His gaze passed over the rest of the men, and a couple of women, gathered to watch the match. He scratched that bandage on his left arm, the bite marks beneath itching, then caught himself with a grimace.
“Pair up as many men as we can spare with the civilians. Use whatever you can find for weapons. Don’t give any of the able-bodied men a choice. Tell them if they want to see Temeritt alive, they’re likely going to have to fight.”
Terson nodded and Gregson moved off toward their encampment. There were still a few hours of sunlight left, but he hadn’t dared move on beyond the small field, the waist-high grasses now trampled down into a rough mat beneath his feet. The scouts he’d sent out ahead of them had reported the roads safe only up to this point; they hadn’t heard from them since. Gregson tried not to let that fact bother him. The scouts had been late before and it meant nothing. The one time he’d pushed on regardless, they’d nearly run into a party of Alvritshai.
The five wagons were drawn up in a rough circle, a few of the women, Ara included, butchering some of the small game the hunters had brought in. He’d reluctantly agreed to allow a fire, hoping the breeze that whispered through the surrounding trees would be enough to disperse the smoke. As he entered the small circle, a group of children emerged from the closest section of forest, arms laden with branches. They screamed in delight as the two women who’d accompanied them herded them toward the fire, one tripping and falling, bursting instantly into tears. Their laughter cut strangely through the somberness that passed between the adults in the group.
“Children are the most resilient of us all,” Ara said, jerking her knife through the rabbit’s carcass as she separated the skin from the meat. Once free, she gutted it and impaled the body on a spit, passing it to one of the other women as she tossed the skin to one side and reached for another rabbit.
“I’m not used to dealing with . . . children.” He’d been about to say civilians. He still didn’t understand why they were all here, why they continued to follow his orders. There was barely enough food or supplies for them all, most of the adults going without in order to feed the children. The rabbits Ara butchered had been a windfall. He was only a lieutenant, and out of the group of three hundred there were only thirty Legionnaires. Why did the others remain? Why didn’t they break away to fend for themselves, or to find someone who could take care of them better than he could?
Ara eyed him critically, up and down, eyebrow quirked. “You seem to be doing just fine. We haven’t lost a man . . . or woman . . . yet. Not since Cobble Kill.”
A flash of the men and women cut down there by the Alvritshai arrows or the catlike creatures’ claws flashed through his mind and he grimaced. He could still feel the claw marks on his legs, no longer bandaged, but still healing.
Before he could respond, one of the Legionnaires guarding the edge of the camp shouted. Nearly everyone jumped, fear skating through their eyes and faces as they tensed.
To the southeast, another Legionnaire emerged from the edge of the trees. He waved his free hand in desperation, the other holding up one of the scouts and helping him along.The young man was covered in blood,his legs barely supporting him.
Gregson was moving before he consciously thought about it, surprised to find Ara at his side, others heading toward the two men as they stumbled into the fi eld. The Legionnaire who’d shouted a warning and another man reached them fi rst, taking the wounded scout and lifting him off the ground, practically sprinting toward the carts.
“Over here,” Ara shouted, and grabbed Gregson’s arm to halt him before he moved beyond the wagons. She cleared a small section of grass,yelling,“Give us room,give us room,” gruffly, shoving those who lingered too long aside. Then she caught an older woman’s arm.“Get whatever rags you can find, and a bucket of fresh water.”
The Legionnaire and the other man—a blacksmith, Gregson recalled, from the new group—set the scout down on the grass and Ara began checking him for wounds. Greg-son crouched down beside them as the older woman arrived with an armload of rags, their meager medical box, and a bucket of water.
“Can you hear me?” Gregson asked, lightly slapping the scout’s cheek.
Ara shot him a glare, soaking a rag and running it across the scout’s face. Blood ran away in rivulets, the skin beneath shockingly pale, almost gray. Something clutched at Gregson’s heart, but he forced it back. Three claw marks ran from the younger man’s ear into his scalp, bleeding as fast as Ara could wipe it away. Ara huffed in exasperation and left the wounds, moving toward the rest of his body. Most of the blood that covered his chest and side could have come from the head wound, but not all of it.
