He squatted, shortening his torso and thrusting hips out behind him, putting as much of himself behind his shield as he could, and bulled forward. The axeman released, but too late, and his weapon bounced away into the night. Allystaire was already cocking his arm as he ran forward, and at the moment of impact on his shield he straightened his legs and brought his hammer down.
He had misjudged the angle; instead of the skull, it crashed hard down on the man’s left shoulder. The force of the blow sent bits of mail flying into the darkness and the man collapsed, screaming as blow crumpled the left side of his torso, driving the shoulder down into his chest.
Allystaire spared a quick glance for the wall around him. His section was clear, but wouldn’t remain so for long. Ivar and the remaining Ravens were pulling back, keeping enemies at bay with veteran spear-work. He looked out over the wall. Delondeur’s horsemen were closing. A thought struck him. He slid his hammer back onto his belt and ripped the throwing axe free from his shield.
It was well balanced, with a long head and a very faintly curved haft. He looked out over the line of mounted and armored men.
Near the standard of the tower, he told himself, and he picked out a likely suspect, cocked his arm, adjusted his aim, and threw.
* * *
Baron Lionel Delondeur watched with calm approval as the shapes of his men swarmed over Coldbourne’s pathetic excuse for a wall. The strong bubble of lantern light he’d ordered kept around him didn’t carry too far into the darkness, but each squad of foot carried a torch or two, and the night had brightened as some cloud cover moved away from the moon and stars, so he had a commanding view.
“Runner!” At his yell, a footman dressed in leathers and lightly armed appeared at his stirrup. “Go find Captain Verais. Give him my compliments for his attack. Tell him that once they have the wall he is to secure it and allow our horse to stage within the village before we advance.”
“Yes, my—” Something flashed out of the night and beside the Baron’s horse, which shied away several steps. The runner’s words were cut off in mid sentence with a horrid wet gurgle. It took Lionel a moment to wrestle the charger back to his command amidst a sudden clamor.
The man he’d just issued orders to crumpled to the earth, a throwing axe embedded where his neck met his shoulder, blood pumping freely from the wound. The soldier twitched and struggled, more and more feebly, as blood poured from the rent in his neck. Finally, he went still. The knights and lords around him seemed impressed and fearful, chattering uselessly to each other.
“Impossible throw.”
“At such a distance.”
“Warlock.”
“Madman’s strength.”
Delondeur silenced them with a yelled order. “Forward the horse! The foot will have that gate open or I will have every tenth man lashed!”
He gave his charger the spur, and the animal dashed forward, iron-shod hooves churning over the fresh corpse of the message runner like mud.
* * *
“Well,” Nyndstir muttered to himself as he crested the hill, “at least I didn’t miss everythin’.”
Down at the bottom of the slope he could see a small group of Delondeur spearmen struggling to assemble their rope ladder.
“Get that ladder up! We’re missing the fun, lads,” one of them boomed, all fake cheer and stupidity, announcing their location and intent to anyone nearby. “C’mon, there’s the knack,” he added as the flustered men fumbling with it finally got a few of the wooden slats straight.
Can just hear the freezing stripe on his arm, Nyndstir thought disdainfully. He considered his position. He had elevation and surprise, but there were five of them, and likely more within earshot.
What I wouldn’t give for a throwing axe or two, he thought. Even the odds a bit.
But then some other part of him rebelled at the thought. Evening the odds wasn’t always my way.
Before he knew it he was striding down the hill, axe in hand.
He heard one of the idle men, huddled in his cloak and stamping his feet in his boots, say to another, “Can’t wait to get in there and start burning something, eh?”
The other one snorted. “I’m thinkin’ more about gettin’ into somethin’ warm,” he replied, with the sneer of a man certain of his prospects of plunder. Nyndstir knew it well.
“Cold, did that bastard just go to his dungeons and hand out spears?” Nyndstir called out to them from a few paces away. As one, they jumped in shock and whirled to face him. Freezing amateurs, he inwardly cursed. Didn’t even post one man as a sentry.
