Most disturbing to the defenders, the oncoming horde made no sounds beyond those of their own movement. None called the time of the march; there were no shouts for the draft animals to move more quickly. It was as though the army was many bodies controlled by a single mind.
Before any of the humans could come to grips with what they were seeing, the Frost Fiends struck. Without warning, all ten catapults loosed their projectiles at the walls of the castle. Ten great chunks of ice colder than the humans had ever known slammed into the defensive structures. They shattered on impact. Shards flew. The stones struck were coated in frost.
The shaking walls finally brought Alaric back to the moment. He turned back toward the courtyard and began shouting commands. “Trebuchet, load for personnel! Fusilier, prepare your weapons!”
Turning back to survey the coming army, he realized his father and brother were still standing, too shocked to take command. He turned to the castellan, “Sir Gyire, take my father and brother back down. I’ll command the walls.” Without waiting for a response, he turned back to watch the oncoming horde.
Though they seemed to march quickly, Alaric was surprised at the individual randomness of their movements. They didn’t march forward in ranks like an army. Rather, they scrambled past each other, sometimes rushing forward, sometimes stopping, like a migration of ants. As they closed into the extreme range of the trebuchet, he nodded.
Turning back to the courtyard, he gave the order, “Trebuchet, fire!”
The courtyard was only big enough to hold four of the mighty siege engines. As their crews pulled to release the catch, the weighted buckets dropped. With a deceptively languid motion, the slings rose up and loosed their own projectiles. Rather than loading with single large stones, each trebuchet had been filled with ten to twenty smaller stones. They rose up in an arc, appeared to slow in the air, and then came down to devastating effect. About one fifth of the stones that had been thrown into the enemy’s midst were enchanted with runes. As they struck the ground they exploded into rings of fire thirty feet in diameter.
The first sounds, other than movement, erupted from the advancing force. Screams were torn from frozen throats. Whether those screams were of pain or outrage, the defenders could only guess.
“Fusilier, fire!” Alaric ordered.
As the men levered their hand cannon up to their shoulders and fired, the crews of the trebuchet had already leaned into their own tasks of resetting and reloading their war machines. From the enchanted guns leaped tongues of flame, or lines of lightning. Each target struck exploded into shards of ice.
Then, the second round of ice boulders hit. The walls shook again as the heavy blocks of ice smashed into them. Beyond the retort of the exploding ice, Alaric thought he could already hear the sound of breaking masonry.
“We won’t survive that too long. But I can’t hit those engines. That range is incredible.”
Indeed, the engines had stopped. It was apparent that whatever mind was controlling the army had realized that the catapults were close enough to do their jobs effectively. Already their own crews were bent to the task of reloading them.
The trebuchet answered. Again they wreaked havoc on the advancing monsters. Again explosions ripped through that massive force. They might as well have been attacking the tides. The Frost Fiends had reached the walls.
“Pike, forward. Fusilier and Arquebus, fire as ready!”
The commands were unnecessary. The pikemen had already moved forward to prevent any fiend that managed to make the wall from getting to the vulnerable shooters. Arquebus thundered. Fusil tempête breathed death.
“We must find the one controlling them. I’ve never seen it with such a large force, but this is how they battle us. Somewhere in that mass will be their War Leader, a Silverback. If we can force him to withdraw, the army will go with him.” Kahji advised.
“Then keep your eyes out, I can’t just go looking for him, but once you see him, we’ll go get him.”
Alaric turned what little of his attention he had diverted back to the battle. He scanned his forces for signs of breech. He scanned the advancing force for signs of weakness. Fortunately, he found none of the former. Unfortunately, he also found none of the latter.
Almost speaking to himself, he observed, “Whichever way the break comes, when it arrives it will arrive quickly. I won’t have much, if any, notice.”
He forced himself to keep scanning the battle. To keep his focus, he forced himself to look at it in different patterns or would just close his eyes for a second. He did everything he could to keep watching the battle with fresh eyes. He knew the fog of war could be deadly for his men, all the more so if he fell victim to it.
