by Anton Le Roy
The Veteran: Coyote Chronicles
Anton Le Roy
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2014 Anton Le Roy
Cover image copyright © 2017 Anton Le Roy
All rights reserved
Published 22nd October 2017
This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher or author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Prologue
Before.
My comrades and my enemies clashed in a maelstrom of violence that shook the very land. The battle was brutal: swords clanged against shields; deadly magical spells zapped against each other in a frenzied flurry; arrows fizzed the air in the search of soft flesh; death spilt about our muddy feet in a nightmarish flood; and into such madness I chose to run headlong, pushing deeper and deeper into the boiling pot of screams and pain. Fear did not overwhelm me because I was young, I was strong and I was fast.
The world surrounding me was confusion and desperation where every swing of a weapon was a line between living and dying, and riding that line meant I felt more alive than ever. This invigorating and horrifying drug kept me going and going until I dared not stop, my sword remaining in constant motion. It spun, swung, sliced and stabbed at a pulsating wall of faceless meat intent on consuming me, and where my sword failed to reach then it was my feet that kicked out instead. My free hand punched. Elbows. Knees. Anything to stay alive. Anything to survive.
Survival was all we had left to fight for now because this was a battle we were losing, and it was a strange sensation for all involved. The Army of The Six had never lost a battle in all its history, long before my recruitment and to consider it now was such an alien prospect that it must surely have not been real and, so, I kept going, hoping that the tide would turn in our favour or that my determined spirit could somehow influence that uneven balance. Alas, I recognised it would not.
At least at my side were my two best friends: big Gregor with his cleaving axe and crazy Satipo with his twirling blades. The rest of our platoon, the Red Dogs, battled with us too. More than just a bunch of random comrades every single one of them was bonded to me as if brother or sister. They were my family, the only one I ever really had, and we lived and died as one. Amongst the entire Army of The Six we were an elite unit, a force to be reckoned with, and there was no stopping us from reaching our goal. This foe that stood in our immediate path? They were mere twigs to our raging storm! We were relentless. A shame that we paltry thirty could do no more to win this war.
Sweat and filth. Pukes and shrieks. Spurting blood amongst the thick clash of bodies. Such chaos threatened to engulf us as the enemy swarmed from all directions and yet we Red Dogs carried on, even when one of our own sadly fell. They were no match for us and our weapons ravaged them. Chop, chop. Hack, hack. Stab, stab. On and on we continued, scything them down until finally we fought on a hill that enabled a perfect view of the chaotic scene below, if one were able to look long enough.
“The city’s lost!” roared Gregor fiercely.
And soon, the battle with it.
What remained of the great city of Twine was burning uncontrollably. Skeletal buildings stood silhouette against a backdrop of raging orange and red fire. A mountain of smoke had turned the late afternoon sky into night as it blotted out the sun. About the broken walls a sea of soldiers in the tens of thousands surged against each other like two opposing currents while wizard lightning and whirling dragons flooded the tortured sky and turned groups of those men into piles of smoking ash and molten metals. From all this, a multitude of sounds roared continuously like an oncoming hurricane.
All of this confirmed that the seemingly impossible was now an awful reality: defeat was unavoidable. It hung in the air like a fetid cloud ready to blanket us all in nauseating horror and you would have to be a fool not to acknowledge it. Truth can strike a blow more powerful than any weapon and shaking our heads in disbelief wouldn’t make that truth disappear. Our army was being decimated before our very eyes and up there on that hill all we could do was perform an act of final desperation in this hopeless play. At witnessing such a terrible thing, at understanding the inevitable, a multitude of emotions like anger, fear, heartbreak and panic rippled through the Red Dogs in a physical tidal wave, all of these alien feelings fighting for ultimate control.
We’d all thought this great army invincible! We’d all thought the glory days would last forever!
We were wrong about that.
“General Daida’s somewhere in this shitstorm,” Satipo quickly barked while briefly pressing his back to me, “And even he ain’t gonna be able to stop it!”
With little else to achieve, all Daida and his lieutenants could do was try and minimise the impending loss. All the while panic and doubt would slowly creep into our soldier’s minds like a cancer until eventually it was all consuming. It was then that they would run. Even the best of us would run. There would be little choice. However, now the city was destroyed, there were few options of where exactly to run to. All of us remaining Red Dogs had to get out of this nightmare in one piece. Together. Before it was too late. It pained me to think it, made me want to throw up with guilt, but of other good friends in the regular army their fate was their own now. Poor bastards.
I risked a glance back at Satipo and almost slipped on a pool of gore. “We have to find them before it’s too late!”
“Ya think I don’t know that already?” he snapped, accentuating his anger with the cleaving of someone's arm.