The one Nyndstir had picked out earlier as a chosen man turned to face him, hand on his short sword. “Do not be speaking of our Lord Baron Delondeur that way, Islandman. Not when your own Sea Dragon blesses him, and us, with victory this night.”
Nyndstir didn’t get the chance to answer, because one of the shirkers pointed a finger vaguely at him. “Steady—aren’t you one of the hired men from the other camp? I’ve seen you about. Shouldn’t you be joinin’ in? There’s work for all hands.”
“I’m about to,” Nyndstir replied, then brought his axe in a tight, controlled swing straight into the neck of the man who’d just spoken. It cut through mail and leather and bit deep into the flesh, blood spilling out in torrents as he pulled the blade free.
The others were too shocked by the sudden attack to respond immediately, so Nyndstir had time for a second cut at the chosen man. He swiped low, taking his legs out from under him and knocking the man to the ground with a scream as he fumbled for the shortsword he never had time to unsheath.
One of the shirkers came at him with his spear leveled, but it was too close for that kind of weapon to do much good. Nyndstir took one step to the side, then another towards the man, and brought the haft of his axe in a vicious uppercut into the bottom of the spearman’s chin. His legs flew straight up as he was taken off his feet, and his head thudded resoundingly against the ground.
The two men fumbling with the ladder finally disentangled themselves from it. One went for his spear, which he’d leaned against the timber palisade, while the other drew a knife from his belt.
The other shirker was also coming with his knife, and he held it like a man that knew from knife fighting, in a crouched guard, with the blade forward and his body a small target, bouncing lightly from one foot to the other.
Nyndstir quickly backstepped a few feet and sent a whirling cut towards the man’s head, which he easily ducked beneath, then did the same on the backswing of the spike that balanced the heavy blade.
Nyndstir grinned in the darkness, feinted another cut. The grin became a smile as the man took the moment to dart within the axe’s arc, knife out. In the starlight, Nyndstir could read the greedy, triumphant smile on his opponent’s face.
A quick step to one side, a reversal of the axe in his grip, and the would-be knife fighter’s smile turned to a grimace as he charged his belly straight onto the first six inches of the axe’s footlong spike.
Nyndstir pulled it quickly free and drew back a heavy boot, kicked the man in the wound, and sent him sprawling with a scream.
The fourth spearman took a look at his three dead or dying comrades and turned away, running into the night.
“He’ll be back with other men,” the last remaining soldier warned him, knife held out awkwardly as he backstepped, free hand searching behind him for the wall and the spear that rested there.
“Don’t see how that stops me from killin’ you,” Nyndstir said with a shrug. He lunged towards the man, raising his axe in a feint. The green-tabarded soldier dropped his knife and ran, knocking his spear aside as he went.
Quickly, Nyndstir secured his axe to his back, strapping it in place with heavy leather thongs that were stiff from lack of use. He looked at the three men he’d felled: one dead, one dying, one twitching and trying to roll over to push ba
ck to his feet. He gave that third one a couple of solid boots to the ribs, and the man crumpled to the ground in a ball.
Then he picked up the tangled remnants of the rope ladder and found the bit he needed: the hook. That he tossed over the top of the wall, thanking Fortune when it set on the first try. Grasping it in both hands, he lifted one leg and placed it squarely against the rough-cut timbers, and then pulled himself up and did the same with the other leg.
The muscles in his shoulders protested, but he gave his head a sharp shake, and hauled himself up with quick steps, wrapping the rope around his forearms as he went.
“Been up as many walls as I have, ya never lose the knack,” he muttered, congratulating himself as he crested the wall.
The congratulations turned to a curse as he realized there was nothing on the other side, and he tumbled over into a longer drop than he’d been ready for.