A corner of his mind saw the pattern long before he noticed it consciously. There was a swirling in the attack, a central point from which the enemy’s van seemed to originate.
“Kahji, there,” he said, pointing, “Is that what you’re looking for?”
“It is. His most powerful troops will be there.”
Alaric looked back to the battle. His men were handing out casualties far in excess of four to one. They showed no signs of breaking, yet. He knew it was only a matter of time.
At some point he had donned armor. Heavy plate sat on his shoulders, chest, back, and thighs. Under it was a mail shirt extending to his wrists, held in place on his forearms by steel vambraces. His boots had steel grieves. At his side was buckled a good steel sword. He wore a cavalry shield on his back. This he loosed and moved to his left arm.
“Sir Gyire, continue to direct the defense. The War Leader and I are going hunting.”
Hearing the acknowledgement, Alaric positively ran down the ladder to the ground, calling for a horse. Before he had reached the sally gate, a great charger had been provided. He climbed into the saddle and gripped a lance provided by one of the squires. Kahji simply stood beside him; he could run as fast as a horse anyway.
“Close the sally gate as soon as we’re through. Don’t open it again except on my order,” he commanded.
Donning his helm, he pulled down the visor. His voice was muffled behind the steel grille, “Open the gate!”
Before the sally gate even began to open, he was spurring the charger. The great steed’s hooves churned the ground for a moment, and then horse and rider leaped forward. Kahji was already in front, leading the way with his great club.
As soon as they exited the gate, they slammed into the Frost Fiends. Stone club, lance, and steel-shod hooves slammed into icy flesh. Fiend after fiend exploded into shards of ice which were rendered harmless by the armor of the furious duo. When the lance broke, Alaric fell back to his sword, remembering to thrust rather than hack or cut.
For his part, Kahji was a whirlwind of hot death. The great stone club would shatter one fiend’s arm, then the War Leader’s claws would stab into another’s chest. Much more in control than an average Igni soldier, Kahji surrounded himself with a hurricane of flame. The Frost Fiends would only come near that swirling conflagration when they had no other choice.
On a charger, not taken by surprise, Alaric was more than a match for the fiends he found. Their sheer numbers would overwhelm him soon enough if he didn’t reach his objective, but his fury coupled with his skill gave them a chance. He rode the horse as though he were part of it. The horse would jump to kick at a beast behind them, and Alaric would simultaneously stab the one in front of them.
Soon, being overwhelmed was not an issue. A circle formed around the two, almost organically. Before they could even pause to consider the reason, it was revealed. There, seated on one of the great ice pigs, sat a Frost Fiend larger than the rest. This beast had markings showing it as something special. And there, on its back…
“The Silverback,” Kahji snarled.
Before the two could set upon their foe, two more hog riders appeared from the mass of bodies. Snarling their defiance, they charged. These held spears and lowered them as though they were lances.
Alar
ic raised his shield and sword, and waited for his attacker to come to him. At the last possible minute, he nudged his horse slightly to the side. Using his shield to redirect the blow rather than simply to block it, he forced the spear out wide. Twisting in the saddle, he thrust at his opponent.
The fiend was canny and fast. Seeing that its strike had missed, it was already bringing its formidable arm, covered in armoring ice, around to parry the expected strike. It then charged on past Alaric and his mount. Faster than the horse could, the war hog turned and began to charge back at Alaric. This time, the pig’s great tusks swung side to side, attempting to slash Alaric or his mount.
Once again, Alaric managed to maneuver out of the way. His horse had not managed to turn all the way around, so he spurred its flanks causing it to leap forward and out of the way of the charge. He then reared the horse up on its hind legs. As it came back down, he sawed the reins to the side, causing the horse to twist as it descended. The mighty, steel-shod hooves missed the head of the Frost Fiend, instead crashing down onto the spine of its mount.