Through long pale hair lank with dark red blood those piercing eyes of his briefly set upon mine. It was not often that my good friend had looked at me in this way. He was pissed and rightly so. Three of our platoon were ahead of us in that roiling sea of turmoil: Blunt, the dependable wall of muscle that gave us strength of heart; Link, the one that bound our volatile team together and made us as strong as glue; and Whistle, our Red Dog Commander and our father when one was so hard to find. Old but very powerful with both fists and words and a leader we’d follow into the pits of hell if he gave us simple enough reason to. I’d do absolutely anything to save him, he was that dear to me, and the thought of how much danger he was in threatened to push me towards panic! That sensation was felt by all and that’s why we pushed deeper into the battleground instead of making a sensible retreat.
“Pitt,” Satipo shouted to an attractive blonde haired warrior woman in our crew, “Be a doll and find them again, will ya?” Although we’d slowly been homing in on their location it was hard not to be pushed off course thanks to the currents of battle.
The flash of a dazzling smile from Pitt and the hint of something unspoken between the two. “Anything for you, sweetheart.” A few of us formed a shield about her while she closed her bright blue eyes and placed two fingers to her freckled forehead, her other hand stretched out before her with fingers splayed. Her outstretched limb soon sagged. Then her knees buckled and she stumbled, momentarily weak from the spell.
Satipo compassionately steadied her while she regained her strength.
A Red Dog brother next to me suddenly took a thrown spear to his shoulder. He ripped it out and carried on fighting regardless.
“Where are they this time?” I shouted while fending off my own attacker.
I got a stern glare in response as Pitt composed herself and picked up her short punching blades. “This way, qu
ickly now!”
That look she’d given me, by the gods, it had struck an invisible blow and it took considerable control not to let it show on my face. My insides burned with shame. Aye, it was my fault they were lost to us and everyone knew it. Their blood would be on my hands. I just hoped that I could make up for my mistake, that we could save them and that no one else got hurt trying to fix what I’d done.
Slightly altering our course we smashed into the flank of the nearest enemy unit unfortunate enough to be in our way. It didn’t matter that we were outnumbered because we were damned formidable. There was nothing but blood, guts and death and most of it was theirs, as always. There was the wail of the dying and the roar of the warrior; bile and shit curdled the air; writhing bodies littered the ground; and we were the cause of it all. I was lost for a while in the bloodlust with each kill reminding me how good it felt to be alive. I took a life in order to survive, I took a life in order to save my adopted family and I would take every life here if it meant I could save The Six and my Red Dogs. Could have stood there all day long if I’d wanted to. I was too damned gifted for them all and I hadn’t even reached my prime yet!
Meanwhile, wizard born energies snapped overhead, static electricity fizzing across our bodies. I saw the explosion in the distance before I heard it. A wizard was permanently taken down, their death curse obliterating a nearby hill that shoved earth, bodies and body parts into the air like a blossoming mushroom of gore.
The surge of enemy soldiers momentarily parted in response to the minor shockwave and I glimpsed them across an empty field: Whistle, Link and Blunt were alive and completely surrounded. Caked in blood and grime, faces almost unrecognisable under the filth. Bodies of their foe lay piled high all around them like siege walls yet there were twice as many more foe still bearing down on them. Surely even they couldn’t hold out for much longer?
The regular unit who’d been with them, those who I knew well and called friends, were already dead at their feet. Their blood was on my foolish hands and I would not let the same fate befall the others, damn it!
I yelled in anger. I yelled to my comrades. I yelled to myself if only to break free from this tar pit of a fight I was stuck in but escape was ever elusive. I saw them again, for longer this time. A pike took Link in the leg and the same pain he cried out flared deep within me. I was still pinned in, and Link still battled on, despite the wound. A crossbow bolt took Blunt in the shoulder and again I experienced it as if the cold iron was lodged deep in my gut. Blunt still smashed his opponents as I still struggled to win free. Whistle took a blow to the back and I almost stumbled in sympathy. He still stood strong and I still didn’t give up. The three of them were quickly fading though and the enemy were keen to finish them off.
Time was running out.
“Gregor!” I screamed. “Satipo!”
Without looking I knew they were there with me. They saw what I saw and their shouts further alerted the others. We pressed ahead. Ferocious. I hacked a hand from one man. Gutted a second. Slammed a third down underfoot. Sliced my blade deep into an armpit, a knee, a foot, a neck. Their blood blanketed me and I could taste it in my mouth, mixing with my own salty sweat. I blinked it from my eyes. Gregor roared, shoulder barging one man out of the way before lopping off a head with his large axe. Satipo skipped around an attacking sword and took the arm off with one clean swipe at the elbow.
His eyes flashed skyward.
Shadows of two dragons briefly flittered over us. With claw and flame they fought each other right above our heads while we fought each other with blade and fist. Dragon blood rained down, thick and slimy. The heat from their breath warmed the air and I could hear nearby screams of those people consumed by wayward dragon fire. The roasting flesh caused a stench that almost made me gag.
A dying dragon suddenly crashed down amongst us, spasming wildly in its brief death throes. People were flattened by its bulk or smashed to bits by writhing paws and a swishing tail, and in all the confusion I couldn’t tell if any Red Dog suffered a similar fate, so, I took the opportunity and ran, ducking beneath a twitching wing to escape from the commotion. I was free, Satipo just behind me and directly ahead were Whistle, Blunt and Link: half beaten and clearly injured, the numbers of their foe too great to withstand. Whistle’s long glaive flashed like a flag calling me to their aide. We ran hard, desperate to save them and I was sure we could’ve done it too, that we would’ve gotten there on time.
