by Damien Lake
“Sergeant Lockhorn! I want you to take that man’s crossbow and use it to break his fool neck! The rest of you! Aim at the gap! The gap!”
The instant he saw the Eleventh and Sixteenth Squads had separated enough to guarantee a comfortable safety zone, as safe as it could be with eighty percent of the men completely untrained in crossbow archery, he hollered, “Now you fire the gods damned things!”
A thick flight of quarrels flew like a swarm of angry hornets between the squads scrambling across the rubble. Cries of bestial pain and fury shattered a cacophony that had already seemed deafening.
* * * * *
“There’s not enough confusion yet,” Marik observed. “They’ve split their Taur forces, but only three are coming this direction.”
“That is to be expected.” Torrance kept his Glasses to his eye for only a minute at a time before lowering them. According to him, eye fatigue set in if the Captain’s Glasses were used too long continuously, causing phantom shadows to flicker across vision, or for perfectly ordinary objects to transform, appearing as something completely different. “Devry’s contingent is a far smaller threat.”
“They won’t break as long as they have the Taurs to hide behind.”
Gibbon stayed silent to Marik’s left. He had not uttered a single word since the attack begun.
“It would appear they will assault the larger force first after all.”
“So much for easy pickings,” the younger mercenary muttered. It had been his hope they would target the smaller force quickly to clear their backs. Then they could concentrate on the larger force without distraction. “But we need to do something fast to keep their attention locked away from Baxter and Skelton. They’ve almost run into them twice!”
“Don’t,” Torrance quietly ordered. He placed a hand firmly on Marik’s wrist. Gibbon continued ignoring them. “They might have had no mages prepared to counter you days ago. We can’t bet on the same being true today.”
Marik looked back at the commander through the moonlight. “I wasn’t going to do…anything like that. It would be a dead giveaway to our positions.” He pulled free to step around an old oak with low branches spreading thirty feet out from the trunk.
On the other side he pointed to the first messenger waiting in the saddle. “Ride to Kraven and tell him he needs to play his part after all.”
* * * * *
Jayran heard the horse clopping toward his position, defiant against the invisible terrain, as he finished shouting at his fourth sergeant to figure out why the army soldiers under his command had stopped shooting. No doubt the idiots had sat on top of their second quivers. Even bets said most of their remaining shafts were broken.
Before he could shout out, the rider beat him to the mark. “Lieutenant Kraven? Where is he?”
“Lad! Behind you!”
A shape melted from the dark to jog the messenger’s stirrup. Ten heartbeats passed, followed by the messenger tugging his mount’s head around to return.
“Pull it together, bucks!” Kraven ordered in a low yell. He stepped closer to Jayran to say, in farewell, “Looks like Second Squad has to earn their pay after all. Watch your back, Jayran. Nobody’s going to do it for you now.”
“If you see any of my men, pull their bacon out of the fire.”
Kraven offered no reply other than a raised hand before melting into the night. Jayran marched over tangled roots to find out what was taking his fourth sergeant so damned long. Having command over a squad formed from both army soldiers and from archers across the entire band made for unprecedented friction in his experience as a leader. He wished his normal fighting men were present instead, especially since Kraven’s squad wouldn’t be there to provide hand-to-hand support in a crisis.
* * * * *
“Lock it! Lock it up!” shouted Lieutenant Piccary to the Eleventh Squad. A shattered timber from a wall frame rolled underfoot. It nearly dumped the man on the ground when his leg slid sideways painfully.
When he righted himself, he saw a massive form illuminated by the sputtering torches behind it. It swiped with an arm so muscled he could see the impressive bulges despite the poor light.
A man screamed. Piccary had heard countless death cries before. Few had ever matched this one.
“I said lock it up, damn you all!”
Men who had already been hurrying to tighten ranks over the crumbled debris risked injury by running full out from the sounds assaulting their backs. Two of the monsters followed without effort. A third loitered where it stood, studying the man kneeling at its feet with interest as he struggled to keep his innards from spilling out through the slashes in his stomach. Chainmail might as well have been paper to these monsters.
Piccary ordered the fallback. Across the distance he could hear the same shouts from Lydan’s squad.
Fast glances over his shoulder revealed the ugly truth. The beasts were only feet from the last man. It would be impossible for Eilow’s crossbows to open fire without taking out half his squad.
Three of his men abruptly whirled to fight the Taurs. Piccary shouted for them to run. They ignored him…or had no chance to comply.
Both men on the right and left of their miniature line went down before their blades could connect with the bare flesh of their adversaries. The central man attacked with deliberation while his friends died horribly. He plunged his blade through an oversized eye.
The beast reared back in screaming agony. It lashed out with a wild swing as it did so, ripping half the mercenary’s arm away. Piccary expected him to fall.
Instead, he loped over roughly-edged stones away from the squad. The wounded Taur leapt after, so furious the lieutenant imagined he could see the rage burning in its remaining eye as a glowing ember.
It landed on its mutilator, repaying the bold act by tearing the man’s head from his shoulders. The Taur lofted the skull high. Shredded meat dangled from the torn neck in long trailers resembling ivy growing on a trellis.