With a squealing roar, the pig fell. Its rear legs would no longer move. It fell to the ground, crippled. Before the fiend could react, Alaric leaned over in his saddle and stabbed it. He removed the blade before it could bind in the Frost Fiend’s body then brought his shield up to deflect the resulting shards of ice.
That reflexive move saved his life. Seeing one of his elite guards fall, the Silverback charged, roaring its own defiance. It swung its massive, clawed hand at Alaric’s head. It was blind luck that Alaric interposed his shield; he hadn’t even seen the great fiend coming.
They were locked, then. Too close for either mount to do much more than shove or turn slightly, the beast of chaos and the baron’s son fought face to face and eye to eye. Both blocked out the sounds of the fight around them. Both focused solely on the other.
In truth, it didn’t matter. Such was their fury that the battle around them all but stopped. Up on the ramparts, the men of the Dell watched their baron’s third son battle a beast they knew none of them could face for fifteen seconds. Many of them found themselves holding their breath as seconds turned into minutes.
Claws and fangs met sword and shield. A great swiping swing would be followed by an impossibly fast thrust from the other great paw. The shield would clang once, then twice, and then it would swipe out in a swing designed to clear the great beast’s defenses. Following behind in the same motion, the sword would arc in to stab. Before it could reach its target, one of those great paws would swipe back, deflecting the weapon or blocking it outright. The two would reset, and the pattern would repeat.
That dance of death couldn’t last. Finally, Alaric began to tire. It was a little thing. Against any human he would still have had many minutes to fight. He might have even still won. He wasn’t fighting a human.
One thrust came just a little slower than the ones before. This time, instead of a single paw blocking the weapon out wide, one came in to block the blow, while the other swiped out and struck Alaric’s now unprotected chest. The strength of that blow, as glancing and off balance as it undoubtedly was, blasted him out of the saddle. Falling nearly eight feet, Alaric kept enough of his wits about him to go limp, thus preventing more serious injury. Still, he looked on in a daze, unable to defend himself as the Silverback’s claws descended.
Before they reached their destination, the Silverback arched backwards and screamed in obvious agony. Kahji, having finally finished with his own opponent, struck the Silverback from behind, stabbing viciously into its back. The Silverback turned and swiped at the tired and wounded War Leader, sending him tumbling to the ground.
As Kahji sprang back to his feet, the Silverback fell back into the crowd of his warriors and soon disappeared from sight. The entire force began to melt backwards, covering their leader’s retreat. They took no time to hitch their great draft animals back to their great catapults, and instead simply fell back, away from the castle and to the borderlands.
Alaric rose slowly and looked at his friend’s bleeding torso.
“We won’t survive another one of those,” he said between his gasping breaths, “They’ll have learned. We have to find out what they’re here for.”
CHAPTER 12
“My Lord, this is preposterous!” Martin all but shouted, “We’ve already proven we can protect our lands now that we know about the enemy. It’s entirely likely they won’t return. If they do, we certainly can’t afford to have some of our best men away from the walls!”
Alaric was not completely certain why his brother was so resistant to the idea of sending a party to look for the Monsignor. He suspected part of it a combination of envy and embarrassment. Martin had been groomed as the next Baron Dell. He had been tutored in history and diplomacy; he had received the best training at arms his father could arrange; and he had been taught strategy and tactics. It must have stung to have been shown up by the brother he’d disdained for so long. Adding insult to that injury was the way he had completely frozen in the face of the Frost Fiends.
Judging by his face, the baron was none too pleased with his own lack of performance. The baron was a veteran of many wars. Never before had he frozen in the face of the enemy. Shame at his own failure warred with pride over his son’s accomplishment.
“Martin, that is enough!” he returned, just short of a bellow.
“My lord,” the castellan began, his tone conciliatory, “You should listen to Martin. With all respect for Alaric, especially in light of his accomplishment, it does not make any sense to go looking for the Monsignor now. The only knowledge we have of these… things… comes from the Igni,” the term ‘Fire Apes’ lurked beneath the surface of the words, “and is far from complete. We suffered few significant casualties, and the engineers are already at work repairing and reinforcing the outer wall.
