The Painting (Rise of the Witch Guard Book 2)

by Luke Sky Wachter

  Falon bared her teeth as the enemy warrior was taken in by her surprise move, his axe sliding down her blade with a shriek of tortured metal, only to thump deep into the dirt beside her feet.

  “Such a man,” Falon whispered with derision, and instead of drawing back her sword for a savage power blow—like any one of her own warriors might have done in response to an opening like that—she instead flipped the tip of her blade out and nicked the savage’s jugular, simultaneously slicing into his windpipe.

  Blood flew in an arc across her face with droplets spattering around her as the savage clutched at his opened throat.

  The yellow power in his eye flared and guttered, then with one last, malignant flash, it faded entirely. The barbarian wobbled and cast an unholy glare at her, despite the blood flowing past fingers which seemed to be trying to hold the life-giving substance inside his body, and Falon could see that whatever power or spirit had infected him was gone.

  The savage lifted his axe halfway and tried to say something, but instead of words a gush of blood—surprisingly followed by a gout of steam—came out in fits and starts. Then savage’s eyes rolled back in his head and he collapsed on his knees, yellow steam pouring from his mouth and neck wound.

  Falon stared at him in disgust, but the clang of metal on metal nearby meant that even though she had defeated one magic champion, there was a horde of his mundane brethren ready to advantage themselves of his gains in breaking her lines.

  Her face twisting, Falon drew back her sword one final time and chopped sideways. The savage’s head fell to the ground, and the rest of him collapsed into a boneless heap. She shuddered when she noticed that, even headless, yellow smoke continued to stream out of the hole in the man’s neck.

  Forcing it out of her mind, she turned to face two more savages—neither of which had glowing eyes—and then there was no more time for contemplation. The battle had reached her.

  “A-Swan! A-Rankin for a Swan,” she screamed, knocking aside a spiked club and following through with a thrust to the gut as she twisted to avoid a stone maul. With un-womanlike strength, she chopped at the maul wielder’s wrist and instead of delivering a gash or wound of some sort, like she fully expected, her sword cleaved through the first bone in his arm before catching and becoming lodged in the second.

  “The Horns! The Horns!” Darius’s battle cry came from somewhere off to her side.

  Falling back with a shriek of anguished surprise, the savage was then struck in the head and killed by the back swing of a spiked hammer. The cruel weapon’s reverse-face spike drove through the back of his head, killing him instantly.

  By now the breach in the line had opened to three men wide, and she knew it would only continue to grow. Distantly, she could hear Darius yelling for men to come help with the breach, but she was already there. With the snake tight around her leg and settling into the pit of her stomach with excess energy, she felt incredibly powerful. She wondered if this was how a mighty warrior felt when he stood amid the carnage, knowing that he could singlehandedly carry the field.

  Falon stepped forward and engaged the next two savage warriors simultaneously, going blade to blade with both of them at once. The men grinned and tried to push back, knocking her off balance. With a furious heave, she actively pulled on her magic to power her arms, and instead her falling back, it was them who were driven a half step onto their heels.

  Grins turned to grimaces at the sight of her, a small youth of a warrior, outmuscling them and then it was Falon’s turn to smile.

  Seeing the men to either side of her starting to waver, Falon planted her feet. “Hold fast, men!” she called out.

  “There’s too many of them!” shouted a young warrior—one of the men they had recruited immediately after the battle that decided the Flower War—right before dropping his rusty short sword and turning tail to run. Before he had gotten two steps down, a savage planted an axe in his back.

  Falon ducked another axe and then riposted, sticking the man’s partner in the thigh with her blade. The first barbarian stumbled back, only to be replaced by two more foes who stepped up beside the one she was still facing.

  “Turn and die with a blade in your back,” Darius barked, showing up with a file of men to plug the gap as the eyes of her men skittered nervously, “there’s nowhere to run, boys!”

  Out of the corner of her eye, Falon watched as the Imperial stabbed one of the barbarians with an Imperial style sword of his own.

