A Darkness Unleashed (Book 2)

by J. T. Hartke

  The new lieutenant thudded his fist against his chest. “Yes, my Captain.”

  Jaerd clapped his shoulder. “Good. Now, both of you stand behind me and frown when Mandibor gets here.”

  The Free City general strode up within moments. Two of his Range Riders, already in their black armor, marched behind him. Their stern faces focused on Jaerd.

  “So,” Mandibor said with a short salute, “the earl is gone and has left you in charge.” He looked at the scant number of Bluecloaks around Jaerd’s camp. “Not much of a command. Don’t worry. My soldiers are here to aid you should the rearguard see action today.” One of his men chuckled.

  Drawing himself up, Jaerd closed the ground between them. His new aides met him step for step. “You should know that our vanguard was crushed in the night, and an entire clan of orcs swarms southward, possibly on both sides of the river.” He pointed to another rise near a bend in the river to their north. “You need to get your men arranged in defensive lines along there. Place your cavalry in a reserve position. We don’t know yet what numbers they are, but put your veterans on your right. We cannot have them cut off our retreat back to the Lond if that becomes necessary.”

  A brazen set of horn blasts echoed across the battlefield, their tones deepened with the aid of magic. The bustle of a wakening army shifted into a rush to arms. Warriors swallowed bowls of porridge and crammed down fistfuls of fresh-fried bacon, before scrambling to throw on armor and grab their weapons.

  Mandibor’s face sank and the stern expressions of his men faltered. He looked at Jaerd, fear etched across his features. “I don’t have much experience in real battles.” He lowered his eyes. “My one try could have ended better.”

  The shock Jaerd felt held his tongue for a moment. What he had planned to be a fiery argument with an arrogant, over-promoted fool, turned into advice for a scared young man with a great deal thrust upon his shoulders.

  Jaerd grabbed the Kirathi by his arms. “Go back to your men. Be forceful but fair, and get them in formation on that rise. You and your Range Riders cover the right flank. Your men move well enough together.” He met the nervous glances with a solid calmness. “We don’t know for certain they are coming down this side, but they’d be fools not to, and I don’t think we are dealing with fools.” Jaerd threw one thumb over his shoulder. “We will remain on this hilltop to await further orders. They will be passed to your chain-of-command immediately.”

  Mandibor and both his men saluted.

  “Good,” Jaerd said. “If the battle goes poorly and we lose communication, your job is to get as many men from any unit, back to the bridge. Burn it once the enemy sets foot on it. There are mages there for that purpose.”

  His fist slapping to his chest, Mandibor bowed his head. “Blessings of the Five Talismans on you, Captain. May we see each other on the other side.”

  Jaerd returned the salute and watched Mandibor and his aides jog away. He turned to his new lieutenant. “Send out the fastest rider we have left to find the supply train. They need to send another dozen men to Novon with news, and double their speed this way.”

  “Yes, sir!” The fresh lieutenant with a sergeant’s face dashed away.

  “Master Sergeant!” Jaerd turned to the former corporal standing at attention. “Get out to the supply wagons. Unhitch every horse and arm each teamster. Load every saddlebag with as much jerky, beans, and hardtack as they can. If we need to fall back, we won’t need the wagons slowing us down.” He waved at the base of their ridgeline. “Get them down there and ready to cover the army should they come running this way.”

  The Bluecloak’s face fell for a single moment, but then he snapped it back along with a second salute. “Yes, Captain!” He turned and dashed off toward the gathered wagons.

  Tomas Harte softly tapped his own chest with a fist. “Well done, Captain Westar. Be assured that Dorias, Gwelan, and I will have your back.”

  “Speaking of which…” Jaerd turned to look at the Ravenhawke. “…has your raven found the enemy?”

  Dorias shook his head, his face knotted in concentration. “The winds fight him, but he wings his way along their trail. They seem to have run all night.”

  Careful to keep his voice even despite the nerves tingling in his gut, Jaerd shifted the cloak on his shoulders. “Can your bird tell us anything of their numbers? Are they on both sides of the river?”