Whatever vengeful satisfaction it felt was short lifted. The space between Piccary and the hulking Taur blurred when dozens of crossbow quarrels sought their target. Multiple hits made the beast jerk backward in several awkward twists. It toppled hard. A feeble attempt to rise ended in failure, most of its tendons torn by the shafts.
The second pursuing Taur leapt into action. It charged not at Piccary’s squad, it relieved him to see, but into the trees. Whatever sorcery controlled the beast meant to put an end to the only weapons at hand that could damage their fearsome creatures.
* * * * *
“Look sharp!” Lieutenant Fraser drew his sword. “We’ve got a major inconvenience coming our way!”
With no time to reload a new volley, Eilow’s crossbow archers scrambled behind the defending swords of the Ninth Squad. Sloan waited with his single-edged sword resting against the back of his left wrist. Dietrik and Talbot waited one tree over. Churt lurked behind Wyman in his customary place, the youth’s crossbow ready. The others were cloaked in midnight.
The Taur crashed into the trees where Kineta met it with her dancing scimitar. She floated back on her heels at its swinging claws rather than stand her ground. Her speedy weapon sliced shallow cuts along its forearms while she kept her body beyond its reach. After the initial contact, the men in her unit swarmed around the Taur to add their meager stings to the overall effort.
Dietrik felt his heart stop when a branch only feet away snapped with a thunder crack. Raw sound from another Taur, the one who had lingered behind at first, pummeled his flesh. He could see, as if in a painting innocently hanging on a wall, the slight curve to the fanged teeth within that horse-like muzzle. They gleamed wetly in the starlight.
Talbot spun to face the monster, slipped, and vanished into the dark.
A root caught Dietrik’s foot when he jerked away. On the ground he fumbled to draw his rapier…for what good it would do. The blade designed for maximum speed had no effect on their thick hides. Yet he refused to bow and accept death.
Especially from a bloody animal that blasphemed against nature by its very existence.
The silver basket-hilt continued to evade his grasp. Dietrik could not take his eyes from the tongue sliding over those exposed ivory points. He could smell the pungent musk it exuded mixed with the fetid breath of rotten meat. Its awesome form transfixed him.
Sloan’s strike surprised Dietrik nearly as much as it did the beast. The Fourth Unit’s sergeant attacked with his considerable skill. He carved a gashing wound across the thing’s arm. It lashed at him with its other hand, fingers splayed.
His sword met the oncoming blow. The steel edge met the claws. Both weapons stopped cold, the Taur surprised, Sloan exerting his complete strength to force it back.
Before the issue could be decided, Churt’s quarrel penetrated the Taur’s skull. It punched through below the creature’s left horn. Blood splattered out of its eye sockets around the startled orbs. The quarrel hit with force enough to disappear fully into that bullish head.
It toppled as a great tree in a forest, slowly and with apparent majesty. Dietrik, still fascinated as a frog caught in the hypnotic eye of a snake, watched the teeth bite down hard enough to penetrate its tongue when it hit the ground face-first.
“Any others?” Bindrift shouted into the void.
Sloan stayed silent in his customary manner. Giles and Kineta called back that it looked clear. Eilow assumed control over the disembodied voices to order all crossbows back to the tree line. With luck, they might have clean shots at any remaining Taurs.
Chiksan helped Dietrik to his feet. “We used to ask the gods what purpose they had for standing us so close to the edge of death’s chasm and letting us peer into its depths.”
“Probably to make sure we mortals remember that’s what we bloody well are,” Dietrik grunted in reply. He brushed dirt from his clothing.
“Perhaps so,” the Tullainian spearman agreed. “Hard falls have been taken by men who sought to place themselves higher.” With that, he returned to his spot, his long spear resting idly on one shoulder.
Even on the forest floor in night’s iron fist, those teeth still seemed to shine with eerie illumination. Being dead made the Taur no less terrible. Dietrik could still recall that sensation of frozen doom. The eye of the serpent, which contained within the creature’s unearthly power to paralyze its victims. Those teeth struck him like that. As if the fearsome power these inhuman beasts possessed sprang from neither muscle nor voice nor claw, but resided wholly in those fangs.
A silly notion. In a short while he knew he would be laughing at himself for a budgie straight out of its nest.
Still, without knowing why he did it, he felt his hand pulling his dagger from its sheath. He bent over the creature and pried at the bloody gums under the furled lip until he extracted three long fangs. They lay wetly on his palm, still warm.
He shook off his daze, crammed the teeth into his pocket, then briefly noted Talbot looking down on the Taur corpse from a distance with a guilty expression.
Dietrik restrained a sigh.
* * * * *
Kraven led his men closer to the well square. Second Squad was infamous for their specialty; dirty work.
His men knew what to do. They had done it countless times before. Behind the lines work. The secret was to never let the enemy understand what faced them.
Tonight more than ever. A small squad causing trouble would only make the Arronaths grind their teeth. An unknown enemy attacking superior forces must surely hold a superior hand. Right?
With large Galemaran groups to their north and south raising hell, along with occasional arrows into their ranks from the east courtesy of Jayran, Arronath sentries had been pulled closer in. All watches were done by black-armored soldiers lining the fragmented walls nearest to their camp. Rubble had long ago been dumped in the spots that had once been spaces between closely-set buildings. As defensive measures went, the ruins were only an inconvenience.
