by John Olsen
Jase said, “Don’t move unless I fall,” and sprinted forward. Gavin ignored the command and drew his short blade as he ran behind Jase.
Women and children charged to join the men to attack the bears. Gavin shouted, “Jase, go left! I’ll come in on the center.” The strange woman jabbed a spear she had found at the injured bear as it stumbled. She continued her assault in a rapid series of thrusts and jabs forcing the bear to focus on her.
Gavin and Jase arrived too late to save the first rank of defenders who fell under great swings of the bear’s claws. Jase slashed at a left rear leg as Gavin leaped, with both hands on the hilt of his blade. He landed on the bear’s back and drove the blade between its ribs just below its shoulder.
It bellowed in pain and rolled on the side Jase had hit, throwing Gavin to the ground. He hit his head, and his vision filled with blackness shot through with stars.
Something pinned his leg. He shook his head clear and saw the bear crumpled half on top of him, but still swinging claws at anyone who approached.
The handle of his blade protruded from the bear’s back, within his reach. Clenching both hands together, Gavin pounded sideways on the blade hilt, forcing it to cut through the thick fur and muscles beneath.
As the bear struggled and fought, everyone who could get their hands on a weapon swarmed in until both beasts stopped moving.
Jase glared at Gavin and pulled him free. “I told you to wait, sir. We can’t risk losing you.”
“I refuse to stand by and watch as men, women, and children throw themselves at the enemy to defend me. I don’t deserve their lives if I’m not willing to join them.”
The mystery woman stood over the animal corpses with the other defenders, breathing hard. She collapsed, and two guardsmen set her back onto her blankets, fast asleep once more due to the waning effects of the sleep juice. The bandages on her feet showed fresh red stains.
One of the bears had attacked a member of the Crystal Cabal. A badger controller bled from a head injury and looked around, dazed. Gavin hurried over and pulled the crystal cord from the man’s neck and dropped it around his own.
The man was in no shape to go back into a trance, but it would likely take too long for Gavin to do any good either.
The enemy reformed out of range of the archers and waited. Gavin took stock of their resources as the remaining cattle gathered. More than half of the cattle had fallen in the attacks, and all were wounded. They didn’t have enough animals to keep another enemy charge away from the dwindling swordsmen and archers, the last line of defense for the main camp.
A runner approached, waving at Gavin. “Sir, the archers are running low on arrows.” Desperation seeped into Gavin as he watched his army shrink by the moment.
He cast his eyes about and saw hundreds, maybe thousands, of used arrows pin-cushioning the battlefield. Reaching them would take care and a good guard to avoid exposing his men to the enemy below, who still had enough archers to blanket the battleground.
Brother Cleo stepped up beside him and pointed behind the main force. “That’s the king’s animal. See the big grizzly bear? He’s holding back to watch. We nearly got his crystal last night, but the collar was too heavy to chew through. It’s got to be barely hanging on. I’m going to take the raven in close to take a peek at it. I’ve seen some of the small animals down that way, too, trying to flank them.”
Gavin nodded. “I have one of the badger crystals, but it won’t do any good. It takes too long to attune to it.”
Brother Cleo said, “Take your boots off, quickly!”
Gavin gave him an odd look but complied.
“Now sit like this.” Brother Cleo sat with his feet together and pulled close, with his hands pressed against the tops of his feet.
Once Gavin was in position, Bother Cleo pushed his hands and feet a bit to adjust their position, and then said, “Now hum. No, higher. Good. Hold just like that as long as you can.”
Brother Cleo continued, “We have to do our best to take him out of the fight. If he brings his reserve force up now, we’ve lost. He has to know that. If we work together we might have a chance.”
Brother Cleo ran back and collapsed onto the ground without taking the time to settle into a comfortable position.
Gavin felt the link forming, but it wasn’t ready yet. He watched the army below as he hummed, an odd resonance filling his mind.
