They stood to attention and tried to look halfway competent until she left, heading off to harass the next pair of guards further down the wall. They slumped back and wiped their suddenly sweaty brows.
“I almost soiled myself there,” Nicholas said.
Penny took a deep shuddering breath. “That big brutal orc can chop a cow in two, but Elder Dalia turns my blood cold.”
Nicholas shuddered. “She’s not Dalia any more. It’s Black Herran now. Best you remember that.”
Penny swallowed and returned to her watch. Monsters roamed the night on both sides of the wall and she wasn’t about to be caught napping. Amogg would have her head if she caught Penny slacking off. And Black Herran would do worse.
Hours passed as they listened to shrill screams and glimpsed torches running to and fro, firelight glinting off naked steel rising and falling. They near soiled themselves again when a blood-soaked monster of fang and claw pulled itself over the lip of the wall. Nicholas cried out and thrust his spear into the belly of the beast.
The bloody beast shifted back into the form of a man, and they both felt their stomachs drop at the sight of Lorimer Felle’s naked body standing before them. With a spear buried right in his gut.
Nicholas swallowed and pulled it back with a slurp of flesh. “Er… sorry, your lordship.” He quailed as the monster reached for him, his death certain.
“Quite alright, my good man,” Lorimer said, patting him on the shoulder. The hole healed up without a scar. He wiped a smear of blood off with a scrap of white robe that had been hooked on one of his claws. “No harm done. Keep up the good work.” He nodded to Penny and leapt down behind the wall, ambling off towards the town whistling a happy tune.
Nicholas stared at the bloody handprint on his shoulder. “Did you just see that?”
Penny’s eyes were huge. “Aye. His cock is fucking massive.”
Nicholas groaned and screwed up his eyes. “That is not what I meant. I thought I was done for.” They began to bicker, and both knew they were just using it as a distraction from just seeing a man get speared and then shrug it off.
The sky began to lighten, night giving way to a purple-tinged half-light that allowed them to see the first enemy scouts arriving from the north. They composed themselves and stood ready to fight, trying not to let their knees knock together and their hands shake with terror.
Penny lifted a horn to her lips and blew it three times, the warbling drone summoning the rest of the militia to the wall. War had arrived in Tarnbrooke, and death would not be far behind.
Black Herran, Maeven, Amogg, Lorimer and Tiarnach gathered atop the creaky wooden boards of the gate house to watch the Lucent Empire vanguard form up with military precision. A daunting wall of swords, spears, shields and steel as three thousand grim-faced men began their advance down the valley towards Tarnbrooke, murder on their minds. Their weapons thundered against shields in an ominous beat.
The rain and cloud had broken, and the noonday sun offered a weak warmth, but the valley was still muddy and treacherous, slowing the enemy’s approach.
“The whoresons are finally here,” Tiarnach said. “At least they gave us time to have breakfast, eh. Now, care to explain why that mad wee fucker o’ an alchemist is herding a bunch o’ pigs through the wall? Or why the fuck he has painted them black?”
Twenty-five squealing pigs were herded out of the sole gate in the wall into a makeshift pen fifty paces closer to the advancing Lucent army. Their bellies were grotesquely distended and their broad backs had been painted with thick and sticky black gunk that smelled of rotten eggs mixed with alcohol and sewage.
Jerak Hyden bent over the pen, peering at the animals through his round spectacles, nose wrinkled with distaste. His gloved assistant heaved a sack of grain down and stood holding a glass bottle in one hand and a flaming torch in the other.
“Trust in his skills,” Black Herran said.
Tiarnach offered her a flat stare. Lorimer snorted.
“Trust in his madness then,” she amended. “He loves to kill, and he takes pride in his work.”
“That I can believe,” Tiarnach said. Amogg rumbled her agreement.
Jerak Hyden’s assistant handed him the bottle. He poured the contents into the sack of grain, tossed the bottle aside and then scattered the mix across the pen. The hungry pigs inhaled the food while he cackled.
Banners flapped and sun glinted on armour as lines of soldiers began advancing at a quick walk, a droning prayer to their goddess drifting across on the wind. Closer. Closer, until the defenders of Tarnbrooke could almost make out their foe’s fierce scowls.