  The wizard’s eyes flashed open, their dark pools boring into Jaerd. “It is not like I’m flying right above them myself. We can only do so much.” He closed his eyes again, pinching his nose and brow. “There are some tracks on the eastern side of the river, but they are only of a few orcs on foot. Mandibor should be able to handle them.”

  “Good,” Jaerd whispered, relieving a bit of his nerves.

  Dorias increased the ferocity of his grimace. His forehead began to redden. “There is something else, something on the far side of the river with the greater part of their force.”

  “Wolves?” a fresh faced recruit asked. “I’ve heard that orcs ride wolves.”

  Jaerd could not help a laugh, a hollow sound in the breaking dawn. “Orcs don’t ride wolves. I’ve heard tell of them riding a goat, but that’s the worst.”

  “More trolls?” Tomas loosened his sword. “My range is limited because of the…interference from all the lives among the two armies. I cannot sense much beyond the flanks.”

  The wizard shook his head in obvious pain. “Bigger, I think.”

  Another horn blast sounded from below. With a hearty shout, Arathan’s army advanced at double-time, the pikemen churning up the river with their advance. Magical missiles of rock and fire followed a huge volley of arrows. The orcs remained in their trenches, and once the pikes made contact with their front ranks, the vast numbers of sword infantry surged forward, swarming into and over the orc trenches.

  Jaerd watched the butchery ensue down below. “By the Waters…”

  The orc horde remained in their pits and Arathan’s soldiers went down in to get them. In one place, the blue banner of Gannon followed a hundred swordsmen down into a trench, only to waver and fall, never to rise again. In another, the red stallion of House Adonara held firm, then advanced along the dugout, hundreds more soldiers flowing in behind.

  With each banner’s movement, a flash of weapons came. Scythe-like swords of black steel chopped against long, straight ones that glimmered in the early morning sun. Screams rose up to where Jaerd stood, followed by the same burned, bloody stench of the previous day’s killing. A fair hint of spilled guts hung in the wind, too. Jaerd grimaced at its rancid taste on his tongue.

  The abattoir raged for hours. Death reared its head over the entire horizon, as black, foul smoke billowed into the air. Even the heavy southerly breeze could not move it, so thick and leaden its pallor. Flames erupted from one covered pit, lifting earth, hides, and bodies into the air, both human and orc. The Thorny Tulip of the Duchess of Allanor followed the sailing ship of her house, thousands of men charging into the thicket of pointed stakes. Down into trenches draped with clawed bear paws they tumbled, and then up out the other side, though less in number. A throng of orc warriors met them at the second trench, and a bloody brawl ensued. At the far flank, a desperate charge of Bluecloak cavalry crashed into a battalion of orcs that had left cover to reinforce the center.

  “In the name of the Balance…” Tomas’ words were almost lost in the roar of battle. “He must mean to take their defenses for his own before the Mammoth Clan arrives.” He shook his head. “But he’s going to maul his own army down to a bare nub. We’ll have nothing left for them.”

  Jaerd lowered the spyglass through which he had watched the desperate struggle. “Would it not have served us better to secure our own position, wait for resupply, and let them come at us?”

  Tomas spat upon the ground in a rare flash of emotion. “Not if you are the great king, hera
ld of a golden age, undefeated in seventy years of battles.” He closed his eyes and breathed in through his nose and out through his mouth. When he opened his eyes, they had calmed, though a fire of just rage smoldered within them. “We must be ready for whatever comes.”

  A gasp sounded from the wizard behind them.

  “By the Waters and your Balance, Tomas, you are prophet as much as paladin.” Dorias shook his head as if he could not believe what he had seen. “Merl has found the Mammoth Clan.”

  The words did not challenge Jaerd’s courage so much as the man’s tone. It carried a hint not of fear, but of awe, as if it were something the great Ravenhawke had never seen before.

  “How many?” Jaerd feared his own question.

  The wizard shook his head. “Many thousands. I cannot be certain. However, that is not the worst of it.” Dorias looked over at Gwelan then turned to Tomas. “Remember what you once told me that you feared the orcs might one day learn to do, something potentially worse than their shamans using magic, something having to do with them roaming the Northlands?”

