by Matthew Ward
Viktor pivoted on his heel. The disembowelling blow tore his surcoat’s rich cloth and glanced off his breastplate.
For a heartbeat, he was off-balance. A heartbeat was a lifetime to someone like Drannic. The champion’s blades, always in motion, wove a gleaming web of steel. Viktor parried the first blow and evaded the second. The third slipped past his guard. It cheated the join between the upper and lower plates about Viktor’s forearm.
Flame coursed through Viktor’s arm. Bright blood welled up between armour plates. His shadow hissed, pulling free as pain sundered his concentration. Flame flickered and died beneath a torrent of cold. Viktor’s breath steamed in the balmy air.
He stumbled back, his attention divided between the darting blades and the shadow’s bid for freedom. He parried one blow mere inches from his brow. He ducked another. A ragged cheer broke out from the Hadari ranks at the prospect of their champion’s victory.
All the while, the shadow fought Viktor’s grasp. He wrestled the overwhelming temptation to set it free – to end the duel in an eye-blink. But he knew the folly of that course. He squeezed the shadow tight and forced it down.
The cold faded. The pain in his arm returned. Viktor welcomed it. He embraced his rising anger at the Hadari cheer. At himself for presenting weakness for Drannic to exploit. The claymore clove the air, driven on by a roar.
Drannic’s swords came up to block, blades crossed to trap the claymore. The left buckled. The right shattered with a dull crack, its upper portion falling into the dirt.
For the first time, he backed away.
Viktor pursued. The claymore battered Drannic’s remaining sword aside. Armour turned aside the stump of the other. Not so Drannic’s golden scales and Viktor’s claymore.
The blade’s point took the Hadari champion in the chest. Driven home by anger as much as momentum, it pierced the armoured scales. Drannic froze, transfixed by the colossal sword that was now his only support. A choked, bubbling gasp issued from beneath the helm. Swords fell from twitching hands.
The Hadari cheer died. Away to Viktor’s left, another rose to take its place – wild, almost disbelieving. A disbelief Viktor shared. Not because he’d won the duel, but because the people of the Southshires – wolf’s-heads, malcontents and rebels all – cheered him. The Phoenix-Slayer.
Blood dribbling from his forearm, Viktor twisted the blade. Drannic’s body slipped free. Using the claymore as a crutch, Viktor stooped beside the corpse.
“May you find whatever reward you deserve,” he muttered.
His free hand closed around the grips of Drannic’s unbroken blade. Rising, he held it aloft as a trophy. Immediately – impossibly – the Tressian cheer redoubled.
Viktor shook his head in wonder and cast the purloined sword aside. With one last glance at the impassive line of Immortals, he set Drannic’s horse to flight with a slap to its haunch.
He didn’t run. Didn’t look back. With every step, he challenged Kai Saran to break convention by loosing his cavalry to vengeance.
But the crown prince had no stomach for treachery that day. King’s blue shields parted. Viktor rejoined the exultant company of men and women who a week before would have cheered his death.
Calenne alone offered no word of congratulation. She merely slid from her saddle and held him tight with a strength Viktor had not known she possessed.
Across the trampled field, the drums sounded.
Thirty-Eight
Caparisoned hide bristling with spent quarrels, the grunda struck the shield wall a dozen paces to Viktor’s north. Shields shattered. Bodies cartwheeled away. Screams rent the air. Then the next wave of the lopsided charge slammed home, and Viktor had eyes only for the battle to his front.
Driven by the clamour of drums, the Hadari shield wall came on without hesitation. Willow-bound shields crashed home. Beast-icons daubed on taut leather fields seemed almost to leap forth alongside spear, sword and axe.
Viktor fought from the second rank, his overhand stance bolstered by his left hand tight around the claymore’s foregrip. He stabbed the blade low over the Hadari shield-rims. Hard, heavy work.
Halberds angled to catch a shield’s rim and drag it low enough to expose the warrior behind. Others stabbed through the gaps with the wicked point at the tip, rather than the heavy blade.
A Hadari screamed and slumped against the line of king’s blue. Then he was gone, replaced by another. Viktor’s blade took his throat.