The enemy paused in their attack, so Gavin issued the order to march the cattle down part way to give the men some protection so they could gather arrows from the upper field. If they had an actual fighting force, things might be different. Most of the armed men were farmers, traders, and craftsmen who had been faced with a choice of defending themselves or being killed. Many of the women insisted on helping with the defensive wall as well. They stood beside their husbands, sons, and brothers, and had come up with all kinds of improvised death-dealing weapons. The people performed admirably given they had less than two weeks of training, but it would all be for naught if the enemy combined all their forces and pushed.
The defensive wall had Draken’s wolf among them as an additional guard, running back and forth among the cattle. Two oxen also stood guard with their bulk between Gavin’s men and the enemy archers.
Jase borrowed Draken’s spyglass to look at the rear enemy group. “An eagle is chasing Brother Cleo’s raven away from the enemy’s reserve group. It must be the one they used to spy on us.”
Gavin could see the two birds engaged in battle, dodging and swooping. Three times the raven barely escaped the eagle’s claws. The raven’s advantage was its maneuverability as they twisted and looped through the sky.
The birds danced their way gradually up the hill, until they were within range of the archers who let a volley fly at the eagle. An arrow pierced its left wing, and the large bird spiraled to the ground.
A cheer rose from the archers, but the main war animal force below began to advance. Jase stepped in and told the trumpeter, “Sound a retreat. Get those men back up now!”
As the bugler put his lips to his horn, a different horn sounded from behind their camp. The bugler’s eyes widened. “That’s a cavalry call!” He turned and blasted out a series of notes, then listened for a response.
A call came back, and the bugler said, “There’s six of them. That’s a good bit of help.”
Gavin tried to figure out if the man was serious, but saw the bugler’s relief. How much could six riders possibly do? He hummed as he thought. The crystal echoed the hum back to him.
It was hard to see much from the ground, but he took a quick inventory of both sides and came up short. The cavalry men weren’t enough to even the odds.
Jase turned to Gavin. “Bluff? Maybe we can make it look like we have a lot of cavalry.”
Gavin nodded as he hummed, trying to keep the pitch Brother Cleo had shown him.
Jase continued, “Split them up, three on each side. Wait out of sight below the ridge until we signal them to come up and look as big as possible right on the ridge where they’ll be the most visible. Lots to see and lots of noise. We might be able to use the terrain to convince the enemy they’re the front rank of a larger force.”
The bugler scratched his beard. “You’ve got to be kidding. Not even the cavalry buglers can put that much detail into their orders. I’ll tell them to form up.” He turned to face away from the fight and traded bugle commands back and forth.
Gavin’s men retreated, but not quickly enough. In less than a minute the enemy would overrun them.
The link to the badger appeared in Gavin’s mind, and he dropped into control. Brother Cleo’s odd trick worked. The priest was a man of surprises.
The view from ground-level disoriented him. It was dim, almost dark. The animal had found a hiding place after its master had been pulled from his trance.
Gavin crawled out and spotted the enemy king’s reserve force nearby, along with a few animals from Gavin’s force of small creatures.
He l
et out a yip then made a paw signal, telling his friends to attack his target. Then he charged up to the King’s grizzly bear.
The bear saw him and raised a paw, ready to squash him with a deadly swing. Three small creatures bit its rear legs, causing it to turn and bellow.
Gavin hopped to the top of a rock and leaped into the air, grabbing the bear’s crystal in his teeth. It didn’t break free. The collar had been repaired. He dangled from the thick leather and clamped his jaws tighter as the bear swung its head back and forth.
Every time the bear tried to stand to use its paws against him, the smaller animals darted in with teeth and claws. A squirrel ran up the bear’s back and latched onto an ear, one of the few places it could get a good hold.
The bear turned his head with a mighty jerk at the squirrel’s attack. Gavin twisted, his teeth shearing through leather. He flew free to crash through a bush and land on his back with a thump.
He choked on a small object and reflexively swallowed. Was that the crystal? A glance at the bear showed the collar no longer held a gem.
