Swordmage

by Richard Baker

  “Take them!” she shouted, standing in her stirrups with her bow in her hand. She drew and fired, drew and fired again, and a goblin and worg went down together, each with an arrow in the throat. Her remaining riders charged at the enormous wolves, lances lowered and sabers high. The overeager goblins wheeled in panic and bounded back for the safety of the woods, but not before more fell under the steel of the Shieldsworn and the House mercenaries. Kara shot one more worg through its spine as it leaped away; the monster howled and crashed into a blackberry thicket, throwing its rider. The goblin dismounted was not much of a threat—but worgs could drag down men or horses. She searched for another target but decided to save her arrows. She might need them more before the night was out.

  Several other quick skirmishes broke out along the woodline as wolf riders blundered too close to the soldiers they were hoping to chase down. After a dozen slashing duels of wolf rider and cavalryman, the woods fell silent again. Kara judged that the Red Claws had fallen back to mass for a more deliberate attack; this would be the moment to pull back again. The Icehammers were already marching south off the field, falling into ranks as they hurried away. It’ll have to be enough, she told herself, praying that she’d bought her ragged army half an hour’s lead on the pitiless marauders who followed them.

  “Fall back!” she called to the riders nearby. “Stay with me!”

  Kara cantered a few hundred yards farther down the road, her small company of riders following her standard as best they could. Then she wheeled around again, searching the open space they’d just crossed for any sign of pursuit. If the Red Claws pressed too close, she’d have to lead her weary riders against them to give the Icehammers time to put another mile under their boots, but for the moment it seemed the wolf riders had learned a little caution.

  “Lady Kara!” Sarise called. “A rider!”

  Kara looked back over her shoulder and saw a strapping young man with the beginnings of a thick beard approaching—one of the Ostings, she thought. His horse was badly blown, trembling with exhaustion, and the young man slid out of the saddle as soon as he saw her. “Lady Kara, there you are! I’m Brun Osting, and I’ve got a message from the harmach himself. He told me to tell you to gather whatever forces you’ve still got and march at once for Lendon’s Dike. He’s bringing the Spearmeet up from Hulburg, and he plans to make the stand for the city there.”

  “Lendon’s Dike?” Kara asked sharply. That didn’t seem wise to her. It was almost a mile and a half long. Between what was left of her battered army and the Spearmeet, they simply didn’t have the numbers to defend a line of that length. And she doubted that the Spearmeet could stand up to the Bloody Skulls for long, wall or no wall. “I don’t think we can hold it, even with the Spearmeet. We’d be better off to fall back to the strongpoints in town.”

  “The harmach said you might say that. He said to tell you that he’s had to abandon Griffonwatch. Some sort o’ terrible ghostly warriors overran the castle earlier tonight, and they’re still there.” The tavernkeeper’s son looked around to see who was in earshot, and lowered his voice. “And House Veruna men were waitin’ outside to barricade the gates, Lady Kara. Many o’ the harmach’s folk were killed, but all your kin got out safe.”

  Kara shook her head in denial. “This makes no sense. Ghosts in Griffonwatch and the Veruna soldiers barricading them in? Are you sure you’ve got this message straight from the harmach?”

  “I saw ’em myself up on the battlements, Lady Kara.” Brun Osting shuddered. “Spirits o’ ancient warriors, carryin’ pale swords and wearin’ tall helms. The harmach said he knew it’d all sound like madness, but he wanted me to repeat this to you: You’ve got to bring your army to Lendon’s Dike as quick as you can. He’s going to stand and fight there. And he wanted you to watch your back ’round the Verunas.”

  “That’s better than a fifth of my army,” Kara answered. How was she supposed to pay attention to the battle—no, the retreat—if she was supposed to be on guard against assassination or treachery too? She looked around to get her bearings in the darkened vale. They’d been fighting and falling back for hours, and with surprise she saw that they were about halfway to Hulburg already. The old earthworks were not more than a couple of miles ahead. They’d be able to reach the dike easily enough, but what then?” I’ve got to speak with him myself,” she said aloud. “Sarise, go find Captain Ironthane and tell him he’s got command of the rear guard until I return. Have Master Osting relay his report to the captain. I’m riding ahead.”