Viktor didn’t cheer the death. Eyes stinging with sweat, he saved every breath for the strength it lent weary arms and a flagging heart. There was only the press of bodies. The dead and the dying trampled underfoot. And the determination to outlast the foe.
The woman to Viktor’s front fell, her head hacked half away. Viktor set his shoulder to the dead woman’s shield and grabbed the loops – her place in the line was now his.
Each impact on the shield set dark fire coursing along his wounded arm. His shadow clawed at the cage he’d made for it, seeking escape – seeking licence. Viktor kept a tight grip on both and lost himself in the wordless fury of desperate warriors.
The Hadari convulsed. The pressure on Viktor’s shield lessened. A primal bellow from the Hadari lines grew in pitch as alarm set in.
The enemy shield wall disintegrated. Harried by sporadic fire from the flanking redoubts, the survivors fled. Tireless simarka pounced in pursuit. Viktor felt no guilt for the slaughter, only relief that the line had held. Guilt would come tomorrow, if he survived to see it.
“You, lad. Take my place.”
Viktor unslung his borrowed shield and thrust it into the young man’s hands. Drawing back from the line, he stared to the north. There, the line was badly bowed from the grunda’s impact. The creature’s corpse lay where it had fallen, a hill of steaming flesh among the shields. Sergeants’ voices rang out. The line flowed forward, past the leathery corpse to reform on the far side.
Viktor glanced away behind the lines, searching fruitlessly for Calenne. He noted the twin banners flying proud above the thin brotherhood of knights of Captain Lavirn’s reserve.
Horns rang out anew. To the east, golden scale gleamed.
The Immortals were coming again.
The bearded Hadari bellowed his last and toppled backwards off the low wall. Kurkas braced a weary shoulder against stone. Arrows whistled overhead. They clattered off stone or thunked into shields. Whimpers and screams marked where they found flesh.
“Seek cover!” bellowed Kurkas.
All along the wall, soldiers hastened to obey. Some sharpened blades blunted in the fight. Others drank from water skins or canteens and wolfed down scraps of food. The wounded hobbled to the comparative safety of the barn.
Kurkas laid his sword aside and popped a metal flask free of its belt-cradle. He closed his eyes in silent rapture. When he opened them, Major Keldrov stood a pace back from the wall. She stared out across the field, the left side of her uniform drenched in a Hadari axeman’s blood. He’d seen the strike – as precise a blow as any tutor could have taught.
“When I said, ‘take cover’,” he said, “that meant you too, major.”
A low chuckle rumbled up and down the wall. Keldrov flinched as if waking from a dream and dropped to her haunches.
“Yes. Sorry.”
“First time on the field?”
“Used to run the stores at Northgard. Posted here three weeks ago.”
A scream sounded away towards the courtyard gate. Someone hadn’t found cover quickly enough. Kurkas proffered his flask.
Keldrov took a sip and grimaced. “That’s not water.”
He snatched the flask back. “Of course not. Who wants water at a time like this? It’s Selanni brandy. The good stuff.”
“The good stuff? Reckon it’d strip the rust off a sword.”
Another ripple of laughter. This time directed more at Kurkas than her. He gave a half-shouldered shrug. “So it’s versatile. Nothing wrong with that.”
She
bobbed up and down, restless.
“Something wrong?” he asked.
She scowled. “Don’t like being penned in. I feel trapped.”
He nodded. Too much of soldiering was spent in dull anticipation of bloody excitement. “You want some advice, Keldrov?”
“Do I get a choice?”
Kurkas laughed. “You’re learning. And if you want to go on learning, you’ll never pass up good walls when you get the opportunity.”
“And these are good walls?”
Kurkas thumped the brick at his shoulder. A chunk of plaster fell away. Dust spattered his black uniform grey.
“Lumestra, no. But they’re a damn sight better than sitting out in the open field, waiting for some bloody great horse to trample you flat.”
Her lip twitched. Not in a smile, but near enough. “I wouldn’t want that.”
“I imagine not.” Kurkas shot a look over the wall. Still nothing. “Anyway . . . it could be worse. We could be stuck in the redoubts. No bloody room to breathe in there. This is luxury. Worth fighting for.”
