Soldiers' Redemption (First Cohort Book 1)

by M. R. Anthony

  “Will it land, sir?” asked Trovis.

  “Yes, Lieutenant. It always lands. How can it eat when it is high in the sky?”

  The Wyrm had attacked only a few minutes before, and already I could hear screams and cries in the distance. The town’s people would soon crowd the streets in their panic and make it harder for us to engage the creature.

  Xoj-Fal was flying horizontal to our position now – its wings flapping almost perfunctorily, as if the action was unnecessary for it to fly. Even from several hundred yards away I heard the sound of bellows again. I was not sure if it was my imagination, but I thought that the creature swelled as it drew in the surrounding air, as if the entirety of its one-hundred-yard length was designed to serve this one purpose. As the first two groups of forty from the First Cohort reached the cover of the streets, I saw the black flame shoot downwards again. I saw roof tiles and bricks thrown high into the air, looking like tiny dots against the blue sky, before they fell down to earth, vanishing from my sight behind the walls and rooftops of the intervening buildings.

  Then, without warning, the Wyrm extended its hind legs forward, stretched out its wings and fell out of the sky like a bird of prey dropping upon its target. I expected to feel a tremor run through my feet at its impact, but there was nothing.

  I found myself running at the head of forty-three of my men, Weevil and Hobble at my side, each clutching their heavy shields and a long spear. I knew they’d have their swords and daggers tucked into their belts. We used shields and spears to hold our line, but deep down all of us were swordsmen. The sword is the only weapon that truly makes your heart sing, and our runed blades were the most precious things we owned.

  “Looks like it’s landed by the river, Captain,” said Hobble.

  “Easiest place for it,” I replied. “It probably doesn’t want to be hemmed in while it torches the place.”

  The streets were in the state of panic I had anticipated and we had to form a point in order to make progress. We raised our shields, not because I feared that the townsfolk would attack us in their panic, but because they made excellent battering tools to push people out of the way without causing harm to them – apart from the occasional bruise or bloody nose. When a threat is known, but its location uncertain, the ensuing panic becomes a thing of chaos. So it was in Gold, with the people running here and there based on what their own eyes had seen and what they overheard from others.

  “It’s over there!” I heard.

  “I saw it that way!”

  “What is it? What the fuck is it?”

  “It’s going to burn us all!”

  We pushed our way through the scrum. The people who were heading in the same direction as us quickly changed their minds when they realised that the First Cohort were unlikely to be running away from the threat. The overall effect was almost like a whirlpool of people around us and I was glad when the numbers thinned out as we got closer to the river.

  There was another roar – thunderously loud this time and I knew we must be close to the Wyrm, even though we had lost sight of it once it had landed. I lifted my hand to slow the men to a moderate pace and to indicate that they should ready their shields. I happened to glance along a side street that ran parallel to the river’s flow and saw another squad of forty of my men approaching from that direction. I was uncomfortable with the idea that we might all get funnelled into a single large group and signalled for those men to hold for a moment.

  The river Fols which ran through Gold was little more than a very broad, shallow stream. Houses butted up close to its banks and there were several low bridges over the waterway; bridges made of stone, wood or both. The street we followed came to one such bridge and we approached cautiously, for the buildings here were some of the tallest in the town, though that didn’t mean very much. Our vision was limited and I hoped to surprise the Wyrm, rather than have it the other way around. If possible, I wanted to prevent it from taking off again. With it in the air, we were almost helpless against it.

  Suddenly, a long, black, muscular shape came into view between the two buildings. The tail crashed down upon the bridge, shattering its thick, wooden beams and crushing the stone walkway into the river Fols a few feet below it. I heard screams still, though now these sounds were joined by the constant rumble of stone and bricks cascading down as the dragon pulled at the walls of the buildings in its search for sustenance.

  I was not prone to indecision, but we had already waited too long and I urged my men along the street. From the side street, I saw the other squad of forty emerge behind us, their blue-tattooed flesh making their bodies hardly visible against the gloom of the narrow lane. It was as though forty sets of disembodied armour marched into the street behind us, with the stark white glow of the men’s eyes visible through the slits in their helmets.

  At the final corner before the ruined bridge, I poked my head around the corner. Xoj-Fal was here and close by. Its head was far longer than I was tall and its mouth took up most of it. Teeth protruded top and bottom through the lips. They were yellow and looked wickedly sharp. The eyes were golden, but even the brief glimpse I got at that moment told of ancient evil and cunning. I didn’t have time to reflect on it then, but I knew it was strange that when I thought of the word evil I also thought of it as something undesirable. For hundreds of years we had fought beside the unspeakable and never once had I thought of them as evil. How we change.

  We were not the first squad into the watercourse. I watched as Lieutenant Craddock marched a group of men out of a street two hundred yards further upriver, closer to the beast than we were. There was another bridge and his men spilled over it, forming as quickly as they could into a line two deep, with shields raised and spears pointed. He must have been funnelled as we had been and forced to merge two groups, for he had more than forty with him.