A few arrows soared from the wall, falling woefully short.
“Hold,” Tiarnach screamed at the nervous archers. “The next lackwit who looses an arrow without my say-so gets my fist through their face!”
The pigs began to squeal in distress, snapping at each other and throwing themselves at the flimsy fence penning them in.
“Torch,” Jerak Hyden demanded, holding his hand out, fingers clicking impatiently.
He lit a narrow trench filled with oil, straw and tinder. Flame and black smoke spread in a line across the valley between the pigs and the wall, leaving just a single patch for him to return safely. The pigs squealed and crowded the far side of the pen, terrified.
Jerak calmly moved to the north side of the pen, facing the army now advancing into bowshot and beginning to jog, their shields up. “Open the pen!” he demanded, waving the torch at the defenders on the wall to signal his readiness.
“Make some noise,” Tiarnach ordered. “Rattle your shields and curse your enemies!”
A roar erupted all along the defences.
Jerak’s assistant opened a hole in the pen just large enough for the struggling pigs to squeeze through one by one. His torch descended and the sticky substance on their backs burst into flames as they charged through and fled, squealing in pain, and panicked from the smoke and the din on the wall behind them. When the last pig had escaped the pen, both humans ran for the gatehouse and the doors were slammed shut behind them, thick bars thudding into place.
Jerak scrabbled up to the top of the gatehouse and stood beside Black Herran and the others, a mad grin on his face as he watched the screaming pigs leaping and bucking and rolling in the mud. The flames refused to die as they raced away from the smoke and shouting. The rolling only served to smear the burning substance all over their bodies.
“Does that not smell delicious?” the alchemist cried, gleefully rubbing his hands together. “I would happily feast on roast pork today.”
The Lucent army broke into a run. They were slower than they should be, exhausted and ill as they were.
“Loose!” Tiarnach screamed. A black rain of arrows lashed into the enemy, bringing some down, but nowhere near enough. Another volley thudded into shields and flesh, and then the Lucent Empire soldiers roared and broke into the final charge.
The enemy dismissed the screaming, burning pigs as a distraction. Faced with crackling fire, smoke, and noise behind them and cliffs to either side, the terrified swine had nowhere to go but to run at the soldiers.
One of the burning pigs knocked a soldier from his feet and impaled itself on his sword. He cursed and stabbed it again, his sword opening up its belly.
The pig exploded. A fireball consumed five men and greasy black smoke rolled skywards.
Parts of men and swine rained red upon the Lucent army, fragments of burnt bone and hot steel rattling off shields and helmets, blood and guts in their eyes and mouths.
Another pig spitted itself on a spear. Flames licked at the wound.
The explosion tore open the battlefield, leaving another handful of men screaming, faces shredded and blinded.
The Lucent battle line broke apart as more explosions ripped through it. Men shoved past their fellows to avoid the screaming, burning pigs of death.
Jerak Hyden sighed in pleasure, eyes gleaming. “What a marvellous day.”
“The fuck is that?” Tiarnach gasped.
“A special alchemical diet,” the wiry little man replied. “Working with stomach acids to produce flammable gas and liquid inside the intestines of pigs.” Then he leaned forward and scrutinised the warrior. “Do tell, how was your breakfast this morning?”
Amogg’s big green arm wrapped around Tiarnach’s waist and dragged him away before he could pound Jerak Hyden’s face to mush. “Come, burn-hair. We go make ready to fight. Little coward makes funny joke. Amogg snap his neck if he tried.”
Jerak removed his spectacles and polished them with a cloth. “Alas. True.” All present knew that threat would not hold him forever if he really wanted to experiment on Tiarnach. He just couldn’t help himself.
Enemy archers behind the front line managed to bring down the remaining pigs before they did any more damage. The Lucent army pulled itself together and resumed the advance.
“Looks like you failed, ya wee prick,” Tiarnach shouted.
The alchemist smirked as he pulled a small brass device from his pocket. He watched the advance and waited for twelve more seconds, then pulled a lever.
