"That works," said Firio. "Imvan?"
Imvan nodded gravely, and started forward to the right in careful silence.
"Everyone else, with me," said Talaos, and he in turn continued on.
The tall trees loomed overhead, and the slopes on either side grew steeper. They reached the little village, a cluster of a dozen ramshackle, poorly constructed wooden houses, with pens full of sleepy hogs.
"Imvan was right," said Larogwan. "Looks like they dropped what they were doing and left in a hurry."
Talaos nodded, and motioned them onward. The valley continued to narrow, and grew steeper. There was a clear and well used trail from the village running uphill, with towering trees overhead. They went on for a while in the shadows as the valley became a gully. The gully became a shallow depression on a hillside, and the trail switched back and forth until it reached a ridge line. Near the top were very old-looking garden terraces dug back into the slopes. Atop the ridge itself stretched a ramshackle patchwork of fenced pasture. Shaggy, half-wild looking goats grazed in the weeds and grass.
As they passed them, Vulkas nodded to Larogwan, "Good to see your cousins are here."
"Aye," answered Larogwan, "and you'll not be wanting to pick a feud with us."
Woods ran along the right of the ridge line, while more pasture sprawled to the left. The trail here joined with another and became a kind of small road running down the center of the ridge. There was another village further on at the end of the ridge, then a belt of woods, and finally higher ground where several ridges came together at a forested hilltop. The enemy's stronghold was atop that hill, as he'd been informed, but there was something odd.
"I think that is a place of death…" whispered Halmir.
In the distance could be seen what indeed looked like the ruins of a fortress, but it was carved from the rocky peak of the hill itself. Its lofty battlements formed a pentagon of five equal sides. At each corner loomed a squat circular tower, and the outer face of each tower was sculpted into the stylized, blocky face of a snarling beast. All of it looked ancient and weathered. He saw no visible gate, gatehouse, or even a ramp.
A great many people crowded atop that fortress. Talaos had a sense of something else in the place, of a hidden and unfriendly power.
"Halmir, I think you're right," he said.
"Talaos, I might be inclined to wait for Hadrastus," said Larogwan, "but I'll guess you have other ideas."
Talaos made a darksome smile in reply and continued forward. Imvan and his smaller group vanished into the woods on the right. The road, such as it was, was rutted and muddy. The goats grazed peacefully in their pasture behind weathered, moss-grown fences, but there was still not a person to be seen outside of the fortress.
Katara drew close to Talaos and spoke, "I see no one, but it feels like a trap."
"No doubt it is," he replied, "and it will be interesting to see what form it takes."
The Northwoman gave him a wondering look.
Vulkas, who was close by, chuckled. "We Madmen did earn our name, Katara."
"It is worthy of honor," she replied gravely.
The second village, though larger and a bit better constructed, was as empty as the first. They passed through it and onward toward the waiting fortress atop the hill. As they neared the point where the woods along the right of the ridge merged with the larger belt of woods around the hilltop, Talaos could make out new details. The thick, crumbling battlements had no crenellations. Armed men gathered along the walls, and archers in four of the towers, but the closest tower held a tall post with a crossbar, like a gallows.
Standing on that tower was a man draped in a white cloak. He held a long gleaming knife in his right hand. Around him gathered women and children. Talaos stretched his inner sight. Seen that way, a cloud brooded around the man, but not like the Prophet's shadows. It was more like mist in the air, a mist of red.
"That's Larikos in that closest tower," said Talaos.
"What's that bastard doing with all those kids up there?" growled Kyrax.
They passed through the belt of woods, and came to a gently upward-sloping meadow. There was no cover of any sort between the outer belt of woods and the dense forest on the final, central hill. Talaos motioned for them to stop just before the end of the trees.
"That trap Katara talked about," said Talaos. "This would be a likely place for it."
With his inner sight, he sensed that Imvan, Sorya, and Firio were hidden to the right in dense undergrowth. Katara and the rest of the Madmen waited behind him. He took stock of the situation. At Megasi they'd told him the enemy had a hilltop stronghold, but it wasn't supposed to be so intact. Larikos was also clearly well prepared. He decided that if he couldn't end things quickly, they'd have to wait on the main force after all, and that could mean a siege.
