At the head of this-army, for lack of a better word-a line of fire pits had been dug and fed great blocks of peat. Around the fires, the biggest of the barbarians danced wildly, throwing their arms up to the sky at random intervals, stomping down the grass with their massive feet. The dancers all wore the same markings Croy had seen on Morget’s face-everything below their eyes was painted a bright bloodred.
Alone among the barbarians, these dancers didn’t look up as the king of Skrae came riding toward them.
As the royal party closed the distance to the fire pits, only one barbarian stirred. A man who had been in the throes of a dice game slowly stood up. He looked older than the rest. His hair was longer than most-the barbarians cropped their hair, or shaved their heads entirely, and this one had a mop of gold and silver atop his head, as well as a full beard. He also stood out a bit for the fact that no visible part of him was painted. He was dressed in furs no finer than the others wore, however, nor was he possessed of any jewelry or harness. He had a single broadsword strapped to his back, and when he rose, a mongrel dog stood up beside him and trotted along at his heels.
A second man got up from where he’d been lying in the grass, drinking wine. This one looked more like the others-his hair was cut very short and he had a mocking smile painted over his own lips. He followed the golden-haired oldster past the fire pits and up to a point just far enough from the walls of Helstrow to be out of longbow range. The two men-and one dog-raised no banners or flags, nor did they call out.
Ulfram’s herald raced forward on his horse and shouted down some words to the two barbarians. The golden-haired one nodded and then looked up and beckoned to the king of Skrae with one arm. There was a warm smile on his face.
The king approached warily. Hew brought his horse close to Croy’s. “I half think we’re being made sport of,” he whispered.
“It’s just their way,” Croy returned just as softly. “East of the mountains they treat their inferiors like equals. There are few divisions between the classes.”
“But how do they know their proper place, then?” Hew asked. “Are they even men, like us? Or some hairless kind of ape? They’re big enough for me to believe it.”
“They’re men. Don’t underestimate them,” Croy told his friend.
Hew turned his helm from side to side as if he were counting the vast number of the horde. “No fear in that.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
The king walked his horse up to where the two barbarians stood. The four Ancient Blades kept close position behind him.
It was Ulfram’s herald who spoke first. “Hail and well met under the banner of parley! King Ulfram, fifth of the name, lord of Skrae, master of the fortress of Helstrow, protector of the people, favored of the Lady-”
“Owner of a very nice horse,” the barbarian with the painted smile said. “Can I have it?”
His golden-haired companion chuckled.
Ulfram’s herald went white with rage, but he finished his announcement. “River warden of the Strow and the Skrait, lord protector of the dwarven kingdom-may I present to you the Great Chieftain Morg of the eastern steppes?”
“Ha! Don’t forget me!” the barbarian with the painted smile insisted. “Hurlind the scold! Ah, is it my turn to speak? This fellow went on so long I completely forgot my lines. Oh great Morg the Wise, this is… some king or other, I believe you heard his recommends already.”
Morg laughed openly. “Aye, I did. And well met, I say.” He shot out one hand to clasp the king’s.
“And the dog, Skari, what is it, the fifteenth of that name?” the scold went on.
The dog looked up on hearing its name, then flopped down on its side in the grass and panted.
“You dare introduce your dog to the king of Skrae?” Ulfram’s herald said, his face turning purple now.
“He’s not my dog,” Morg said. “Sometimes I feed him, that’s all. More than once, when I was starving, he fed me. Sometimes I think I’m his man.”
Ulfram’s herald began to complain again, but the king stopped him with a gesture. “That will do, I think. Ride back to the gate now, and tell them I’ve been met with the required civility. Go on, man.”
The herald glared down at the barbarians one last time before he left. Ulfram sighed deeply once he was gone and then dismounted so he could face Morg man-to-man. “I’ll choose not to take offense at the jests and boasts,” the king said. “It is my understanding your man there-your scold-is trained to taunt and provoke, rather than to offer your own thoughts.”
