A Sea of Skulls (Arts of Dark and Light Book 2)

by Vox Day

  A terrible wail went up from the men close enough to have seen their captain fall from the tower. Steinthor himself killed the dark-furred Aalvarg by punching his sword twice into its chest. He followed that with half-severing its head for good measure. He fended off a rusty, thrusting dagger with his left arm, then chopped off the beast’s hand at the wrist. For a moment both he and the wolf stood there and stared at each other. The wolf was stunned by the loss of its hand and Steinthor was astonished that his sword still retained enough of an edge to do such damage.

  Then the wounded creature snarled and lunged at him. Without thinking, Steinthor raised his arm and thrust the blade deep into the gaping maw. He found himself gasping as the dead weight of the wolf suddenly dragged his arm down. The sword was too deeply lodged into the beast’s skull to withdraw it, so he drew his dagger and fell back into the furiously fighting ranks of the Horse-Bjorn’s remaining men.

  There were too few of them left to throw back this wave, he saw. The relentless pressure from the Aalvarg was wearing them down and the loss of the Horse-Bjorn had caused more than a few to give into fey despair. Their discipline was all but gone, and he saw two more men pulled forward and hurled from the ramparts by the powerful grey-furred arms of the demonspawn. When the signal flames went up from the West Tower, indicating the wolves were attacking it now as well, he knew the time had come to fall back.

  “Half-Giant! Half-Giant!” he shouted as he fought his way back towards the huge man and his men. “Half-Giant!”

  “It is time?” Hrafnkel asked him, peering down uncertainly at him. “Do I blow the horn?”

  “Blow the horn,” Steinthor said. He gripped the big man’s thick forearm and squeezed it, wishing he could give the man a more worthy farewell. “Don’t let them pull you forward and throw you off the tower.”

  The big man nodded seriously, as if there was any advice that mattered now. “Go, Steinthor Strongbow, and the gods go with you.”

  Steinthor squeezed Hrafnkel’s arm again. He felt he hadn’t properly appreciated the Half-Giant’s courage until this moment. And yet, this was not the first or the fiftieth time he had felt Death’s cold hands clutching at him, what made him so womanish and sentimental now? Cursing himself, cursing his luck, cursing the wolves, and most of all, cursing whatever evil god had birthed the damnable creatures, he limped over to Rennir and reclaimed his bow, which was already strung.

  “Two volleys and then we run for the stairs and down into the keep.” He nocked an arrow.

  “Can you run?”

  “Not really.”

  “What happened to your sword?”

  “Got stuck.” He shrugged. “I’ll get another one inside.”

  A horn blew. It was a mighty blast worthy of a true jotun. “Half-Giant!” the men roared as they charged towards the ferocious struggle. The wolves were caught by surprise as the thirty-odd men with whom they were engaged suddenly fell back, giving the archers the space they required. Rennir was the first to loose, but Steinthor and the others quickly followed suit. They sent a second flight of shafts hammering into the foe before the gap was closed by Hrafnkel’s screaming men.

  He felt Rennir grab his arm as they joined the bleeding, battered remnants of the Horse-Bjorn’s men and rushed towards the doorway, as fast as his injured leg would permit him to go. But they needn’t have hurried. He looked back and saw, silhouetted against the flames, the great figure of the Half-Giant holding an Aalvarg aloft in his massive hands before snapping the creature’s neck and swinging it like a limp, but heavy club. He’d have caught a Chooser’s eye with that one, thought Steinthor in astonishment and admiration.

  He waited until the last man was through, then stepped down into the stairwell and pulled the door shut behind him. Rennir slid the metal slab into place, barring it, and the two of them began to follow the others down the stone stairs.

  “Can you make it down?” the bowman asked him.

  Steinthor suddenly realized that his wounded leg hurt and he was very, very tired. It won’t be long now, he promised himself. He only needed enough strength for one last task. The West Tower was already taken and the North Tower would only last as long as the Half-Giant and the door they had just barred. Their long defense of Raknarborg was over.