Then his thoughts were interrupted.
"You gonna hide in them woods all day?" said a plain, rough-edged voice that reminded him of Dromno. It reverberated from the fortress, louder than anyone's could be without magic.
From here, he had a better view. Larikos stood on the crumbling lip of the battlement itself. He was a tall, lanky man with a long, gaunt face and long brown hair, and a lofty, tapering bronze helmet on his head. He threw back his cloak, revealing white robes mottled in random patterns of red-brown, and waved his long knife in the air.
Besides Larikos, most of the people visible along the walls were dressed ordinarily enough in tunics or dresses of common Hunyos style, and simple earthy colors. There were a few others, all women it seemed, in mottled white robes of their own.
"Well? I know it's you. C'mon, Storm Lord!" yelled Larikos.
As he spoke, several children of various ages climbed precariously on the battlement close around him. Behind them, a group of women and older boys were performing some kind of labor around the gallows.
That was odd too, thought Talaos. Whatever was going on up there, waiting longer wasn’t going to help. "Main group," he whispered, "with me.”
With that, Talaos stalked forward out of the woods with six companions.
Larikos laughed, a wild, high-pitched, scratchy-sounding laugh like steel scraped over stone. He waved his knife in Talaos's direction and shouted, "Seven of ye? Haw! Well, I heard you had balls, stormy! I know you got my hills swarming with them that call themselves hillmen, but they ain't close enough to do ye much good right now!"
Talaos called out to Larikos in a booming, yet cheerful, almost friendly voice, "So Larikos, what made you change your mind about the Prophet?"
Larikos, chuckled and replied. "He got it all wrong! People gotta come together and make sacrifices, no doubt about it, but some gotta rise to something greater. Some, but not all."
As Larikos spoke, and Talaos drew closer to the base of the hill, the work of the others on the tower became clear. A man in the uniform of Megasi was hauled up, bound and hanging by his feet from the scaffold. He didn’t move, and it was unclear if he was alive. His companions reacted with varying degrees of surprise, but Talaos forced down his revulsion and showed no outward change in manner.
"And you're going to lead them?" asked Talaos, cheerily, as he continued forward. In his mind, he gauged the distance.
"That's right, I'll lead ’em, all of ‘em!" answered Larikos. "I'm the one… wait there a second…"
With that, Larikos leapt down from the battlement, behind the children, and walked over to the soldier of Megasi hanging upside down from the gallows. Swift and sure, as if with much practice, Larikos cut the man's throat with his long knife. The women and older boys around put cups underneath to collect the blood.
There were growls from among the Madmen. Vulkas muttered in a low voice, "Talaos, what's your plan?"
Talaos didn't answer, though by his will the clouds overhead gathered and darkened. As he advanced, he shouted to Larikos again, "So what makes you the one?"
The latter hopped back up on the battlement with a silver cup full of blood. The children there
clung close to him. Larikos took a drink while others near him passed cups around and sipped.
Then he answered, "Simple! It was always in me blood. Then the Prophet's people came poking around here for old secrets. They said they was lookin’ for sinful things to destroy. Haw! Well, I already found some things they didn’t need to know, and they found some others I liked better'n I liked them!”
"Like what?" asked Talaos as he continued his approach, and his estimations. He thought he'd only get one chance. He'd need to advance ahead of the others. For the sake of accuracy, he decided to risk the archers on the other towers. He had no desire to hit those children by mistake.
On the battlement, Larikos handed the cup to one of the smaller children, who sipped, while a woman in a white robe handed him a bronze hand axe of an odd, sickle-bladed design. Talaos prepared to sprint, and to call the power that would slow the world, or rather speed himself and his perception faster.
"Like this!" shouted Larikos. He hurled the axe far out from the hill, over the forested slopes and half the meadow, farther and faster than any arrow, and aimed straight for Talaos.
