Stillbright

by Daniel M Ford

  “Where did you get another one of those?”

  “A prepared dwarf believes in redundancy. Looks like they’ll be tryin’ fire first.”

  He held the tube out to Allystaire, who peered through the smaller end in imitation of the dwarf. Indeed, a square of infantry was forming up. Heavily armored in scale, with green tabards, and carrying thick oak shields with the sandy Delondeur tower crossed behind by a white spear.

  “Must be the salt spears Leoben talked about.”

  “Salt spears?”

  “Name of the battalion. My guess, it is something Lionel threw together out of what guards and garrison soldiers he could find. Never heard of them before.”

  He watched as the infantry hefted their shields and began advancing. In the middle of the square, three braziers, flames flickering at the edges of the bowls, had been placed on a cart, and it was trundled forward as the square moved. The shields went up in front, to the flanks, and above, but there was a gaping hole in the center, open and vulnerable, where the fire was.

  “You are sure that fire is not a problem?” Allystaire asked, as he lowered the glass and handed it back to Torvul.

  Torvul grinned up at him. “Faith.”

  Allystaire glanced at the bulging skins, reached out, and took one in his hand. The skin itself was not well-tanned, for it stank, but it held tight against the liquid within. And that liquid felt heavier, denser somehow than water or wine would have. They hung at regular intervals, and the cauldrons and buckets below were, he knew, filled to the brim with some liquid that looked like water, but did not quite smell or feel like it.

  “Where did you find the time to make so much of it?”

  “I made the time.”

  “Even you cannot conjure time from the day, Wit of the Mother though you are,” Allystaire said.

  “No, but I can steal it back from the night.” The dwarf tapped a pouch on his belt. “I’ve not slept much these weeks. Haven’t needed to.”

  “Is that safe?”

  Torvul glared up at him, one eyebrow cocked. “We’re about to be set upon by men who outnumber us five to one at least, and you’re wonderin’ whether somethin’ is safe? Tend your patch, boy. Let me tend mine.”

  Allystaire shrugged and drew in a deep breath. “Looks like they will try fire! Look to your weapons! Bowmen, nock arrows but do not draw!” Allystaire’s command rolled powerfully over the scaffold. Half of the Ravens and half of Renard’s militia began adjusting their armor, resettling grips on their weapons. The black-mailed warband soldiers did so much more casually than the villagers.

  “Mind yer skins and the cauldrons below,” Torvul yelled.

  “Bowmen stay on the scaffold,” Allystaire called out. “Spearmen and others will refill the skins as needed.”

  Allystaire eyed the bowmen—a dozen of them, mostly villagers. He smiled to see Norbert and Henri standing a few spans apart, both drawing arrows from the quivers on their hip. Mother, let him live to finish the sentence I set him, Allystaire prayed.

  Then he turned his senses inward, projecting his thoughts to Idgen Marte. He had a brief image of her pacing the more thinly manned scaffold at the other gate, nearer the Temple, her own bow held lightly in her hands.

  They are going to try the front door, he thought. With fire. Torvul assures me. What do you see?

  Nothing, she fired back. No swords-at-hire, no soldiers, no wains.

  How are your men?

  The Ravens are a bored lot of murderers, to be sure. Keegan’s bunch won’t speak t’anyone. And Renard spends most of his time trying to keep the militiamen calm even though we’ve seen naught but our breath. Are you sure Gideon was right about what was coming this way?

  Do you think Gideon was wrong? No doubt the picture has changed since the last time I let him go aloft. Where is the boy, at any rate? Allystaire felt a brief mix of shame and anger at himself for not keeping track of the boy this morning.

  In the Temple with Mol. He said he’d know if we needed him, that he needed to make some calculations.

  I will let you know if we need you. Be well.

  He could feel her chuckle. I’ll know if you need me before you can arrange the thought.

  Allystaire’s attention snapped back to the present. The square of heavy foot was still out of bowshot, but they could see it advancing slowly.