  “The owner of that castle at our backs isn’t too happy with the Prince right now; I don’t think they’re going to welcome you with open arms,” the Sergeant shouted, “so hold fast and stay true to your salt!”

  With men on either side of her, Falon felt her bravery bolstered. Stepping forward, she cut and thrust and parried for everything she was worth, putting her magically-enhanced strength into every motion. One, slow, agonizing step at a time, they pushed the barbarians back and closed the break in the line.

  Like a spring storm, the barbarians had come on strong and now, just as quickly, they drifted away. For a candle sliver’s time, Falon stood there staring dumbly at the dead and dying, her brain unable to comprehend there were no more enemies to fight.

  “Did we win?” she asked numbly.

  “Look up,” Darius spoke in her ear.

  Falon jumped, her sword coming instinctively up in response.

  Darius reached down and trapped her hand mid-motion, and it was only when she started to instinctively summon magical strength to shake him off that she came back to her senses.

  Relaxing herself forcibly, she let him push down her sword and then looked up as he had suggested. She saw that, far from running away in retreat, the barbarians only seemed to have drawn back for a pause. Already, leaders with better armor and weapons—as well as powerfully-built men with glowing eyes—were pacing back and forth in front of their men while shouting in their native tongue, working the savages into a fury for the next attack.

  “We should go after them,” Falon panted, “I’m sure the Captain will give the order to advance.”

  “No,” Darius disagreed, “that would be suicide.”

  “But we’ve got them on the run,” she protested.

  “They’d chew us up and spit us out; we need to wait for orders,” he said heavily. “Barbarians like these are used to wave attacks. They attack, and then pull back, and then attack again. If we were in the Regiments we’d keep the pressure up and break their lines, but we can’t do that with your people.”

  Falon ground her teeth in frustration as a figure in aging plate armor stomped up and lifted the visor of his helmet. “A glorious day on the field, eh, Squire?” Sir Orisin said, exposing blood-streaked teeth.

  “Are you okay?” Falon asked, concerned by the blood as she pointed at his teeth.

  Sir Orisin rubbed a finger inside his mouth and then looked at the small amount of bloody spittle on his finger. “Tis nothing,” he said dismissively, “I was cracked on the jaw and bit the side of my mouth. It shall pass soon enough.”

  “It does me good to see you,” Falon said politely.

  “The Lord of the Field will reap a heavy bounty today,” Sir Orisin gestured to the fallen corpses around them.

  “Not heavy enough,” Falon grumbled, looking over at the swarming barbarians as they shouted and stamped their feet, all the while looking back at Falon and her men with angry eyes. “We shouldn’t be giving them the chance to recover. Why don’t we smash them—I mean what is Captain Smythe waiting for?!” she exclaimed with frustration.

  “The rest of the army?” Darius deadpanned, and even though he looked and sounded respectful she could all but hear the mental eye-roll.

  “Contain yourself, Squire Falon,” Sir Orisin interjected, breaking her train of thought as the disapproval in his voice brought her up short.

  “What did you say?” she asked incredulously. She might have expected disapproval from Sergeant Darius, given his role as her instructor in all thi
ngs military, but not from a man who was technically still her prisoner!

  “Raven or Stag, it matters not, young Squire,” the Raven said with censure in his voice. “It is not our place as fighting men, or even,” he lifted a hand to forestall her imminent rebuttal, “the leaders of small companies of men, to question the orders of our Generals and betters in front of the men—or, at any other time, for that matter.”

  Falon started to splutter and then froze. She hadn’t been questioning their decisions exactly, more like eagerly anticipating the order to attack!

  “Well…” she began, trying to mount a defense and finding that in light of how she actually did feel toward the Prince his subordinates. She stamped her foot on the ground in frustration.

  “Fits of temper are not the mark of a well-respected gentleman,” Sir Orisin observed neutrally.

