrod, The Merciful, Knight Lieutenant of the Order of the Stallion of Gateskeep. This,” he pointed, “is Lord Carter Sorenson, Chancellor of Gateskeep and chief military advisor to King Rorthos Riongoran-Thurdin. Tell your king: this stops here. If he continues to antagonize Gateskeep, we—” he pointed between himself and Carter, “— will return with an army, and this afternoon will seem like a happy memory.”
“It wouldn’t hurt to tell Gavria the same thing,” Carter added. “Don’t make us come back here.”
The Uloraki spent the next several minutes gathering up their wounded and slinging Elgast of Skullsmortar over the front of a horse. They muttered vulgarities as they rode past the Gateskeep knights and gave a wide berth to the Faerie on the bears.
“Sir Jarrod, The Merciful,” Jarrod told them each as they rode past. “Tell your friends.”
“I still can’t believe you brought a gun,” Carter said to Jarrod as the last of them rode away.