On the battlefield, the clay pots he had buried earlier exploded. Fragments of slate and scrap metal scythed across the Lucent forces, shredding exposed skin and cutting through leather boots. Hundreds reeled, clutching at bloodied faces and ruined eyes. The Lucent army limped back in disarray, dragging their wounded away under a hail of arrows. They fled towards their acolytes in the rear, desperate for them to lay hands and healing magic upon their torn flesh. The residents of Tarnbrooke raised a disbelieving cheer.
Jerak winked at Tiarnach. “The pigs were just to make things interesting. If I had been provided with more than these paltry supplies, I could have disposed of those savages all by myself.”
“I can’t believe we won,” Nicholas shouted, hugging Penny and watching the retreating soldiers. “Soon, we will be back to our normal lives.”
Amogg approached the militiaman with Tiarnach still squirming in her grip, still hurling crude threats in the wiry alchemist’s direction. “Not be sad,” the big orc said to Nicholas. “That was just first fight. Lots more chance for glory.”
Nicholas’s face fell. Amogg dropped Tiarnach and hefted her axe.
Tiarnach got to his feet and drew his sword, staring forlornly in the direction the alchemist had fled. He sighed, spun the sword in his hand and then laughed at Nicholas’s expression. He grinned, trying and failing to be reassuring. “That was just one of that bastard’s wee tricks. Wait until the real magic starts flying. There’s more o’ those ugly pricks than flies on a horse’s arse so you’ll have your fill o’ killing today.”
Nicholas shuddered, said nothing, shouldered his spear and rejoined the militia as horns began to blow to the north and the enemy lines slowly reformed.
With all eyes staring in the opposite direction, Tiarnach’s false grin slipped. He took a deep shuddering breath, releasing some of the tension in his neck and ribs. The fear had him in its grip again. He was weak and mortal and facing a trained army with only a pack of grubby peasants. They were all fucking doomed. He only hoped he lasted long enough to gut that stinking Falcon Prince.
One of his men glanced back and he forced the mad grin back onto his face. “Should’ve been one o’ those lying bards instead o’ a warrior,” he muttered as he leapt atop the wall to stand with his men.
He howled defiance at the enemy and bared his arse at them, a gesture quickly taken up by the men he had brutalised into something vaguely resembling warriors over the last few weeks. No other fucker here would be able to make paltry peasants stand and fight, so it was up to him to keep this rabble together. If that meant pretending he was the fearless warrior of old, then so be it. In any case, he was pretending more for himself than for them.
CHAPTER 25
Landgrave Laurant Daryn wiped gore from his face and surveyed the hundreds of wounded moaning in the mud, some dying or already dead at his feet. There were too many for so few acolytes to save. Some of his men were squatting right next to the dead, grunting and voiding their poisoned bowels, their faces red with disgust and shame.
Anger burned inside him, a raging torrent of the Goddess’s wrath pounding through his veins demanding recompense.
“The filthy peasants mock us,” he snarled to Sir Orwin. “They poison us and break our charge with swine! Swine! And now the degenerates expose themselves atop their wall.”
The holy knight calmly drew his sword, the steel shedding rainbow light. “I am not concerned about the genitalia of peasants. It is the evil creatures lurking in the shadows pulling their strings that must be dealt with.”
“Up!” Daryn bellowed. “Up, men. Form line. Archers to the rear.” His men pulled up their breeches, tightened straps on armour and shuffled back into their lines.
“Advance! Make those peasants bleed.”
“They come again,” Amogg rumbled. She grinned at her squad, tusk rings glinting. “Good. I bored.” Ragash and Wundak chuckled and hefted their weapons.
The orcs and her women warriors spread out among the other untrained townsfolk, the carpenters, hunters, masons and merchants that had been too busy building the defences to learn as much of the arts of war.
Amogg hefted her axe and pointed to the menacing bulk of Ragash and Wundak. “If humans run, orcs kill you.”
Nobody doubted she meant it; not after she murdered the elder in the temple.
Tiarnach nodded to her and looked to his own men. “Those women will stand and fight. If any o’ you runts don’t do the same then don’t you precious little babes worry, I won’t kill you…”
He had trained the militia hard, and by now they knew him well enough to recognise the trap. They kept their expressions blank and their mouths shut.