  A pale wave washed over the paladin’s face. “Yes…”

  Dorias pursed his lips. “Let’s just say that they are not called the Mammoth Clan for nothing.”

  The slow rumbling under Jaerd’s feet that he had attributed to the fierceness of the battle continued to grow. With it came a horrifying realization. “But they are extinct.”

  Gwelan Whitehand sniffed. “So were dragons.”

  Frustration limiting his words, Jaerd only whispered, “Blood in the bloody Waters…”

  The low rumble grew and soon Jaerd could feel it from the north – an almost imperceptible tremor in the grassy earth. The soldiers enmeshed in battle did not seem to notice. Before the tremor grew, a sudden blast of the king’s horn echoed over the landscape. A trill of four notes, repeated over and over, carried up to where Jaerd watched the fighting.

  A large portion of the king’s pikemen disengaged from the fight, shifting their position to face northward along the river. The archers and mages shifted position to protect the pikes, while the swordsmen kept up their butchery in the trenches. The cavalry tried to shift as well, looking for a position along the pikemen’s flank.

  “They don’t have enough room to maneuver,” Tomas said, his brow furrowing. “The cavalry will be useless.”

  Dorias shook his head. “I don’t think they will be that useful either way.” He pointed at the horizon. “Look…”

  Large humps appeared over the rim of the folds of grassland about a mile from the edge of the orc trenchworks. They swelled as they neared, their rusty brown color standing out against the drab switchgrass. More popped over the horizon, and as they neared, their sharp ivory tusks caught the sunlight, and their long sinewy trunks began to trumpet blasts that challenged the magical horns of King Arathan.

  Jaerd slapped his spyglass to his eye, and the great shaggy beasts leapt into the circle of his vision. “Mammoths…sweet Waters…real, live mammoths.”

  The rumble grew until even those engaged in the fight looked up from their killing to search for its source. Jaerd gasped as the herd swept over the last ridge, hundreds of wooly beasts running in a stampede. With his spyglass, he could see orcs running behind them with fiery brands, driving the stampede into a frenzy.

  The lines of pikemen began to buckle before the first mammoth crashed into their raised spears. Once the great beasts actually struck among them, the lines crumbled. A few mammoths crashed to the ground, impaled on many pikes, but far more trampled the men, crushing even their plate armor. Their tusks flashed about, skewing soldiers like meat on the spit. The mammoths bucked and reared, their thick legs coming down on heads and arms and chests. Their stampede slowed, bogged down by the spears of men. Dozens of russet mounds quivered feebly or lay still, spears and arrows sprouting from their hides. A hundred more thrashed about, desperate to continue their headlong flight through the forest of metal and death.

  Tomas Harte ground his teeth. “If they’d just open a path, the herd would rush through and beyond!”

  The mammoths carved their way through the two mile wide line of Gannonite soldiers, crushing anything that stood against them, and leaving great mounds of their dead behind, like russet islands rising from a sea of twisted Gannon blue. Through a more organic process, the soldiers below eventually took Tomas’ advice by just getting out of the way of the thrashing beasts. Eventually the hundred or so giants remaining cleared the battlefield, rampaging off to the south along the riverbank and trumpeting to the empty sky.

  The moment of relief Jaerd felt at seeing the herd flee dissipated as the bulk of Mammoth Clan warriors slammed into the flank of Arathan’s army. The pikes held solid for a while, but soon the pressure of what had to be almost a hundred thousand orcs began to drive them back. Jaerd watched the attacks from the Battlemage Corps grow desperate, flashing out with redoubled ferocity. When the infantry lines turned to aid the pikemen, the other orc clans rose up out of a thousand dugouts.

  Jaerd slapped his father’s spyglass shut and pulled back on his horse’s reins. “All the Fiery Hells are about to break out down there. We have to give them some cover to pull back.”

  Tomas Harte pointed at the Free City guard to the north. A pitched battle raged there with several thousand orcs on the eastern bank of the Gallond River. “They are engaged. We cannot pull out their reserves or everyone’s line of retreat will be cut off.” He gestured at the two thousand mounted teamsters just below. “Looks like they are all we have. Not much to turn this tide.”