  “I can make it,” he said.

  He leaned on Rennir’s arm and together they descended towards the keep. There was nothing left to defend. Now it was time to attack.

  Theuderic

  He heard the sounds of battle before he saw anything. The sun was up and the men’s torches had been extinguished and returned to their saddlebags, but the leafy filter overhead created a dappled effect that played tricks on the eyes. As near as he could tell by the bestial roars that echoed through the trees, the orcs were attacking the curé’s forces, which puzzled Theuderic considering that all of de Cervole’s men were mounted. Even in a forest such as this, his cavalry shouldn’t have had too much trouble disentangling themselves from orcs on foot, unless they’d somehow managed to get themselves encircled.

  Lord Roche reined in his horse next to him. “What do you think?” He sounded as if he was similarly puzzled.

  “I have no idea. It sounds like they’re making a stand.”

  “That makes no sense!”

  “I know.” Theuderic shrugged. “Perhaps their captain is fallen and they’re trying to defend him.”

  The viscomte laughed. “Ah, my dear magus, you know nothing of Jean de Cervole or his men. If he’s down, they would only delay long enough to cut his throat, steal his purse, and loot his saddlebags. And I can’t imagine the old deviant would risk himself or his men for any of the knights.”

  “Do you smell smoke?” Theuderic sniffed at the air. The wind was at their backs, but even so, he thought he scented the smell of a fire nearby.

  “I don’t smell anything.”

  Then they heard a scream. It was followed by another. The two men looked at each other.

  “Was that what I think it was?” Lord Roche said, confusion on his face.

  “Those were women’s voices!” Theuderic declared.

  Without another word, they spurred their horses forward, in the direction of the screams. Theuderic dropped back a little, to let the more heavily armored knights take the lead. They raced through the forest, winding their way through as fast as the trees would allow, and both the sound of battle and the smell of smoke grew stronger.

  The first thing they saw were the orcs. Dozens of them, big creatures with powerful shoulders and short, but thick, bowed legs. They were hurling themselves at a thin wall of dismounted men who were fighting ferociously in defense of a hastily erected pile of brush that served as an ineffective barricade. Neither the viscomte nor his men slowed down as they charged into the attacking orcs and hit them in their undefended left flank. Theuderic saw Lord Roche behead one screaming orc and trample another; one of his knights drove his lance all the way through the neck of one orc to spit a second one just below his right shoulder blade. The oaken lance snapped, and the knight swung the broken handle down on the bare head of a third orc like a mace, crushing its heavy skull.

  Then Theuderic himself was in among the shrieking, dying, and panicking orcs, lashing out with his sword whenever his horse brought him within range of anything with a green skin. They were barely capable of resistance and were trying to flee, but the press of onrushing horses left most of them to be slashed in passing when they weren’t run through or trampled. A few were clever enough to stand still behind large trees, then dash for safety when no riders were approaching, but there were not many of them.

  The viscomte and his men were already coming back towards him, having turned around after riding through the orcs. Seeing that the wretched monsters were fleeing, Theuderic was finally able to pull up his horse and turn his attention to the men, and, as he saw to his surprise, women and children behind the barrier.

  “What are they doing here?” he shouted at one dismounted man-at-arms.

&
nbsp; The man, whose weary face was stained with blood both red and green, raised his free hand in a gesture indicating his ignorance. “We came across a band of about fifty orcs shepherding them along. We killed about half of them and drove off the rest, but then we ran into this lot.”

  “How many?”

  “Hard to say. At least six, seven hundred. You interrupted the third crack they took at us. Damn good thing you came along when you did.”

  “Where are your horses?”

  The man jerked his thumb towards the rear. “Behind the women and children. Captain Jean had most of us dismount and kept a reserve of thirty to hit them when they were pressing us hard. I thought that’s who you were at first.”

  “Where are they? Is de Cervole with them?”

  “I think so,” the man said. But just then, Theuderic heard a familiar voice crying out to him. “Theuderic!”