  I signalled for the group behind my own to fall in with us and then I led us out from the shadows of the street and into the shallows of the river Fols. I jumped over a pile of rubble from where the Wyrm had destroyed the bridge and into the knee-high water of the river. My armour clanked and the chill raced over my flesh but I paid these things no mind as I pushed myself through the water towards the creature ahead, Garver and Flax at my side.

  The buildings to either side were in a state of ruin, where Xoj-Fal had clawed at the walls and brought them into the river. Now that we were free of the high walls of the street, I could see where the black flames of its breath had scoured other buildings. I could not see the fires from here, but the smoke rose thickly a few streets away from us. I did not know how much intelligence the Wyrm possessed, but it struck me that it should have simply stayed in the sky and burned the town to ash. Perhaps it liked to play with its victims and draw out their suffering. I knew that Warmont was the same.

  Xoj-Fal had seen the eighty men under Lieutenant Craddock and its eyes narrowed at the sight. Had we been normal soldiers I felt certain that it would have laughed – an unpleasant sound that I had heard it make before. The Wyrm’s memory must have been a long one and I saw recognition in its eyes.

  The dragon stood crossways over the river, much of its tail hidden by a street leading away on the opposite bank. We approached its flank, still eighty yards away and as my two squads splashed towards it, the massive head swung in our direction as it sized up those who approached. I chanced a look over my shoulder, twisting my neck, and saw that the final two squads of men were another hundred yards away to our rear. I assumed that Lieutenant Sinnar had gathered them into one.

  Without warning, the creature bellowed. There was no build up to it, nor an intake of breath. It simply opened its jaws and the sound came forth. It was not the same as the roar of a wild animal – this sound spoke of every unknown fear that a man can imagine - the noises heard by someone who is lost and alone in a place unknown. It sought to drive a wedge of terror into our souls and make our primal fears overwhelm our conscious thought, to force our feet into carrying us in headlong fligh
t away from the dragon. Against me, you are nothing! it railed.

  I felt the creature’s call to flee and I laughed long and loud, the sound almost manic to my ears. How dare this beast have the temerity to speak to me about a fear of loneliness and loss, my mind shouted to me. The men of the First Cohort were never alone when we fought. Each and every one of us could rely on the men around us to die in our defence, for the lives of our brethren were as important as our own. When you had seen every threat to your life and your existence defeated by the strength of your arm and the loyalty of your comrades, what fear was there left for us? We were not free from fear – we all had our own insidious voices whispering to us – but none of us knew of the urge to run that the dragon tried to call from us.

  I heard some around me laugh in the same response, whilst other men roared their own denial, their sound tiny in comparison to that of the dragon, but greater in its determination.

  The first of Lieutenant Craddock’s men reached the Wyrm and were dwarfed by the inconceivable bulk of its body. The creature swiped with a scaled forearm, ten paces long and heavily muscled. It connected with the nearest men, knocking half a dozen of them flying. I saw that each man retained his shield, even against the power of the impact. Warmont’s First would find out that we did not die quite so easily as those who still have blood within their veins.

  I had my own squads form a line, only one man deep. I saw that the more we bunched up, the greater our vulnerability would be to its claws and its sharp teeth. I did not carry a spear, but held my shield before me – my own metal brother. It had turned my certain destruction into ongoing existence on more occasions than I could recall.

  “Cut the bastard’s wings off!” I shouted.

  The great head moved around towards me and I knew that the creature had understood the command. Its wings were furled for now, high up on its back, but their size was such that they almost drooped on the ground and into the water. I reached the dragon’s side and swung a hard blow at the thick bone and leathery skin of the closest wing. Even the runes of my blade felt torment as they fought to cut through the ancient flesh. The blade sparked and howled – a noise I had not heard it make before – and it reluctantly cut into the iron-hard flesh of the wing, sending a juddering vibration along my arm. I knew at once that Warmont’s First was not going to be an easy kill.

  The Wyrm lunged downward to my right and plucked up a man near to me – I did not see him to provide a name. The soldier’s entire head and torso vanished within the jaws and I saw the legs kick for a moment and saw huge muscles bulge to the side of the dragon’s mouth as it crushed the man within his armour. Then, the jaws opened and the creature howled in pain and anger. It spat the man away and his crushed body and bent shield tumbled into the river. Even in death, he’d done his duty, and I saw the glow of his sword where he’d embedded it into the roof of the dragon’s mouth as it had taken him.

  In its fury, it swung its clawed arms at us. We were fortunate that it could not make use of both at the same time, and it had to have three limbs planted on the ground in order to maintain its balance. The creature was not as ponderous on the ground as it had looked in the air and its attacks were fast and powerful. It did not thrash blindly and aimed at the largest group of men each time. Our discipline was impeccable and we did not bunch up, but even so we were not able to avoid the claws and I saw dozens of us hurled away by the blows. Most of the time my men were quickly back on their feet and into the fray once more. If our bodies were not completely shattered, we would keep fighting and pain was not the impediment that it once might have been.

  The dragon did not attack in comfort and for every blow it landed, we hewed at it with a grim and indefatigable strength. I had instructed the men to bring their spears in the hope that their points would provide a distraction as well as a defence. Against men and horses, I would not have done without them, but against the unnatural toughness of Warmont’s First, they did almost nothing. I watched Sinnar and another man attempt to drive a spear into the creature’s haunch, but the hard tip would not penetrate the flesh. Sinnar was a strong man and even with his best efforts, the steel did nothing.