Gregson reached down and caught the scout’s jaw, turning his head toward him as he leaned far enough forward he could stare down into the glazed eyes.“I need you to focus.” He saw a flicker of awareness and patted his cheek again until the awareness caught and held. “What happened? What did you see?”
The scout coughed, a froth of blood spattering his lips. Gregson heard Ara rip the man’s shirt open and swear, but he didn’t turn to look. She shouted for more water, more rags, and some godsdamned thread, her voice shaking.
“What did you see?” Gregson repeated.
The scout finally appeared to recognize him, smiling even as he choked on blood.“War party,”he wheezed.“Found me. Chased me. Had to get through. Need to tell you—”
He contorted with a seizure.Ara spat curses and ordered a Legionnaire to hold him steady; Gregson leaned his arm onto the scout’s chest.
“Tell us what?” he demanded, even as the youth thrashed. He tightened his grip on his jaw, felt the muscles bunched beneath his fingers. “Focus, boy, focus. What did you need to tell us?”
The scout’s gaze locked with Gregson’s and he muttered, “GreatLord Kobel . . . Legion . . . line day distant . . . watch birds...not birds...”
Then the intensity in his eyes faded and his body went limp. A trickle of blood trailed down one side of his face, staining the grass beneath him.
The activity beside him ceased abruptly and someone grabbed Gregson’s hand. He turned to fi nd Ara, hands bloody up to her forearms, staring at him intently. “He’s dead.”
Gregson drew in a breath and released his grip. He glanced down toward the scout’s face and thought about not losing a man since Cobble Kill, then swallowed the tightness in his own chest and rose. He suddenly realized he hadn’t even known the young man’s name, that he barely knew any of the newer members of his group.
That would have to change, he vowed. He wanted no more nameless men dying during his command, under his watch.
A crowd had gathered, mostly women and children, but a few men among them, including Terson.
“Terson, you have the camp. You five, come with me.” He’d selected three of the civilians—Carlson, Brent, and Orlson from Cobble Kill—and two Legionnaires, Leont and Darrall, all of them sturdy men with weapons already in hand. They must have come from the practice field.
As he moved away from the scout’s body toward the edge of the forest, the silent crowd parting before him, Terson stepped up to his side. “Where are you going, sir?”
“To verify what he saw.”
“What did he say?”
Gregson looked back to find the five men he’d selected a few paces behind them, the three civilians looking uncertain. All of them were listening, though, and Carlson, the carpenter, gave him a nod of encouragement.
“He said the front line was a day distant. We’re near the Northward Ridge. I want to know if we can see it from there.”
“Shouldn’t we wait until the other scouts return?”
He met Terson’s gaze squarely. “What makes you think they will?” he said softly.
Terson’s eyes narrowed.
“We’re obviously closer to the Horde’s line than we thought. I want to know how close, and if we have a chance in hells of getting through to our own side.”
“Very well.”
He hea
rd the unspoken warning to be careful. He didn’t need it. He’d seen the scout’s face and the jagged wounds along his torso.
He only wondered what the scout had meant when he’d whispered, “Watch birds . . . not birds.”
“Ah,” Gregson murmured to himself.
“Diermani’s balls.”
Gregson turned, a reprimand on his lips, but realized the man who’d spoken was Brent, one of the civilians. He caught the tail end of the man crossing himself, his eyes wide with fear, his breathing already shortened in panic.
“Steady,” he said tightly, catching the man’s gaze. “The line is too distant to be a threat.”
Brent swallowed and gripped the pendant that hung hidden beneath his shirt, his breath slowing.
Gregson turned back. Reaching forward, he pulled a leafy branch out of his line of sight and stared down from the ridge toward the rolling hillsides below.