He rolled to his feet and yipped again, hoping everyone knew enough to get out of the way. Once he was out of immediate danger, Gavin found another hiding spot and released control.
He put his boots on, too dizzy to stand. “We got the king’s crystal off the bear.”
Jase lent an arm and handed him the spyglass with a grin. “It’s getting lively down there.”
Gavin turned the spyglass back to the enemy as the grizzly, previously harassed and pestered on all sides, was free to act on its own. It lashed out at anything close. The rest of the king’s reserve force scattered to get out of the bear’s reach.
He would never get a better shot than this. “Forget about having the cavalry form up. Sound a full charge. Everybody all the way in, including the guard wall. Including us. It’s our only chance. It’s victory or death. Get the cavalry out there with us to see what they can do.”
The bugler let out a blast and Gavin grinned like a maniac, watching the enemy reserve team break. His ragtag army ran down the hill, screaming at the top of their lungs. The meager cavalry force came over the hill on both sides and charged down into the arena of combat.
Gavin stumbled as he ran, shaking the trance tremors away as he gained speed.
The enemy front ranks of men and animals stopped, stared, and held to a slow retreat for a half a minute. Then they turned and ran. The cavalry cut in on their flanks while Saleena’s remaining cattle plowed forward through the center where the pike men were now in disarray. Draken’s wolf and some farm dogs bit anyone who tried to dodge out of the way. The oxen rumbled through after the cattle and stomped anything still moving. The front wave of cattle ran straight over the fleeing men and beasts and into the enemy camp, leaving injury and death in their wake. Gavin’s footmen and archers screamed and followed. They swarmed anyone who didn’t flee fast enough or throw down their arms.
Gavin ran with them, losing his hilltop view of the field. He had given his last order, and the rest of the fight was in the hands of his people. Jase and the bugler ran at his side, keeping pace, screaming a battle cry of “Stoutheart!”
Two men from the cavalry force, one on each side, were buglers. They directed the other four who maintained a trance to control their mounts. The buglers coordinated their flanking maneuvers to devastating effect through the edges of the routed forces. If the enemy had seen the cavalry was only six strong, they might have ended the fight with a renewed attack. The confusion and chaos sewn by the rampaging grizzly played into the hands of the amateur soldiers under Gavin’s command as they flooded down the field of battle.
Again and again, men and trained animals fell to the cavalry, lacking orders to organize against the three fronts they faced. Soon there was a path through the enemy to the camp where men, many of Northern noble blood, lay helpless in their trances.
Rather than be butchered by the cavalry and the approaching footmen, they surrendered. War animals lay out flat on the ground in the common signal for surrender. The remaining Graven soldiers threw down their weapons, kneeling on the ground with raised arms.
It was over.
They’d won.
All that remained were an angry, injured grizzly bear and a few animals that fled back through the enemy camp.
Gavin looked out across the wreckage and carnage. It was a victory, but it had cost them nearly everything. People swarmed him and cheered, making their slow way back up the hill to their camp in his wake.
“Sir?” Brother Cleo was once again at his elbow, breathing hard. “I spotted Adrian and six of his men at the rear of the enemy camp on horseback, but I lost them. Outrunning the eagle seemed more important at the time.”
“Thank you. I’m sure they’ll show up soon.” Gavin checked to make sure Adrian wasn’t already standing beside him.
Gavin wandered around the top of the hill in a daze and ended up standing where the bears had broken through to savage their defenses. He heard weeping and cries of pain all around him. On the ground was a boy’s red-stained shoe, torn loose in the fight. He fell to his knees and squeezed his eyes shut to block out the sight of the bodies as he clenched his fists. He’d failed to save them all, with more lives lost than ever before. They deserved better, and he could only make it up to the survivors.
* * *
Adrian motioned his men to stand back, two in the far corners of the tent and two inside the entrance. He didn’t want any interruptions. Gerald Stoutheart’s guards lay lifeless, their blood soaking into the ground. Stoutheart himself sprawled on a low cot in a trance. Adrian fingered shackles that had been attached to a tent pole as he waited. He had seen the baron’s shackles before.