“Cold dammit, there’s usually some freezing steps or a parapet or something.” He pulled himself out of the dirt, giving each limb a careful shake to see that they were still in working order. Then he unlimbered his axe and ran off towards the sounds of fighting.
* * *
Allystaire pulled himself into Ardent’s saddle, ripping a lance free from the ground where three had been planted for him, points driven into the dirt to hold them up. In another life I would’ve run a squire off his feet for doing that, he noted absently.
Around him, Chaddin’s score of men were similarly mounting and pulling lances from stirrup boots. Not all of them were armed and armored to function as heavy lancers; some were unfamiliarly couching spears under their arms.
“Chaddin!” Allystaire bellowed, searching for him amidst the crowd of riders. Finally one of the better-armored figures rode up to him, pushing up a visor. Chaddin sat his horse a bit stiffly, and he kept shifting his grip on the lance.
“We do not want to come straight up against their foot,” Allystaire told him, once he could see his face. “They are all spears, and would tear us to pieces. But I think your father means to bring up his horse, and we have to give them a bloody nose, keep them from racing beyond us. A loose line, charge only at my command, and remember, it is not a freezing tourney list. You are trying to kill them, and they you.”
Beyond them, there was the sound of commotion and frightened shouting, as the folk of the village poured into the Temple. Torvul had worked a minor miracle, erecting barriers made of carts, barrels, crates, even his own wagon. At the moment, the dwarf, laden with a heavy crate and leather straps full of tools, was trying his best to empty the contents of his boxlike home into the Temple one trip at a time.
Renard, his clearly frightened militia, and the remaining eight Iron Ravens manned the makeshift barricade, spears and bows at the ready. Mol glided among the crowd, stopping to speak with children, or with the most obviously frightened. Idgen Marte moved along behind her, a heavy sack in one hand, from which she drew the confiscated weapons, pressing them into the hands of unarmed adults that passed by.
The sound of horns in the distance froze the scene for a moment. Allystaire listened to the pattern of the blasts, then said, “They are calling formations, trying to organize. Let us not do them any favors! Horse, forward with me!”
He nudged Ardent and the destrier responded, tugging at the reins he clutched in his shield hand as he and twenty of Chaddin’s loyalists went off to meet the Baron’s horse.
They hadn’t far to go, and Allystaire had surmised correctly; the Baron was drawing all of his horse inside the walls, screening them with infantry as he drew them into lines. At a quick guess Allystaire thought he was drawing up two lines of twenty each, with his remainder in reserve, but it was taking a while. Against the force staging inside the western gate, the line of horse looked paltry indeed.
The line of spears in front of them was thin, but it was thicker than his own, and charging it brought the risk of getting cut to ribbons. Idgen Marte. Torvul. What can we do to disperse their foot?
Call in another army, Idgen Marte grumbled back.
Depends on how careful y’need to be about fire now, Torvul thought to him.
Not at all, Allystaire replied. I will use any weapon I have now.
Good. I’ll send ‘er up.
Among the enemy lines, orders were being shouted, but in the dark and in the confusion of any battle, on unfamiliar ground, it took untested men a long time to respond to their orders.
It did not take nearly so long for Idgen Marte to appear out of the darkness behind his horse. The animals to either side of him shied away, stamping at the ground and tugging at their reins. Ardent barely acknowledged it.
She held out a clinking bag in one hand. He set his lance in his stirrup boot and took it. “Hope your arm is still good. He says it won’t burn for long, or very hot, but it ought to give them a good scare,” she said as she handed it over.
He let the bag dangle from his hand and started to open it up. She had already disappeared. He considered for a moment the problem of how to pull the three bottles out of it individually without crushing them in his hand, then spat an oath, yelled, “Hold your line,” to the horsemen around him, and spurred Ardent.
