by Nelson, J P
You couldn’t hear anything outside of the shelter, so we had a meal and then I pulled out a reed flute I had made and began to play. Only I played some gentle lullabies, and *Channeled*. I hadn’t tried this before, but it was worth a shot. I felt that heat rise up from So’Yeth, despite the cold outside, and I put all I could into wanting these guys to *Fall Asleep*. Soldiers, wicked or good, are still flesh and blood and they like to relax when they can. It wasn’t long before everyone, including Merle, was fast asleep.
Easing over to him, I woke him up, or tried to. Merle was a heavy sleeper who snored. Waking him up became a major challenge, but I finally did it by pushing a blade of dead grass up his nose.
He came around kind of funny like, but we didn’t have any time for humor. “Pssst …” I whispered at him, “Merle?”
He was startled at seeing me so close, but I kept him quiet and said, “Listen mate, I’ve got to talk to you.”
We were no longer just good friends; we were soldiers who needed to depend on each other. I opened up and told him some of what I could and couldn’t do, how I could sort of talk with animals, and that it was important to tell Ander. But only he, Ander, Ize and Dudley; nobody else could know what I was telling him.
Ander was always the one with the great plans and strategy during games, and I, we, needed him to come up with some ideas, if possible. I also told Merle what I surmised about Aldivert, how I saw into the Gadwaur’s mind and saw the wizard, and everything like that. I didn’t go into my past, and wasn’t going to, but only the relevant things I felt Ander and the chums should know right now.
Coming up with ideas, yes, I could do that. But I was lacking in experience, and I was smart enough to know it. We needed to work as a team, and right now I didn’t know how to go about making that work. Also, everyone looked at Ander as a leader, not me.
Having the squads lay in just the right way, my yelling the word engage, the whole thing had been Ander’s idea. When he looked and saw the major on the ground he naturally took command. So he would have to be the one to take charge, now. I didn’t know how Montao or our field sergeant, a hard core soldier named Dannon, would take to it. We would have to shoot that target when we saw it.
Merle was sometimes slow in his speech, but he was smart and had no problem grasping what I said. I would have to trust him to find a way to get the information to the others.
The hail hammered down upon us all night, the next day, and into the following morning. But then the storm suddenly broke and in no time the sun was out bright and shinning. Everything was icy, but we got out of there and spent much of the next day double-timing our march. I wondered where we were going so quickly.
Distance was measured in days of travel, not miles, and it was a good thing. A couple of those days were hard going and we didn’t get very far, maybe a dozen miles. This wasn’t flat land and often involved rugged hills. I had expected much arguing between Aldivert’s men and our original company, but everyone was usually too tired to care. We were pushing that hard.
On our fifth day after the hail, we were again on the edge of the jungle when Aldivert had us start making a camp at the top of a small mesa. The back side was almost straight up and down and there were only two places where a person could comfortably go up. The top was only about six to six and a half acres with signs someone might have tried making a dwelling up here. There was a rise of rock off to one side where a bubble of ice cold water streamed out into a little pool.
We were going to make camp here, and I have to say it was a good choice. Once at the top you could see maybe eight or nine hundred rods in any direction. There was no shelter up here, however, and I wouldn’t want to be up there in a storm of any kind.
While camp was being made, Aldivert had four of his men to choose three troops each to go out and explore the outer perimeter. One of the men I caught plotting against Dud, a man whose nose must have been broken more than once, named Tarrin, picked me, one of his buddies, and Patriohr from West Gate Barracks and Montao’s platoon.
I thought Montao was going to bust when Patriohr was picked, and Tarrin smiled. Something else going on … something I had no knowledge of. Patriohr, I thought, Izner had once called him the guffous from Malone. He was quiet, did his job, but otherwise not a spectacular individual.
We were sent into the jungle, of all places, and without backpacks or crossbows. Aldivert said in the dense jungle, the structure of the bow’s cross section would be a hindrance amid the deep undergrowth. I would have preferred the hindrance and was at once fairly well alarmed.