  Reaching into a pouch she had placed on her belt for just such an occasion, Falon pulled out a piece of cloth and angrily started to clean her blade.

  The drums finally sounded and when she heard their message, Falon could have spit, for they beat the ‘hold position’ order. She just wanted to get this battle over and done with, as fear once again started to uncoil until magic wasn’t the only thing in her belly.

  “To advance without support would be suicide, and remember that the Captain isn’t in command of the Left Wing; Sire Morlan is,” Darius said evenly.

  Sir Orisin gave the former Imperial a hard look but instead of upbraiding or correcting him, like he had done to her, he just shook his head disapprovingly at Darius.

  That hardly seemed fair to the young woman actually in command of their particular detachment.

  “Everything alright?” Ernest asked as he came limping up behind her, the company banner still in his hands.

  Falon turned to look at him and frowned at the sight of his blood-smeared face and gash on his forehead.

  “Do you need to have that looked at?” she asked with genuine concern.

  “This?” Ernest said proudly touching the slice, as soon as his fingers found the cut however he winced, “It’s nothing.”

  “You’re all covered in blood; why don’t you go get that seen to by Chloe and come back here as soon as you’re done?” Falon said sternly.

  “What? No! I’m ready to fight,” Ernest exclaimed indignantly.

  “We can’t have him taking the banner with him,” Darius said with a nod, “since you don’t look grief-stricken, I’ll assume that brother of yours is still running around here somewhere. Find him and pass off the banner before going to get that sewn shut,” he ordered.

  “I’ll give him the heavy thing and be glad of it, but there’s no need to send me back. I’m ready to do something, not sit in line with wounded men who have more need of a Wench’s grace than I,” he protested.

  Falon started to shake her head roughly and then stopped. Ernest wanted a job and he was right; in a way, there must have been a lot of men who needed help for wounds a lot worse than a minor head gash.

  “Alright,” she lifted a hand, cutting off Darius before he could interpose himself. Besides, whatever the Sergeant thought, she was curious what was going on, “Why don’t you take Bucket and run on over to Captain Smythe? Find out if he has any new orders for us, or if he expects any from higher up.”

  “Sure thing, Fal,” Ernest said with a much happier look on his face. “I’ll pop over there and put my ear to the ground!”

  Darius sighed and Sir Orisin frowned, but Falon noted that neither man tried to talk her out of it—or countermand her orders—for which she was grateful.

  No sooner had Ernest handed off the banner, mounted up, and trotted off bouncing like a sack of potatoes atop Bucket than an explosion of light and sound erupted from the Center of the Prince’s army.

  “Why do you use ‘The Horns’ for your battle cry?” Falon asked Darius even as she stepped in front of the line of Swan Warriors, her eyes strained to see what was going on with the rest of the army. “At first I thought you were telling the men that the horns had sounded, but so far this battle I haven’t heard a single horn blown…not from our side anyway.”

  Darius started and looked over at her. She liked the fact that he didn’t loom over her like a lot of other men did; she didn’t think it added much to her officer’s demeanor that she was shorter than most of the men, but still wanted an answer to her question.

  When he didn’t answer right away, she turned from the drama unfolding in the Center and cocked an eyebrow. Why didn’t he answer? Was he ashamed, embarrassed, or…worse? Although she couldn’t understand how a simple battle cry could be a ‘worse’.

  “I picked it up in the Regiments,” Darius said, scratching an ear. He stopped scratching and talking at the same time, in favor of digging around the outside of his ear and then the inside.

  Falon waited with silent, if impatient, respect for him to finish, at least up until the point he pulled out his finger, examined whatever had caught underneath the nail, and then used the edge of his teeth to dig out whatever was under his nails before eating it.

  “Gross,” she muttered and shook her head disapprovingly. Didn’t he know how dirty his hands were, covered with dirt and blood and only the Lady knew what else? Men really are some of the most disgusting creatures on the face of this, or any other, land, she once again decided irately.

  “Sorry,” Darius said, without a single shred of shame or remorse in his voice.

