The Chronicles of the Eirish: Book 1: The Lich's Horde

by Doug Dandridge

  * * *

  “Fire,” yelled Marcus, staring at the gun captain.

  “But, we don’t have a target, young master.”

  “And you don’t need one for this gun. I just need your inertia. So fire, damn you.”

  There were six guns on the rise. One had just fired at the demon, proving that they needed more force behind the thirty-two-pound ball to actually hurt the thing. The ball had struck the shoulder, not the ideal target for a killing shot, and had penetrated only a couple inches into its iron hard flesh before rolling back out.

  Marcus wasn’t sure where the other mages were at the moment. He hadn’t seen Master Aepep since the beginning of the battle, and in the confusion he had no hope of finding him now. The small hillock was surrounded by the king’s guard, men with half plate and tower shields, smacking away zombies and living alike to keep the guns safe.

  “Firing,” yelled the gun captain, putting a match to the gun.

  Marcus had already voiced the spell, with the exception of the final trigger word. He quickly touched his staff to the gun and said that word, just before the weapon barked and sent out a cloud of smoke. The ball flew out at an abnormally slow speed, arching to fall into the swarm of zombies, destroying several of the undead despite its lack of power. The mage felt the energy flow into his staff, some of the excess coming through into his body. He gritted his teeth as he forced the energy back into the staff, then moved on to the next gun.

  “Fire,” he yelled, and the weapon rocked back as he absorbed most of the inertia from that round. He repeated with a third gun, then moved to the one that counted.

  “We’ve only got one shot at this,” he told the gun captain, turning to look at the demon, who was in the process of lifting the demigod to his mouth. Tengri had thrust his sword into the chin of the creature, trying to keep himself out of that mouth. So far he was winning that fight, though the young mage couldn’t figure out how he was doing it.

  The gun captain pulled on a rope, moving the barrel slightly to the left, then turning the elevation screw. “We’re ready.”

  Marcus quickly said the words to the spell that was the opposite to those he had just employed, then nodded to the gunner. The match went to the vent hole, the powder sparked, and Marcus hit the gun with his staff at just the right moment. The cannon went off with a deafening roar, the gun flew back on its wheels and strained at its ropes, one snapping and letting it slew around, then tip over.

  The heavy ball flew in a flat trajectory, flying just under the legs of Tengri to strike the demon in the upper abdomen, where the solar plexus would be on a human. Hot ichor spurted as the ball penetrated deep into the stomach of the demon, which folded forward as it dropped the demigod. Hands went to the wound as ichor flooded out, the ground sizzling as the liquid landed. The massive body fell to its knees, the head coming up, the blazing eyes locking on those of the mage. Marcus could feel the power in that gaze, and his vision started to blur as he felt the energy being pulled from his body.

  This might have been a mistake, thought Marcus, as he felt his consciousness flee and blackness overwhelm him.

  * * *

  Tengri landed and rolled, coming to his feet, his blade licking out to decapitate a nearby zombie. He was back in the swarm, the creatures trying to pull him down. His divine armor protected him from most of their strikes, while his divinely forged sword, swung with greater than human strength, destroyed all of those in his way.

  The demon, he thought, knowing that it would be coming for him as soon as it recovered from the cannon hit. He turned, bringing his sword around, ignoring the zombies, preparing himself for the sight of the massive hell creature coming at him. He was shocked to see the demon going down to its knees, one hand reaching out to keep itself from falling face first to the ground. The head looked up, looking away for a moment, staring at another target. A few moments passed, then the eyes locked on Tengri’s, and he could see death in those orbs. Its own death. The eyes glazed, the form started to smoke, and in seconds it had turned into a hot burning torch. Score of zombies around it were caught in the blaze, and within seconds it and the undead in its proximity were gone.

  The demigod looked around for a moment, then started to push his way through the swarm and back to the retreating line of soldiers. Most were in the process of fleeing, though enough of the troops were still in formation and retreating in good order to keep everyone from being overrun.

  Time to get out of here, thought the demigod, swinging his blade and clearing the way. The zombies to the side kept attacking him, their clawed hands striking his divine armor with little affect. He pulled up the last of his energy and cut a swath, until he joined up with the Eirish infantry still in formation, moving back while they cut down the oncoming undead. He wondered where the last of the flesh golems had gone. There were no more in evidence, and that seemed to be enough for the moment. But they had done their job, they and the demon, breaking the lines.

  The demigod reached out and grabbed a young Eirish soldier who was trying to get away. He pulled the man into the group of organized soldiers, who spun him around and set him in place in their lines.

  “Thank you,” said the young man, holding his shield before him and bringing his mace up to strike.

  Arrows started falling around the soldiers on a high arc, dropping down and taking a number of the troops in openings between shoulder and helm. Tengri looked down and hunched his shoulders to reduce the target area, and then saw the incoming nomad cavalry, riding through the zombies who seemed to frantically move out of the way. As frantically as the slow moving creatures could be.

  The infantry braced their shields just before the lances struck. They needed to have pikes in the line, troops who could push back against the lancers. But there were very few ready. The line held for a moment, then cracked, and soldiers who had stood brave against the dead were suddenly fleeing from the living, turning their backs to the men who rode forward, thrusting with lances and dropping hundreds into the dirt.

