by Tony Daniel
Wulf found a cart with a tapped keg. He searched around for a cup or a container to drink from. He couldn’t find one, so he leaned down and put his mouth under the keg spout and pulled up on the wood slide. He let the water stream out into his mouth. He took swallow after swallow, trying to gulp everything that came in.
The bear men saw another wagon with a tapped keg sitting on top of several others. A mixture of wounded was lined up there. The bear men didn’t have cups, either, and this keg was at a better height for them to drink under. They got in line.
Wulf drank deeply. Then he took a palm-full of water in his right hand. It formed a small, longish lake in the scar. Wulf smiled grimly and sipped the water from his hand.
As he stood up, an arrow hit the side of the wagon where he’d just been stooping. Wulf dropped the water. He reached for his sword in its scabbard.
Where had the arrow come from?
He spun to look behind him and saw an archer standing only a few paces away. The archer was standing in firing stance and had nocked another arrow. He was drawing back the string and sighting along its length.
The archer was Smallwolf.
Where had the fox man come from?
He must have followed me all the way from that line, Wulf thought.
He obviously meant to kill Wulf.
Wulf leaped to his right, but Smallwolf expertly followed and lead him. The arrow struck him in the middle of his back, and Wulf felt the thump. But there was no stabbing pain. He’d swung the buckler onto his back, and it had caught the arrow.
“Curse you to cold hell,” Smallwolf said. “What does it take to kill you, boy?”
Where were the bear men? Wulf glanced around frantically. The wagon was blocking the bear men from seeing him. It was just himself and Smallwolf.
Wulf turned back around. Smallwolf nocked yet another arrow. Wulf thought about pulling his buckler around, but there was no way he could do it in time.
“I’m not your enemy!” Wulf called out.
“You’re a man,” Smallwolf called back.
There was the whisper of an arrow in flight. Wulf thought for an eyeblink that Smallwolf had released. But the fox man’s fingers on the bowstring went slack. The nock slipped. The string hit the arrow, but on the side, spinning it a few paces away before it fell harmless to the ground.
Smallwolf let out a curse and stumbled forward.
There was an arrow in his back.
It had stuck in the fox man’s leather armor.
Smallwolf dropped the bow and sat down. His black nose twitched. He looked like he was sniffing the air. Then blood erupted from his nostrils.
The arrow had gone through the leather and pierced the fox man. Smallwolf slumped to the side, and blood flowed from his mouth down his furry neck and from the wound.
His eyes remained fixed on Wulf. Wulf thought the fox man was still glaring at him with hatred. He waited. When Smallwolf didn’t move, he realized the fox man was dead.
Wulf looked toward the woods where the arrow must have come from. It was at least a hundred paces distant. A near impossible shot. Who was back there?
The baggage train was hidden among the trees.
He saw someone on the edge of the woods holding a bow. He couldn’t make out the face. Then there was a gust of wind. A red cape swirled around the form.
Ursel.
She let fly another arrow, and this one missed the fox man by a hand’s breath. It buried itself in the ground. That didn’t matter. The first had found its mark. Smallwolf was already dead.
That was the most spectacular shot I’ve ever seen, Wulf thought. Keiler had claimed his adopted daughter was an amazing huntress. He had spoken the truth.
Wulf walked over to the dead fox man. He looked down at him for a moment, then put a toe under his body and kicked him onto his stomach. He stepped on Smallwolf’s back and pulled out the arrow. It was a bodkin. No wonder it had punched through the leather. Ursel had not only made the shot, she’d picked the right arrow for the job.
He held the arrow up and waved it back to her.
The bear men charged up, but saw that they were too late to do any good. They growled anyway—at nothing.
Wulf looked down at Smallwolf. Was the fox-man leader one of many? Was it his own hatred that had made him try to kill Wulf? Wulf hoped it was only him. But there had been a lot of voices calling out their agreement with Smallwolf at the law-speak.
Wulf climbed back up the hill. He still had the bolt in his hand. He saw Keiler talking with one of his runners, and waited for the earl to finish. Then he walked up to the bear man.
“Your daughter just saved my life,” he said.
He showed Keiler the arrow. When he saw the blood on it, the bear man’s graying muzzle broke into a smile. He flashed sharp teeth.
“How far?” Keiler asked.
“At least a hundred paces.”
“Ursel’s had a bow in her hands since she could walk,” Keiler said. “Who did she kill?”
“Smallwolf,” Wulf replied. “He was trying to shoot me.”
“The idiot,” Keiler grunted. He nodded toward the arrow. “Save that. Maybe it will keep you warm at night when you realize she’s not in your bed and you could have had her.”
Wulf was silent for a moment.
Keiler’s not wrong, he thought.
“I will,” Wulf finally said. “And I’ll never forget.”
He’d had it easy so far, even though he hadn’t known it. The last section of the belltower was impossible. Rainer was beneath an overhang. The cupola was on a platform that gracefully flared out so that anyone climbing it would have to hang upside down.
Charge it. Go at it with complete commitment. Forget about falling.
I can do this—
But wouldn’t it disappoint the cold hell out of Wulf if I did peel?
