The Painting (Rise of the Witch Guard Book 2)

by Luke Sky Wachter

  “You didn’t think to mention this earlier?” Darius growled.

  “It’s not important,” she shrugged off his concern.

  “Of course it is,” Darius said in a low, clearly upset voice.

  “I said ‘it isn’t important’!” Falon snapped. “Right now we’ve got to focus on getting our men ready for another day in the front of the army, keeping the foragers out of trouble, and avoiding the eye and attention of the baron.”

  Darius’s jaw clenched and then he nodded—like not so much in agreement as acceptance.

  “The earth is already frozen and it’s only the end of autumn; this is going to be a difficult campaign if this weather keeps up—which it will,” Darius said.

  “A frozen earth campaign,” Falon said dryly, “lovely.”

  Chapter 31: Marching to Ice Finger Keep

  Horns bellowed in the distance just like they’d been doing all morning.

  “More raiders sighted up on that hill,” Darius said, pointing at a nearby slope.

  Falon glanced up the hill nervously. “They’ve been making a lot of noise for hours now,” she said, unconsciously looking to the other side of the road and the small rolling hills in that direction with several smoke columns rising to the sky, “do you think they are going to attack us soon?”

  “The army’s either too big for them to hit until they concentrate, or they’re setting up an ambush while their scouts keep eyes on us…or, most likely, both,” Darius said with a tilt of his chin as he considered.

  “So they don’t have enough men?” Falon asked.

  “Not yet is my guess,” Darius said then pursed his lips, “but they will.”

  “How can you be sure?” Falon asked, careful to keep her voice down and her posture unconcerned as she spoke with her Sergeant. At the same time she felt almost desperate for some reassurance after listening to the war horns and seeing small parties of savages shadowing the army ever since it broke free of the Gap and began marching that morning.

  Just then there was a thunder of hooves behind them and Falon turned to look. She saw a stream of heavily armored Knights and men-at-arms break off from the army’s main column and start riding up the hillside.

  “That won’t end well,” Darius said, looking back and forth between the cavalry and the small barbarian party moving parallel to them atop the hill.

  “Why not?” Falon asked, a surge of irritation welling up inside her, even as she forced it down and schooled herself to soak up the Imperial’s war knowledge. She really wanted to be angrily defending her countrymen and the flower of their warrior class—the Knights and other dashing men dressed in their ranks.

  “Heavy cavalry, riding straight up a hill, against a foe that can see them coming…and you ask why?” Darius shook his head.

  Falon chewed her bottom lip as she tried to imagine it. “These northern savages don’t wear much armor and their weapons aren’t the best for taking on warriors wearing plate and wielding steel blades,” Falon retorted.

  “Those savages have shamans that can conjure giant spirit creatures,” Darius said flatly, even as the Knight’s started up hill. “Maybe there’s a proper wizard one hidden in that mass of men, but I don’t see one. I say forget arriving up there with blown horses; what do you think will happen if the barbarians have another shaman waiting for them?”

  Falon’s eyes widened and, looking up at the tails of the many horses forcing their way up hill despite the heavily armored men atop their backs, she gulped.

  “I’m sure they’ll account themselves well,” she said weakly before spotting the banner belonging to the Fist of the North at the front of the wedge of knights. “Well, at least if things go poorly for them, the baron will be front and center,” she pointed out glumly.

  Darius barked a laugh. “Thanks be for small favors,” he nodded.

  The infantry kept marching but Falon and Darius kept watch on the hill, and at first things seemed to be going well. The knights slowly lost ground to their less heavily-armored comrades, but nothing came down hill to stop them and before long they were most of the way the hill.

  So far, so good, she thought. Then the moment she had feared—ever since Darius had observed the apparent lack of any spellcasters—arrived.

  Cresting the hill top of the hill was another gigantic Red Bull. Pawing the earth and snorting steam out of its nostrils, the massive, unnaturally red bovine let loose an unnatural scream and charged.

  Thundering down the hill, the Red Bull was moving much faster than the horses which had been going up it—and almost unnoticed behind it was a half score of savages.