My ability to sense things through the ground was far from being well developed, and there were several large critters in there. I couldn’t distinguish much apart from … wait a minute. The sensation of four-footed sharp strikes upon the ground; it couldn’t be a horse, could it? Was that the distinct sound of saddle leather creaking?
We had been scouting around, seemingly endlessly, for maybe three hours, when we came upon a huge tree with what must have been the world’s largest honey bee hive in it. I looked up, and then stepped back to get a better view as I remembered the honey in my momma’s and my quarters when I was a child, when a crossbow bolt whipped by just inches from my neck. Tarrin whipped out his sword and lunged at me when a roaring sound like a big, angry beast came from inside the brush. Tarrin and I just stopped and looked at each other, off to the left Patriohr and his partner looked around, and I could have sworn I heard a horse suddenly gallop away.
Stumbling out of the brush, holding his behind with a bolt sticking out of it, was seven and a half foot of pissed off cognobin. By the look of things, he must have been relieving himself. He stopped and stared at us, we stared at him, and then we all started yelling. I passed a thought to those bees in hopes they might want to lend a hand here, but didn’t stay around long enough to find out if they did.
Patriohr and his partner had a head start on us, and we were still running when we made it out of the forest’s edge. I passed Patriohr, then his partner and was making hard time toward the encampment. Behind us were the yells of more cognobins than I wanted to know, and then I looked back to see where my fellows were. Patriohr was way back there and had fallen down.
That magical seeing-things-real-close-up effect happened again, and it was like Patriohr was right in front of me and I saw he couldn’t get up on his left leg. His buddy looked back but kept running for the mesa, and then I saw a vision of Bernard riding hard for me, No man left behind, he said to me, so many years ago.
Behind where Patriohr had fallen in the clearing three, no four … By Cherron’s Beard … there was a whole mob of the hideous cognobins emerging from the forest and I knew he would never make it. The first of the cogs would reach him in moments. With a sudden rush, I felt that animal rage within me. Tarrin was coming up the hill my way and he made as if to avoid me as I stepped in front of him. Reaching around him as he tried to run by, I grabbed the sword from his sheath and drawing my own I began running like never before toward Patriohr, a sword in each hand.
I could see no way I could beat the cogs to where Patriohr was still trying to get up … but I had to try. I felt the wind in my hair and I began to growl like an enraged beast as I ran faster, *Faster* toward the cognobins. One threw a javelin at me and I leaped into a sideways spin to avoid it, landed and kept running. The growl in my throat had turned into a primal roar as somehow I beat them to Patriohr’s position. I *Leaped* past Patriohr, a fantastic jump of almost thirty feet, and onto the first of the charging cognobins; my blades cut deep into the thigh and torso of the fiendish creature as I went berserk ...
I cannot tell you what moves I used, for I don’t know. My swords moved with the fan patterns taught me by Hoscoe and they bit deep as I struck and killed. The first went down and I rolled to slice another. Then stepping up on a cognobin knee, I vaulted into the air to catch a third unguarded across the shoulders and through the neck.
From off to the side, and just rods away from me and
the cogs, Patriohr was trying in vain to get to his sword. I could hear him yelling at me to watch out behind me, to leave and save myself.
Whirling, I put both blades against a hamstring here, a torso there, and somewhere along the line I saw a head fly off. One of my blades broke, but I don’t know how. My obsession was only to stay between the enemy and my teammate. I began wielding my remaining blade in two-hand fashion with a series of spins, leaps and rolls. ‘Faster-harder-*Faster*-press-press’ I thought. It was as if So’Yeth couldn’t feed me enough of her power; with every touch of my foot against the ground a new surge of energy rushed through me.
Again my blade broke as I hammered hard into a huge leg.; their bones were just too hard for this plain steel. Seeing the javelin of a slain cog, I grabbed it up and ran one through the midriff. It wouldn’t come out, so with a maddened yell I wrenched it and broke it off. As I did, however, the wood began to hum in my hands. What was this? No matter, I now had almost six feet of stick in my hand … I began to wield the broken weapon like the iron tipped staves of the Nahjiuese Hillmen.
