Ravinor

by Travis Peck

  The leader, commanding from his hillock, tried to rein back the others, but the scent of blood must have reached them by now, and they would not be held in check from a feast long denied to them by the more cerebral of their number. All but a handful failed to heed the thinker’s orders, and the rest rushed toward the gate, raising a ravenous cry of their own.

  Crallick could hardly stifle his excitement at his plan’s early success. He glanced over the edge of the wall and saw two figures standing in the distance on another small rise only a hundred yards from the thinker’s position. He could not make out the arrow until it took the leader in the neck. Another blur quickly followed and pierced his chest. The ravinor thinker fell to the ground with two shafts buried in his flesh.

  The few ravinors that had not abandoned their leader cried out to the others, but there was no stopping that group now that it was closing in on the open gate and the alluring scent of blood that beckoned within. The two figures, Private Dizzy and the archer, Private Besra, hit the ground before the ravinors knew where the attack had come from.

  With the ravinors’ intelligence neutralized, they were still badly outnumbered and the next phase of his plan would be the most perilous. Hopefully, for the ravinors, it would be even more so. The coven of over one hundred of the creatures sounded like a stampede of oxen rumbling toward them. Crallick felt the ground shaking the wall beneath him. Then the ravinors burst through the opened gate and held to the same course the much smaller group had followed, making straight for the house.

  Not all of them would fit inside the house, but as soon as Crallick determined that only a few more would be able to make it in, he waved toward the barn. The double doors burst open as Walis, still riding double with Obrag, led the way through the gate. The two privates dispatched a few of the slower ravinors that were late coming to the feast. The remainder of the creatures stopped trying to force their way into the house and turned toward the meal that they could see with their own eyes. A score turned away from the overcrowded house.

  Crallick waved furiously to Rogair, who was lying prone on the catwalk of the wall nearest to the house. The farmer quickly lit his torch and tossed it onto the freshly oil-soaked roof. He saw the farmer climb over the wall as flame burst over the roof and down the walls. Windows shattered with the sudden heat from the conflagration that was born inside the dwelling.

  At the same time, the other defenders bolted out of the barn. The three war mastiffs took down any ravinors foolish enough to get in their way. Myrna rode with Osbar and Shiya clinging to her as she led the horse with Garet strapped into the saddle. His limp body bounced astride the mount unnaturally. The sergeant cringed as one of the ravinors made a leap to grab at the incapacitated man, but Aelpheus was having none of it. The huge war mastiff caught the ravinor’s neck in mid-jump then squeezed and twisted with his powerful jaws. The ravinor’s head was ripped from its body. Blood sprayed onto the ground as Aelpheus howled in rage.

  The other ravinors near the giant mastiff decided against giving chase after that display, and the riders were able to pass through the gate at a full gallop, unmolested. The enraged mastiff took out another ravinor, and then stood on its corpse and stared back at the others, daring them to pursue. The two slightly smaller mastiffs, having escorted the riders out of the gate, rejoined their leader, and flanked him to either side with their long teeth bared.

  With the rest of their number screaming in agony behind them in the burning house, the score of surviving creatures adopted a less-aggressive posture in the face of the destruction and the three war mastiffs directly confronting them.

  Crallick stood up and shouted to the mastiffs, “Aelpheus, guard Garet!” Twenty on three were even odds, but they could not risk an injury to one of the mastiffs when it was not absolutely necessary. The alpha mastiff, having vented his anger and established his dominance, barked once, sending the other two mastiffs off following the riders again. The giant dog sauntered out of the gate with not a backward glance to the ravinors cringing behind him.

  Mozz and Crallick, now alone with the remaining ravinors, were not so nonchalant. The two men each leaned down and stretched an arm out to close the gate. Then they dropped the bar into place, shutting the ravinors inside the walls with the growing inferno. They dropped the coil of rope outside of the wall and slid down it.

  Outside the walls, Scout Trimmel met them, along with his fellows who had escaped their century’s destruction. The young soldier was looking slightly more recovered—and more important—he led a string of badly needed remounts behind him. Crallick and Mozz mounted up and kicked their horses into a gallop. They were reunited with the others over the body of the dead ravinor leader on the knoll. And there is the ravinor who had caused us so much trouble.

  Grim smiles greeted him all around, and Mozz slapped him on the back. Crallick could not believe how well his plan had gone, and not a man had been hurt, and all three mastiffs were unscathed. At least he thought so. It was hard to tell much with the slick coat of ravinor blood that glistened over their tawny bodies.

  Crallick heard a familiar voice as he looked over at his adopted family. Myrna sobbed as she hugged her husband.

  “Myrna. Crallick. Why is the house on fire?” his old captain asked groggily, still strapped awkwardly onto the saddle. Crallick laughed so hard tears streamed down his face.

  “I’ll tell you as we ride,” Crallick answered, wiping at his eyes with a sleeve. “Damn smoke…”

  “Hup! Hup!”