The Legion fought in ragged formation along a front that was far too wide to hold, not with the amount of Legionnaires present. Gregson estimated nearly ten thousand Legion had been gathered, the combined garrisons of Temeritt and all of the surrounding cities and towns within a hundred-mile radius of the Autumn Tree. His heart lifted with hope when he picked out the orange-and-black banners of GreatLord Kobel near the heart of the fi ghting. They were too distant for him to pick out the man himself, but he could tell they were fi ghting ferociously. His own muscles tensed, his hand itching to find the handle of his blade and join them, but even without the responsibility of the refugees waiting a short distance away there was no easy descent from the Northward Ridge.
Not close anyway.
Instead, he turned his attention toward the Horde. As at Patron’s Merge, it undulated on the hillsides like a black wave, pushing against the Legion, the line of combat shifting beneath the late evening sunlight.Arrows darkened the sky; archers perched on the highest hilltops on both sides, the deadly shafts raining down in waves. Gregson was close enough he could hear the clash of blades and the screams of the dying, but it was muted, rising along the ridge face to his position like mist.
The sound made his jaw clench.
The Horde was composed mostly of Alvritshai, some on horseback, like those who’d attacked Cobble Kill, but most on foot. Mixed in with them, he could see more of the leathery-skinned giants and packs of the catlike creatures attacking in swarms. The giants were mindless, powering forward by brute force, grabbing and ripping and rending whatever they could get their hands on. The catlike creatures were just as vicious, but their attacks were more intelligent, their attention focused on the Legion on horseback.
The Alvritshai were precise and methodical, their lines coordinated. Gregson studied their formations with a coldly critical eye, his mouth pressed into a grim line, even as he fought a surge of respect. He had never fought the Alvritshai before. Temeritt’s Province was separated from Alvritshai lands by the dwarren. They’d only had to deal with the dwarren, and with the Accord that had meant an uneasy alliance that neither race had seen fit to test significantly. There had been skirmishes, disputes over exactly where the boundary lay between the dwarren Lands and the Province, but nothing serious. The attacks were mostly posturing.
The Alvritshai below were not posturing. They were vicious and frighteningly direct. No hesitation and no attempt to back off or to seek quarter.They weren’t here for concessions of land or for barter, and they weren’t looking for the Legion to surrender.
They were here to kill and conquer.
Gregson’s eyes narrowed as he began searching for a way for the refugees to get past the Horde’s line and to the uncertain safety behind the Legion. The fi ghting raged across a flat stretch of rolling land between multiple hills, split by a road running more or less east-west.A low wall of stone ran across a few of the hills, most likely separating the property between two owners. Copses of trees grew in the valleys between the nearest hills.
The ridge had forced the Horde to separate and converge from the east and west as they bypassed it, but they now lay between Gregson, the refugees, and the Legion’s forces. He leaned farther forward, trying to see the land beneath them, closer to the face of the ridge, but it was empty.
He frowned. Where were the Horde’s supply wagons? Their supporting forces?
“Lieutenant!”
The warning from Darrall snapped Gregson’s attention back to the fighting.
The Legion to the west had collapsed, the men fighting desperately as a roar of triumph washed up the ridge face from the Horde. Horns blew, the creatures and Alvritshai at the back of the Horde shifting toward the break. Gregson bit back his own curse, then felt a hand on his shoulder.
Brent’s face was etched with terror. “Not there.” He pointed toward the sky. “There.”
Gregson looked up, his heart already sinking, to see a huge bird circling above their position. Even as he registered that it wasn’t a bird—the wings were too long, the head too pointed and narrow—it shrieked, the sound slicing into Gregson’s gut. He heaved up out of his crouch as Darrall, Leont, and Carlson drew their swords. Orlson panicked and vanished through the trees, racing back toward the refugee camp, but before Gregson could roar an order to stop, the creature that was and wasn’t a bird shrieked again, louder than before, and swooped down toward them.
Leont and Carlson jumped in front of Gregson, both swords raised. Leont, a new recruit, bellowed in defiance, but the creature never broke the tops of the trees, banking left out over the edge of the ridge and down toward the army below, its shriek fading with distance.
The four remaining men were left gasping at the edge of the forest.