“If you say so.”
“That’s the spirit.”
He peered up over the wall. To the north-east, a fresh line of Hadari shields formed. The banner of the spread-winged owl rippled and snapped above their heads. Emerald-encrusted armour glinted.
“His lordship’s getting a visit from the prince. Which means we’ll have friends before too much longer. See if you can scrounge me up some food, would you? I’m starving.”
A crash of drums. A blare of horns. The distant line of Immortals started forward, shields raised high against incoming shot. Golden armour glinted beneath the owl banner and a forest of fluttering spear-pennants. The emperor’s chosen were coming.
No one spoke. Likely they were contemplating the Immortals’ unflinching advance through the hail of quarrels. How the oncoming wall of spears and golden shields was at least twice as deep as their own. Viktor felt their fear – could practically taste it. But he did not share it. Kai Saran was coming, and Kai Saran could be slain. His ambition had brought the Hadari to the killing field. His death would drive them from it.
A ballista shot struck a bloody smear in the outer face of the Immortals’ line. Living warriors flowed to replace the dead.
Silence dissolved beneath whispered prayers. Viktor gritted his teeth. He couldn’t allow the fear to take root. And take root it would, if they did nothing but wait for the lines to clash. His ragtag army had given a grand account of themselves. It wouldn’t be enough. Not if they lost heart.
He pushed through to the front line and set his back to the oncoming foe.
“I’ve had my fill of waiting!” Horns blared. Viktor let their brazen notes crash away before pressing on. “The would-be emperor’s coming for us! We kill him, and this is over! I’m going to end this. I’ll go alone if I have to, but if you want to be free, you’ll follow.”
He glimpsed wary nods as the first glimmerings of courage renewed.
Viktor held his claymore aloft. “For the Republic. For the Southshires.”
“For the Phoenix!”
The lone voice belonged to Revekah Halvor. Away to the south, she too broke the line and regarded her soldiers with disfavour.
“What?” she bellowed. “You all going to let this pampered north-wealder show us up?”
Viktor scowled the insult away.
“You’ll let that gilded princeling take your land?” Captain Halvor’s voice cracked. “Your sons and daughters? Or are you going to give Lumestra a battle worth watching?”
It seemed the goddess heard her words, for the clouds broke. Sunlight blazed across the croplands. Across the dead and wounded. Across swords and halberds hoisted high with renewed strength. Voices roared as one.
“For the Phoenix!”
Halvor cheered with them. Her gaze met Viktor’s. Her left eye twitched in what might have been a wink. Kraikons started forward, their stride outpacing flesh-and-blood comrades.
The sun warming his face, Viktor set out across the field, leaving the redoubts behind. The tramp of feet behind told him he was not alone.
The crackle of white flame swallowed the Tressian’s scream. Melanna scraped the sword back and spurred forward over the rocky ground. Her horse slammed into a knot of Tressian warriors. One went sprawling. Another perished as fire slid between his ribs.
“Ashanael Brigantim!” Aedrun’s bellow sent his men splashing through the rushing stream.
The ragtag enemy line broke. Dark figures slipped through the rocks towards the eaves of Davenwood.
Melanna’s blood blazed bright. She ignored the wearying ache in her left shoulder and hoisted the moon-banner high into the new-come sunshine.
“Drive them back! For the goddess!”
Her voice faltered as she glanced back eastward. At the bodies strewn across gulley and crag. At where the waters ran red. The white of the lunassera. The gold of Aedrun’s Immortals. The mismatched garb of the enemy dead.
Lunassera and Immortals flooded past in pursuit. Melanna let the banner drop and stared down at a sword-arm bloodied to the elbow. She’d no recollection of how many she’d slain. There was just the blur of fire, and the perfect jubilation that set her blood atremble. The same feeling as had overtaken her at Charren Gorge. The one that had set her soul coursing with incomparable joy . . . and whose ebb had left her empty and soul-sick.
She wasn’t ready to feel that way again. Not yet. Blood could fill that void – at least for a time.