  “Why does he send three-score if he has three hundreds,” Allystaire murmured. “This is starting not to feel right. Like a feint.”

  “Let me know when it starts to feel like a punch,” Torvul said. “I’d hate to miss it.”

  The last few moments of waiting were terrible. They always are, Allystaire thought. Even as the square of foot picked up speed, as shieldless men in the middle began lighting brands, they seemed to crawl.

  Allystaire raised an arm and bellowed, “Draw!”

  He heard the pathetically small noise of a dozen bowstrings drawn back.

  He waited, waited till the last possible moment, and dropped his arm, a dazzling gleam of sunlight rippling off of it from pauldron to gauntlet, and yelled, “Loose!”

  The arrows arced into the sky, not the thick torrent Allystaire would’ve liked, but instead an all-too-thin trickle.

  The Salt Spears broke into a run, and the first torch, thrown far too early, was hurled out of the square, arced up, and hit the ground with a puff of sparks and smoke.

  The Battle for Thornhurst was joined in earnest.

  * * *

  Though she could feel the turmoil at the other end of the enclosed village, Idgen Marte tried to close herself off from it, to focus only on the side of the wall Allystaire had asked her to take charge of. She had the slightly smaller portion of such forces as they had, with less wall to guard and, they reasoned, lesser threat given that the better part of the barony lay west of Thornhurst.

  “Watching the back door is an important job,” she reminded herself, as she paced along the thin line of scaffold that served as a battlement. Ivar and the remaining Ravens, longbows unstrung in their hands, lounged at intervals, with the bored competence that only professional soldiers knew how to demonstrate.

  She spared a glance towards the Temple, wan winter sunlight palely resting on the stones of its oval dome and the thick, leaded windows dimly glinting as if in reply. She brushed her fingers through the arrows on her hip, shuffling them in their quiver.

  There was a sudden snap in the trees beyond the gate; her head whipped around. She saw nothing.

  Keegan climbed up the scaffold, shuffling towards her, occasionally looking north and craning his neck, lifting his nose in a movement reminiscent of a cat sniffing at an unfamiliar scent in the air. His band had kept to themselves since they’d come inside the walls, bringing the bows they’d found or been given, and an impressive cache of nuts, acorns, wild tubers, and smoked and salted game—far more than half a dozen men would’ve needed for the winter.

  “Somethin’s comin’,” he half-growled. “Somethin’ that don’t smell nat’ral.”

  She slipped an arrow from the quiver and nocked it, but did not draw the string, eyeing the man uncertainly.

  When he turned towards her, his eyes were wide and white. “You don’t believe me.” His voice was low in his throat. “But something…”

  Her concentration was interrupted by Gideon’s suddenly loud warning in her mind. Sorcery! the boy yelled, and she whirled back to the Temple to see him emerge from it, running faster than she’d thought him capable. She had but a moment to reflect, absently, that Allystaire’s training must have done him some good after all, when there was suddenly a louder snapping, as of trees being felled.

  She turned back to the treeline just in time to see a knot of trees explode, as an ordinary-looking covered wain rolled through them like a knife through hot bread. Some wedge of force was projected around the wagon; she could see
the faintest outline of it, practically feel the air thrumming with it.

  She drew her bowstring, yelling commands as her eyes searched for the driver.

  There was none.

  She loosed anyway. The arrow came no nearer to it than a yard away when it suddenly tumbled off its flight and skittered to the ground.

  Gideon! She felt, not panic, but a kind of despairing anger rise within her. The wagon, and whatever was projected around it, was headed straight for the wall—and there was nothing, she knew, that her arrows or her knives could do about it.

  Then she bared her teeth in anger, turned and blurred with unnatural speed to Gideon’s side, wrapped an arm around the boy’s thin chest, and appeared back on the scaffold, panting with the exertion of dragging another body through the shadows.

  Gideon was not thrown by being suddenly moved so fast across the dozens of yards, or if he was, he didn’t show it. He closed his eyes, flung out an arm, and Idgen Marte felt the power in the air buzzing towards him, draining into his extended hand.

