The Broken Man

by Hawkings Austin

  The rebellion had started in summer. The Count, Idris of Nog, had assembled his army and broken the garrisons of the Blessed Folk, which had been stationed to keep him in his fortress. He was cleanly efficient and the northern armies, the Blackriver Men, had gotten no notice till Fall Moon. He had then spread throughout the southern lands, raiding where he willed and cutting the north off from supply.

  Coscar made it to his feet, bending his neck to loosen it before strapping his fierce-faced helm back in place.

  “Force Leaders!” he shouted, calling his captains to review the battle plan. Here he was hardest hit. The Blackwater garrison had been his home for five years; the highest ranking among the soldiers had been his closest friends. So many of those captains were dead, that the lesser Unit and Group Leaders came as well.

  The Fomor King and his men held a fortress north of the great lake. There was peace between the Fomor and the Blessed Folk, but it was a peace enforced by the armies. Any military move by the King had to go through the Blackriver garrison first. Sure, if the King wanted to go north or east to visit the coast, he was free to, but there were few places there to land an army. If Count Idris could break the Daen garrison which imprisoned his King, and re-group the army in the southern lands, they would have an uprising of the Fomor, and armies fit to once again conquer the Blessed Mother’s Children.

  The garrison was commanded by the Warlord Coscar, who had been given command over all the troops in Pywer, but the other garrisons were cut off and solely intent on keeping their colonies from being overrun by the Count’s army. No War Leader would risk his troops being ambushed by the tricky Count. Without scouts, there was no way of knowing where Nog would strike next. Idris had taken the center of Pywer and from there he could strike at any of the colonies, but, importantly, he had not yet committed himself to battle. The fear of his forces, small as they were, kept each army trapped behind its walls. On the open plains, with no coordination between armies, the Fomor could destroy each in turn, a defeat in detail that was to be avoided.

  “I lied to you, men.” Coscar spoke, his voice harsh with strain. “I said no man could pull his troops together after such a loss. I could have, but Idris did.”They did not need to look out at the snow again, as each had been watching. The voice of the Count of Nog was dimmed by the snow, but the bellow of the giant could be heard at a thousand paces. He had done what few could have and re-assembled his broken army.

  Coscar had known they would come to the north; it was the only plan that made sense to him. In his council chambers, he had found the weakness in the Blessed Folk’s defenses. Trapped in the north, there was little room to move. If the forces formed up on either side of his garrison, he would be powerless to stop the King’s forces from crossing the river and heading south. King Brennen was a great leader and well loved by his people. If he made it into the south unopposed, the Fomor would rise. That army would be unstoppable.

  This looked like a stalemate. Idris couldn’t reach the fortress without going through the fortifications on the Blackwater. While his army was crossing the river he would be easy to stop. But there was a pass to the west that wasn’t fortified. There had been no reason to fortify it, as it didn’t lead anywhere important.

  “I told you he would come here, that we would be the ones our people were counting on,” Coscar said. “The glory or the shame will fall on our heads alone.”

  There had been no hint anywhere that Idris had gathered ships, but Coscar knew. The absence of evidence was good enough to prove it to him. This late in the year, a landing on most of the north coast was suicide but at the end of this pass was a reasonable harbor. From that landing, Idris’s army would have a clear path to Brennen’s door. Coscar would have risked it, so he knew Idris would. Coscar had predicted Idris’ next move and laid an army in the snow to wait for him.

  Coscar continued. “I thought…I hoped that breaking the vanguard would break their spirit.”

  The vanguard travels before the army, to protect it from ambush. Coscar’s plan was solid: destroy the vanguard from ambush. If he killed every last man man, the line troops would never attack. Yet Idris had formed his lines and attacked the pass. Coscar could not let even a single Fomor past him to wake the Blackwater Fortress. If even one giant had slipped their line, they would now be facing war. The king could march his troops on Blackwater garrison, which held only women and children to defend it. Coscar had crafted the line to hold, and it held. The brave warriors had taken the full rush of Idris’ army and even thrown it back.

  Coscar, in his legendary wrath, had struck into the Fomor line like a hound among geese. Brea defended his left, a thick oxhide shield on her left arm and Avenger, her forearm-length bronze needle, fast in her right hand. Coscar fought through their lines and got behind them. The Fomor captains had turned back to deal with the enemy warriors suddenly behind them, and their lines had broken. The soldiers had not seen the enemy at their backs but only the retreat of their captains, and they had fled.

  “We feared that Idris would get men through, raise his king at our backs, and cut us off from our own garrison, but we stopped them.” Coscar smiled the bleak smile of a killer. “We turned them back.”

  The men chanted his name, each time louder. He swelled with pride, finding the strength to stand firm again. “Now we are weakened. He is sure that all he has to do is poke a hole in our line, and we will collapse.”