  The riders all wheeled their mounts to the east, they would ride that direction for a candle to avoid the ten covens headed their way. Once clear of that threat, they would swing back around to the south and toward Styr, where maybe, they would find safety. Crallick took one last look back at what had been his home since retirement, and he watched the black smoke rise up from the house. Red, orange, and yellow flames engulfed it, and the barn as well. Turning back around, he kicked his horse to follow the two mounts in front of him. Myrna rode with Osbar behind her, Garet now had Shiya clinging to his back like a monkey from Rhyllia as the two horses rode side by side.

  Crallick gave a small flick of the reins and his mount trotted behind the two. Garet turned and gave him a nod and a tired smile. Crallick followed his captain and the family that had welcomed him forever into their lives, and a wave of contentment rolled over him as soothing as the steady gait of his mount.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  LERIUS’S EYES SNAPPED OPEN to frantic shouts and bells clanging maddeningly around the estate. He shot out of bed and scrambled in the dark to find his clothes. The alarm bells continued to sound their warning as he pulled on his breeches and tunic, not wasting the time to tuck it in. Instead, he leaned toward the window to see what they faced.

  In the darkness, figures milled around in the courtyard. Torch flames danced about in frantic motions as their bearers scurried all around the grounds in front of the manor house. The tenants and soldiers raced to muster into groups. Indistinguishable orders burst out into the night, bellowed by the guard captain, Daeris, and his sergeants. Lerius’s eyes drifted further afield to see if he could see what was coming their way, but the darkness surrounding the manor was too deep and dark. He could see nothing but the torches floating in the distant black where the watchtowers stood. Then he realized that they weren’t torches. The watchtowers themselves were ablaze.

  Pulling on his boots, Lerius tore his gaze away from the window and concentrated on tying the laces. As soon as they were tied, he threw open the door and stepped out into the hall—nearly colliding with Hossen. The innkeeper looked as harried and confused as he felt. They did not exchange words, there was no need. They had to get down there and help the defenders any way they could.

  With Hossen at his heels, he sprinted down the hall and bounded down the staircase, heart pounding in his chest. The healer and his stalwart companion had faced constant danger in the last week, but this was to be their first actual battle, and he had no
illusions about his fighting ability or that of the innkeeper. He forced his legs to continue pumping despite his trepidation. His limbs felt heavy and watery, and it was all he could do to keep them moving toward the danger that awaited them outside.

  They burst through the wide front doors and straight into chaos. The oil burning on torches permeated the night air, along with the sound of hundreds of tenants, amongst them women and children, all being divvied out a random collection of armor and weapons. A burly sergeant, his face red and puffing, jammed the ash haft of a spear into the healer’s chest; and Lerius had no choice but to take the weapon. He did not see the guard to his left until the man suddenly plunked an old helm onto his head and pushed it down. The crossbar bit painfully onto the bridge of his nose.

  Hossen was being similarly outfitted next to him, but with a rusty sword and a battered, dented round shield. He opened his mouth to protest that he was a healer and that he would be serving the defenders more usefully without fighting, but the words died on his lips as he and Hossen found themselves being herded to the front lines by a press of folk behind them.

  Without the weight of the throng behind him, Lerius’s legs would have given out as he saw what approached. Mercifully, the shoving and pushing from behind stopped as he felt—and saw on the others’ faces—the collective shock run through the defenders. The burning watchtowers had ignited the surrounding fields; which, along with a strong wind from the east, had whipped up the small fires into a frenzy that had plenty of fuel in all directions. That was not the frightening part, though it did allow Lerius and the others to see what was coming.

  The flashes of fire revealed a mass of ravinors seething toward the manor of the Geryn estate. Lerius’s eyes flickered over the approaching horde, he stopped bothering to count after he passed five hundred. To either side of him, and behind him, there were perhaps two hundred humans. Included in that number were dozens of women and children. And the majority of the men were not soldiers, but rather farmers and skilled laborers…and an elderly innkeeper…and a young and terrified healer.

  The makeshift defensive force that Lerius and Hossen found themselves a part of did little but stare ahead at the ravinor army with wide eyes and sweat pouring down faces despite the night’s chill. Equally transfixed, Lerius began to shake involuntarily. During all the other moments of fear he had experienced recently, he had had little time to think; he had simply reacted—and prayed. But this was different.

  He was overwhelmed. Time slowed then sped up in a dizzying bombardment of disjointed sights and sounds. His reeling mind fixated on minutiae in the scene before him: a rabbit scurried into its den, in between the two opposing forces; crows wheeled in the night sky as they looked down in anticipation of the forthcoming feast; a bead of sweat dripped off the tip of Lerius’s nose, and then another. He barely registered several groups of men pushing wagons out in front of their defensive line, and then tipping them over to provide some means of slowing the creatures down.

  As a wagon crashed down on its side twenty yards in front of him, Lerius’s mind snapped back to normal. He was glad to see any kind of barrier coming up between him and the ravenous beasts. He had no martial experience, but he guessed that the force and violence that the mass of ravinors would bring to bear as they reached the defenders would surely shatter their tenuously held line if there was nothing to impede them. Even if the wagons served to hamper their charge, he did not know what chance they had of surviving. If he served as any indication of the average defender’s skill level—Lerius had never held a spear, much less used one—then they were in serious trouble.