“He’s not my man,” Morg said. He waved behind him, toward the rabble. “None of these are. They let me talk for them, that’s all. That’s what a chieftain does. A Great Chieftain just talks for a lot of them.”
“But you are invested with the power to make terms today?” the king asked.
“I am. Should we sit? This might take a while.”
“I’d rather not soil my robes of state,” Ulfram said.
“As you wish.”
Ulfram nodded gratefully. “I understand you believe you were invaded first, by one Herward, a lone, insane religious hermit. Who you slaughtered without trial.”
Morg waved a hand in front of his face as if dismissing a fly.
“To show my contrition for this grave offense,” Ulfram said, “I am willing to offer you tribute-one hundred chests of gold coin. Once the exchange is made, I will expect you to lead your people back through the new pass to your own lands.”
Morg sighed. “I already have a lot of gold.”
Croy could see Ulfram trembling. The crown rattled on the king’s head.
“What I’m really looking for is land,” Morg went on. “We have plenty of that, too, in the east, but it’s no good for farming. My people need to eat. I’ve spent my life trying to convince them there’s more to life than just looting and pillaging, but when I can’t grow good wheat, it’s hard to get the point across. Now, personally, I’d prefer to avoid bloodshed today. I don’t like watching men die.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” Ulfram said softly.
“Unfortunately, that makes me a rarity among my people.”
The scold laughed. “For us, the sound of dying men screaming their last is sweet music! We love the ring of iron on iron. Some like to drink hot blood, and others-”
Morg punched the scold in the side of his jaw. His fist was like a hammer’s head, and it sent Hurlind sprawling into the grass, clutching his face as if his bones were broken.
Instantly Croy’s hand dropped to his sword hilt. It was all he could do not to draw Ghostcutter and race forward to cut down the golden-haired barbarian. But he had his orders.
“Sorry,” Morg said. “He annoys even me, sometimes. As I was saying-the clans want to go to war. It’s what they love best. I might be able to convince them to let you live. But they’ll want something good in return.”
“Such as?” Ulfram inquired.
“A grant of all the land east of the river Strow, and everyone living there now as our thralls.”
Croy couldn’t help but gasp. That was a third of the entire kingdom.
Chapter Twenty-Six
The king of Skrae spluttered in rage. Croy didn’t blame him.
“Thralls,” Ulfram finally managed to spit out. “You want thousands of my subject reduced to thralldom. To slavery.”
Morg shrugged. “I need people to teach us how to plant, and how to tend crops.”
“We know already how to reap,” Hurlind the scold said, still rubbing his jaw.
“Anyway,” Morg went on, “thralldom’s not that bad. Our laws say a thrall has the same rights as a chieftain, and he can even buy his freedom if he works hard for twenty years or so. You have villeinage here in Skrae, yes? Tell me something-if a reeve beats a villein for some offense, what happens to the villein if he fights back?”
Ulfram glanced back at his knights as if expecting them to explain to him why he was being questioned on the finer points of the feudal syst
em. “He’d be placed under arrest, of course, and tried for assault. Most likely he’d be hanged, as an example to others.”
“I thought so. Yes,” Morg said, nodding. “I’d much rather be a thrall. If a thrall’s master beats him too severely, and he breaks his master’s neck, most of us would cheer.”
“We do love a good avenging,” Hurlind affirmed.
Morg smiled. “I imagine more than a few of your villeins would prefer thralldom if they had the choice.”
“They don’t,” Ulfram pronounced. “The people of Skrae will never be sold as slaves. Only the Lady can assign a man to his station-that lies outside my power. So the answer is no. I will not grant you that land, nor give you my subjects in tribute. If that means war, then so be it.”
“I was afraid you’d say that.” Morg stretched his arms over his head and arched his back. “Well, I gave it my best shot.”
Ulfram sneered at the barbarian. “Did you really expect me to take what you offered, or was this just another naked ruse to justify mass slaughter?”
