The Painting (Rise of the Witch Guard Book 2)
Page 26
Darius nodded firmly. “It will be done,” he said, bracing to a salute. He turned to the rest of the Swans, “Right face and general advance up that hill. Don’t stop until you reach the top, and kill anything that’s not one of our people,” he bellowed.
“Yes, Sergeant,” replied the nearest file leaders, the order rippling down the line. Despite a few fearful looks cast up toward the top of the hill, where the shamans were presumably located, the men began advancing in a line.
“A line attack? Why not move up the hill in column?” Falon asked.
“Marching up a hill over broken terrain?” Darius shook his head. “With the time it took we wouldn’t be saving anyone. Assuming there’s anyone to save and besides our ranks will be broken up anyway, column or no column. This is the fastest way,” he paused and looked at her, “but there will be casualties.”
Falon steeled herself to ignore the drop in her stomach. “This is war,” she said flatly, as she briefly realized that she was fast becoming numb to the harsh realities of her current predicament.
Chapter 32: The Hill Attack
“Are we going somewhere?” Ernest asked as Bucket brayed beside her, and her brother’s donkey began to prance from side to side, as if to showcase his magnificence after he caught Falon’s eye.
Falon smirked at the antics of her little brother Rogan’s diminutive, altogether out-of-place steed, and gave herself a shake.
“Yes,” she said simply and then pointed up the hill. Reminded of her duty, Falon put heels to the flanks of her horse urging Cloud Breaker to start up the hill.
“Hey!” Ernest blurted from somewhere behind her, and then she heard Bucket’s indignant bray followed by the eager patter of donkey hooves. “Wait up,” she heard him say from increasingly further back.
Falon grinned, Cloud Breaker was a genuine warhorse, and for all that Bucket ‘thought’ he was—as her brother liked to call him—‘a mighty steed,’ the headstrong animal was still just a little donkey. Before they knew it, the young Lieutenant and her warhorse had left the other mounted pair behind them.
In her eagerness to reach the top of the hill, she may have accidentally over-motivated Cloud Breaker. With the grin on her face fading, Falon broke out of a small stand of brush trees atop her charging mount.
Screams erupted from behind her, along with a not quite equine challenge—a sound that belonged to no living horse. The sound sent a shiver up her back, but before she could even think of turning her horse to investigate, Falon caught sight of the scene on the hillside battle.
She was just on the outskirts, but it didn’t take a war-skilled battle genius to recognize dead horses and fallen men.
Darius will just have to deal with the Blue Horse as it wreaks whatever havoc it can, she decided. It was imperative that she see if any of the Knights, Lords, or men-at-arms had survived this mess, and then scout out the area so they could get to the shaman’s and drive these savages from the hill.
Although, somehow she expected she would get more accolades—or rather, less punishment, she thought with savage disappointment—for saving any surviving Knights as she would driving the Ice Raiders off this hill.
How was it her fault for answering when the Prince started loudly demanding to know out if there were yet any wizards in the army? There she had been, standing nearby with a wizard all her own and—
Her inner grousing was cut off as effectively as an arrow through the throat when she spotted a trail leading up the hillside. It was clearly a trail that something, or someone—most likely several someones—had just been dragged up.
Clicking her tongue and flicking the reins, Falon urged Cloud Breaker forward. So intent was she on following the trail that she almost didn’t spot the barbarians before running headlong into them.
She was less than a man’s length behind the tail end of the savages when she looked up. Their eyes met and she saw the savage’s eyes widen.
Jerking out her sword, and cursing herself for a fool, Falon cleared the sword from its sheath. The barbarians had half a dozen prisoners wearing the plate armor. Either Knights of wealthy men-at-arms, she absent mindedly noted.
Then there was no time for comment or observation. She didn’t know how many of the savages she’d stumbled upon, nor did she have the time to care.
Her sword was out and the one whose eyes she had met was on her. Her sword met his bronze axe with green streaks running down its length, and sparks flew, most of which appeared to come from the axe.