  The knights did their best to rally to meet the beast, and Falon waited with bated breath for someone in the group to start hurling magic at the creature.

  When nothing happened, she stared with horror as the knights started to clump up. And then at the last moment, they turned their horses as if they were attempting to sprawl apart, right before the bull slammed full-tilt into a cluster of at least twenty mounted warriors.

  Horses screamed and men were trampled under the hooves of the giant, red beast. Like shards of a broken glass, the formation was shattered as men and horses scattered in every direction.

  The bull turned, and using its giant horns, started tossing plate-armored men into the air, while other men tried to strike it down with swords and spears.

  Behind the bull came the charging barbarians, who fell upon the fallen and disordered cavalry with a vengeance.

  “I feel sick,” Falon said as she turned away, unable to watch. Despite the way she covered her eyes with her hands to block out the sight, she couldn’t resist nervously cracking her fingers—a bad habit she’d observed from a number of the men and now copied in a moment of worried weakness.

  A handful of mounted, and un-mounted, warriors to the side of the main attack rallied in time to receive the barbarian’s attack. But after rampaging through the main body, the now-smoking bull continued its headlong run down the hill.

  Falon stared at the bull perplexed. “It looks like it’s going to miss us unless it changes direction,” she observed in a tight voice.

  “Let us pray that it does,” Darius muttered turning to the men. “Be ready for when that spirit creature changes course,” he called out.

  The two lines in the column turned and presented spears, axes, and whatever weapons they had as they faced the bull. But despite their preparations, the smoke-spewing bull, looking somewhat smaller than it had appeared on the hill, ignored them.

  Falon wasn’t the only one watching with wide eyes as the bull hit the road path ahead of them, and then squeal with unearthly, bovine anger before charging up the opposite hillside where it disappeared into the trees and brush.

  “Well,” Falon said with a shuddering breath as her limbs felt all tingly and jerky despite that fact nothing had actually happened.

  “Indeed,” Darius said in a low voice.

  “By the gods, here comes another one!” someone cried and Falon’s head whipped around.

  She stared as a brilliant, impossibly blue-colored horse with terrible, foot-long claws and a barbed tail that forked at the end, appeared at the top of the hill. It didn’t look good for the handful of holdouts on the side of hill battling the barbarians, who had pursued the first spirit creature, the Red Bull.

  Hooves thundered as a small party of armored men came pounding up almost as many banners as men in their midst.

  “Hold!” cried one of the men at seeing the stalled out Knights and men-at-arms about to be set upon by a second spirit creature. He held up a clenched fist and again called for the group to halt as he circled his horse again and again.

  A racket of metal on metal sounded from the middle of the group, and to Falon’s wide-eyed surprise she recognized Prince William himself! Surprise turned to shock as the Prince threw his helmet on the ground, his revealed features twisting in disgust.

  Jumping off his horse, the heavily-armored Stag Prince started jumping up
and down on his armored helmet.

  “Demons take you, Baron!” he cried stopping to shake his fist up the hill. “Give me back my Knights!”

  “My Lord Prince, we cannot continue against the beasts like this,” urged one of the Knights surrounding the Prince, “we must have magic.”

  “You are right, General Morlan,” Prince William said, pulling back his foot and kicking his helmet into the underbrush. Falon noted the helm had collapsed, bending it from ear to ear to the point of making it unusable under his repeated stomping, “this battle was lost before it even began. Lord of Battles save me from fools and incompetents like this so called ‘Fist of the North’!”

  “No wonder he had to call for aid in putting down the Frost March,” Morlan said more diplomatically.

  “He refused—refused!—our most generous offer, Morlan,” the Prince spat on the ground. “we don’t need mummers and southern charlatans from their white-washed towers to put down these barbarians,” he said haughtily. “Well look at him now,” he barked, spittle flying from his mouth, “he’s led the cream of this army’s leadership to the slaughter!”

  “My Lord Prince,” the General said uneasily.