  “The Horns, the Regiments—explain,” she said sternly, allowing his disgusting display with the ear to color her response.

  “It’s simple, really, and rather common where I come from. Everything in the Imperial Army is about the Imperial Bull. The ‘Horns’ refer to a Bull’s horns, not the detached version you make noise with,” he explained.

  “Oh,” Falon said, as things finally started to make sense. He wasn’t referring to the horns as the musical instrument that helped coordinate battles, but that part of a bull most dangerous when they became enraged. Not that she hadn’t known—or at least rather strongly suspected—that this was the case, but even still, “so that’s why. An homage to your homeland,” she nodded.

  “Yep,” Darius smiled knowingly, “we say, in the Army, that we’re ‘the Horns of the Emperor’.”

  “Okay,” Falon allowed.

  “And you know what they say,” he added with a grin.

  A fresh explosion of fireballs, followed by a few cracks of flashing lightning arced from the Center in a cascade that tore into the savages arrayed before the Prince’s position.

  “What?” Falon said absently to the Imperial Sergeant, more focused on the action in the middle of the army at that particular moment.

  “If you mess with the Bull, you get the Horns,” the Imperial explained, with his deep blue eyes dancing with silent laughter, which temporarily dragged her attention back to him. “So that’s what I’m really saying every time we fight. My enemies had better watch out for the horns,” he said, lifting his sword and waggling it suggestively.

  Falon was surprised at the almost lewdness of the gesture, and had to stop herself from blushing at the motion. A younger, more naïve Falon—one who hadn’t spent the past months in the company of rough men—most certainly would have blushed. She had changed, and she didn’t think it was for the better. What was next, picking her nose and cursing like a man?

  “Thank you for your explanation,” she said, eyeing him and his sword suspiciously but when he shrugged and lowered his sword again—this time so he could clean it and put it away—she shrugged it off.

  Will my sisters even recognize me when I come home, she wondered. And with that thought, she felt a flash of empathy for her father. To have seen what he’d seen and done what he must have done—things just like she had recently done—and still come home to raise sons and daughters with laughter and love in the home…

  For the first time in a long time, she realized she felt halfway respectful toward her Papa. In that instant, she wa
sn’t ashamed for the angry thoughts she harbored in the dead of night, but then she pushed that firmly away also—she had more important things to do.

  This was not the time for sour grapes, deep realizations or crying into a pillow. There was a war on!

  A great cry went up from among the savage center, and a score or more great beasts gave vent to screaming animal war cries mere moments before appearing at a run as they made to cross the no-man’s land between armies.

  The animals’ hides were red, green, yellow, blue, brown and even purple. Some of the beasts were wreathed in flames, others trailed smoke, and some left splashes of water behind as they ran. But the one thing they all had in common was the way their eyes glowed with an inner, unholy light.

  “Where’s my horse?” Falon asked anxiously, glancing aside for her war-steed before her eyes were captivated by what little she could see. “I can’t see a thing,” she complained, not entirely truthfully but still desiring a better view.

  “They led him back out of the way; it would take half a minute to get him,” Darius said.

  Falon shook her head but kept her eyes glued as the third storm of fireballs, accompanied by several flashes of lighting, stormed out to meet spirit creatures summoned by the enemy shamans.

  “Rats!” she stomped her foot and craned her head forward, even going so far as to take an extra step in order to get a better look.

  “Don’t go too far,” her Sergeant said.

  She started to shake her head irritably, but the Sergeant wasn’t about to be denied as he grabbed her by the collar and unceremoniously yanked her back. “Haven’t you ever heard of arrows, or a thrown axe?” he sounded irritated. Then, before she knew it, she felt an arm sliding around her middle just below her hips.

  Falon stiffened in alarm. “What are you doing—” she said in a rising voice.

  She gasped as the person holding her tensed his muscles and then picked her up, and the instant her feet left the ground the snake disappeared as if it had never been.