"Well, it looks like you were right."
"Did you ever doubt it?"
"Never." He looked back at the enemy. "You know what worries me?"
Gabriella couldn't imagine anything really worrying DeBarres. "What?"
His pitted cheeks widened in a wry smile. "What sort of force kicked that lot out of Freedom in the first place?"
"Raul?" Kannis called. "They're moving."
Gabriella looked at the goblins charging towards them, with the wolves and big cats ranging out in front. The bone-chilling howls of the maddened horde carried across the fields between them. The goblin tribes, their teeth and claws filed to needle points and razor edges, competed with each other to lead the charge, not caring which of their own side they trampled in their crazed rush.
Preceptor Raul DeBarres felt his spine tingle at the sight of so many hostiles, but he reminded himself that they were a mob, not an army. They weren't trained, they had no strategy, they were just driven by hunger and their own momentum. There might be hundreds of them, but every member of the Knights was worth a dozen of them. DeBarres knew that victory wasn't in question, but he feared that it would hurt.
DeBarres drew his sword and all along the lines weapons were likewise drawn. "For the Lord of All! For Solnos! For your people!"
Gabriella DeZantez saw DeBarres rise slightly in the saddle, waving a hand forward, slashing it towards the goblins. Gabriella was already nudging her horse to one side, guiding it towards the dust cloud that signalled the goblin rush. She listened to the drumming of so many feet and paws rushing towards her across the earth.
Then battle was joined and the world disappeared in a red haze, and a cacophony of clashing metal and screaming voices. A wolf leapt at her and she cut it aside, before slicing the head from a goblin. She made her horse rear, its fore-hooves chopping down into goblin arms, shattering bone.
Blood filled Gabriella's senses. Red and green, sometimes even black. It sprayed across her vision, clouded her nostrils, flavoured her lips. She could even have sworn she heard it spatter on her helm. Then she really began to fight.
Travis Crowe slashed left and right with his broadsword, cleaving goblin skulls and spreading what passed for their brains across the trampled grass. He did his best to stay close to Gabriella and watch her back, but the Knights of the Swords all wore the same helms and surcoats, with the crossed-circle of the Final Faith. It was damn near impossible to tell them apart.
He pushed his horse forward towards a knot of goblins protecting one with tattoos marking him out as a chief or shaman. Crowe hoped he was the former and not a magic-user. Either way he was a more important target.
He spurred his horse straight at the tattooed leader, swinging the broadsword right for his tattooed face. His coat flapped like the feathers of a carrion bird, bringing death and decay. The goblin's eyes widened just before they were bisected by sharp iron. The cluster of goblins scattered and fell prey to Kannis' men.
A moment later, Crowe cursed violently as searing pain ripped across his thigh, and he wheeled his horse to trample a goblin as it withdrew a blade from him.
Roaring at the top of his voice, Crowe set about killing more of the creatures for the pain they'd caused. Now they had made him really angry.
Kannis led her unit in a wide wheel around the goblins' left flank. Crowe's killing of one of their leaders had caused a weakness in that area. Swarming lines of the creatures met steel and iron and were found wanting. The mix of Knights and mercenaries charged down the goblins and the creatures ranks were beginning to fragment.
Filled with the red joy of battle, Kannis and her men swept through the weak and starved hordes and scythed them down.
Then something slammed into her chest and she was momentarily floating. For a heartbeat, she enjoyed the surprising sensation of weightlessness, but then the world smashed into her back and it felt like every rib exploded like a thousand suns.
The mounted Knights crashed into the charging goblins like a mailed fist hitting a grinning mouth. Sabres cut down into the goblin onrush and dozens of the creatures fell screeching to the earth and rolled wildly though their ranks. Other goblins scrambled for better positions, or hurled themselves flat, risking being trampled under hoof rather than fall to the sabres.
DeBarres and his Knights wheeled their mounts around, drawing sabres and longswords, before charging again. This time they dropped into the enemy lines on their left flank and charged lengthwise, splitting skulls and cleaving heads from inhuman bodies.
The goblins were running purely on instinct, as DeBarres had suspected; instead of closing in under the Knights' reach and trying to bring down the horses, they began to scatter. The goblins' lines ripped themselves apart and DeBarres could see clear through the swirling lines to where Kannis' mount was rearing and riderless.
"Kannis!" he screamed, and spurred his horse towards hers. He narrowly avoided running over Kannis herself, who was twitching on the flattened grass. He reached down, as a couple of Knights knelt to check on Kannis.
"Get her on my horse!"
Together, the two soldiers hoisted Kannis onto the flanks of his horse, and beat their way towards the edge of the battle.
The stink of sweat-lathered horses and warm blood assaulted Gabriella. The earth itself rose upwards in front of her. Gabriella clung on grimly as her mount reared back and she managed to guide it alongside the suddenly-rising embankment.
"Sorcery!" someone shouted. "They've got shamans!"
Gabriella looked around frantically for any sign of the spell caster.
As she scanned the battle, she saw DeBarres carrying Kannis to safety, cutting down anything that got in his way. She looked for Crowe and waved to him.
