by Tristan Vick
“Ironic. I know,” she replies.
From behind I hear horses galloping. I turn my head briefly to try and see if they’re following on horseback, but when I look back a branch hits me square in the chest.
The wind rushes out of my lungs as I rebound off the branch and crash to the ground. Any air that may have remained in my lungs is knocked out of me by the brunt of the fall.
Dinalagosseth stops and turns back to come to my aid. But the horses’ clomping hooves grow closer. Unable to speak, I roll onto my side and raise my hand to warn her not to come back for me. She hesitates for a moment, but the snort of a nearby horse sends her scurrying into the trees. I don’t take it personally. After all, it’s not me they’re after. It’s her.
I roll onto my hands and knees and gasp for breath. It comes in painful short bursts but eventually I fight through the shock and my breathing returns to normal.
Suddenly, the sound of hooves is all around me, and I look up to see the knobby knees of a giant black steed. Turning my head, I see three more sets of horse’s legs. I’m surrounded.
“What do we have here?” a rider asks.
“Looks like we found ourselves a wildling,” another retorts.
“I’ve always wanted to catch myself a wildling,” a third says. “I hear they can’t be tamed. As feral as the beasties they are. But breaking her fine piece of ass in will be a bloody fine time.”
“Be careful mate,” the first one warns. “She’s caked in blood. She’ll eat you alive, that one will.”
I note that the fourth rider doesn’t say anything. He just sits on his steed and stares at me intently. His eyes aren’t hard with hate or soft with compassion. Rather, he gives off the strange sensation that he’s hollow, somehow.
Suddenly they all slide off their horses and their boots all splash down into the mud. As they circle around me, I throw out my arms and growl, “Stay away from me. I’m warning you.”
“Ooh,” jeers the second bounty hunter. “We’re so scared.”
“Grab her!” the third yells.
They move in to subdue me and I reach for the knife. The knife I had tied to my hands but which came untethered when the branch hit me. Dammit, I think. There’s no goddess-damn knife.
The first guard comes up from behind. He wraps his arms around me to try to pick me up, but I slip out of his grasp. Immediately the first bounty hunter comes at me. I throw my fist forward and clock him straight in the jaw. Just as soon as he hits the dirt, however, the third guard kicks the back of my foot and trips me up. I take a nose-dive into the dirt and, unfortunately, take in a mouthful of mud.
I spit out the mud and push myself back up, readying myself for a fight, but my muscles are fatigued from the wolf attack. I have nothing left and just crash back down into the mud.
“Hold her down,” a fourth voice says. The fourth bounty hunter sounds detached somehow, as though he’s not quite in the moment. It’s hard to explain, but the vibe he gives off is eerie.
The other three bounty hunters all scramble to do as they’re told. They roll me over so that I’m face up, and the two short ones hold my legs while the big one leans over me, his hands pressing down on my biceps. I sink into the mud as the fourth bounty hunter approaches.
“Don’t worry,” he says in a voice devoid of any trace of emotion. Reaching down he begins to unfasten his belt. “This won’t take long. There’s only four of us.”
I squirm and wriggle with every ounce of remaining strength I have left, but it’s no good. Luckily, before anything can happen, the sound of a bugle horn cuts through the trees. This is followed by the noise of many galloping hooves.
Turning our heads toward the sound, my captors and I all look toward the crest of a hill. From between the trees suddenly appears an entire line of more than thirty horses.
In the middle, leading the charge, is a massive man with red hair and a red beard in black armor. A very familiar black armor.
“Lord Dathrium!” I screech out in a strange voice that exudes excitement and relief simultaneously.
Dathrium Volgoron raises his gauntleted fist and the entire line of horses comes to a halt.
Lord Dathrium gazes down upon me for a long time. It’s likely he doesn’t recognize me beneath the mud and blood. Trotting up to us, he scans the faces of the men. He asks, “Do you know who I am?”
All four bounty hunters kneel down in the mud. The ringleader, the Hollow-man, answers, “Yes, sire.”