  “Why, now I’ll have no choice but to continue to deal with peasants and jumped-up country Knights for the rest of this campaign if I’m to have anything but a leaderless army,” snarled the red-faced Prince before taking several deep, heaving breaths. “Send for our wizards,” he said icily, “it’s time they earned their exorbitant fees and showed this inbred ice baron the way his betters fight a war.”

  Morlan turned red in the face and muttered something.

  “Speak up, General. I have not time for quizzlers in my army,” the Prince demanded loudly.

  The General cleared his throat. “I said, the Tower Wizards threatened to leave en masse unless you paid the back-wages they were promised from the Flower Campaign, and two months in advance for this new expedition besides,” he replied officiously.

  “Lord of Battles, save me from money-greedy merchants and money-grubbing wizards,” the Prince spat, throwing his hands in the air. “So pay them. Pay them, man!” he cried, “I give you leave to access the war chest. Clearly, the Baron was wrong and we’ll need their magic to settle these barbarians.”

  “I fear,” Morlan swallowed visibly, “that is, I regret, my Prince, that the Wizards have already turned back en masse at the entrance to the Gap, declaring their intent to start for home. Our wizards no longer accompany the Princely Army.”

  “Yeee!” screamed the Prince in a most un-Princely fashion, grabbing his hair and yanking. “By the Gods, isn’t there one wizard in this entire army who thinks more of his honor and duty to the Kingdom than crass coins and commerce? Haven’t I declared that I would pay them? Who then are these cravens who, when put to the test, shirk the fray and doubt the words of a Prince—their Prince?! What exactly did they say?” he rounded on General Morlan and demanded.

  “They said something about an ‘honest day’s pay for an honest day’s labor’,” the General said, looking hang-faced.

  The Prince looked like he was about to burst. “Why, if I did not need their magics, I would hang the lot of them,” the Prince raged. “If a single one of those pen-pushers has done a hard days’ work in his life, I’d…I’d,” he paused, clearly at a loss and then a light shone, “that is, I would devote half their wages to the Saint of Cripples and Orphans out of sheer surprise and pleasure. Yes, I said it: pleasure,” the Prince declared.

  Falon choked and wheezed at this last part. How quickly the Prince spoke of donating half a man’s hard earned wages, if they turned out to be hard workers instead of the cravens he took them for. Did this mean a hardworking person in this Prince’s army would only earn a tithe of his lazy counterparts?

  She thumped her chest; the Prince was incensed and must have misspoken. Clearing her lungs, she turned and placed a shielding hand over her eyes and scanned for Schmendrick.

  “We must save our Knights!” Prince William declared, as if by force of sheer, Royal, will he could make this happen.

  “I fear wizards in this army are worth their weight in gold, at the nonce,” Morlan said regretfully.

  She spotted Schmendrick the Magician and jerked her head toward the Prince and his stalled out party of Knights and Lords.

  The young wizard nodded repeatedly and lifted his satchel to show he was ready. When Falon strode forward, the Initiate of the White Tower did likewise.

  “Are you saying that none of our vassals had the foresight to procure their own wizards? Not one?!” the Prince demanded with rising disbelief and ending in a shout. “What fools have I surrounded myself with then, Morlan?” he asked, his tone turning his words into an accusation.

  “My Prince—” Morlan started, but his Highness cut him off.

  “His weight in silver to the Lord, Gentleman, or Officer who can provide me a wizard to drive the rabble from this accursed hillock,” Prince William threw his arms wide rhetorically.

  “I fear—” Morlan started, only to turn his head sharply as Falon and Schmendrick approached the Knights. “Why do you intrude upon the converse of your betters?” he snapped, drawing himself up in his saddle.

  The Prince looked over and glared at Falon haughtily. “Return to your unit,” he glanced down at her Officer’s sash and sneered, “Lieutenant. And tell your superior to put you on report: five lashes will do,” he finished dismissively before turning back to Morlan. “Now, about that wizard: find him for me, Morlan, or so help me…,” he trailed off, a single hand squeezing the air viciously for emphasis.