  What had been nearly twelve hundred men a few hours ago was now nearly cut by half. The thousand line troops of Blackwater garrison had only found a measly two hundred reinforcements from brave Unit leaders who dared to risk the snow and Idris’ forces to aid the man they secretly called “king.” Warlord was the only rank the council had allowed the greatest warrior of the Blessed Folk, but in his people’s eyes he was higher than the council.

  In truth, Brea thought, Coscar had done as much to rally his men after victory as Idris had after defeat. The lines were not so different now. A few hundred Fomor matched against barely twice their number of Daen. The snow whipped through her hair as the Fomor line came again; the great bronze axes looked like toys in their hands.

  “This time, I believe he is wrong. He counts his army as sufficient for holding Blackwater garrison in place while the King marches out.” Coscar snarled in derision. “Idris will have no army.”

  “We form no line. Without Count Idris to push him, the king won’t move in this snow, and before winter is done, we will have our reinforcements. Form units, sets of five. Take your ambush positions, break these bastards and kill them all.”

  The troops did not hesitate but ran to their men and scattered into the snow. Coscar stood with his personal guard, a bare hundred men, and his wife. He knelt in the snow to preserve his strength and to keep what little privacy they had.

  Coscar looked up at his bride; love shone in his eyes.

  “My love, I am done in. I cannot summon the wilding again. The anger has left me, and I am barely able to stand.” When the line had come the first time, Coscar had raged against the Fomor, his battle aura a blaze of fury twice the size of a man, striking fear into even Idris’s hardened veterans.

  The warriors had ignored the woman by his side, small by their standards, and drove their great bronze axes toward the warlord’s head. Inevitably, they were surprised; Avenger slid between the thick bronze-covered leather belts of their war-coats, driving under their ribs and into their lungs. They thought to slay her with the backswing of their axe, but the hardened auroch leather of her shield could hold against their worst blows.

  Brea looked at the soldiers coming, the Count of Idris marching with them, in a point of five men. He meant to break the battle line of the Blessed Folk himself.

  “Love, my only love,” she said, “your battle aura has broken them twice upon this very slope. Can you not bring it forth and cow that beast where he stands? I’ll not leave your side, but even by your own words, we can’t let that rebel bastard through, though it means our lives.�
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  Coscar measured her, as perhaps he had done a thousand times before, but he had done all he could. Now his final act would be how he was measured, when the history was told around the campfires.

  “My heart, the men will follow none but me, but there is one other who can cut the heart from the Fomor rebellion.”

  He lifted his iron blade from its sheath, its cold white steel a gift from the Blessed Mother’s hand to his grandfather’s. King Nuada had used Answerer to conquerer Pywer. Nuada had passed the blade to his son, Gaibel, whose armies fell to the giants. Gaibel grew old under Fomor rule, having no sons till he was feeble with age. Gaibel, on his death bed, had given Coscar the blade to finish what the Warlord Lugh had started. Together they had overthrown the Fomor and created this time of peace.

  The blade had fought the Fomor in his family’s hands for nearly a hundred years. His sons now fought in distant wars against their own folk, no place for the Mother’s gift. He passed it now to his wife.

  “I hold The Blessed Mother’s Answer. Will you give Idris its judgment?”

  Pressing the blade into her hand, he spoke the ritual of the sword.

  “How will the Count of Idris die?”

  She replied to him, as he had spoken to his father.

  “I have his answer in the palm of my hand.”

  Leaning upon her spear, he raised himself. He lifted his shield and his war band stood behind him.

  “Count Idris will charge me, I count on it. But you will charge him. Take five men and strike him dead. Cut the heart from this army, I command it.”

  She unhooked Avenger from her belt, slid it behind his back, under his belt, and hooked the fishtail of the sheath on his belt.

  “I’ll not leave you with nothing to protect yourself.”

  “Thank you, my heart. I’d not have lived a year as warlord without you. You gave me near twenty more than I deserved,” he said.

  Her job had always been to keep him safe, but he was her general. He commanded. With tears in her eyes, she gathered Lugh, Cain, Davin, and his twin Cael. She came to Berin and saw him tying the bandages around his left hand. “You need to burn that,” she said, “or you’ll bleed out in the night.”

  “I’ll not make the night, if the Count passes us,” Berin said. “I’d rather die at your back than on my back at camp, if you don’t mind.” His half hand couldn’t grip his shield, so he slid his arm through the straps, and tied his hand to the grip. “I’ll die with my shield in my hand, at least.”

  She joined the line with her husband, standing to his right as always, but this time he did not hold Answerer but her own spear. It was well balanced to use in one hand or two, and he would be amazingly fast with it, as he was with any weapon. The reach would make him great and protect her left side, for soon she would not be protecting herself.