  “It isn’t safe to ride alone, my lady,” one of her adjutants pointed out.

  “Then you, and you, and you—come with me, if you can keep up.” Kara pointed at several of the Shieldsworn riders nearby and rode off over the darkened fields, cutting cross-country. The Vale Road was full of her soldiers, and she didn’t want them to think she was abandoning the field. She hoped that Kendurkkel wouldn’t think so, either, but so far the dwarf captain had quickly grasped her commands and intentions. He’d understand that she was not leaving them.

  Kara led her small band through muddy fields thick with the stubble of last year’s planting, until they found an old lane between homesteads that more or less paralleled the Vale Road. She set her spurs to Dancer and let the big mare stretch out her legs on the road, while her guards hurried to keep up with her. The rush of cold night air drove away her weariness. After a good run, she saw a long, straight row of trees rising up across her path—the old berm, long since overgrown with thickets and young trees. Scores of torches and lanterns burned along its length. “It seems the Spearmeet’s already here,” she said to herself. She veered back toward the Vale Road and in a few more minutes of riding climbed back onto the road a short distance from the place where it cut through the embankment.

  Dozens of men worked furiously to build thornbrakes across the road. Along the earthworks more Hulburgans worked with axe and hatchet to make the top of the dike defensible. Now that she was closer to the old berm, she saw that the trees and tangled briar-patches covering its slopes made it a more formidable obstacle than she remembered; the men and women of the Spearmeet were felling trees and piling up brush on the north face of the dike to improve it even more. If only she had more archers, she might have a chance to hold it—at least for a little while.

  “There, m’lady,” one of her riders said to her. He pointed to an improvised banner fluttering in the torchlight, a simple white field with a blue blazon on it. “The harmach.”

  “I see it,” Kara replied. She rode up to the simple banner, and there she found half a dozen Spearmeet captains gathered around Harmach Grigor, along with Master Assayer Dunstormad Goldhead, the Master Mage Ebain Ravenscar, her cousin Geran, and—surprisingly—the tiefling sorcerer Sarth she’d seen by the barrow on the Highfells. The world seems to have gone mad tonight, she thought. She leaped down from Dancer’s saddle and strode over to the harmach. She couldn’t remember the last time he’d left the city; he stood leaning on his cane, a thin cloak whipping around him in the bitter night.

  “My lord Harmach,” she said formally. “I am here.”

  Grigor Hulmaster looked around and found a crooked smile of relief. “Kara, I’m glad to see that you’re well,” he said. “I was afraid for you, my dear.”

  “Brun Osting said I’m to bring my army here. We’re on our way. You should see my leading companies any time now, and my rear guard’s less than an hour off. But, Uncle Grigor—the Bloody Skulls won’t be far behind us. Are you sure this is where you want to stand?”

  “It’s here or nowhere, Kara,” the harmach said. “Griffonwatch is taken. We have no castle to fall back to.”

  Kara glanced at the other Hulburgans nearby and lowered her voice. “I heard that ghosts invaded Griffonwatch? Is that true?”

  Harmach Grigor nodded. “I’m afraid that it is, and I’m sorry to say that it seems to be your stepbrother’s doing. He and his Veruna allies tried to kill us all tonight. If not for the fact that Geran
and his friends took it upon themselves to arrange his escape from my prison and rescue me, I think Sergen would have succeeded.”

  “That was the price the King in Copper paid for the Infiernadex after House Veruna got it for him,” Geran explained. “He agreed to send his specters to serve when called. It seems Sergen decided to call them tonight.”

  “Given the circumstances, I’ve pardoned Geran of any wrongdoing in his duel with the Veruna captain and in his escape,” the harmach added. “And should we run across Sergen again, we must treat him and his Veruna allies as enemies of Hulburg.”

  Kara lowered her voice. “The Verunas with my army have done their part so far tonight. They’ve fought as well as any of us. This makes no sense. Are you saying that they’ll turn on us at some point?”

  “It’d be wise to expect them to,” Geran said. “They might be waiting for the right opportunity to show their true colors.”