“Good,” Dathrium says in his booming voice. “Then answer me, why have you attacked this woman in my forest? You know the law is quite clear. All travel routes are under the protection of the king. If you have a problem with her, then you have a problem with me.”
“No, sire. No problem,” the first bounty hunter says, picking me up under my arms and helping me back to my feet. Dusting off my shoulder just for show, he adds, “No problem at all.”
The Hollow-man steps forward and bows reverently. “Your highness, we merely were returning from a hunt when we heard this woman’s cry for help. We stumbled upon her mere moments ago and were trying to help her up when you arrived.”
“Is this true?” Dathrium asks, turning his eyes toward me.
“As true as it is I am but a failed king slayer,” I answer.
This catches Dathrium off-guard. He peers down at me from behind squinting eyes. After a long study of my face, he belts out, “Arianna? Is that you?”
“In the flesh,” I say, taking a bow.
Lord Dathrium slides off his horse and marches up to me. Just as soon as his boot hit the ground, ten knights ride up on their steeds and surround us.
Dathrium puts his arms on my shoulders and gives me a good long look, then says, “It is you!”
“Who is she, again?” asks the second bounty hunter.
Dathrium turns and glares at the man, who lowers his gaze in submission. Turning his attention back to me, Dathrium asks, “But what in the realms are you doing here?”
“It’s a long story,” I say.
“I’ll bet!” he responds, looking me up and down and nodding his head in disbelief.
Dathrium turns to one of his knights and says, “Fetch this woman a horse. And get her something decent to wear.”
“Yes, sir,” the knight says, and then gallops off.
“Are these men bothering you?” Dathrium looks, turning his hardened gaze back to the bounty hunters, who fidget nervously under the weight of his exacting scrutiny.
“No, no bother,” I say, eyeing the Hollow-man. “They were just leaving.”
“Yes, we were,” the Hollow-man says, taking another bow. “And we wish you luck, but I’m afraid we’d best be off now.”
Dathrium doesn’t say a single word in reply but merely stares at them menacingly until they collect their things and leave. Once they’ve gone, he turns back to me and holds out his hand for me to take. And I gladly take it.
He walks me toward the line of horses and explains the situation to me. “I’m leading four hundred reinforcements to Sabolin at the request of Queen Sabine.”
“It’s that bad, is it?”
“They’ve managed to regroup behind the walls, but Ashram is laying siege to the city. Without reinforcements, they will not make it more than a couple of days.”
I stop and turn toward him. “Then I will help you.”
“I would expect nothing less from a woman such as yourself,” he says with a big smile.
I can’t help but smile back. All those months I had the wrong impression about Lord Dathrium. But every time I speak with him, he treats me like a daughter, and I can’t help but feel as though he’s becoming like a father figure to me.
The knight returns with my horse, with a fresh set of clothes folded and set out on the saddle. Hanging on the side of the saddle is some light armor. Nothing fancy, just a breastplate with shoulder pads. But it’ll do.
Once I’ve finished dressing, Lord Dathrium nods his chin toward the horse, as if to sa
y, climb on. I reply with a smile and then climb onto the horse. Dathrium mounts his steed. He draws his sword, raises it high into the air, and announces, “Let neither rain nor sleet deter us from our noble duty to aid our countrymen in their hour of darkness. Come, we ride to Sabolin!”
Cheers erupt all around as the men roar in chorus. And for the first time in five days I realize that I’ll finally be reunited with my friends.
12
Carnage. That’s what awaits us at Sabolin. Bodies of the dead litter the battlefield. In some areas, it’s piled two or three high. The heaps of bodies are all different heights and it looks like the contours of the rolling hills of some awful and distant shore where only death greets you.
“My Goddess,” I whisper as we pass through swaths of the departed. I estimate there must be over two hundred fallen soldiers. Nearly the entire defensive. I scan each face attentively to see if Leif, Lisette, or the Goddess forbid, Alegra are among the fallen. Try as I may, I can’t find them though, which brings a small relief to my mind.