Talaos dodged, but the axe turned toward him with a buzzing noise as it flew. However, he called on his power in reply, and all around him now seemed to slow. The axe moved faster than anything he'd faced, but not so fast as him. He watched as it approached, spun as it veered in midair to strike him, and caught it in flight with his left hand. He felt tempted to hurl it right back, but thought better of it.
It was a very long way, but he thought he could make the shot. His eyes blazed, and he stretched out his right hand. A bolt of lightning arced far across the sky to the tower. It struck Larikos full in the chest.
Nothing happened.
In his surprise, Talaos returned to the speed of the world.
Larikos laughed again, and he taunted. "That the best ye got? Lightning don't hurt me!"
Katara, walking on Talaos's right, watched the scene with an icy glare on her face and in her gray eyes. Kyrax snarled. Vulkas made a kind of low rumble in his throat as he swung his mattock in a circle. Halmir, Larogwan, and Epos walked in silence. They were still outside the range of even long bows.
Talaos turned to his companions, “Halmir, javelin!”
The latter threw him one, even as he dropped the axe to the ground. In one sweeping motion he caught the javelin, drew back his arm, and cast.
Faster even than the axe, it flew straight at his foe
Larikos, however, leapt from the battlement with sudden and superhuman speed of his own. The children, far slower, lingered all around. The javelin passed through the spot where the warlord’s chest had been and soared harmlessly over the fortress.
In fury, Talaos called the storm. The clouds overhead roiled. Lightning from the sky struck the tower to the left of Larikos. Archers burned and died as their bodies hurled in all directions.
Again lightning, and the next tower to the left blasted with the ruin of armed men.
The archers on the other two towers began to run, dodging for cover.
Too slowly. Another strike, and another, and more archers died.
The men, women, and children that crowded the top of the central fortress wore no armor and showed no visible weapons. Talaos spared them, and many began to run, vanishing into some unseen stairs or ramp down to hidden levels below.
Now something else happened. From the snarling mouths of the bestial towers came a reverberating sound. With it thundered a transparent shockwave, radiating outward. Talaos could see its power in the air, like waves in water.
It moved fast, as fast as him and his lightning.
Trees shook on the hillsides and branches snapped, flying outward.
It struck Talaos and his companions. They went flying backwards through the air. Talaos tumbled and flipped to his feet. Even as he did, he felt something else, a power that attempted to snuff out his magic, like a breath on a candle. He braced himself as it howled against him. His aura of power, without and within, flickered but held and reignited.
He took a step forward as his friends rose armed, ready and angry.
While they'd weathered the blast, Larikos had not been idle. There now came creaking metallic noises from five spots along the base of the hilltop. Hundreds of armed men and women poured out of hidden tunnels at those spots. They carried a vast, motley array of weapons. Only a few had armor, but they charged fearlessly with wailing battle cries.
"To me!" Talaos shouted to his companions.
Behind, he heard sudden cries of pain, followed by gurgling noises and crashes to the ground. Talaos glanced behind him and saw at least fifty more enemy warriors creeping through the woods. Some of them were already dying by the hidden hands of his friends. He struck another down with lightning, then turned back to the charging mobs.
At least a thousand had now poured from the hill or emerged from other hidden places nearby. Some, mostly wild-looking, lightly armed young men, sprinted in great loping strides ahead of the others, faster and for longer than was normally possible. They howled as they ran. A few were shirtless, revealing intricate tattoos on their torsos in spiraling designs with what looked like glyphs. The tattoos were so recently made that the skin around them was still bleeding raw. They closed to attack.
He stretched his right hand in the direction of the fastest and closest of them, a lean, shaggy youth who leapt yards with each stride and spattered foam from his bloodstained mouth as he howled. Talaos unleashed lightning, and the foe's upper half incinerated.
Another of the howling, feral-looking men closed on Katara. She spun and cleaved his right arm from his body in a spatter of blood. He turned with a snarl, picked up his fallen sword in his left hand, and leapt at her. The whites of his eyes were heavily bloodshot with red.