He’ll know this wasn’t that hard of a climb. At least until the end. He won’t say anything bad while they’re burning me at the funeral. He’ll think I made a stupid move, though.
What would Wulf do here?
He’d brood for a while.
He’d think about all the ancient words of the skalds, then pull some quote from a saga out of nowhere. Not because he was trying to impress anybody, but because he knew the cursed things like he knew how to breathe.
And this would be his way of thinking things through.
Wulf would think this through.
Then so will I.
Rainer took a long breath.
There was no way to muscle this whole way. You had to rest or you would peel. You had to find an eyeblink here, an eyeblink there, when the strain was off one set of muscles or another.
First, he needed to rest.
Rainer changed his grip to rest one arm, then the next. His muscles hurt less.
Now or never.
It began to rain.
“No,” Rainer said to the sky. Then he shouted, “No!”
The sky responded with a roll of thunder. Wind whipped droplets in Rainer’s face. Soon his clothes were soaked. Grer’s boots were wet. His hands were slick with water.
Now it couldn’t be a matter of just holding on tight. It was impossible to hold tight to wet stones. He would use jams or he would fall.
The rain showed no sign of letting up. It was time to go.
Carefully, joint by joint, Rainer worked his way across the bottom of the cupola. He had to let each set of muscles relax slightly, one set at a time, or all of his muscles would freeze, lose tension, and he would fall. But he could do it. He knew how to do it now.
The flare of the belltower cupola began to shield him from the worst of the rain. The wind still sprayed him with droplets, but he wasn’t being hit from above.
Then he was out from under the balcony’s shelter. Rain pelted him again.
This was the final move. He had to get over the balustrade. He found a grip, and it was a good one, but the angle was wrong and his feet came loose from below. For a moment he
was hanging by one hand from the cupola siding. The rain was like a river pouring down.
Then he swung his other hand around and pushed his fist into a keyhole shape cut through the balustrade stones. He twisted it sideways. Jammed.
He had his grip.
He hung, jammed in, swinging back and forth until his feet came up against something to push against, and he was back on the tower. Hand over hand, he pulled himself up the siding. It proved to be a parapet wall with designs cut through the rock.
He rolled off the top of the balustrade and onto the top floor of the belltower.
Under the cupola roof was the Elder Bell. Ropes dangled from the bell wheel down through a hole in the center of the platform.
He caught a glimpse of the clapper sticking out a fingerbreadth below the bell. It seemed to have a flat head from what he could see. It could be some kind of hammer.
The Elder Bell moved.
The Elder Bell began to ring.
Someone was yanking on the bell rope. It was attached to a big wheel that was itself attached to a yoke that held the bell. The rope got yanked. The big wheel spun. The bell rang.
Rainer covered his ears. The sound rattled his teeth. It hurt.
What time was it? It was too early for Nickerchen bell, wasn’t it? What was the ringing about?
Rainer pulled himself up to look over the cupola wall.
Below in the courtyard the soldiers were gathering in front of the fallen Olden Oak. There were shouts of command.
It was an alarm bell.
The bell kept ringing. The troops double-timed it out of the square. They ran toward the eastern gate.
“Tretz, let this be what I think it is,” Rainer prayed. “Let this be the counterattack.”
Chapter Forty-Six:
The Crux
Max Jager heard the distant clanging of the cathedral bell for the first time in his life.
Was it already Nickerchen bell? It seemed like he’d been fighting forever.
He’d heard bells before—his home village had one in its chapel tower—but nothing so deep and powerful as this. It carried over even the clash and clamor of battle. He guessed it was the Elder Bell, something he’d known about all his young life but never heard before.
Jager was nineteen years old. He was a rarity among the Tier, a bobcat man. Brullen, his small village of hunters and trappers, was in a cove far in the south of Bear Valley. There Jager had been an assistant to his uncle, who was a tanner of hides.
Jager was tall for a bobcat, but barely the height of a short human. Despite his small form, the fifteen bear men in his company respected him because they’d grown up near the back-valley bobcat village where Jager was born and knew that Jager was smart and a ferocious fighter. When the call had come to gather at Bear Hall, they had elected him their leader despite his age and followed him up the valley.
These fifteen had gathered in their cousins from elsewhere in Bear Valley. A band of misfit otter, beaver, and raccoon men had thrown in with the group as they made their way toward Bear Hall.
Before Jager knew it, he was leading a group of over seventy. Soon everyone was calling him “captain.” The company was calling itself the “Raufers,” which was valley slang for “brawlers.” They’d even provided him with something he’d only dreamed of ever owning, a horse.
Jager didn’t care what they called him or each other. He just wanted to fight.
Once at the Bear Hall gathering ground—a muddy, trampled barley field outside the village—the earl had assigned a squad of squabbling buffalo men to the Raufers, as well. The group of twenty had been fighting with each other and with their leaders, and nobody had known what to do with them.
Now these Tier men he’d barely had time to meet, much less learn their names, were fighting for their lives outside the gates of Raukenrose, a town Jager had never visited.