  Tengri had no choice but to run along with them, forging ahead, getting to the front of the swarm, constantly looking for some resistance that might form and give him a base to fight back from. But nothing seemed to coalesce, and the rout went on.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  “Leave those guns,” yelled the king, turning his horse, his riders forming around him.

  “But, your Majesty,” argued the officer in charge.

  “You won’t be able to get them away, Captain. You can’t even get your horses under control. So leave them.”

  The captain nodded, then shouted orders to his men to get them running.

  Most of the other cannon had been mated to their horses and were rolling quickly ahead of the army. The king knew he had lost many of his guns, but he would still have some for the next battle, if there was one. Enough? He really wasn’t worrying about that now, since the first thing he needed to do was to get as many men as possible away.

  Rory moved his horse up onto the rise, his eyes taking in the entire battlefield. The rout was on with all the armies. The Latins had broken first, and he wasn’t surprised, since they hadn’t been prepared for this fight. He still wasn’t sure why they had folded so fast, but they had, and most of them had been pulled down by the zombies or were being pursued by nomad horsemen.

  Even his own army was on the run after having been broken by the flesh golems and the demon. The flesh golems had gone down to cannon fire after enough gun crews had stayed at their posts. So had the demon, after the demigod had taken it on in personal combat. That had been an amazing fight, and he wasn’t sure anyone else on the battlefield could have stood against it and lined it up as a target.

  The Iberians were running, the Geats were running. One of his infantry brigades, the Norse and the Franks had not broken, and were moving backward in massed squares.

  “We’re ready, your Majesty,” called out the commander of his guard, sitting his heavy horse at the bottom of the hill
, hundreds of heavy cavalry arrayed behind him.

  “Then let’s be about,” said the king, walking his horse down the side of the hill.

  “I wish you would let us handle this, your Majesty.”

  “I led us into this mess, so I will get us out of it,” said the king. “Now, follow me.”

  The king rode to the far flank of the field, angling back, his men cutting down any zombies that were in their way. There were a few nomad lancers in their way as well, and they too were cut down. The mass of the enemy was still coming on, thrusting fleeing infantry in the backs, bowman putting heavy shafts through their weaker back armor, or in the creases that left their flesh unprotected. Some arrows came at the cavalry as well, not many, not enough to cause more than a pair of casualties with lucky hits.

  Rory turned his horse when they reached the cliffs that bounded that part of the wide pass. The other men jockeyed into position, the king’s guard on either side of their ruler. They formed six lines of about a hundred men each. Most were in full plate, though some few here and there wore chain from head to foot. Most still had lances, those without hefted their heavy hand weapons, mace or ax, or hand and a half or two-handed blades. Most of the heavy horses, their real weapons on the charge, wore barding, some of plate, some of chain, many more of stiffened leather. The horses were their strength, and their weakness. As long as they were healthy and moving the knight had the advantage over infantry or lighter cavalries. Let it go down, though, and the knight was doomed.

  Over half the men were Eirish, with a good number of Franks and a smattering from the other armies, including a few Latins. Rory knew his people would fight and fight hard. The others he could only hope.

  I wish we still had the rest of the cavalry, he thought. But he had sent them to hit the nomad horse archers on their flank. As far as he knew they had accomplished that, but he didn’t know what had happened to them when the spells of the necromancers had hit the field, followed by their summoned monsters. For all he knew they had been overrun by something and were no longer part of his army. The most he could hope for was that they were still out there, making their way back to the army, soon to rejoin. He wished they were with him, but he didn’t have time to wait.

  “Sound walk,” Rory told his bugler. That man raised his instrument and blew a tattoo, and every horse stepped forward, some a little behind the rest as their riders took a moment to catch on to the, to them, unfamiliar signal.

  “Trot,” yelled the king a moment later, and the lines went into the slow run that presaged the charge. He didn’t have all that much room to work with, so they had to do everything in abbreviated fashion.

  Nomad lancers started heading their way, along with some of the zombies. The king was not concerned about the undead. The enemy horsemen were more of a threat, and their target.

  “Charge,” screamed the king at the top of his lungs, his war trained voice cutting through the din of the battlefield. Each man spurred his mount forward, lances dipped, and Rory pointed with his heavy ax toward the enemy, setting his shield.

  Some of the enemy lancers rode large horses, though nothing as heavy as a destrier. They wore chain and leather, or in some cases lamellar that was almost as tough normal plate. Many of the westerners wore alchemy hardened plate many times tougher than normal steel, and even those without the benefit of enchantment still wore armor that was proof against most musket shots.

  The line of knights rolled over the nomad lancers as they came to them, the enemy not having time to form any kind of line, still scattered. They took a couple of knights out of their saddles with their lances and suffered a hundred dead in less than a minute as the longer weapons of the westerners took them from their saddles, or heavy blades chopped them down.

  Rory took a lance on his shield, leaning forward while he crouched over his mount’s neck. He and his horse’s combined weight pressed the nomad back into his own kak. Rory’s ax swung down and the lance shaft shattered. A quick move, another chop, and the nomad fell dead from his saddle, his head split to his teeth.