  Jaerd watched the Gannonite heavy cavalry crash into the Mammoth Clan, cutting deep into their mass. But soon they were surrounded and struggling to fight their way back out.

  “We have to do something,” he said. “Tallen is down there, and after all we’ve been through, I’m not going to leave without trying to get him and Boris free.”

  A black dot shot out of the sky and resolved into Merl, fluttering to an unceremonious halt on Dorias’ shoulder. The raven puffed and fluttered his disheveled wings. He babbled a low gibberish while the wizard stroked his feathers into place.

  “We will be with you, Captain.” Dorias cast a penetrating gaze at Jaerd. “I have a great deal of fondness for your brother, myself.”

  Tomas loosened his sword in its sheath. “Arathan be damned. I’ll not be at the back of this fight any longer.”

  Gwelan clanged his swords together in agreement and Jaerd’s two new aides offered him a solid salute.

  “Then let’s do it.” Jaerd nudged his horse down the ridge and to the front of the waiting Bluecloak teamsters. “Well, men,” he shouted, “you’ve been feeding all these others and keeping the clothes on their backs for weeks. Now it’s time for you to pull their arse from the Fires, too!”

  A laugh bubbled up into a cheer from the soldiers.

  “We aim for the king’s van!” He lifted Shar’leen on high, her steel catching the midday sun in a sharp glimmer. “Cut our way through anything that tries to stop us. Once a path is clear, we take it back out. We regroup right here!” He pulled his horse around to face the battle. “For Arathan and Gannon!”

  Shouts of both names followed him when he charged, along with the rumble of two thousand cavalry. Jaerd drowned thoughts of their change in profession as they hit the water’s edge, though most had at one time served in combat units. Driving the wagons is usually a job for men too old to fight every day, but still too young to completely retire.

  Those were the last conscious thoughts in his mind as the river gave way to the waves of battle. Orcs and men had become enmeshed, any previous lines of battle washed away. Separate units fought in isolated skirmishes. Broken weapons stuck up out of the fallen bodies and the muddy ground, washed to a deep crimson by the flow of blood making its way to the river.

  Jaerd swung at any enemies to come within reach of his sword
, many surprised to find a cavalry charge riding through the Humans’ center. Those Gannonites he passed rallied at his call, pushing back together and attempting to cohere into a solid mass.

  Most of Jaerd’s focus, however, remained on the mass of noble flags at the center of the fight. The Battlemage Corps had been split away by the charge of the wild mammoth herd, and now tried to fight their way back through a wedge of orc warriors and shamans. Most of his teamsters had been caught up assisting other units or stopped by enemies. Tomas and Dorias were nowhere in sight. I can get there, though!

  “This way!” He waved a now bloodied Shar’leen over his head to signal whoever gathered near him. “For Gavanor!”

  The battle whisked by, any black-armored shapes that came too close receiving a swift taste of his steel. The clangor fell to the wayside and the only sounds he heard were the beating of his heart and the pounding of his horse’s hooves. Or maybe he just felt them, along with the occasional ring from Shar’leen. Nothing else mattered – until he saw Tallen.

  On a low rise, his brother sat mounted on his palfrey. Maddi hung on behind, her face frozen in a mix of anger and fear. Tallen concentrated only on the orc army before him, lashing out with unseen blasts that threw ten warriors a dozen paces, followed by a fork of lightning that sent an entire company running. No emotion crossed his brother’s face, but Jaerd could see the exhaustion.

  “Tallen!”

  Jaerd waved and Maddi saw him. She spoke into Tallen’s ear and he nodded, but did not relent in his focused attacks.

  “Where are Tomas and Dorias?” he shouted.

  “They are coming.” Jaerd looked back to see only about two hundred of his mounted teamsters, along with Lieutenant Roper and Sergeant Maidson. “They were caught up by the battle along with most of my men.”

  Before Tallen responded, Earl Boris Mourne, followed by a few dozen Bluecloaks, charged up Balthar, his sword running with blood. He returned Jaerd’s quick salute but his face was black. “The king is dead.”