  “Sebastien!” he shouted back. “Over here, at the barricade!”

  It was hard to see where his fellow battlemage was amidst the confusion of horses blowing, men shouting, women crying, and the wounded shrieking in pain. Unsurprisingly, the women and children outnumbered the men by about four to one. Most of them were naked, or were wearing tattered rags. They were bruised, scratched, and half-starved by the look of it. Many of the women and not a few of the men had dried blood staining their legs. The children had a vacant, dull-eyed stare he had seen before; it was the same stunned look he’d seen on the faces of soldiers when they had witnessed too much horror for their minds to accept. And there were scores of them milling aimlessly about, getting in the way of the warriors who were trying to shore up their paltry defenses and arm the male prisoners with sticks that might serve as spears or clubs before the orcs returned to come at them again.

  To one side of the barrier, flames still crackled and the sides of the trees facing it were scorched black up to the height of a mounted man’s head. There were several dozen charred corpses of orcs, most with their arms upraised before them, scattered between the barrier and the trees. They had learned the hard way that a Savondese battlemage was no easy prey.

  Finally, he spotted Sebastien’s royal blue cape as his fellow mage made his way past a pair of men-at-arms bandaging their wounded and trying to catch their breath.

  “Sebastien!” he shouted again, and this time the younger mage saw him.

  “Theuderic! Thank God you arrived! Things were looking desperate there for a moment.” He was looking exhausted and on the verge of collapse. Theuderic could tell he had all but drained himself dry.

  “Where is your horse? What are you doing?”

  “Captain Jean told me to stay with the captives and help defend them in case the orcs broke through the men he had stationed there. They nearly got through once, not the last time, but the time before. I managed to keep them at bay, but I had to burn down nearly half the forest to do it!”

  “I saw that. You need to rest, Sebastien. You should ride out now, while you can.”

  “No! Captain Jean said no one leaves. There are more than five hundred villagers here, Theuderic, and most of them are women and children.”

  “I saw. What are they doing here in the middle of the forest? You said they were captives?”

  “Some of them were taken weeks ago. Others more recently. They’re from at least six different villages.” He paused for a moment and made a face. “Theuderic, I think they were being brought along as supplies.”

  Theuderic nodded. He wasn’t surprised. No army that didn’t hesitate to live off its own light infantry would shirk at devouring captives. Mobile food supplies were a logistical advantage. “If we can drive the breeds off, we can escort them out of the forest safely.”

  Sebastien smiled grimly. “More and more of the monsters kept showing up, Theuderic. Thousands of them. We had no idea where they were all coming from. At first they were almost completely unorganized, but then a big bastard showed up with a pair of shamans and kicked them into order. The last two waves, they hit us from two sides. That’s why I was helping hold the rear.”

  More and more of them kept coming. That was the problem. More and more of them would continue to come because that was precisely what he and the prince had anticipated, what they’d expected to be able to use to their advantage. The Amorran pressure on their rear would only increase with time; Theuderic knew enough of Legio XVII and its officers to know that once the attack began, they would keep pushing steadily forward, neither dashing rapidly ahead nor slacking off in order to rest. He had seen the Amorrans practicing their revolutions over and over again on the parade grounds of their castras, one century rotating smoothly after the other, like a slow-moving iron mill that ground flesh into blood instead of grain into flour.

  Theuderic’s original plan had called for the four squadrons of horse to use their superior mobility to methodically reduce the fleeing bands of orcs, striking, retreating, then striking again. But now, their mobility would be rendered useless by the need to protect the captive villagers. It occurred to him they might abandon the adults, and each take up a child, or perhaps a young woman, and ride out with them. That would require leaving the rest to their doom, but surely saving scores of the youngest ones would be better than sacrificing over one hundred riders in a futile effort to save a few villages’ worth of peasants. To say nothing of two royal mages.

  He had no doubt whatsoever that the king would not countenance the risk. If nothing else, he must convince Sebastien that it was their duty to retreat even if the prince’s cavalry captains would not. Courage and honor were for knights, not kingsmages.