  The ranger laughed bitterly. “Geran, they’ve had many opportunities for treachery tonight. All they had to do was abandon the field, and we probably would’ve been destroyed three times over.”

  Sarth cleared his throat. “Forgive me for saying so, but the explanation may be quite simple: Perhaps things have not gone as House Veruna planned tonight. After your initial defeat they may have decided that it would be folly to carry through with their plan in the face of an orc invasion.”

  Kara frowned. She didn’t know how the horned man had come to be standing at Geran’s side, but she simply did not have time to satisfy her curiosity. With effort she set aside the questions still dancing in her mind and focused on the immediate crisis. “I’ll ask for a complete explanation later,” she said. “Uncle Grigor, I expect the Bloody Skulls to reach this spot in an hour, perhaps two. I would guess that I’m down to six hundred tired men—less if you tell me that the Verunas can’t be counted on. How many Spearmeet do you have with you?”

  “Around eight hundred, I think,” Geran answered. “About half are here already, and the rest are marching up from Hulburg as quickly as they can.” She frowned dubiously. Geran saw her skepticism and added, “They’re not as good as your Shieldsworn or your mercenaries, but they’re fighting with their homes and families at their backs. They’ll do better than you might think, Kara.”

  “I don’t think it will be enough,” Kara said. “The Bloody Skulls outnumber us by a margin of at least two to one, maybe closer to three to one.”

  “We didn’t choose this fight, but it’s ours nonetheless,” Harmach Grigor told her. “Somehow, we have to find a way to win it. We simply have no alternative. Now, Kara, given what you’ve seen so far, what can we do to give ourselves the best chance for success?”

  Kara looked at the old dike extending off into the darkness to either side. She noticed that a pale gray streak had appeared above the jagged shadows of the hills and peaks of the Highfells to the east. Dawn was not far off … if they lasted that long. She thought furiously, considering the problem from every angle while the others waited for her to organize her thoughts. “We’ll need to intersperse the Spearmeet and the professional soldiers,” she finally said. “Alternate a company of militia and a company of Shieldsworn or mercenaries to man the top of the dike. And then we’ll need to keep most of our cavalry together in reserve behind the dike, so that we can try to seal breaches in our line as they happen.”

  “Good,” said Harmach Grigor. “What else, Kara?”

  She studied the men and women swarming over the dike, and sighed. “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to pray,” she said.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  11 Tarsakh, the Year of the Ageless One

  If Geran was any judge of the weather, the approaching day promised to be bright and cold. The skies were cloudless, but a cold wind gusted and moaned over the vale, making the meager handful of banners and pennants over Hulburg’s defenders ruffle and snap. He wished the wind would have chosen a different quarter for the battle to come. It was blowing in the faces of the hundreds of men and women waiting along the top of the dike, and it would hinder what little archery they’d scraped together for the fight. On the other hand, orcs don’t care for bright sunlight, Geran reminded himself. The disadvantages of weather seemed equal to both sides.

  “When d’you think they’ll come at us, Geran?” Durnan Osting said quietly. The brewer and his company of Spearmeet volunteers lined the top of the dike to each side of Geran. Kara and Harmach Grigor had entrusted Geran with command of the right wing of their small army—two Spearmeet companies, a battered band of Shieldsworn, and a motley collection of mercenaries from Marstel, Sokol, and the Double Moon. He needed about three times as many men to properly defend the length of wall he had, but there simply weren’t any more to spare.

  “Soon, Durnan,” Geran answered. “Before the sun comes up, I think, and that’s not far off now.”

  The valley floor was a patchwork of gray shadows, growing brighter by the minute. On Geran’s end of the line, Lendon’s Dike climbed to meet the steep wall on the east side of the Winterspear vale. From Geran’s elevated vantage, he could see the torch-dotted line of the earthworks stretching across the valley floor to the inky shadow of Lake Hul, a mile and a half away under the western margin of the vale. The old dwarf Dunstormad Goldhead and Burkel Tresterfin’s Spearmeet company held the spot where the dike met the lake, strengthened by the Veruna mercenaries. In the center of the line, where the Vale Road pierced the old dike, the harmach’s banner fluttered. Kara and most of the Shieldsworn were there, along with the Icehammer mercenaries and the weaker Spearmeet companies. The heaviest blow would fall right in the middle of the line; Geran could see the dark, seething mass of the orc horde gathering only a few hundred yards from the dike.