“Actually,” Morg told him, “it was mostly a play for time. It takes a while for the berserkers to get good and hot.” He turned and looked toward the fire pits, where the wild dancers gyrated at a frenzied pitch. He threw them a simple hand signal, and they all stopped on the instant, freezing in place.
One by one the red-painted men started trembling. Even from a distance Croy could see how they shook. Their teeth chattered in their heads and their eyes waxed red with blood. It looked like they were suffering from some kind of mass apoplectic fit.
“Your majesty,” Sir Hew said, his voice taut as a bowstring.
“I told you not to speak,” Ulfram snarled at the knight.
The berserkers picked up axes and shields from where they lay on the grass. Their faces were as red now as the paint across their mouths. One of them started gnawing on the wooden rim of his shield as if he would take a bite out of it.
“Forgive me, liege,” Sir Hew said, “but get on your damned horse right now!”
The king was not blind. He jumped up into his saddle. Yet before he turned the horse back toward Helstrow, he glowered down at Morg. “You dare to sully the sacred rite of parley,” he said. “No violence offered, no treachery brooked!”
Morg laughed. “That’s your custom, not ours. Ours is to cheat every way we can. We win a lot more battles our way.”
Sir Hew dashed forward and kicked at the haunches of the king’s horse. Croy didn’t need further provocation to wheel his rounsey about and get it moving.
“Guard me,” the king shouted. “On me, all of you!”
The Ancient Blades moved swiftly to box him in, even as the berserkers started to howl and chase them on foot. They ran far faster than any man should, their axes waving high over their heads, their shields bashing forward at thin air.
“The gate! Open the gate!” Sir Rory called. Up ahead Croy could see soldiers desperately trying to get the gate open before their king reached it.
“The ballistae!” Croy shouted. Up on the battlements above the gate, the giant crossbows were slowly cranked to tension. “Shoot over our heads-do it now!”
The horses thundered toward the gate, throwing up great clods of earth as their hooves pounded at the soil. The gate was still a hundred yards away.
The berserkers were gaining on them. And behind the running men, ten thousand barbarians were rising to their feet, their weapons already in their hands.
A ballista fired with a twang like the world’s longest lute string snapping in the middle of a chord, and an iron bolt six feet long flashed over the top of Croy’s great helm. It passed through one berserker, leaving a hole in his chest big enough to put a fist through. It impaled the man behind him, too, before plowing deep into the earth without a sound.
The first berserker died before he hit the ground, his axe slashing again and again at the yellow grass. The second berserker, the one who had been impaled, took longer about it. Incredibly, as Croy watched over his shoulder, he saw the berserker try to pull himself forward, attempting to drag himself off the ballista bolt that transfixed him.
Step by excruciating step the berserker forced himself forward. There was no pain written on his face at all. Had he made himself totally insensate with his wild dancing? The berserker took another step-and pulled himself free. The ballista bolt thrummed as it came clear from his back.
The berserker laughed-and then died, as blood erupted like a fountain from his wound.
Behind him fifty more of them were still coming.
“The gate! Open the gate!” the king screamed, and Croy looked forward to see that the gate was in fact open-but the portcullis behind it was still lowered.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Behind the portcullis, soldiers shouted at one another and men ran back and forth as they tried desperately to get the gate open again. It was designed to be dropped in a hurry, to fall its full length in a split second, but as a result it took far too long to rise again. Men working at a pair of windlasses had to strain and strive to lift its massive weight inch by inch. Croy jumped down from his horse just as the iron bars began to lift-but slowly, so slowly it was like watching death come creeping. Croy yanked off his gauntlets, then grabbed the bars with his bare hands and heaved at them, trying to help the soldiers manning the windlass behind the gate.
“Your majesty!” Sir Hew shouted. Croy turned to look-and saw a flight of arrows, dark in the air.
He’d seen so few bows among the barbarians that he assumed they disdained their use. But now a hundred arrows or more were hurtling toward him.
Sir Hew grabbed the king off his horse just in time. He pulled the monarch down behind the destrier’s flanks just as the arrows struck home. A dozen points clattered against Croy’s armored back, bouncing off harmlessly, but the horses screamed and some of them bolted.