I could almost feel a wave of vigorous power coming from the broken stick, invisible to see, but it was there. Smashing it into a cog’s knee, I felt the satisfying crunch of bone as he began to howl in pain. ‘My prize,’ I thought, ‘what was my prize?’ There were just too many, thinking was hard to do as all I wanted was to lash out and destroy. Wait! ‘Patriohr,’ he was the prize. I had to get him out, but how?
Spinning about I smashed another cog’s leg and felt the bone shatter as a bestial elation washed through me. Bending over I whirled my staff behind my back to change grip and leaping up like a tornado I crashed howler-cog in the head and he dropped like a stone. Reversing my spin I saw shatter-knee hopping on his one good leg; I hit that one low and against his shin, again I felt bone shatter and he went down hard on his back. Another whipping spin of my empowered staff and with a primal yell of defiance, I *Channeled* a surge of power into my weapon as I struck down, onto the prone creature’s face with a crunch.
One more came up quickly to engage with me, I deflected his own thrown weapon then whirled to the side, catching him in the solar plexus with the butt end of my staff so that he rose up and back several feet. Running in, I planted the stick down, vaulted up and over his dazed head with a back flip, and as I landed behind him I *Pushed* my energy into the stick, making it grow into a wicked, pointed barb on the end. I ran him through from behind, and then caused the barb to momentarily close as I yanked the stick back out. Looking to the next cog coming to bear, I made the barb grow once more into a foot long, thorn-like wooden blade with serrated edges and needle point tip, and hurled the weapon.
I saw my *Thorn Blade* javelin hurtle sixty-five rods and impale the surprised cog as he caught the missile in his chest; the force of the projectile stopping him in mid-stride, causing his feet to fly out from under him, and he landed on his neck and shoulders. Another hundred rods past him a rush of the creatures emerged from out of the jungle, and I felt myself begin to tire, quickly.
Turning to find Patriohr, I saw him lying fifteen rods from me. The mesa was five hundred rods from our position, but I saw Dudley running full tilt down the mesa’s slope with a crossbow and several sheaves of bolts in hand to get into firing range. Following him was a wave of Resounder teams with Ander taking command and setting up two ranks of crossbowmen. At the top of the mesa, Aldivert showed up and was yelling at the men below, but it was too far away for me to hear.
No sense in me looking behind us, I had to get Patriohr, there was no time to lose. I rushed to my buddy’s side, looking as I ran at his wrenched leg I saw it was snapped at the ankle. I couldn’t take time to heal him, and he would never make it if I helped him to his feet. I did a diving roll and caught his arm as I went down. Curling him up as I went, I got to my feet in one movement. I reached deep into So’Yeth for strength, and up to So’Yahr as well. The two energies met somewhere inside me for the first time and I ran.
I extended my legs and felt as if a flaming wind was pushing me; my strides covering more distance than humanly possible. The mesa was so close, yet so far away. Focus, I had to focus. *Run like the Wind*, I thought. Run, Wolf, run.
My *Awareness* warned me to swerve, and I did as a javelin hurdled past me. I saw Dudley aiming, and then he fired, and then again. He was using my crossbow. The Resounders were also starting to fire, Merle holding his like a standard weapon. Again I had to swerve as one javelin flew overhead and another one cut past my ribs. And then I caught a sight to sooth any soul, a company of cavalry led by Lahrcus, himself, sounding a horn and coming around a ridge to head directly into the wake of cognobins.
Running full out with the last of my strength, I crested the top of the mesa and dropped both of us when we reached center. Turning to Patriohr, I saw his white face and felt of his leg. Yup, the ankle was shattered. Gasping for air, I said, “It’s only a bad sprain, Patriohr.” And I put all the energy I had left into his leg. As I felt it come back together, I pulled his sword out of its sheath and with sheets of sweat pouring from my body I said, “I’m going to borrow this for a while.”
___________________________
The entire engagement lasted no more than maybe three-quarters of an hour, but in a life and death situation even one minute can seem like an eternity. Commander Lahrcus scoured the area with his mounted troops while the rest of us tried to square away our camp. A few cognobins had retreated back into the jungle, but their dead were left behind.