  “Use your swords!” I heard Craddock shout from the other side of the creature’s body, as we realised that we had no choice but to engage at the closest of quarters.

  To my side, I heard Garver grunt with effort as he clashed his sword off the dragon’s front elbow. The skin parted on the limb, revealing a sickly yellow bone underneath. No blood flowed and I realised that Xoj-Fal was not a creature of life.

  Garver’s attack had brought its attention and it flicked an arm out in a way I had not expected. The knuckle of the dragon’s claw struck Garver’s head, knocking it to one side and into an unnatural angle. The blow carried through, cannoning into me and Flax. I had been mid-lunge and avoided much of the attack by rolling with it and allowing myself to be knocked face-down into the river. I was submerged for a moment, the water coursing through my armour and soaking my clothes and skin beneath. The force of the impact had left me stunned and I lay there for what seemed like an age, though was surely only a few seconds. Booted feet stumbled into me as I summoned up the strength to haul myself once more onto my feet.

  I shouted my defiance as I broke the surface. My shield was gone and I saw that Flax was also. I hadn’t seen what had happened in the time I’d been underwater, but the soldier was on his back in the water nearby, his chest plate crushed, his helmet gone and his shield battered. His lifeless eyes stared upwards from their place a few inches below the water.

  I heard the voices of the others nearby, each of them waging his own personal fight against the creature before him, yet each aware that he was one of a team. The individual was never alone.

  “Stab the bastard!” I heard from Sinnar. “Watch those legs! It’s turning! Follow it, follow it!”

  My head finally cleared and I was able to make sense of the Lieutenant’s words. Xoj-Fal had wheeled around in the riverbed as it sought to trample us or bunch us up against its attacks. Water was not a good place to fight, but we kept pace as it rotated and did our best to remain at its haunches. It had stopped using its mouth to bite at us and I gave thanks to the unknown man whose sword had made the beast wary. Even so, the claws were taking a terrible toll and there was hardly a moment that one or more of my men was not struck by one, each attack throwing the victims many feet away. I fervently hoped that those soldiers would be able to recover, assuming we were successful in defeating the dragon.

  I joined in with the fray once more. The body of another man – alive or dead I didn’t know – flew by my shoulder as I hacked at Xoj-Fal’s tattered wing. Each time my sword made contact, the sparks jumped out from the blade and the peculiar howl came forth. I had one of the Emperor’s finest weapons, though it was now joined to me by a bond that Malleus would never be able to break. The swords of my men rose and fell and we looked like little more than butchers, bereft of finesse. Every now and then, a series of blows would dislodge a chunk of dead flesh, which would drop into the river and sink from sight. I could feel them beneath my feet as I moved to retain my balance.

  Without warning, Xoj-Fal turned again, scattering us as it did so. It unfurled its wings, the action knocking fifteen or twenty of us away, and I thought that it was about to take flight. It did not, and instead it charged down the widest main street that ran through the centre of Gold. We were all taken by surprise at the speed of it. Behind it, the thirty-yard tail thrashed to the left and right as the beast’s body hurtled along the street. Most of us were quick enough to drop full-length into the river to avoid the swinging appendage, but I had not stopped around for long enough to be sure that it missed everyone. I saw a thick, black shape flail in the air above me and I jumped to my feet once it had passed. All around me, other men were doing the same, shaking themselves to speed the egress of the water from their armour.

  “Get after it!” I shouted. I didn’t know if it had fled or simply wished to
find a more favourable place to combat us. Its escape had given me the chance to see that the lower edges of its wings were in shreds, with strips of the leathery flesh hanging in banners from the hollow bones which supported it. I didn’t know if we’d done enough to prevent it from flying – I was now sure that it used more than just its wings to keep it in the air.

  A shield jutted up from the surface of the water next to me. I reached to pick it up and saw that it was still held by the hand of a dead soldier, who lay on the riverbed. The ripples on the surface of the river were not heavy, but they were sufficient to prevent me from recognizing the man’s face. Even as I pulled the shield away from him, I felt a profound sadness that my brother below had been denied this one last honour, that I would not be able to thank him by name for the service he had rendered. I swore that I would return to this place and that each and every man who had fallen would be remembered by his name and that each would have his toast.

  The men of the First Cohort, urged on by me, Craddock and Sinnar, shrugged themselves from the river’s weak grasp and gathered at the end of the street along which Xoj-Fal had fled. I tried to see how many of my men remained, but any attempt to calculate the number who had perished was futile, for I had noticed others of my men join us during the fight. I had presumed them to be men who had returned from patrols or who had seen the dragon overhead and made haste to find us.

  There was little rubble on this side of the river – the Wyrm had pulled at the buildings on the other side from us – and we were able to gather on a small paved area adjacent to the river bank. The beast’s passage had torn down shop fronts and left indents in walls as the sway of its run had caused it to collide with the walls around it. We had not taken long to escape the river, but by the time we had regained our formation on the bank, the street was empty.