“Never in our history have we found a foe we could not defeat. Given the quickness, if not actual ease, with which this force was defeated, I see no reason to believe that has changed. Moreover, few enemies, so quickly defeated, would return without great cause. We know of no such cause. So it does not seem reasonable to expect further attacks.
“While I do not doubt Alaric’s motives or earnestness, I do question his judgment, here. He insists that these Frost Fiends will attack again more quickly than we believe. If he is correct, then we can hardly afford to send him, who so ably directed our defense the last time, and our best men off on a search for a man who is who-knows-where, or could even, let us face the possibility, be dead.”
Alaric could easily guess Sir Gyire’s motives. The castellan had borne a grudge against the baron’s youngest son for quite some time. He seemed to take absolute delight in contradicting him or putting obstacles in his way. Further, he saw in Martin a chance for advancement. The castellan was not a dishonorable man, but he did desire more lands. The baron had, for a variety of reasons, denied his requests for additional manors in the barony for many years. Sir Gyire saw his best chance to have those requests granted in becoming very close with the heir.
For his own part, Alaric had to repress his frustration. Perhaps it was because of their prejudice against the Igni, a common enough feeling among the humans of the Firemarch, just as the reverse was true among the Igni. Perhaps it was because they resented his success and wanted to limit any perceived damage to their own reputations. There was even a slight chance the two were acting out of honest, but misguided, judgment. Whatever the reason, they had teamed up quickly to prevent Alaric from taking the best men he could find and seeking out the Monsignor.
Taking a deep breath, he tried once again. “My lord, Kahji and I nearly died defending the castle. Yes, the wounds we took were superficial, but the Silverback had me. Had Kahji been just a little slower, or a little less lucky with his own opponent, I would now be dead. Kahji likely would be as well. We did not drive the attackers away. They chose to retreat. There is no reason they won’t try again tomorrow. We are guessing that it
will take somewhat longer than that for the Silverback to regroup and be able to bring them back across into our realm, but that is merely a guess.
“If we can find out what they seek, then we can go about defeating them. Right now, we don’t even know why they’re attacking us. It is possible that the artifact they likely seek is already in the castle. It’s possible that it is not, but that they believe it to be. For all we know, this army, and it was an army, is merely a diversion from their real goal, designed to keep us locked up here and unable to block their path toward their true purpose.
“I am not suggesting that I take an army with me. I want three men. Yes, the ones I’ve selected are the best horsemen I can find. Yes, they’re also some of the best with sword while on horseback. If you didn’t notice, we didn’t exactly have a chance for a cavalry charge when they attacked last time.
“My brother and the noble castellan would ask that you believe the best or middle scenarios. Their position is that the threat is likely ended, and that even if it isn’t we can fend it off ourselves. I am asking you to consider that the worst case is possible. Consider that the threat is not ended, and that we cannot resist it with main force. I am asking for three men and one week,” Alaric pleaded.
The baron regarded the three of them from his high seat. His whole being had seemed to be under some dark cloud since the battle several hours ago. His face seemed drawn and haggard. His shoulders showed a stoop that Alaric could never remember seeing before. He seemed shrunken. Defeated.
After long moments, he spoke, “No, Alaric. I understand your thoughts, and your wishes. But I cannot spare the men. If, as you say, they arrive tomorrow, we will need every hand. The wall will not be repaired for many days. While I certainly do not believe that I will balk a second time against such a foe, we can take no chances that I or your brother will, or that we will both fall in battle, and then there will be no one to lead the men. I cannot accede to your request.”
Alaric bit back a curse with some effort. With precision so sharp it could cut, he half bowed to his father, turned on his heel and strode out of the great hall. The guards at the door had to move quickly to open it before he reached them.
Fire and Frost (Seven Realms Book 1) Page 8