  The knights drove through the nomads, cutting off the few in the lead from the rest as they mowed down those before them. Some knights fell from their mounts, horses went down mortally wounded, while arrows came in from the Turk archers on the flanks. An arrow hit Rory in his helm, glancing off from the heavily enchanted metal. Several more hit his mount’s barding, splintering on the plate. His horse whinnied as an arrow cut the skin on a hind leg, a superficial wound, and the animal lashed out at a nomad beast in response, staving in the smaller mount’s rib.

  The charge seemed to go on forever. Lances shattered and knights drew other weapons. Some had braces of pistols and fired when they thought they needed them the most. The line swept across the field, driving the nomads back, while some of the fleeing infantry turned on the horsemen that were still pursuing them, taking them from their saddles, stabbing them on the ground until they stopped moving.

  The line reached the hills on the other side of the pass, having ridden the entire width. Half of his men had fallen, but he thought they had killed ten times their number in the charge. The nomads were in retreat, and the infantry continued on, the still organized formations staying back to guard the rear as the panicked remnants fled.

  “All horse,” yelled Rory at the top of his lungs, standing in his stirrups and looking around. “We will follow the infantry at a trot. Be ready to turn and drive off nomads.”

  The king wasn’t worried about the zombies. The running infantry would outdistance them easily. Even the marching infantry and the horse would distance them if given time. And if the nomads came back, the heavy horse would again buy time for the rest of the army to get away.

  * * *

  The night was dark as the pits of hell. Small fires scattered about the hills gave off the only light, and men, along with the few women in the army, sat around the tiny pits and tried to gather in what warmth they could. People spoke quietly around those fires, most too tired to even bother to try to speak above a whisper.

  Marcus stared into the fire, fighting to keep his eyes open. The energies that had passed through his body that day had made him as fatigued as he had ever been. He was sure that if they were attacked this night he would be helpless, which caused him great anxiety. And now, as far as he knew, he was the senior master in the force. Master Aepep had disappeared during the battle, and no one had seen him since before the rout had been on.

  “We have to do something with this army on the morn,” said King Rory, sitting around the same fire with a few of his generals and the leaders of the other nations, those that had survived. That had not included the prince of the Etruscans, probably lucky for him, since King Rory had looked to be in a mood to kill after the escape from the enemy.

  “These men will not be ready to fight tomorrow,” said a man that Marcus didn’t know, speaking in the accent he associated with the Franks. “They are broken, body and soul. Maybe in a week.”

  “They’re not coming after us this night,” said another of the men who Marcus thought was an Eirish nobleman. “They must have sustained severe losses as well.”

  “Not as many as we did,” interjected the Frank. “Not three in five of my people made it off that field, and we were already a crippled force.”

  “We can’t cower in these hills forever,” said the Eirish noble. “Tomorrow the dead will come, including the men that we lost today. And if you think our men were frightened today, wait until they see their fellows coming at them.”

  “Your man is correct,” said the Frank. “We have experienced that throughout this war. To see the men you have fought beside, their faces slack in death, coming toward you.” The man shook his head.

  “How long will it take them to raise the dead?” Rory asked. “We must have cut down over half of their undead army.”

  Marcus shook his head as he stared into the fire. He wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do. Master Aepep had been like his father for the last fo
urteen years, since he had come from the steppes into Aegypt. Though he was a strict taskmaster, he had also been kind, helping his young charges grow in skill and power. Now he was gone, dead as far as the young mage knew. Which meant he was now the master of all the mages in the army. He didn’t feel like a master. He was not quite twenty-three and did not possess the wisdom needed to lead the other, younger wizards.

  “Master Marcus? Are you still with us?”

  Marcus looked up to find most of the men around the fire looking at him. The king was leaning forward, his fatigued face cradled in his hands, elbows on thighs. “I asked, how long will it take the evil bastards to raise more dead?”

  “I am not familiar with their arts, your Majesty,” replied Marcus, who couldn’t even begin to imagine the evil that such practitioners contacted on a daily basis. Their souls would have to be damned, and the only way they could avoid their damnation was by extending their lives past the normal limits.

  “I’m sorry, your Majesty. I only know what goes into our own magic, which is not of the blackest evil like theirs.”

  “Can you make an educated guess?” asked the other Eirish nobleman.

  “If the lad doesn’t know, he doesn’t know, Count,” said Rory waving a hand down at the nobleman.

  “I can make a guess, my Lord,” said Marcus, looking at the nobleman. “They must have taken months to amass the army of undead they had. Maybe years. And if we have destroyed half of that army this day, it would have to take some weeks, if not months at least, to rebuild.”

  “Which doesn’t mean they will wait that long to try and root us out of these hills,” said a deep voice, and Marcus turned to see that Tengri sat on the other end of the log he was using as a seat. “The young master is correct in his estimation. The Necromancers will need life energy to reanimate the dead. Not as much as a living being. Oh, no. Not more than a fraction. They will absorb some of that energy, the force that was released over the battlefield, to feed their own dark souls, and some large portion of that will go to my brother, Erlic.”