  The ravinors were eating up the distance separating them. Each breath seemed to last a candle, and it felt to Lerius that he had been waiting in this spot for ages. He knew that would change all too quickly. He nearly yelled out in relief when the estate guards hurried into position amongst the line of untrained defenders. They merged into the existing line so that there was—hopefully—someone capable every five or so defenders. He noted that the guardsmen were all fully armored. Their bright, polished metal gleamed and eerily reflected the orange and yellow light cast from the raging fires. I wonder which one will be the end of us? The ravinors or the fire, he thought to himself, then struck his palm against his helm to banish the thought away.

  The ravinors were much closer now, and he could make out individual creatures amongst the ranks by the orange glow of fire. A more frightening pair of forces he could not have imagined in his most terrible nightmares—and he had been living through such a nightmare for more than a week.

  His hands were slick with sweat, and he had to keep wiping them off on his tunic to keep them dry. He had no idea how to use the spear like a trained soldier, but he at least wanted to maintain a steady grip on the weapon in the fight to come. His eyes met Hossen’s and they shared a grim look. They had been lucky so far—they both knew it. Lerius just hoped that this toss of Give and Take would roll in their favor one more time.

  Lerius trembled from head to toe as he looked ahead. The ravinors were moving more as a mob than the tight and disciplined formations of a professional army. But with the inexperience of the tenants defending the estate, he feared it would not prove much of a disadvantage to the charging creatures. He vaguely heard the sergeants howling out orders to stand firm, but it seemed like their voices were far away. All he heard from within his helm was his blood pounding in his ears like hammers in a smithy, and he heard each of his panicked gulps of air as the bellows.

  He could see the black pits of each ravinor’s eyes now. The characteristic ravinor call flooded the estate as they became frenzied at the closeness between themselves and the humans lined up before them. His terrified mind, rather than remaining focused on the imminent danger, detached itself from the rest of him as he analyzed what was happening.

  Amongst the ravinors, he spotted perhaps a dozen of the creatures who were actually brandishing weapons and yelling out, much like the sergeants were for the humans. He, of course, could not understand a word of it, but the fact that they were clearly giving out orders was plain—and rather concerning. He had seen the ravinors that he and Hossen had come upon by the great carriage communicate to one another, but that was between the giant ravinor and the master of the coach, not amongst the ordinary ravinors themselves. The giant had communicated much like a large dog would communicate with its lesser packmates, through the language of violence and posturing.

  As if the thought of the titanic ravinor had summoned him, Lerius saw a giant ravinor a few ranks behind the mass of charging creatures. He nearly lost all his nerve then, but it was too late to do much to change his circumstances. His mind snapped back from speculative to survival moments before the ravinor vanguard swarmed over them.

  He did not recall doing it, but he must have raised the spearpoint up toward the attackers for one of them had impaled itself on the weapon. He thanked the Giver for the weight pressing up behind him by his fellow defenders or the force of the charge would have bowled him over. Even with the support, he nearly lost his hold on the spear from the weight of the dying ravinor that threatened to rip it from his sweaty palms.

  He heard screams of pain and panic around him but could not distinguish them from his own. Lerius just managed to hold on to the spear and surprised himself when his boot kicked out to knock the creature off his weapon as he hauled it back to where he could exert some control upon it. Hossen yelled next to him, and he saw the innkeeper battling with a ravinor who had once been a rather portly man. The innkeeper thrust the shield out to keep it at bay and thrust with his sword around the shield, stabbing the ravinor several times in the midsection. The ravinor howled in pain but stopped suddenly as Lerius shoved the spearhead into its throat. This time, his weapon slid out cleanly, and he brought it back up as the next wave slammed into them.

  He and Hossen braced themselves for the impact with their fellow defenders. The ravinors fared better on this charge. Human defenders went down with shrieks o
f pain as the ravinors’ sharp claws and teeth tore at them as they fell. Once again, Lerius and Hossen had managed—by sheer luck—to stay on their feet, each man supporting the other against the press of enemies crashing against them.

  With only his spear to defend himself with, Lerius had to use the weapon as a horizontal staff to keep the ravinors from pushing through to his flesh, rendering it more a shield than a weapon. He did not dare to stab at the creatures now lest the sharp point lodge in bone or get stuck in ribs which would leave him open for its compatriots to finish him off. All he could do was hold on to the spear and push against the ravinors as they sought to slash at him with their claws.

  The healer wanted to check on Hossen, who was still beside him, but he could not take his eyes off the handful of ravinors reaching for him with only the ash haft of his spear between him and death. He grunted from the immense exertion required to keep them away, and he knew his strength would soon give out. He was already exhausted and the battle had only just begun.

  Suddenly, the ravinors were falling, trampled to the ground by a wedge of horses riding down the line. He saw men swinging blades down in high arcs that split ravinor skulls like melons. Then the mounts were gone, leaving broken ravinors strewn about in their wake. A momentary reprieve but one that had saved his life and the lives of his fellow defenders in the area. He sucked in a ragged breath but choked on the dust the charging horses had kicked up. The swirling particles still hung in the air. Lerius spat and coughed again before the dust finally cleared away with the night’s breeze.