  The valley shook with orc shouts and chants. Dozens of massive drums thumped and battled with each other, and the clamor of spears striking shields was overwhelming. Geran looked at the militiamen around him; he saw faces gray with anxiety, knuckles white as they clenched their weapons close.

  “Come on, lads!” he shouted to the men nearby. “Let’s make a little noise of our own. Show them that we’re still here!” He raised a piercing war cry, and the men nearby joined in. Within a few moments the cry spread up and down along the dike until hundreds of men were shouting together against the orc horde. The orcs were far louder, but Geran kept at it, and he heard the small echo of his warriors’ voices rolling back from the hills amid the orc clamor.

  “A vain gesture,” Sarth muttered from close by, but a moment later the tiefling joined his voice to Geran’s and shouted defiance as well. Vain or not, Geran thought that the men around him looked a little less frightened. Perhaps they felt that way, too. He wished Hamil were at his back, but the halfling hadn’t been able to march; Geran had left him at the Troll and Tankard.

  The orc chant reached a crescendo then broke apart into countless individual roars and cries. The front line of the Bloody Skull army surged forward and swept over the unplanted fields toward the dike—thousands of orc warriors, running headlong into battle with axes and spears high.

  “Here they come!” Durnan Osting shouted. “Get ready for ’em, lads! They’ll no’ find a weak spot here!”

  Geran drew his sword, weaving spells of ruin on his blade. The elven steel gleamed a deadly silver-blue in the gloaming, and he flicked the point from side to side to set the grip in his hand. He hadn’t expected the orcs to simply rush the entire line at once; it would have been more effective to concentrate a blow at a single point. Then again, the mass charge would keep him from sending help to any other point of the defenses as long as he was fighting to hold his own position. “Archers!” he shouted. “Fire at will!”

  He had only a few dozen bowmen under his banner, so few that there was little point in trying to volley their fire. Most of the archers had no experience with the tactic, anyway—they weren’t even militiamen, just Hulburgans or foreign laborers who’d joined the effort to defend the town. Their arrows hissed out over the ea
rthen rampart. Many missed, but as the orcs continued to close, Geran saw a few of the charging warriors stumble and fall.

  “Sarth, save your spells for the moment,” Geran told the sorcerer. “I want your magic at the point of decision.”

  “I understand,” Sarth answered.

  Geran watched the dark tide rushing closer and seized the shoulder of a young Spearmeet lad next to him. “Get over to the far right, and tell whoever’s in charge of the Marstels and Sokols to bring all their men here, right now. We’re going to need them. Go swiftly!” The teenager nodded once and bolted off to the east, heading for the handful of mercenary fighters Geran had on that end of his line. Few of the orcs were heading toward the uphill side of the dike. Then he faced the oncoming horde and breathed a few words of warding, preparing for the fight to come.

  The first of the Bloody Skulls reached the bottom of the dike. The old earthworks were not more than fifteen feet tall, but heavy brush and small trees grew thickly on the sloping mound; despite the ferocity of their charge, the orc warriors had a difficult time struggling through the thickets.

  “Stay in ranks!” Geran shouted. “Let them come to you!”

  A band of orc berserkers bulled their way up the embankment near Geran, and he hurried through the thickets to meet them when they crested the wall. He caught a thick-muscled orc axeman as he scrambled up the slope with a hand on the ground, and lunged down to bury his swordpoint in the orc’s neck. The apelike warrior bellowed, clapping his hand to the wound, and staggered up to swing at Geran. The swordmage danced back a few steps, avoiding the orc’s wild axe-swings until the dying warrior’s feet slid out from underneath him and he fell heavily to the ground. Geran found more orcs swarming up the slope all around him, and for a hundred furious heartbeats he slashed and stabbed, charged and retreated, wielding his blade of elf-wrought steel in a blinding blur of searing blue-white radiance.