From the distance, there is a bugle call. A flame lights up on the city watchtower, alerting us to the fact that there is still someone alive inside. Likely holed up waiting for reinforcements.
Although Sabolin has no defensive moat or drawbridge, it has a fortified barbican with a steel reinforced portcullis that protects the giant wooden doors to the gateway into the city.
Perched on his steed, Lord Dathrium points at a trumpeter who nods, as if he understands exactly what Dathrium wants of him. Placing his horn to his lips, he blows, responding in kind. There is a brief pause after the bugle boy’s trumpeting comes to an end. Then the heavy portcullis begins to rise, inviting us in.
I look back out across the battlefield and can’t help but have the sneaking suspicion that something isn’t quite right with all this.
“Is something the matter?” Lord Dathrium asks me.
“I don’t quite know,” I respond. “Something just doesn’t feel right to me about any of this.”
He looks out over the dead bodies and then turns back toward me. “It’s never easy seeing a dead body, let alone several hundred. A terrible slaughter happened here. And believe you me, Mistress Arianna, I intend to hunt down every last undead warrior in Ashram’s army and personally send them back from whence they came.”
I smile at him with a shallow, fake smile. I know he’s just trying to be reassuring, but I still can’t shake the strange feeling that lingers over me. With his piece spoken, Dathrium turns his horse toward the entrance of Sabolin and begins heading toward it. Approximately a hundred riders break off from the main battalion and race ahead of him.
We reach the outer wall without incident, and I pull my horse over to the side as soldiers begin to march two-by-two into the mouth of the entrance of the barbican.
Strangely enough, there are no guards to greet us. Curious, I dismount and step to the side. After a minute, and after at least one hundred soldiers have entered the city, Dathrium rides up on his black armored horse. “I’ll meet you back inside, yes?”
With the reins in my hand, I curtsey and says, “Yes, sire.”
Dathrium smiles at me, then takes his steed under the pointed teeth of the portcullis and disappears inside. I turn back toward the battlefield and give it a final once-over as the train of soldiers continues to file through the entrance into Sabolin.
Unable to determine what’s bothering me so much, I shrug and turn to enter the city along with everyone else. That’s when two white hands reach up from behind, wrap around my mouth, and pull me back.
Suddenly there is a loud clangor, and the heavy portcullis comes crashing down. It barely misses me, thanks to whoever reeled me back just in time.
Looking up I see Dinalagosseth. She puts her pointer finger to her lips and hushes me, letting me know something is awry. In a terse whisper, she says, “It’s a trap.”
With half the soldiers cut off from their comrades, there’s bound to be commotion on top of confusion. While they look at one another wondering who might have any answers suddenly there is a scream. Considering it’s a man’s scream, it is a bit startling, and everyone turns to see what’s amiss.
Dinalagosseth points in the direction of the cry, and the fallen bodies of our fellow knights and comrades that litter the battlefield begin to rise back up again. What was moment earlier a field of death and carnage is now a field writhing with the reanimated corpses of over two hundred undead.
“Nobody panic!” a soldier yells out.
But just as soon as he says it an arrow flies out of nowhere and drills into his left eye-socket. He slowly turns and looks back at us with an expression of equal parts fear and dismay frozen onto his face. It seems he wants to mouth something additional, perhaps a call to retreat, but it’s in vain, for he collapses to the ground—already dead.
This alarming scene sends the remaining forces into a panic, and with their backs against a wall, quite literally, they begin lashing out at the army of the living dead, striking at whichever thing is closest to them. But even as they engage the enemy, the undead continue to encircle us, creeping in around from all sides.
Men scatter about everywhere, the ranks rapidly thinning as men selectively pick off the undead at will. Soon enough, pandemonium breeds defensiveness and without order, everything devolves into complete chaos. The frenzied clashing soldiers, both the living and dead, look a lot like a swarm of bees after a hive gets disturbed. There’s sudden commotion in every direction and it’s all but impossible to make sense of.
“Wait!” I shout out about the din. “We have to regroup!”