The savage was drawing back his weapon for a strike with the full power of his overly muscled strength behind it but Falon wasn’t about to give him the time to complete such a blow. Drawing back her foot, she kicked the savage right in the nose. Using the backswing of her leg, she thumped her heel behind Cloud Breaker’s ribs, urging him into the mass of barbarians warriors and their captives. Her other heel gave an out-of-time thump on the other side, so as not to confuse horse with mixed signals.
Lashing out with her sword to the left she took one of the savages in the throat. Swinging to the right brought her sword cross body, the flat of the blade slamming into another’s eye and forehead.
Giving Cloud Breaker the signal, the warhorse turned obediently, following her silent orders perfectly. The horse reared and kicked a barbarian in the face with his front hooves, before pivoting and lashing out with his iron-shod hooves sending another barbarian warrior flying.
Rocking from front to back and side to side, it was all Falon could do to hang onto her seat as her horse bucked and reared. So when something slammed into her side, she lost her grip and fell head first off Cloud Breaker.
“Ack!” Falon said white flashing across her vision. Seeing an iron-shod food slam into the earth beside her, she instinctively rolled away. Then, seeing she’d lost hold of her sword in the fall, she rolled back and snatched it up with her left hand. Then she once again found herself rolling for dear life, as the Cloud Breaker’s hooves slammed into the trailing edge of her shirt.
Someone screamed, and the stream of words that followed sounded like a Kingdom accent: someone was in trouble.
Shaking her head to clear it, Falon brought up her sword into the ready position Darius had been training her to use each and every night.
“Vosten Mogrey’s!” screamed a barbarian. “Custo mando!”
Neither knowing what he was saying, nor understanding the stream of savage gibberish that erupted from the mouths of the other barbarians in reply, Falon ducked. She barely dodged out of range of the two-handed steel sword—which had obviously been taken from a knight—which the savage swung at her head.
Stepping forward as soon as her enemy’s mighty blade had move past her body, Falon stabbed with her Imperial-style sword. The barbarian twisted, taking the blow on his upper arm.
Glancing down at the wound and baring his teeth, the savage laughed at her, bringing his sword around for another powerful attack.
Planting her feet firmly and taking the sword into a two-handed grip, she felt the power of the earth begin to snake up her left leg—the one covered with tattoos by that witch Tulla.
Pulling back her blade like a snake coils before striking, she swung at the attacking barbarian. Power flowed through her arm as her sword struck a savage gash on his upper chest, across the sternum, and down across the warrior’s ribs.
Blade dropping from his hands, the savage stared down at his chest, air bubbles coming out of the ragged, bloody gash. Then he looked up at her and smiled.
Feeling a horrifying chill at his seemingly uncaring response to what was undoubtedly her finest attack yet, Falon readied her sword.
Blood burst from the savage warrior’s mouth suddenly, and then he keeled over onto his side where he lay motionless.
Falon stared at him stupidly, hearing herself ask incredulously, “What?”
As if the word had released something, the barbarians roared with rage and the captives started twisting in their bindings and began fighting back.
“A-Swan!” she screamed, jumping forward and slashing the next barbarian in the back of his calf, looking for a hamstring blow. “A-Rankin for a Swan!”
“Saint George!” cried her fellow Squire with the dreamy, emerald-green eyes, “Saint George for the Prince!”
“Steel for a-Lackland,” cried one of the prisoners, punching a barbarian in the teeth and wrestling free from his captors, “I need steel!”
Ducking under an axe, Falon stabbed the oversized brute in the groin. When the barbarian doubled over, she unsheathed her shri-kriv and stabbed him through the exposed temple.
“Give me a blade; I’m a Baron!” Lord William, the so-called Fist of the North, proclaimed indignantly—even though a glance in his direction revealing he was still firmly held by a barbarian on either arm.