He’d been fighting for what seemed like hours. He was not built to be part of the shield wall, but he’d used his size to his advantage, like he’d always had to do. He’d climbed up the backs of buffalo and bear men and stabbed down into the scrum of Sandhaveners, drawing blood again and again. He’d worked his way between legs and under shields to cut into Sandhavener shins and groins.
Jager growled in rage when the Raufers were pushed back toward the forest edge. He ran up and down the line of men, sometimes pouncing on shoulders, sometimes scrambling under legs.
If we have to move back, Jager thought, I’ll damned sure keep us from breaking.
“Push, boys, push!” Jager screamed. He’d seen when he’d joined the front lines that his awareness narrowed like a steep walled canyon to just those fighting directly near him.
There wasn’t any use shouting out general orders. There was only one command that counted.
“Stand with your left man! Stand with your right!” he shouted.
He’d thought about ordering a step-by-step retreat, but had seen a band of bear men break after trying that. He’d lengthened and thinned the Raufer line far more than he’d wanted to filling up the hole the retreaters had left. Had to be done.
“Cut ’em down, boys,” Jager screamed. “Make ’em pay!”
More of his men fell. Some could be pulled away, and he ordered it done, but most would have to lie where they’d gone down, usually wallowing in their own blood.
We’re not gonna break like those cursed buffalo, Jager thought.
But things were looking bad.
He had a squad of bear-man longbowmen that he’d kept pouring arrows into the Sandhavener second and third ranks. They were also a reserve.
He climbed on the shoulder of Odis Knudsson, the bear man’s chief archer. Knudsson was Jager’s best friend from Brullen. He was about to order them to lay down bows and take up spears, when he caught a movement to the rear.
It was a clump of twenty or so of the buffalo men he’d been assigned. They were headed toward the forest.
No you don’t!
“Hold the cursed line, Odis,” he growled. “Move your boys forward if you have to. I’m takin’ after them quitters.”
Knudsson nodded, too intent on nocking another arrow to make a reply. Jager pounced from his shoulder and took off after the buffalo men. He was very fast when he wanted to be, and he soon caught up with them.
No time for yelling and screaming. Jager took out his sword—which would have been little more than a long knife to a bear man—and stabbed one of the buffalo men in the butt. This brought forth a scream and curses, as Jager had intended it to, and the whole group turned to look.
Jager bounded in front of them.
“Turn around, boys!” he shouted. “Turn around and fight! There’s men that need you back there.”
For several of the group, this was enough. They did what Jager ordered. But there was a knot of ten or so buffalo men who did not obey. One of them huffed loudly.
“You get out of the way, little cat.”
Snot streamed from the buffalo man’s nostrils.
Scared out of his mind, Jager thought.
He shook a halberd at Jager.
“I’ll trample you myself,” the buffalo man shouted. He stepped forward, trying to move around Jager.
Mistake.
With a quick movement, Jager spun and stroked his sword across the back of the buffalo man’s heel. He’d skinned enough hides to know exactly what was there.
The sword sliced through the rear tendon in the buffalo man’s lower leg.
Jager cut the other tendon for good measure. The Tier fell, howling in pain and amazement.
“You stinking bobcat!” yelled a buffalo man behind Jager. “I’ll cut you down!”
He charged at Jager, and Jager dodged again. He repeated the exact same procedure. Another buffalo man went down screaming and clutching at his ruined legs.
Jager raised his sword. He gazed up at the remaining buffalo men. “Get back in there and fight!” he yelled. “Get back, or I promise you, by Sturmer, I’ll do the same to you
!”
Eyeblink.
Jager shook his sword.
Eyeblink.
The remaining buffalo men turned and headed back to the fight. Jager wasted no time. He raced in front of them and led them like a spear into the Sandhaven lines. Jager reached around a shield and stabbed up through a Sandhavener’s chin. Jager twisted his sword and yanked it out as the man fell dead.
In a moment, the buffalo men were past the spot where Jager stood over the dead Sandhavener. They were fighting more furiously than ever.
He headed back to his bear man archers.
“Down bows and up spears!” he yelled to the bowmen. While they were doing this, he climbed back up onto Knudsson’s shoulder.
“Want me to bring ’em up behind those cowards, keep ’em at it?”
“Nah, those others will hold,” Jager said. “They got something to prove.” Jager balanced with his feet on Knudsson’s broad shoulders and stretched up as far as he could to get a look at the fight. He was mindful that he was making himself a target for Sandhaven archers, but he needed to glimpse what was going on.
He saw what seemed like a roiling sea of fighting, screaming, bleeding men and Tier. But behind them he made out a column of Sandhaveners marching up in rows of four. He couldn’t see how many there were. He wasn’t high enough. But he knew there were plenty of them. They were headed at an angle to the company’s left. It was where the line was thinnest.
This looked dangerous. The approaching Sandhaveners needed to be bloodied as quickly as possible or they might punch through.
“Got to take ’em left,” he said to Knudsson. “Take ’em in hard.” Jager jumped from Knudsson’s shoulders. “Follow me, boys!” he shouted.
Once again, Jager charged.
They were losing.
The flank attack with archers worked for a while. Centaur and fox-man bowmen on one side, bear-man longbowmen on the other. The Sandhaven dead and wounded piled up.