The wind changed, and carried with it a rumbling, wordless battle cry. Not in her own tongue, but in dull, artless Tressian voices. Away to the south, past the hilly flanks and the nearer of the palisaded redoubts, the enemy marched into an arrow-darkened sky. At their head came a terrible, clawed shadow whose wings touched the sky.
“Ashana preserve us.” Her blood cooled with the words.
“Savim?” Aedrun halted and stared up at her with obvious concern. His helmet was gone, his brow swollen and bloody above his right eye, but he stood tall. “What troubles you? The Tressians are desperate. Your father’s guard will make swift work of them.”
“But the shadow! Do you not see it? There – at the head of their advance.”
Aedrun frowned. “I see a man, Ashanal. A brave man who’ll earn a good death.”
Now Melanna looked – really looked – she made out a man’s form. But the shadow remained. Alive. Thrashing like strands of hungry mist. How could Aedrun not see it?
“He is a scion of the Dark.”
Melanna jumped at the suddenness of the words. So Sera saw it too?
“Like the Sceadotha?” Aedrun cast his eyes skyward in horror and traced the arc of the crescent moon across his chest.
The name sent ice rushing through Melanna’s veins. The Sceadotha. Malatriant. The Tyrant Queen.
The blood-spattered folds of Sera’s robes shifted as she nodded. Her chandirin stood motionless as a statue. “An echo only. But an echo is enough.”
A pair of kraikons broke free of the Tressian lines. Massive feet pounding the well-trampled soil, they lumbered headlong into the wall of golden shields. Fleet-legged lions loped in their wake. The line crumbled. Pennants dipped as bodies flew wide. Golden light crackled, bright against the shadow that came behind.
“This is your moment, Ashanal,” said Sera. “You bear the goddess’s flame. Drive back the shadow before it claims your father. The goddess is with you. We are with you.”
But the goddess had rejected her. The Huntsman had granted her the power she wielded. What if his favour alone wasn’t enough?
She swallowed. She’d thought her fear of battle conquered. But that was of ephemeral foes. If the teachings of her youth were anything to go by, the man-of-shadow was far different. But a leader had to lead, did she not? And was it not the duty of an empress to perceive threats others missed? To perceive them, and to bring about their obliteration?
Below, the Tressian line quickened pace.
> “Warleader Aedrun . . .” Melanna heard the tremble in her voice. She gripped the moon-banner’s pole tight. “The heights are yours. I have business on the field below.”
He bowed. “As you command, Ashanal. Goddess ride with you.”
As Viktor had gambled, the kraikon charge succeeded where the Immortals had failed: it broke a line of shields. The Immortals responded with stoic precision. Golden shields crashed together, trapping the bronze giants within the formation and their flesh-and-blood masters without. War hammers crashed. Heavy spikes prised apart armoured plates to dissipate the magic within.
Viktor’s lowered shoulder struck the closing join between two shields. The impact jarred every bone in his body, but then he was through, and the claymore death in his hands. It flashed like bloodied silver, widening the corridor of the kraikons’ wake.
Southwealders flooded in behind. The air filled with screams and the scrape of metal on metal. Viktor’s shadow snarled to be free. He kept it caged, tamped deep in his soul, and strode on into the slaughter. Each stab and thrust of his sword brought him closer to the owl-banner and to his prey.
Viktor caught a war hammer’s haft across his claymore’s hilt and its wielder by the cloak. A twist, a heave, and the attacker was behind him, hurled to the mob following in his wake.
Two more Immortals pressed in. Too close to swing his claymore, Viktor backed away. Another kraikon, come late to the charge, battered its way through the formation. The first Immortal vanished screaming beneath its steel-shod feet. The second dived clear and found Viktor’s sword at his throat. A cut. A gurgle. Viktor strode on into the battle’s din, the screams of his victims herald to his coming.
“Saran!”
The Hadari prince spun about. His sword arced to block the claymore’s strike.
Viktor grunted and leaned into the blade. Saran twisted aside. Claymore skittered across an armoured sleeve. A golden buckler slammed into Viktor’s upper arm. He staggered back, scrambling for footing among the corpses. He’d forgotten the man’s strength.