  The wedge that surrounded it seemed to disappear, and Gideon relaxed, looking suddenly sleepy.

  But the wagon itself did not slow.

  “Gideon!” she yelled, and the boy’s tired eyes snapped open. He flung his hand out again and she felt force again project from his hand, saw a hazy line drawn in the air at the height of the wagon’s axles.

  The carriage of the wagon flew off the axles. The wheels spun crazily away in four directions, rapidly losing force and speed. The top crashed heavily into the wall with a thundering sound of splintering wood.

  The wall buckled, and those on the scaffold reached out hands to steady themselves. Idgen Marte heard the creaking screech of stressed timber, but the wall held.

  Those on the parapet, Idgen Marte included, nocked and drew, holding the points at the canvas covered wreck below them.

  Suddenly the wagon’s cover was torn open from the inside by a long, ugly blade, then another, then two more, and the defenders recoiled in horror as monstrosities poured forth began climbing straight up the wall.

  * * *

  Allystaire ducked beneath the wall as arrows sailed back and forth, staring in amazement as flames hit the wall, then guttered and died as they came in contact with Torvul’s thick and viscous concoction.

  For his part, the dwarf cackled madly each time one of the Delondeur soldiers darted forward with a flaming brand, or hurled it, yelling insults at them in Dwarfish. At least, Allystaire assumed they were insults. When opportunities arose, Torvul would pop over the wall and unloose a bolt. Allystaire had not yet seen him miss.

  He heard a voice on the wall cry out after the impact of an arrow, saw a village man go down, and began rushing across the parapet to his side.

  As he bent next to the man, pressing his left hand to his sweaty, stubbly neck and pouring health and warmth into him, he wasted no time in pulling the arrow free from the ribcage with his right. Allystaire winced in empathy as the man cried out in pain, but he could feel the quickening of his pulse and the healing of the muscles and bones that the Mother’s Gift sped along, and knew he would live.

  An arrow clattered off the back of his own armor, the impact more surprising than painful, though it would likely bruise.

  “Back on the wall,” Allystaire yelled, as he helped the village man to a knee. “Good man!”

  He was turning back to his own position when he heard Idgen Marte and Gideon’s voices both in his head.

  Allystaire! To us! Your wall is a feint! The real fight is here, came Idgen Marte’s silent voice.

  Gideon’s message was much simpler, but much more dreadful, a cold sickening lump forming in his stomach as he heard it, though he did not understand what it meant.

  Battle-Wights.

  Allystaire turned to Torvul, knew instantly that he had heard as well, saw the wide-open eyes, the fear written in those bluff, square features. “Go,” the dwarf yelled. “We’ll drive ‘em off here. Take Chaddin and his knights with you,” the dwarf yelled. “You’ll want ‘em!”

  Allystaire nodded and ran down the parapet steps, bellowing as he went. “Chaddin! An attack at the other gate. Now is the time to earn your place.” Then, gathering breath for a louder yell, he bellowed, “Ardent! To me!”

  He heard an answering whinny and began running along the road, only realizing after his first few steps flew by that the Goddess’s strength had come to his limbs.

  While he easily outpaced the former guard-sergeant and his men, who were slow to respond to his call, he heard the hoofbeats of his destrier on the road behind him, knew without thinking when the horse had matched his pace—for though his song-strengthened limbs propelled him faster than usual, his speed was nothing on the stallion’s. Barely slowing, he threw out a hand onto the pommel and vaulted himself into the saddle, kicking his feet into his stirrups by blind chance on the first try.

  He lay flat against Ardent’s powerful neck and drew his hammer. The village flew past, with the Temple coming nearer. He rounded the bend, the big grey’s hoofbeats pounding loudly on the frozen mud of the track.

  Before him, he saw what warranted Torvul’s horror.

  Things, monstrosities made of bones and metal grafted horribly together, swarmed the walls, attacking its defenders. They were man-shaped, vaguely, each seeming to have two legs, two arms, and a torso topped with a skull, but the limbs more often ended in ragged blades, bitted axes, or simple iron clubs than they did hands. The ragged bones were wired together with iron and steel, and each skull seemed to be encased in a strange metal that glowed darkly.