  Falon gaped in surprise and felt herself turning pale. Although it felt like the hardest thing she’d ever done in her life, she opened her mouth and loudly cleared her throat, to gain the attention of the Prince and his Lord Knights, as she firmly reminded herself that she’d done much harder things on the field of battle—although it didn’t at all feel like it right at the moment.

  “Fifteen lashes,” Prince William snapped, “another outburst and it’ll be fifty!”

  Falon shook with fear as she realized the Prince was serious. “B-but,” she stuttered.

  “Do you want to be stripped of your rank and sent home in shame,” Morlan asked all-too-kindly.

  “I’ve got a wizard!” Falon finally burst out, placing a hand on Schmendrick shoulder for support, half afraid that if she kept getting herself in trouble for only trying to help she’d collapse to the ground.

  The fury on the Prince’s face was terrible to behold, until her words appeared to penetrate.

  “You do?” General Morlan exclaimed in surprise.

  “By the gods, we’re saved!” Prince William said, falling to his knees and lifting his face toward the sky as if praying.

  “Schmendrick the Magician, Last of the Red-Hot Swamis, my Lord Knight; Lord Prince,” the wizard said, bobbing his head to the Knight and then the Prince. He reached into his satchel, “My papers from the Tower.”

  “The gods have answered my plea, Morlan,” the Prince declared, standing up and brushing the dirt of off his legs, his face a glowing smile.

  “Come here, lad,” Morlan said, motioning over Schmendrick as his eyes fell upon Falon. “Continue back to your unit,” he ordered her.

  “Yes,” the Prince appeared surprised to realize she was still here, “and inform your commander that for service to the Prince Marshal of this army, your sentence is to be reduced to only five turns of the knotted rope,” he said benevolently.

  “What?” Falon asked with disbelief, too stunned by the Prince’s ‘largess’ to contain herself. “Surely, my Lord Prince, there must be some…” she trailed off at the last second realizing that saying a Royal was mistaken was a great way to lose one’s head, at least in the old tales.

  “Must be what?” the Prince asked sharply.

  Falon blinked rapidly.

  “I think perhaps what the young Lieutenant meant to say,” Morlan cut in, with hard glance in her direction,
“was that he would like the boon of assaulting the hill and wiping free the stain brought upon his honor?”

  “Indeed!” the Prince said with rising indignation but then he stopped and visibly contained himself. “I am surrounded by greedy, honor-starved, jumped-up—” he stopped, biting his tongue as he turned to Morlan. “Is this craven even a Gentleman?” he asked with exaggerated care.

  The General looked at her and lifted his brow in clear question. Your Style?” he asked his patience cut with a hint of irritation.

  “Squire Falon Rankin, of the Twin-Orchards Estate,” she paused and then added with a gulp, “a Lieutenant in his Lordship, Richard Lamont’s, Fighting Swan Battalion.”

  “There’s more of you out there?” the Prince said with dismay, muttering something not so quietly under his voice about nits and lice.

  “Your Highness?” Falon asked with disbelief—and a rising anger that she ruthlessly suppressed.

  “Don’t tell me you’re landed,” the Prince said indignantly.

  “No, Highness, Squire Rankin is my father,” Falon said, forcing her teeth apart as they attempted to lock down in anger.

  Morlan leaned close to the Prince and muttered just loud enough for Falon to hear, “The squire to the Captain, Sir Smythe.”

  The Prince’s face twisted. “Fine, fine,” he said crossly and then bestowed an airy wave upon her, “take the men under your command and assault that hill. If you can drive the savages off then you honor is restored, your impudence ignored, and you may forgo the rope.” He sounded cross, and more than a little regretful, as if the concession caused him pain.

  Bewildered at being threatened and punished for offering help, Falon beat a hasty retreat back to her forces.

  “What’s the good word?” Darius asked with a lifted brow upon her return.

  “We assault that hill…and if we drive off the barbarians I am forgiven,” Falon said tightly.

  “Forgiven?” Darius looked nonplused. “For what? What happened?”

  Falon gave him a level look. “We don’t have time for question and answer; we must take that hill and save any of the knights who still live,” she said evenly, “this is our mission, given directly from the Prince.”