The destrier’s muscles bunched and the huge grey leapt into motion. Before they’d traveled more than twenty yards, Allystaire was swinging the bag over his head in long circles. Another dozen yards and he released it, then pulled back on the reins. He couldn’t follow it in flight, but he knew when it landed. A gout of flame erupted that would’ve filled the largest fireplaces in Wind’s Jaw keep, hearths that were made to hold entire tree-trunks. The flame billowed into the sky and rolled out behind the front line of spearmen.
Panic erupted, frantic officers calling frantic orders. All sense of discipline among the Delondeur foot vanished when another, much smaller fire erupted on their far right flank, and then another close beside it. A dozen men turned and ran, then a score. Some of them, passing too close to the flames, suddenly found their cloaks and tabards catching on tendrils of it, and a few were too mad with fear to drop and smother themselves.
At the sight of their comrades running, and a smattering of them screaming as they burned, the trickle became a torrent, and the Salt Spears turned and ran. Allystaire heard their screams of panic, caught the words “Witchery! Sorcery!” among them.
Allystaire turned Ardent and trotted him back towards his thin line of horse, who cheered. He heard one man call out, “Cowards!” at the retreating foot, others simply celebrating with wordless cries of triumph.
“Quiet,” he bellowed at them. “Burning a man to death is nothing to celebrate! They were unblooded boys, tradesman’s sons. The Baron’s knights and men-at-arms will not be driven off so easily. With me, at the trot,” he finished, snapping command into the words with a lifetime of practice.
He picked up his lance and turned Ardent again, letting the horse take his head. In his stomach, he felt a brief flare of shame when he saw the fires burning ahead of him. Oh, Goddess, he thought in a quick prayer. I am sorry I could not give them a clean death, or better still, a cleaner life. It could be that they are not truly your enemies, only men who are badly led. I am sorry.
With that, his trotting line had come within sight of Delondeur’s horse as they forced their way around the panicked foot. He saw more than one Delondeur knight laying about his horse with a weapon, mostly horseman’s axes or flails they kept on loops around their wrists, driving away or simply felling their own panicked spearmen.
There, he thought then, steeling himself and finding the song flowing louder in his limbs, are better targets.
And there wouldn’t be a better time, as only a trickle of them had managed to pull themselves free of the retreat and started to form a ragged line.
As he began to fill his lungs to give the order, a stray thought crossed his mind. I really ought to teach Gideon the trumpet calls. Then with a pang
of sorrow and anger that turned his voice hoarse, he bellowed, “CHARGE!” with all the force he could muster.
Ardent pulled away from the rest of the line before they’d all run five yards, eager for the run, his energy seemingly boundless. Allystaire leveled his lance and picked a target among a knot of little more than half a dozen Delondeur men who’d only just begun to spread out. Two of them tried to turn their horses and run for the flanks rather than confront the charge. Most brought up their shields and tried to wrestle lances into their hands.
His chosen target, whose arms he could not read, got a heavy shield up to take the blow, but had only just got his horse moving and couldn’t hope to match Ardent’s speed, and the force the pair of them brought to bear.
Allystaire’s lance shattered with an explosive sound, and he heard a sharp crack. The other man’s shield or his arm, he hadn’t time to care, but he turned his head to see the man thrown from the saddle as his horse reared back and only just managed to keep its feet.
Luck had been with them. Most of the men of his line were successful on this first pass, though he saw one unhorsed as a Delondeur knight from further back, with more time to prepare, had met a man with his own charge. Even as Allystaire was yelling for them to fall back and reform, he saw three of Chaddin’s knights, emboldened by their success, go racing into the second ranks of Delondeur horsemen, who were quickly finding themselves and splitting into two columns to pass by the flame.
“Fall back, you fools,” he yelled, his ragged voice still carrying, but to no avail. He saw them crash amongst the armored ranks. “Back! They will surround you!” But the trio had gone too far, discarded broken lances, and were now drawing swords or swinging flails. They were quickly overrun. He could hear the sounds of the combat, the yells, the sound of weapons beating on armor, the cries of men wounded or killed.
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