  No time to gawp, you old fool, Allystaire told himself, even as he spurred the horse that had slowed to a walk and drew back his hammer. One had been tossed off the wall by a Raven using his spear—thrust inconsequentially through its gaping ribcage, with shriveled flesh and putrid sacs that were once organs clinging to it—as leverage to take it off its feet.

  The spear was pulled from the black-mailed soldier’s hand. The Raven clutched at his belt for the axe that hung there. Before he could pull it free, a blade punched through him at navel height and he screamed horridly, raggedly, till the Battle-Wight’s other hand, mace-headed, whirled down upon his skull and crushed it with horrifying strength.

  Allystaire grimly set his teeth and cocked his hammer. The Battle-Wight turned for him, the spear stuck awkwardly through it and impeding it not at all, and charged.

  Allystaire bent to one side in the saddle and swung the head of his hammer for the center of the thing’s mass. He hit it square, felt the impact reverberate up his arm. Like hitting steel, he thought, not bone. Still, the sheer force of it as he rode past was enough to break it into two pieces. The lower half crumbled, the spear clattered away, but as he looked back, he saw that the thing’s bladed hands were pulling it slowly but inexorably along the ground after him.

  He gritted his teeth and wheeled Ardent around, feeling through the horse’s eager muscles that the destrier knew what he had in mind. Allystaire spurred, squeezed, and the horse raced forward, gathering speed and trampling straight across the half of an iron-and-steel wired corpse that remained.

  Should grind the Cold-damned thing into dust, Allystaire thought, just before the impact. He thought he saw sparks fly, struck from Ardent’s hooves against the wight. The impact jolted him in the saddle, sending a shockwave through his body.

  He glanced over his shoulder once more and saw that an arm had been severed, but still the thing came on. Allystaire swung out of the saddle, swatted Ardent’s rump to send the horse away, and ran towards the Battle-Wight that struggled on the ground, raising his hammer up and bringing it crashing down upon the skull, smashing it flat to the turf, splintering and shattering it.

  Allystaire knew that only the Goddess’s Gift of Strength let him smash it in one blow. The resistance he felt beneath the hammer was more than mere bone
could have offered. More, even, than well-worked steel.

  There was a ripple of power released into the air that he could sense, though he could not have explained how. It felt wrong. It felt like life and knowledge and craft all bent together into something not simply evil, something wholly unnatural, something that was not meant to be.

  It reminded him, dimly, of the feeling of the Grip of Despair, and his heart lurched. Then it was gone.

  Allystaire turned back to the wall, seizing his hammer in a two-handed grip.

  A half-dozen more of the things clung like spiders to the wall, and the defenders were the worse for it. His hammer whirling in his hand, Allystaire ran into the fray.

  As he sprinted, he looked for familiar figures. A shadow blurred along the wall, too fast to see distinct details. Where it appeared, the Battle-Wights fell, but not permanently. Legs were tugged out from under one; another was levered over the wall to crash against the wreckage of the wagon.

  He saw Gideon standing calmly on the frozen grass in his blue robe, with one of the Wights closing fast. Allystaire pumped his legs faster, sent out a panicked thought to Idgen Marte, then saw Gideon’s hands spread apart and a staff of light appear in them, about the size of the staff Allystaire had used to teach him. With better form than he’d ever displayed in his lessons, the boy stepped forward and thrust the staff out like a spear, his hands meeting together at the end. He stepped into it perfectly.

  It took the Wight straight in the skull. Allystaire felt the air grow taut against his skin. The horror began to shake and then slowly disintegrate. A cloud of dirty yellow light appeared in its place, floating in the air like grease on water. The staff vanished from Gideon’s hands and the boy thrust out a hand, palm out, pulling the energy into him.

  Then, to Allystaire’s horror, Gideon dropped in a boneless heap, his head hitting the ground with an audible thud.