“Catch,” Falon shouted, tossing her shri-kriv to the first man to shout for steel.
“Thank you, boy!” said the scrapper, catching the knife out of the air.
Falon saw him start to raise it against a barbarian like it was a sword, and then look down with dismay at the small boar tusk-handled knife.
“This is a toothpick,” he protested with an ‘ooph’ after taking a blow to, what Falon now saw, was his rust-streaked chainmail shirt.
Seeing an opportunity, Falon stabbed a barbarian in the back as he turned to deal with the prisoners.
The prisoners were starting to fight back against one of the savages, who was wearing some kind of modified scale armor made out of leather and alternating bronze and iron plates, and he brought his spiked club down on the head of a rebellious prisoner, splitting the man’s head like a melon.
“You would arm a poor armsman before a member of the House of Lords,” the Baron cried angrily, as he was dragged up the hill by a pair of barbarians. “I command you to give me your sword, boy!” The word ‘boy’ was spoken in such a way as to seem an insult, but he didn’t seem to recognize her specifically judging from a quick glance in his direction.
Falon’s indignation at him failing to remember her face, even when the Baron had personally complained to the Prince about her, was cut short when a barbarian came out of nowhere and swung his spiked club into her side.
The rock-hard wood met her arm, and the bone beneath her flesh snapped like a twig even as a large spike was driven through her limb and into her side.
Falon gasped and stared down at the spike sticking through her arm. Everything felt distant, like it was happening to someone else. Then the savage jerked his club free of her flesh and it didn’t feel distant anymore.
Her arm flopped down, every movement of the limb, which was no longer fully under her control, sending a lance of red hot pain straight up through her.
Seeing the club descending again, she flinched and instinctively raised her sword to block. Metal met wood and, to her surprise and despite the fact the barbarian was close to twice her size and using two hands with a larger weapon, she actually forced his blade to the side through sheer, brute strength.
Liquid fire flashed up her tattoos, and she screamed as her face twisted with an unexpected mixture of pain and rage.
The barbarian lifted his weapon and she chopped down with her sword, half-severing his arm just above the wrist.
As the barbarian’s face twisted she slammed the hilt of her weapon into his face once—twice—a third time, until he began to fall.
“I am a Lord, churls!” the Baron shouted, his feet twisting and kicking at the earth as he was dragged off, “free me from these savages and give me a blade. It is your duty to free me!”
Falon almost stopped in her tracks to turn and glare at the insufferable baron, but instead she finished the falling savage of with a thrust of her sword to his neck.
Erik Knightson—he of the green eyes and sculpted jaw—was clouted first on his shoulder, and then upside his head with the flat of axe, sending him to the ground like a poleaxed steer. The sight of him going down caused Falon to jump forward; she knew she had to help him. He was one of the few warriors who could hold the barbarians at bay!
“A-Swan!” she screamed, thrusting her way over to him until she was standing over his fallen body.
A barbarian came at her low, with a foot-and-a-half long rusty dagger slashing her across her upper thigh before she could react, but her return blow found nothing but air.
“I’ll sha-ave you, my Lard Baar-oon,” Erik Knightson slurred, rolling up against her leg and almost sending her tumbling to the ground. He certainly broke her balance, leaving her poorly prepared to stave off the dagger wielder, who now wielded a dagger in each hand.
“Hold still,” Falon said between clenched teeth, her right arm flopping around even as she fought on with her sword in the left.
“To me! To me!” The baron said, right before being clouted in the head by a club-wielding barbarian.
“We must rally!” Erik said, his eyes lolling around in different directions as he turned over and crawled out from under her legs.
“Watch out,” Falon cried after his right leg kicked backwards into her ankle, parrying for all she was worth against not one, but now two savages.
“Saint George!” the Knightson bellowed, clambering to his feet and waving his sword about like a madman, his footing wavering almost as much as the tip of his sword.