“Aye, instead I’ll hand you over to that mad wee fucker Jerak Hyden to make something useful out o’ your sorry hides.”
Their faces paled. Some fates were worse than death.
Tiarnach nodded in satisfaction. “That’s what I thought. Get those spears and axes ready, my mad lads.”
Lorimer’s manservant Estevan assumed command of the archers and reserve units, leaving Tiarnach and Amogg free to inflict a dreadful slaughter on the first soldiers who dared try and climb their wall.
Through the strip of cloth protecting his eyes, Lorimer Felle watched the arrows raining down on the enemy. The sweet aroma of blood and sweat made him salivate and his jaw drop to accommodate lengthening fangs. He looked to Black Herran, her aged hands clasped behind her back as she calmly took in the battle beside Maeven, and a visibly bored and fidgeting Jerak Hyden at her side. “How would you have me fight this day?” he asked.
She didn’t look away from the sight of men being skewered by arrows. “You are the swiftest among us. Go wherever you are most needed.”
He bowed, only half-mocking. “As you wish, oh great and powerful general.”
She glared at him from the corner of her eyes. “If you act like a child, I will treat you as one. Now be a good little boy and go play with your food.” Then her attention returned to the line of men charging her wall.
He hissed with laughter and loped off, fingers and toes lengthening into razor-tipped claws and bony plates of armour sliding across his skin.
“Such arrogance,” Maeven said, shaking her head.
Black Herran snorted. “None of us have ever been short of that commodity. How are your magical preparations?”
Jerak Hyden yawned loudly and adjusted his spectacles. “I shall return to my work if you are discussing sorcerous flimflammery. Do try and keep the rabble from my wall until the sun is almost down. I will be most displeased if you do not.” The little man scrabbled down the wall, rounded up his assistant and shepherded her towards his workshop.
Maeven ignored his exit, her lips twisted into a smile as a flight of arrows thudded into charging men. “My preparations are complete. Come the morning the dead outside Tarnbrooke will ri
se.”
“Excellent,” Black Herran said. “We must make the best use possible of this resource we have been given. Blood, death and corpses: the stuff of their lives shall not go to waste. We will need all of what they offer us when we face the Falcon Prince and his inquisitors.”
Under a heavy rain of arrows and slingshot, the Lucent soldiers charged into a field of shallow foot-sized pits dug irregularly all across the valley floor. They were a simple but effective trap of Tiarnach’s. With the recent heavy rains there was no way to tell which was a shallow puddle and which was a pit. Soldiers fell, twisting or breaking ankles, and all their armour couldn’t save them. The rest slowed, the charge broken up as they tried to pick their way through the mess. At this range it made them easy targets for the archers and slingers of the Tarnbrooke militia. Men fell, but more pressed on behind their shields.
The Lucent vanguard finally reached the wall. Tiarnach and Amogg were there to meet them. The first line of heavy infantry crashed into the fortification, their shields held high as they attempted to climb up through a barrage of stones, arrows and spear points thrusting down at their faces. In the press, some impaled themselves on sharpened wooden stakes, howling in pain.
A squad of soldiers set their feet in the mud and hefted their shields to form steps up to the lip of the wall. Men charged up, only to be intercepted by the axe of Amogg Hadakk that reduced their shields to kindling and split their bodies. She roared with savage joy as the bloody pieces fell back into the press of men below.
Atop the wall, the Tarnbrooke militia frantically stabbed their spears down into the mass of flesh and steel, desperate to keep the soldiers away from them. There was little skill involved, just butchers operating a meat-grinder. The soldiers who managed to top the wall were run through by Tiarnach or slaughtered by Ragash and Wundak, their corpses thrown back down into the mud.
Archers following behind the Lucent battle line began feathering the engaged defenders of a single section of the wall. A dozen lightly armoured townsfolk fell, leaving a gap in the defences. Ragash grunted as a shaft thudded into his arm. He ripped it free and then plunged the arrow through the eyeball of a Lucent soldier.
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