“Did you see its eyes?” Brent asked. His chest heaved, his face and shirt damp with sweat. He wiped at his forehead with one sleeve. “They were yellow. And that head! I’ve never seen anything like that, never even heard of such a thing, not even in the legends. It didn’t even have feathers! And it was the size of a horse! It—”
“Quiet!” Gregson barked. Brent’s voice verged on hysteria. He opened his mouth in shock, but Gregson didn’t let him continue. “Whatever that thing was, it knows we’re here. We have to warn the others. Move!”
After a moment of indecision, mouth still open, Brent turned and ran.
The rest of them followed, Gregson keeping his eyes on the patches of sky he could see through the leafy cover.The shadow of the creature passed by overhead before they’d made it halfway back to the camp, moving fast, and within fifteen minutes they heard it shrieking from the direction of the refugees. He swore, prayed to Diermani that the archers could take it down, but heard its cry veering off to the side.
When they broke through the edge of the clearing into the field, the camp was in chaos, with men, women, and children racing in every direction,Terson stood in the middle of it all bellowing orders left and right. He was surrounded by five men with arrows nocked and trained toward the sky, but the creature wasn’t in sight. Everyone else was frantically throwing supplies into the backs of the wagons, calming skittish horses, or heaving children up into saddles.
As soon as Gregson took stock of the scene, he roared, “Leave it all! If it isn’t already in the carts, leave it! We need to go now!”
His voice cracked over the chaos, nearly everyone turning toward him, their faces panicked. He caught sight of Orlson, the civilian who’d fl ed the ridge, and gave him a black glare before turning away.
“Terson, get them moving to the west. Our best chance is to skirt the end of the Northward Ridge and have everyone scatter into the forest there. If we aren’t all gathered into a single group, the Horde will have a harder time finding us. We’ll try to make the Legion’s line through the cuts between the hills to escape notice. Go, go, go!”
Gregson’s second in command stalked off shouting, “Form up!” shoving people he passed, too roughly for Gregson’s taste, but he couldn’t take the time to curtail him.
Somewhere south, beyond the ridge, the creature screamed.
/> It was answered by another shriek, so close Gregson flinched from the sound, ducking instinctively. Nearly half of the refugees did the same, a few dropping into a crouch.
But not all.
Gregson heard the flap of thick cloth, spun in time to see a shadow fall over the group, a confusion of leathery wings, a thick body, reaching legs—
Then the talons of the creature raked across one of the mounted men, tumbling him from the saddle as blood flew. The distinct sound of arrows being released shot through the high-pitched scream that followed, Gregson registering mild respect that some of the archers had remained calm enough to fire, and then with a gust of wind that carried grass and grit into his face, the creature lifted away, something clutched in its talons.
Gregson stared after it in shock, his mind not willing to accept that the figure struggling in the creature’s grip was a child. But the mother’s screeching wouldn’t stop. He turned to face her, body numbed, two men holding her back as her arms reached up and out toward the bird that was not a bird, already a receding shadow in the distance.
A smaller shadow suddenly dropped from it and fell toward the earth.
Gregson turned away, bile rising in the back of his throat, the mother’s scream escalating before breaking into sobs as she collapsed back into the arms of the men holding her, her body suddenly limp. Two men hauled her upright and carried her to one of the carts, tossing her into the back as she protested, arms flailing, striking them and herself in her frenzy.
“Lieutenant!”
Gregson swallowed with a wince, then turned, saw Curtis and Jayson charging up to him.
“Everyone’s moving out,” Curtis gasped. “We need to go!”
Gregson surveyed the trampled grass of the field and acknowledged that Curtis was correct. The attack of the creature had lit a fire under everyone’s ass. The carts had already reached the edge of the road heading westward, the one with the mother trailing slightly behind the others. The rest of the refugees were stumbling at a half-run out in front, the Legion, archers, and men on horseback urging them on, all with swords drawn. He shook his head. It was all falling apart. They weren’t abandoning the supplies; they weren’t preparing to separate into smaller groups. In their panic, they were doing the exact opposite, unwilling to break from those they’d bonded with over the last few days.
Leaves of Flame Page 39