The wounded troops were cared for as chow was being set up. Hot tea and a bowl of stew was medicine in itself. But well off to the side, Aldivert’s face was wrathful as he berated Dudley. For several minutes that went on, and then pointing a finger at Dud, he said, “The bottom line is, you disobeyed a direct order to NOT leave the mesa for ANY reason. You have a history of repeat offenses for flagrant violations of …”
“Stand down.” Lahrcus said with a stern voice as he walked up from around the mess tent. “Sergeant, go take your chow.” Aldivert had been too busy laying into Dudley to notice the cavalry’s return.
Dudley replied, “Yes sir.” At least, that’s the way Dudley told it to me as we were eating. What Aldivert had against Dud, no one knew, or at least no one ever said.
Truth to tell, Dud had scored with every shot he fired, was the first off the hill and into the battle, and the last to come back in. When his bolts ran out he pulled his sword and engaged. Ander had taken charge of the line fighting and was calling out maneuvers as if calling plays in a game of sports. Loud and clear, intense, yet as cool as could be.
Sergeant Dannon has assembled a squad of swordsmen for just in case, and sure enough, three of the cogs actually made it through to the top of the mesa. Dannon was first to engage and got two hard slices in before a strike with a morning star caved his chest in.
I tried to re-summon that berserker rage, but I was played out, the biggest part of my fight was over. Still, I had my skills and I pushed to the utmost of my limits; beyond, actually, but no more than several others. The soldiers now knew these things could die and their moral was high. The teamwork strategies taught by Hoscoe worked well here and it was Ander who yelled out to use circle-baiting-and-draw method on these things.
Puffer, Izner and I were the fastest, and we kept taking the point with nip-and-tuck fighting as others slashed hamstrings and Achilles tendons; and it worked. I have to give credit where credit is due; Aldivert was Storm for Thunder with his sword, which is a Keoghnariu phrase for pretty damn good.
It was Patriohr who saw a weird, purplish glow over on the cliff side of the mesa. We had all but finished the three in camp when he looked over and shouted, “There’s five more coming up the side.” Patriohr took post with a crossbow, and Merle caught one of the slain cog’s morning stars and waylaid them as they came up. One he took by himself, and you could hear the bones cracking as Merle hit him four hard times before he finally went backward.
Ander c
alled his men in and we surely met them coming. Only one made it all the way up to set foot on flat ground, but he looked like a pin cushion growing spines as he kept soaking up bolts, then finally falling over the cliff.
We lost forty-one men all totaled; including six of Aldivert’s men, including Tarrin, who I really wanted to talk to, and eight cavalry-men. Everyone had wounds of some kind or another, but luckily no more than four were actually incapacitated.
Everyone was worn out, so talk was low. But I kept hearing how crazy I was, how fast I ran, and killing six cogs in stand up fighting, and then the throw. I was something of a hero that day, the way I went back for Patriohr and carried him back. Izner and several others were sure I was running as fast as a horse. But I was far from being the shining star.
Everyone worked hard, but if I were to pick the single most important man, I would have to say Ander. He’s the one who held it together under fire, and was in the middle of it as well. I remembered how Hoscoe talked him up, years before.
Commander Lahrcus must have thought so too; he wrote Ander out a battlefield commission on the spot. “Lieutenant Ander, I am charging you with getting these foot-men back to Kiubejhan. Sergeant Dudlemoore,” We chums all looked at Dudley, “you are being promoted to Field & Battery Sergeant. You will act as Lieutenant Ander’s second in command.”
And so it was. Izner and Puffer were made Buck Sergeants and the remainder of the foot-company was divided into two platoons. Montao had been killed. The next morning saw three divisions moving in different directions. Aldivert with his remainder marched back to the mines, and since Aldivert’s horse was killed, he was on foot. Ander, with cavalry for support, marched for home.
Before they left, Traevos walked up to me and said, “You’re alright, Wolf.” With that he joined his rank and file.
Me? Lahrcus had come to me and asked, “Can you ride?”
I looked at him blankly and said, “No sir. Those horses are bigger than me. The last time I was on top of one I fell off.” But it was true, I wasn’t lying.