"Look after DeBarres and Kannis!"
He waved in return and plunged into the fray around the pair.
She saw the shaman then, dancing as if possessed and hurling power from his fingertips. With a roar of fury, Gabriella pulled a javelin from a fallen horse and hurled it with all her might.
It impaled the shaman cleanly and he fell twitching. Screams arose from the survivors of the goblin horde as they scattered. To all intents and purposes, the battle was over.
"Swords!" Gabriella shouted, "To me!"
Gathering her forces, she led them in a wide sweep, cutting down the scrambling, flopping monstrosities as they panicked and fled.
"To victory!"
The twilight was rent by occasional screams. Some of them were the sounds of the wounded and dying men and women being attended to by Healers. A few were the last goblin stragglers being cut down.
Gabriella and Crowe had caught up with each other after sundown, when she found him sitting outside, bags under his eyes. He looked more tired than she felt.
"Gabriella," he said. "You'd better go inside."
She entered the tent and found DeBarres sitting sadly, holding the hand of Kannis. She lay on a cot and Gabriella could tell from her pallor that she was dead.
"A lance pushed her off her horse," DeBarres said quietly. "The fall broke her neck."
He looked tired and worn. Not tearful, because that wasn't his way, but he had no liveliness left in him to make him seem as powerful as he usually did. Gabriella wondered if this was also how she looked.
"You two were close?"
"She was my daughter in law. My son was Bound to her."
"I'm sorry."
"I don't know how I'm going to tell him."
"Directly is probably best."
DeBarres stroked his moustache. "Yes. He'll understand. He's from a military family. And she died achieving a great victory."
"Is there anything you need me to do?"
DeBarres looked up. "We'll be moving south, towards this Freedom city. Take what men you need and scout the route. If there are any goblin stragglers, I want to know about them before we reach them."
"I'll take Crowe," she said. "Though really…"
DeBarres nodded his understanding. "I wish Erak ha
d got to track Kell to Freedom as well. But when we get there…"
"Erak won't have died for nothing."
DeBarres managed a smile and reached across to pat her hand. "He never did. No-one who serves the Faith really dies for nothing."
CHAPTER 16
Gabriella felt a little better. "Nor do those who serve with us." She nodded at Kannis.
"Thank you, Gabriella."
The trail of goblin detritus was easy to follow south, even without the map Gabriella carried. It had been re-copied many times since she had brought it to Solnos and the force that followed Travis Crowe and Gabriella DeZantez had many of them.
Finally, they came within sight of the smallest outskirts of the great World's Ridge mountains. The sight was one that Gabriella knew would have been worth drawing, or painting, if she had the inclination.
On the horizon and blending in with the sky, the white peaks were capped with snow. Thin columns of smoke and steam rose from a couple of the peaks, while far to the south a pall of smoke sat like a blanket over the heart of the World's Ridge.
"Over there, they say even the life blood of the earth tries to cross over to Kerberos." Crowe sounded unusually sombre.
To their left, the horizon shaded with green as the south-western end of the great Sardenne forest encroached on the World's Ridge. Directly ahead, the smaller peaks at the end of the World's Ridge were arid stony teeth, snarling at the heavens. Most weren't high enough to have a snow-line, but a few of the larger ones, set back into the range and blurring in with the clouds, were topped with a permanent frost.
"I thought the World's Ridge was supposed to be impassable," Gabriella said looking through the telescope.
"It is, love. Don't you worry about that."
"But that valley… It seems to cut straight through and that peak, it seems to shimmer like glass."
"Seems is one thing, Dez, but, trust me on this, what seems and what is are two different things here."
"It's still our best opportunity," she insisted. "It's our duty to check it."
She nudged her mount in the direction of the wide open valley. Crowe shook his head, and then followed reluctantly.
Two days later. Gabriella was both stunned and dismayed to find herself emerging from the open valley, right on to the same spot from which she had first set off into it. She recognised all the landmarks around and was both angry and frustrated. "What are we doing here?"
"Told you." Crowe said with a yawn.
"We didn't circle round…" That would have been impossible, as the valley was a straight line. "We can't be back here."
"I agree with you, pet. But we are back here all the same. I told you the World's Ridge is impassable."
"Is the Stormwall like that?"
Crowe gave her a dark look. "Worse. A lot worse."
After a few more hours, they entered another valley of rock and scrub grass that looked to Gabriella as if it was a crack in the rocky face of the World's Ridge. There were old, stained goblin nests all over the near-vertical slopes on either side. Strange cries of unseen birds and animals echoed confusingly from the flat surfaces and both Gabriella and Crowe looked around anxiously at each sound.
They picked their way slowly through a narrow defile. The sheer rock walls were becoming more and more discoloured by streaks of yellow that stank of bad eggs. Both of them had tied scarves around their faces to help keep out some of the smell, and to try to avoid searing their throats and lungs with the hot dust in the air.
And these were just the foothills of the World's Ridge.
Crowe nudged his horse over a small rise and Gabriella followed him right into an old goblin settlement. Thankfully it had been long-since destroyed. Tent poles had collapsed, the skins and cloth rotted away. The only occupants of the settlement were skeletons, some of them were distressingly small.