Suddenly screams from inside the city walls break out. The screams of men crying out as though their very souls are being torn from their bodies.
Dinalagosseth grabs me by the elbow and pulls me to the side. “Come, we can’t stay here.”
“But my friends,” I say in protest, pointing a thumb over my shoulder, “they’re still inside.”
“It’s easier if I just show you,” she replies. Pulling out the Serpent Blade, she slashes the air in an upward fashion. Radiating off the blade is an energy wave that flies upward, quivering like the string of a harp as it flies up. Suddenly there is a shimmer and then I see them.
The wave ripples across the sky and then, out of the blue, quite literally, appears the cloaked skeletons with scythes. They have no legs. Instead, just tattered tunics that blow on the breeze as they float over the battlefield. When a fallen soldier lets out his last breath, they swoop down out of the sky like carrion crows and tears the souls of the dead form their bloodied corpses and drag them screaming down into the Nether.
“Reapers!” I gasp.
“Dozens of them,” Dinalagosseth adds. “I noticed them earlier, but didn’t know quite what it meant other than it being a really bad omen. I decided to keep to the shadows until I could investigate further. I followed you all here when I noticed that lingering above the entire city were dozens of them. I figured then everyone in the city was either dead or about to be.”
“I’m sorry I doubted you,” I say.
“Apology accepted, Mistress Arianna. But we’re wasting precious time debating the veracity of my words. If your friends really are still inside the city, they’ll be holed up in the holy temple. That’s where we’ll must get to if we are to make a final stand.”
Usually I do my best to keep my brave warrior’s face on. But sometimes my doubts get the better of me. This is one of those times. “What if I’m wrong?” I ask Dina. “And my friends have already fled the city and escaped with their lives…what then?”
“Then we will have fallen right into Ashram’s trap,” she answers. It’s not the answer I was hoping for, but it’s honest.
I turn back toward the gate. Drawing out my sword, I inform Dinalagosseth, “This is my fight. You don’t need to be here.”
She shoots me a harsh look then, ignoring my previous words as though I’d never said them, says, “There is a back entrance
I know of, follow me.” Without even waiting for a response, she heads off along the wall toward the south.
As the battle rages on all around me, I look over my shoulder one more time at the madness and the mayhem. The remaining soldiers, two hundred strong, engage the army of the dead, which match us in force and in numbers. Still no sign of Ashram though. Which doesn’t bode well. It means the main forces of the dead army are elsewhere. Most likely inside the city walls, where the screams of dying men continue to promulgate.
Once we’ve walked a fair distance, Dinalagosseth raises her hand and beckons for me to wait. She begins searching the rock wall for a secret entrance. I check over my shoulder and see a lone straggler ambling toward us.
“I’ll take care of this one,” I say. I toss the sword in the air, let the blade spin two times, then catch the handle in one fluid motion. Spinning the sword around, I swing it back and forth. Fanning it for show, I spin around, raise the blade high, then, using my momentum as I arc around, I bring it down full force and sever the head of the undead soldier.
Its body falls to my feet while it’s head rolls away in the opposite direction.
“If you’re quite finished playing around,” Dinalagosseth says letting out an impatient sigh, “I think I’ve found it.”
She pushes on a bulging rock and suddenly a large section of the rock wall shifts. Then there is a clunk, as if a heavy weight has dropped, followed by a grinding of wooden cogs. Unexpectedly, an entire portion of the rock face opens.
“Impressive,” I say.
“The monks knew that, being pacifists, if anyone ever did declare war on Sabolin it would take the form of a siege. As such, they had the foresight to build several secret entrances and exits all around the city walls. If necessary, they could sneak out under the cloak of night.”
“You don’t say,” I quip, not attempting to subdue my sarcastic tone any. I reach up and slap Dina on the shoulder and wink at her as I pass. She stands off to the side looking at me curiously. Pausing in the entrance of the secret passageway, I look back, and say, “Hey, Dina, are you coming or are you just going to stand there staring at my ass?”