And still the berserkers were coming, howling, cutting themselves with their own weapons to add bright streamers of blood to their already red faces.
“Your king is in peril,” Croy shouted through the bars of the portcullis. The wicked spear points at the bottom of the gate were only a few inches off the ground.
Sir Rory drew Crowsbill and strode out toward the berserkers. The fat old knight struck left and right as the first of the manic barbarians came upon him. The blade looked like a normal sword until it struck, when its metal flowed and curved like quicksilver, reshaping itself even as Rory swung it about. Crowsbill twisted like a snake as it sought out their vital organs, guided by magic to always strike the most tender spot, just as a crow on a battlefield will pluck at the liver and lights of a dead man.
The berserkers showed no sign of fear or pain as the blade curled again and again toward their bellies, their hearts-but one by one they went down. Sir Orne rushed to help, drawing Bloodquaffer from its broad sheath. The blade looked fuzzy even close up, but nasty all the same. Its two edges were viciously serrated-and the teeth of the serrations were themselves serrated, and those serrations as well, and those, until the serrations were too small to see with the naked eye. When it struck even the lightest of slashing blows, it cut down to the bone and its wounds bled violently. Orne had learned to use his Blade to maximal advantage, whirling about, reaching only for the fastest, most shallow cuts. Light as they were, Bloodquaffer’s strokes always sheared flesh down to the bone. Blood hung in the air all around Orne like a red fog as veins burst open and arteries pumped blood out onto the grass.
The berserkers didn’t stop coming, though. They seemed wholly ignorant of the numbers of their dead that piled up before the gate under the constant attacks of Rory and Orne. The berserkers ran pell-mell right into the teeth of the fight and they struck with an inhuman savagery, driven by their trance to strength and speed no normal man could match. The heavy armor that Orne and Rory wore turned away most of their axe blows, but one cleaved right through Rory’s left pauldron and bit deep into the flesh below. His arm went limp and he dropped his shi
eld-even as Orne stepped in to cover his friend’s left with his own shield, and took a barbarian’s head off with a backhanded slash from Bloodquaffer.
“Get the king through-get him inside,” Sir Hew shouted into Croy’s ear. Croy looked down and saw the portcullis had lifted a handbreadth from the ground. “Shove him in there, if you must.”
Croy grabbed Ulfram’s robes of state and pulled the king to him. Ulfram was unconscious. It looked like an arrow had struck him a glancing blow on the temple. His crown was gone, lost somewhere out on the field. Croy had no time to find it. As the portcullis lifted another jerking inch, he picked up the king and stuffed him through the opening. The points of the bars tore at Ulfram’s silks, but Croy could only hope they hadn’t snagged his royal skin as well.
Once the king was past the bars, soldiers on the other side grabbed him and pulled him through the rest of the way, then lifted him off the ground and carried him off.
“Now you,” Hew told Croy, and started to draw Chillbrand.
“No,” Croy told him, putting a hand on Hew’s wrist. “He’s in no state to give orders. You’re in command now-you go through next.”
Hew didn’t waste time arguing. He dropped to his belly and crawled through the gap, the points of the portcullis shrieking against the steel on his back.
Croy rushed to Rory’s side just as the old knight began to droop. He propped Rory up while Orne defended him from axe blows, and shouted into Rory’s great helm, “You go next, brother.”
Rory nodded gratefully and hurried to clamber under the bars.
Bloodquaffer came down in a wild slashing stroke that cut a berserker’s face in half. Another barbarian replaced the dead man, and it was all Croy could do to bring Ghostcutter up and parry a whistling axe blade. The berserker lunged forward, and Croy was suddenly face-to-face with his foe. He saw the wildness in the red eyes, the exultant rage in the red-painted face. Spinning around, Ghostcutter an extension of his arm as he whipped it up and in, he gutted the man, but even that wasn’t enough. The axe came up again like the berserker was chopping wood.
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