Outside, a large animal ran up to the tent, and Adrian heard the clinking sound of a latch as it slid home. The baron often used the bear to lock itself up before releasing control. Adrian smiled at the Baron’s predictability.
Baron Gerald Stoutheart sat up and glanced around the room. “Adrian, those were my men, not the king’s. I think you, of all people, would recognize them and ask before killing them.” He sat up, all poise and confidence despite the shakes from his recent trance. “I’ve hoped for you to catch up to me for some time. That was brilliant how you led a third of the army away on a wild goose chase. Did you buy more than a day?”
Adrian said, “They might be two days. Three if they search all the false trails. It was some of my better work, but I wasn’t after your approval. You see, your son’s done an admirable job as the new baron.”
Gerald grunted. “It sounds like he’ll make a fine figurehead if things don’t work out as I planned. We need to get to King Ithan before my son’s ragtag crew gets there. Help me up, will you?” He stretched out a hand.
Adrian stood still. “She’s not here. When I first thought you were dead, I hoped she was released or had escaped. She never showed up. How long was it before you killed her?”
“Oh. I see where you’re going with this. I still have her. She’ll be fine as long as you continue to serve me as you have in the past.” Gerald struggled to his feet, still shaky.
“You forget I know how you work. You’re not subtle with your messages. If you had her, she’d be here. You’re at a disadvantage now.” Adrian tapped his collar with a groove worn where he had worked to remove it. “Do you know what your son did when he found out your crystal controlled me? He smashed the master crystal right there in front of me. No discussion. No threats. No putting my own knife to my throat. Do you know why? Because he saw right through me and accepted me for what I was, and for what I could become. He has honor you’ll never understand.”
Adrian turned his back on Gerald. “I only came for one thing, and you don’t have it.”
Gerald drew a dagger and slashed through the back wall of the tent, but before he had so much as taken a step to escape, an inconspicuous but deadly snake struck from its hiding place near Gerald’s leg. It pulled back and struck again as he jerked back and
tumbled onto the cot. The striped snake had one of the fastest acting venoms known, and it wore an over-sized crystal, fastened behind its head.
“Right. Small and sneaky worked out pretty well.” Adrian placed a sack on the ground, and the snake obediently climbed in. Gerald gasped in pain and surprise, his skin turning ashen. A few moments later, two more of Adrian’s men came into the tent, one of them wavering as he walked, steadied by the other as he recovered from his trance.
“No kingdom for you today, sir. You’ll never see family, never watch your son marry and have your grandchildren. Never even see another sunset. You’ve taken everything from me, and now I’m taking everything from you.”
Adrian looked at the old baron and shook his head. “Some would call this justice. Others, vengeance. I can’t really tell the difference.”
“She’s ...” Gerald held a hand out to appeal to Adrian as paralysis spread through his body. It would take an hour or more for him to die, but there was no stopping it now.
“Goodbye, sir. I’ll watch over your grandchildren.” Adrian walked through the door flap and handed the bagged snake off to the man who wore its matching crystal. He gestured behind him at the baron. “Please bring him along. The new Baron Stoutheart will want to know about his father.”
Gavin sat down to rest and catch his breath near the Crystal Cabal’s camp when Saleena approached him tentatively. “I don’t know what this means, but this was in the gear of those bandits you fought in the canyon. It has your name on it. There wasn’t time to bring it to you before.”
She offered the wax-sealed envelope. He stared at it and then pulled out a knife to break the seal as Adrian hopped down from the wagon behind him to peer over his shoulder. Gavin held the knife out defensively and then gave an exhausted grimace. “Must you do that every time?”
“Sorry, old habit. I need you to see something.” Adrian stood and held out a hand to Gavin, then stopped as he looked past Gavin to the freed slave woman who sat wrapped in a blanket.