However, we were being shadowed to one side. Skimming low to the field was the surviving enemy dragon, close enough for me to reach out and touch, I was sure of it. It eyeballed me. A great mean eye at a sideways glare. A cold calculating intelligence. A cruel smile like that of a crocodile. Wings spread wide in an effortless glide, the dragon turned its attention towards the collection of men ahead where fought Whistle, Blunt and Link. Some dragons are clever bastards and this one knew who they were. Where I saw Whistle’s glaive as a beacon for help, the dragon saw it as a beacon of opportunity. It wouldn’t care that it would kill a lot of its own men if it could take down a figure as important as him.
One beat of the wings and it sped past, arcing far up, back down and around till it switched direction. Now it was approaching us from behind Whistle. Deep within that long throat an orange glow began to intensify, ready to issue forth a blast of flame. While that column of fire would be brief in its passing, there would be enough heat to kill them all in an instant and Whistle, Link and Blunt would be dead before they could even scream. Then it would do the same to me and Satipo and there was no stopping that with a blade.
With a surge of strength that surprised even me, Whistle turned and threw his glaive at the beast. It was a perfect shot, lodging deep within the small soft part of the dragon’s scaled chest just as it was about to emit a torrent of fire. The force and accuracy of that weapon was startlingly effective, much more than I could ever have anticipated, because the beast first flinched, then smashed into the ground and then exploded into a massive ball of tumbling flame, spitting earth and a shredding reptilian carcass that headed straight for our brothers. It was too late for their escape now, too late for any of them, foe and friend alike.
As I stopped running there was the briefest of moments when I found myself captivated by Whistle who stood like a god before the surging flames of hell. He gave me a short knowing nod of acknowledgement. I know he’d decided that destroying the dragon now would stop it from subsequently killing Satipo and me and that he, Link and Blunt were as good as dead anyway. This sacrifice of theirs might have saved us, although he might as well have thrust that glaive into my own breaking heart.
Then the moment between us vanished as he, Link and Blunt and even all those surrounding enemy soldiers suddenly disappeared into the mighty conflagration and I just stood there like an idiot, staring in shock and waiting for the inevitable. It happened so quickly: the rupturing dragon body ploughed through them all and then the huge explosion reached out to engulf me and Satipo too.
A blast of heat. A shockwave slamming into my body. Then I remember the world spinning in a sea of rage and fire as the earth erupted below us and we were tossed upwards. For a moment we flew through the turmoil and then the ground eagerly smashed into me and I lay in a daze listening to Satipo’s terrible wails. Slowly rolling onto my throbbing side I watched him stagger around while the dragon flames first took his hair and then curled over the rest of his body before Pitt pulled him back down to the ground to douse the fire. It was horrific, so, I turned back to the blazing hole where Whistle, Link and Blunt previously stood battling the enemy and that was worse. A ripped dragon wing stood up straight like a tattered sail of a shipwreck. Human bones and broken limbs also stabbed up from the torn earth and I couldn’t bear to imagine which of Whistle, Link or Blunt they might be. It was hard to believe that they were gone, yet it was real and with that truth a piece of me had been burned away forever.
They were dead and it was all my fault. My vision blurred in response.
Satipo was whimpering now, shivering in Pitt’s arms as she lovingly cradled his charred body. “Look what ya done, Vet,” he spluttered, with his face hidden from me, “Look what ya done!”
I didn’t know what to say to that! Guilt sliced me deeper than any blade. He was right to blame me. Their deaths were on my hands and his burns were my doing. Look at what I’d done, indeed!
And then, movement from beyond that fresh graveyard. My focus intentionally shifted away from the gravestones of flesh and bone and those faceless bodies momentarily blurred into insignificance. Instead, I observed a wall of soldiers charging our way and realised that behind the clamour of war sounded the grim trumpets of retreat. We were done. The Army of the Six was broken. Our undefeatable army had become a routed army, disintegrating into disorder as everyone ran. One could only assume that hot on their heels followed the enemy in death dealing force. Despite this revelation I just lay there in my stupor and waited to be crushed underfoot by my own panicking comrades.
A pair of hands suddenly hauled me to my feet and a voice barked into my ear. “Run, you daft bastard!”
Gregor.
My loyal friend.
He carried me and then others helped because the weight of failure attempted to drag me down again. My family. The Red Dogs platoon, what was left of us anyway: brothers and sisters were lost and our strength was shattered. With Whistle killed we were leaderless. More faces were missing from the platoon and I knew not if they were missing, dead or just out of view. Words were muttered between the survivors. Anguish and grief wailed. None could come to terms with the fact that Whistle, Link and Blunt were amongst the dead. Red Dog eyes were upon me and I couldn’t look back, dared not to, lest I discovered the truth of what they all thought of me.