One of her opponents, along with another, jumped the beleaguered Knightson and metal rang as an axe and a club struck him from either side. Fortunately his breast plate absorbed most of the damage.
“Saint George for the Prince!” Erik screamed, forcing his way clear of his current opponent and then jumping into the middle of pack of three others, laying about him with reckless abandon. He was forcing his way toward the Lord of the Ice March without so much as a backward glance to see how Falon was doing, but then again he probably wasn’t aware of all the much right at that moment.
Falon blocked a club, smashing the savage in the face hard enough to break teeth and seen the man reeling, but while she was holding him off the dagger-wielder slashed her sword arm. Her skin was rent and the muscle underneath with the lone, vicious swipe.
Rallying as best she could, Falon tried to call upon the mysterious power that seemed to come from the earth through her tattoos and into her body. But this time when she reached down deep, all that she found was a profound, all-encompassing exhaustion.
The dagger wielder came at her again, and this time when she went to parry his attack her sword was knocked out of her weakened grasp by a pair of crossed daggers and a twist of the wrist.
Falon gasped and desperately fell to her knees, to avoid a slash that would have taken her throat.
“A-lackland!” cried the man-at-arms she had given the boar knife, as he tripped over a root and practically fell into the dagger wielder. Shri-kriv and daggers clashed as the two men toppled to the ground.
Falon tried to rise, but when she went to place her hands down to push off the ground, her left arm was completely exhausted. In her numbed state she completely forgot that her right arm wasn’t working at all, so she face-planted in the dirt.
“A-Swan! A-Battalion of Swans!” cried a half dozen voices speaking as one.
“For Lieutenant Falon!” screamed Ernest, riding into the midst of the melee atop Bucket and loosing an arrow from his short bow right into a nearby man’s face.
“Find the Squire,” raged the oversized Raven Leader Uilliam, lumbering up the hillside with his razor sharp scythe in hand.
Falon tried to rise but couldn’t manage it on the second attempt. Spotting her sword, she grabbed it with her one still-working hand and held on as best she could as she lifted it to interpose the weapon between herself and a
ny more of the attackers.
“Mogrey’s!” screamed a barbarian, letting loose with what seemed to be their savage war cry. Insane as it was, this barbarian war cry only seemed to encourage her men, who promptly cheered in reply.
Men screamed and surged around her as Falon squatted on her knees in the middle of the trail, her sword held stiffly in front of herself for protection.
The sound of barbarian chanting came from further up the hill.
“A shaman!” shouted one of her men.
“Help me with the tripod,” Schmendrick ordered from somewhere out of Falon’s sight.
Turning, Falon saw the Apprentice wizard placing a round, copper ball the size of a man’s head on a giant spring, which had been set up between three rods.
“Pull down the fireball!” Schmendrick ordered, and after exchanging looks one of the nearby men gingerly touched the ball. “Hurry it up, man. We haven’t got all day before they send the next spirit creature!”
Crouching down, the man squeezed his eyes shut and reached over to pull down on the ball.
Schmendrick started chanting and waved his wand. “Ackamandy Gorgey Husty!” he thundered, and the man holding the ball jerked his hands free, shook them in the air briefly, and then promptly stuck his fingers in his mouth.
The ball jumped into the air several feet, and Schmendrick’s face took on a look of intense concentration. The ball suddenly burst into flame and, instead of losing its momentum and falling back to the ground, the fireball kept moving through the air at the same speed it had possessed when initially released from the tripod.
Another Red Bull appeared, charging down the hill toward them. Bull and Fireball met in an explosion heat, flame, and smoke.
The smoke continued to fill the space around the bull, but after blinking away the flash she could see that the bull was laying on its side with only its back legs still attached. Instead of a pair of front legs, it had a pair of holes in its brisket which were spewing steam. The spirit bull bellowed with pain and rage, spinning itself in a circle as it tried to get at the people who had caused it so much pain, but possessing only its hind legs it did nothing save churn itself in a circle of frosty dirt.