  “We have to leave, Sebastien. If the orcs are gathering, even with Lord Roche’s men there won’t be enough to hold them off. We can’t force them back, not with the Amorrans driving them in this direction.”

  The younger mage stared at him, momentarily struck dumb. Then his eyes flashed with contempt and anger. “You run away if you’re afraid to stand, Theuderic. I’m not going anywhere. None of us are! Captain Jean said he’d ride down and kill the first man who fled and left these poor people behind!”

  Theuderic sighed. An uncharitable thought about the bugger-priest’s distaste for leaving children behind crossed his mind, but apparently even the worst of men had their moments. And the fury on Sebastien’s dirt-stained face seemed to suggest that it might be counterproductive to speak his mind aloud.

  “All right. If we can’t run, then we have to disrupt them, break them up and keep them from building up enough strength to overrun us.”

  “How do you suggest we do that?” Sebastien’s tone was still hostile, but there was an underlying note of hope in his voice too.

  “We kill the big bastard. If they don’t have anyone to gather around, there won’t be a group large enough to challenge us. Find your horse and come with me. We need to find de Cervole and the viscomte.”

  “I’m staying here. They will need me when the orcs come again.”

  “Go get your damn horse, Sebastien!” he snapped. “If you want to save them, then come with me! I’m going to need someone to distract those bloody shamans and you’re the only other mage in sight! I’ll meet you back here.”

  His colleague stared at him for a moment in dismay, then nodded and ran in search of his mount. Theuderic turned his own horse around to see if he could get a better view of the situation now that the orcs had fallen back and most of their wounded had been methodically dispatched.

  The trees obscured his view, but he could see that de Cervole had managed to find a slight rise which gave the defenders a modicum of advantage, one that was enhanced by the brush and fallen trees piled up behind him. From the movement in the distance and the flicker of shadows, he could tell that the orcs had not retreated far, which indicated that it would not be long before they would be gathering for yet another assault. He saw no sign of the big orc that Sebastien identified as their leader, nor the two shamans, but presumably they would be further back, either attempting to rally fleeing orcs or collect
ing stragglers from the night before.

  He went in search of Lord Roche and found him in the company of a filthy fat man with a ring of long, stringy, blood-matted hair hanging down from an otherwise bald head. The fat man’s face was uneven, as if he’d been smashed on its left side by a shield as an infant; it gave him a freakish, even frightening appearance. But his green eyes were bright with a keen intelligence that belied his otherwise grotesque persona.

  “Seigneur de Merovech, Jean de Cervole. Jean, you will recall the senior kingsmage.” The ex-priest nodded at him, unimpressed, and jabbed his finger into the viscomte’s breastplate.

  “You ride away if you must, Seigneur. I will not stop you. But leave me at least fifty men. I have lost twenty, maybe a few more in that last assault. We can stop them! They have no armor, their weapons are poor. But they are so many, and in the trees, we have no room to maneuver.”

  “That’s why you dismounted your men,” Theuderic said.

  “I did! And we were better able to defend the poor unfortunates on foot. We cannot simply leave them, ne pas? Better we should cut their throats before we flee like thieves and cowards. At least have the courage to show them the coupe de compassion, monseigneur le viscomte. Have you the courage to cut the throats of the mothers, the little ones?”

  “I’ve got the courage to cut yours, you filthy excuse for a pig!” The viscomte curled his lip in disgust. “I said nothing about riding anywhere! As if any true knight of the realm would even think to flee and leave those wretched folk to the defense of scum like you and your men!”

  “I rejoice to hear it, monseigneur. Then we shall stand together against these beasts, and we shall slaughter these monsters seeking to feed upon the flesh of the innocent.” The twisted face seemed to leer, and Theuderic wondered if the defrocked mercenary was actually trying to bait the nobleman.

  Lord Roche’s face tightened, and for a moment Theuderic thought he was actually going to strike the man. He quickly interceded before it could come to blows.