A third man, with red eyes and bared yellow teeth, reached Vulkas, but the giant brought his mattock around in an arc that sent the man flying twenty feet backward. He crashed into the grass with a shattered hip and ribs. He tried to rise like a broken insect, snarled, and shambled forward a few steps in a very unnatural looking way. Then he fell to the ground again. Blood poured from his mouth, but he continued to try to crawl forward with a look of fury in his red-shot eyes.
"Bleeding bloody pigfucker!" shouted Kyrax as he skewered another of the red-eyed men, only to see the enemy leap backward off the blade and charge again to the attack. Kyrax blocked him with his shield, spun, and cut the enemy's head off. That stopped him.
Katara cut the head from her one-armed foe, then turned and cleaved the head of another in half. He dropped, but a third man leapt at her with a raised axe. The enemy was interrupted by Epos's spear, but pressed forward, pushing along the spear and still howling. His howling was at last stopped by Larogwan's axe through his face.
Larogwan himself then would have faced a spear through his throat, but Katara cut the spear with a leap and downward slice of her sword. Then together, they cut down the spear’s wielder, a howling woman with bloodshot eyes and matted, tangled hair. Halmir had turned the other way, fighting the men who had crept through the woods. These advanced in silence under cloaks of mottled browns and greens, and they fought and died like normal men.
Imvan and Sorya emerged from hiding. Imvan fought with leaps and stabs of his short sword. Sorya struck a foe through the throat with her dagger, then vaulted up a tree as three others closed on her. She threw a dagger into the eye of one. A second suddenly fell with a blast of green-white lightning as Firio and his daggers appeared seemingly from nowhere. Then Sorya leapt from her perch like a striking cat to cut the throat of the third.
As they fought, Talaos blasted one foe after another, He raked lightning in a line and cut down twenty foes at once, but many more were now recklessly upon them. He drew his swords, whirled and spun. The blades arced with lightning, cutting down foes on all sides. Even so, the numbers and ferocity of their attackers began to tell. Talaos and his companions fell back, surrounded as the enemy closed on them. He though
t to himself that it would be a good time for Hadrastus to arrive.
He was not disappointed.
With a mighty shout, the half-Jotunheimer giant charged from the belt of woods, and after him five hundred mighty soldiers, heavily armed and armored. With them were Talaos's Wolves, who made howls of their own. They smashed their way through Larikos's howling mobs. Talaos and his companions cut down the last of the feral, red-eyed vanguard, in some cases having to hack them almost to pieces before they stopped.
Together, they forced the enemy back, step by blood-soaked step, toward the hill.
Talaos sheathed his swords and kindled the lightning in his hands. He glanced at the tower and saw that Larikos stood on the battlement once more, though now without his children close by. Even at this distance, Talaos could see the man’s eyes were blood red. Larikos hefted a spear and hurled it far beyond normal range. It skewered one of Hadrastus's soldiers.
In wrath, Talaos sent a brilliant blue-white arc of lightning into the crumbling stone at Larikos's feet. Rock shattered in the blast and flew in all directions. Larikos leapt straight back with superhuman speed and agility as the spot where he'd stood collapsed outward and stones fell a hundred feet to the hillsides below. He let loose another screeching laugh.
The enemy fled in full retreat toward the base of the hilltop. The entrances to the tunnels there had been skillfully concealed with branches and vegetation under the shade of dense trees, yet the heavy iron gates inside were of crude and recent-looking construction. They were still wide open to receive the fleeing warriors. Talaos again called lightning from the darkened sky. It struck in the path of the fleeing foe. They panicked, turning this way and that, and were smashed, ground into the earth, by Hadrastus's force of mighty ones. Smashed as if struck with a hammer.
The hammer of Hadrastus, thought Talaos, even as he called down the lightning.
It occurred to him that Larikos, or someone under him would size up the situation soon and prepare for siege He shouted to his men, "To the gates! Now!"
Firio ran far ahead of both friend and foe, racing so swiftly he appeared more a blur than a solid form. The gates began to lower. Firio raced through the closest one. From within came sudden sounds of commotion. Talaos drew his long blade as he sprinted after Firio.
The Storm's Own Son (Book 3) Page 16