Crowe kicked a skull aside. "This happened months ago. I hate to say anything positive about a gobbo, but this fits right in with what that goblin prisoner said."
"About them being driven out of the mountains? All right, someone eradicated this village, but isn't it as likely to have been a rival tribe as humans? Even other goblins don't much like the goblin tribes."
"Some bugger came this way," he said. "Humans; the length and width of stride is wrong for an animal. Single file to hide their numbers."
Gabriella nodded. "Not many of them, though. Three or four people at the most."
Later, they camped under an overhanging cliff. They took turns to sleep, which was wise, as at one point a lizard as tall at the shoulder as a wolf tried to attack their horses. Thankfully Gabriella was able to impale it through the head before it even knew she was there.
When they rose, they cut steaks from it for their next meal and left a marker showing the location of the carcass. They had been leaving markers all along their journey, for the mercenaries and Knights who would be following.
The narrow valley zigzagged back and forth several times, before dropping away into a vertical well. "That's another dead end," Crowe said. "We'll have to go back — "
"No," Gabriella said, squinting down into the depths. "There's light down there.
"What?" Crowe looked to where she pointed. The well was a hundred yards wide, and, on the far side, light was cast across the bottom, a couple of hundred feet down. It was definitely sunlight. As his eyes adjusted, he could spot the edges of wide steps cut into the edge of the well. It spiralled down, a staircase with steps just the right size for horses to walk.
Preceptor DeBarres had seen his fiftieth summer a few years ago, but none of his muscle had turned to fat as far as anyone in the Order could tell. He may not have been as fast a runner as the younger Knights, but when he stood his ground he stayed fixed and couldn't be moved. His weapon of choice when fighting on foot had always been the axe, and he made it flow as effortlessly as a dancer from Fayence made her silken scarves flow.
His preferred method of travel was not the forced route march, but he settled for the knowledge that Eminence Kesar, being a bean-counter and not a soldier, had enjoyed it even less.
They had followed the goblins' path out to the west coast, led by Crowe and Gabriella, and down the edge of Pontaine towards the foothills of the World's Ridge. They made sure to keep well away from Fayence and Eminence Kesar made sure that Kannis' liaisons kept Aristide just well-enough informed to keep him quiet.
The mountains, when they reached them, were as large as anything in the Drakengrat range, and yet both Kesar and DeBarres knew that there were far greater peaks beyond. They had picked their way through twisting canyons and riverbeds, until they emerged at one end of a deep and jagged valley.
It narrowed as they travelled along it and, at one point, they found the carcass of a huge lizard. Eventually they came to a point where they had to travel almost single file. This area led them to a deep, wide well, with steps clearly marked out. Gabriella and Crowe had marked the beginning of the great spiral staircase that had been cut out of the living rock.
The Knights and mercenaries had to restructure their whole column, in order to descend.
At the bottom of the enormous well or sinkhole was a wide natural archway, festooned with moss-covered stalactites hanging down. A valley was visible through this wide grey maw and, at the far end of the valley, a gleaming mountain rose up magnificently.
It took a whole day to get the entire force down the staircase and into this other new valley, and DeBarres had almost begun to fear that the job would never be finished.
Eventually, though, he rode under the stalactites himself and looked along the valley at the distant peak. Between there and the column, he could see Gabriella and Crowe riding back towards them.
The mercenary force had made camp on a rise to one side of the approach to the natural archway. Tents were put up and stakes set around the lower slopes of the rise. The valley curved around this rise before opening up into a field. On the far side of that expanse of arid dust and scrub grass, jagged p
eaks formed a curtain between the valley and the glinting peak behind.
There were other, larger, peaks around and beyond the one that all eyes fell upon, but they were merely mountain peaks. The other, the special one, gleamed and shone with myriad colours, like a diamond or carved crystal.
Preceptor DeBarres, Gabriella and Crowe all brushed into Eminence Kesar's tent without preamble. Kesar merely raised an eyebrow as DeBarres' lips barely passed over his signet ring.
"Am I to take it that your urgency signifies important news, Preceptor?"
DeBarres nodded. "That's one way of putting it. Gabriella?"
"The valley ahead leads to the location we have for Kell's Freedom city. We scouted it out with a telescope and there is a manned gatehouse set into the defile that cuts through that ridge of peaks at the end of the valley."
"A gatehouse?" Kesar looked at the maps that were unfurled across the table in front of him. "So, there is a Freedom, after all."
"If there's a town that the Faith doesn't know about," DeBarres commented, "it's a town with no Faith."
"So what does it have instead, I wonder?" Kesar said.
"People who need faith, mate," Crowe suggested with a cheeky grin. "Unless, of course, you know something more than the rest of us?"
"If you want me to go into that wretched excuse for a city and clean it out," DeBarres said, "I can. But you'll have to be prepared for how long it'll take."
"A siege? You don't think that a good idea?"
DeBarres shook his head. "Not really. There are going to be enough paths in and out of there that stopping them up will be damned hard for us or for them, but…"
"But? If there's no problem with getting in — "
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