A solid wall three or four enemies thick surrounded the archers in the well square. Kraven had no intention of taking out the bowmen. Any place along the enemy line would have done for this, but hitting here added the benefit of making the Arronaths think the archers were the primary goal. Keep events happening too fast and hopefully they would fail to realize that several of their former sentries were missing thanks to Baxter.
Second Squad rearranged into their three-needle formation once he stopped. The technique had been perfected deep in the band’s past by their forbearers. It worked wonderfully to make an enemy concentrate his men in a specific spot.
Kraven ran with the leaders. One-third of his men ran with him over a space roughly two-hundred feet wide.
They entered the torchlight. Kraven could see eyes widen in surprise on faces unblocked by the badger helms. His line ran at the defenders. In most cases, fewer than three feet worth of wall remained to shield the Arronath’s legs.
Twenty-six men hit the enemy line as one. The first hit was always the most effective. Most soldiers had their swords drawn already. What few who kept them sheathed until they saw an enemy were the only ones who fell.
Kraven swung a hard blow. Despite his charging like a wild stallion from the dark, his opponent’s reflexes were fast. He blocked the lieutenant’s blow.
The instant the first blow ended, Kraven spun with his men and ran back into the night. He shouted as he went. “All brigades lean to! Forward the battalions!”
Two voices called back from men widely spaced in the remaining squad. Their replies were as nonsensical as his. Its only purpose was to make the enemy think a larger force prepared to assault than actually did.
Second needle lanced ahead. Twenty-six men launched forward when they distinguished the forms of returning shieldmates. Offset, they would strike different points along the enemy line.
No victory could be gained via three-needles but it never failed to make enemy commanders question the tactics being employed against them. The bizarre actions always left them worried about what they faced. As long as the squad withdrew when the time was right, usually after the fourth needle, perhaps as many as six if the Arronaths were slow to redirect their archers, it would keep their attentions riveted on the eastern front.
* * * * *
Marik looked down on the battle from the etheric. The Arronath holding force roughly equaled the total number of soldiers he commanded as crown-general. A pitched battle would have meant high losses due to the shock-troop Taurs.
Fewer than ten Galemarans had been lost. Arrows had claimed fifty or so Arronaths.
Nine Taurs had attacked the southern forces. They were taken down by the crossbows before they could deal serious damage. The eight Galemaran casualties were their doing before the beasts were finally killed.
He watched while his orders reached the crossbows planted in the northern woods. Eilow’s had been the only serious heavy artillery used so far. The Arronaths would never guess that only a quarter of the crossbows at Marik’s disposal were situated in the south.
A small portion of the northern crossbows, held by the most experienced hands among the soldiers, unleashed a flight that ravaged the three Taurs advancing on Devry’s squad. Cold satisfaction filled his spirit.
Marik snapped back into his body. “The last Taurs are down. Its time to pry them out of their shell!”
Gibbon, sour, immediately signaled to the Screamer archers. Their arrows’ high-pitched voices told the allied forces surrounding Drakesfield to enter the next stage.
Until then, the only missile assaults against the Arronaths had been Jayran’s paltry archer squad to the east armed with traditional bows. Marik had needed their presence felt from the beginning, setting the enemy mindset about where the opposition’s forces were stationed.
With the Screamer signal, the bows furiously unleashed the shafts that remained into every corner of Drakesfield within their range. Too, Eilow’s crossbows began a hundred-shot assault into the well square as quickly as the men could lo
ad fresh quarrels.
Behind Devry in the North, Classent kept his men under tight control. No mean feat considering he needed to control three times as many as he was accustomed to. He only allowed the fifteen men who had fired on the Taurs to launch their shots over the ruins.
Marik silently urged the Arronaths to do what he wanted them to. With no solid roofs remaining in the town, they had very little shelter from the incoming projectiles. Canvas campaign tents could slow an arrow, but not a quarrel whose head was one with the body and the fattest part. Quarrels ripped through the heavy fabric, continuing with nearly the same destructive force as before.
Don’t try to tough it out! For all you know we have enough shafts to replant an entire forest. You know it’s a bad position, so give it up.
After the ninth flight, Marik could vaguely feel his fist pounding his thigh in frustration. Were they going to brave the assault until he did run out of shafts? Already the bow archers were nearing their stock’s end.
Their Taurs were gone. The only magic users they possessed were the Taur handlers. Since they had never once cast offensive magics against the Galemarans who slaughtered them in every engagement Marik had taken part in, he believed they were task-specific trained. They could control the Taurs’ minds, and that was all.
A moment before Marik decided to send a contingent of crossbows from Classent’s company to reinforce the dwindling bow fire under Jayran, he saw the Arronaths finally begin moving. They had no idea if they faced a minor raiding party or a concentrated assault from the royal army. Attacks rained in from every direction except west without surcease. They were dying a man at a time and could launch no counteroffensive, especially with their best weapons dead.
The Arronaths chose to retreat. Marik smiled. The only step left was to direct their path.