  The Fomor closed slowly, firming up a strong center of their line and letting the edges weaken. Coscar grinned, for he had known their plan before they started. He raised his hand to Idris and waved it in a broad circle, to show him all the lands around him. Their shallow line was flanked a hundred times. Men in small units, five man teams, were moving toward his line from all directions. They came from the woods, from beneath the snow. Down from the rocks in the passes they came.

  Idris was given pause, for he knew this wasn’t the strength of the Daen line. This close, he could see that the line was barely a man deep and easy to strike through. He wavered for a moment, seeing his plans near to completion, but his opponent acting in a way that defied easy explanation.

  His men were afraid; for they had been broken twice, and there was little strength in their souls to face the enemy line again. Coscar spoke, his voice deep and strong, despite the weariness of his limbs.

  “You are trapped. Throw down your arms, or I shall kill every one of you.”

  The Count of Nog’s troops were wavering. Yet still, with victory at hand, he raised his hand to his banner man, and, turning from the Daen, he gave the banner man the order to signal for advance. By the time he had turned back, it was too late.

  Brea moved like a cat; the ground here had lost its snow beneath the boots of a hundred soldiers. She leapt forward, driving herself ahead of her feet, nearly falling down the slope as she raced ahead. The battle rage took her, as it had taken her husband before her, and the world narrowed to the man standing before her. A man more than three times her size, taller than her by more than the length of her arm, and strong enough to break her with a single strike, but she wore no armor, and no man would live long enough to strike her.

  The lead soldier, defending the Count, stepped in front of her to intercept this bounding shield maiden. He lifted his axe and lowered his shield for the arc a person her size could swing. His eyes missed the flight of Coscar’s spear, and he did not live to swing his blade.

  His shield man stood at his left and had not even bothered to do more than cock his sword over his right shoulder. His shield hung at his side, ignored till the spear cracked through his brother’s skull. He started, looking at the man standing beside him who was already dead, and missed Brea’s charge.

  Brea slid between the men. Answerer cleft the leather plate like soft cloth and slid under his armor. She let the blade slice deep into his entrails and then she moved away, focusing on her true target, Idris. Each man, each death was a minor obstacle. If Idris had not stepped aside at the moment he saw her charge, then the shieldman wouldn’t have even been in her way, and her sword would not have found his final answer.

  Idris fell back toward his banner man. His personal guard stepped between Brea and his Count, raising his shield to guard himself and raising an axe the size of her head to kill this small nuisance. She went to the left, ducking under the view of the guardsman, under his own shield. The banner man fled, dropping the flags at his feet. She did not pursue, but dodged back toward Idris.

  An evil spirit reared up between them. Summoned by his pet sorcerer, this was a construct of ice and snow mashed around the bones of a giant. It lept from the snow and drove a spear of ice into her slim form. The bronze rim of her shield shattered the tip and the monster drew back, confident in its icy armor. Answerer lept forth. A bronze blade would have slid helplessly across its icy flank but the blessed iron dug deep, shattering the ice and snapping the dry bone beneath.

  Brea slammed her shield into its good flank and it stumbled on its broken leg. Its back bent and she dove across. The blessed iron called to the spirit to return to the earth. The spirit became lost between its snow and the ground beneath it. By the time Brea rolled to her feet, the spirit had returned to the Dragon. Nothing remained but a corpse entombed in a mound of ice.

  The shield man smiled at her unguarded flank; he stepped into the shot, and was thrown down as Lugh and Cain struck him together, driving their shoulders into his shield and knocking him into the snow. They struck his head from him, and he never rose again.

  Davin and Cael were never separated, even in death. They struck the line to her left hard, and it turned on them. The Fomor soldiers never looked to Idris, for the twins moved like death among them.

  Idris’s third shieldman had stuck to the plan the Fomor Count had made. His name was Neit, and he went for Coscar, directly and fully. His intent was to take the heart out of the Daen lines. But Coscar strode into battle with no defenders at all. He strode valiantly into the fight, following his wife and striving to keep Idris’ guards from reaching her back. When Neit moved to block him, he tried to side-slip the giant, but Niet moved again to block him. Cut off from his wife, he stepped back from the line and let a space open about them. Coscar challenged Neit to a duel.

  Coscar yanked Avenger from the sheath behind him and spun it once in his hand. It was far lighter than Answerer, which was good, for he lacked the strength he had shown that morning. He had a lifetime of skill; however, and Avenger spoke to that skill. Without realizing it, in challenging Idris’s guardsman, he had challenged a man with skill near equal to his own.
Neit was called “the Dancer” for his footwork. Most giants are slow of foot and weak on sword skill, but the Dancer was as tight in his forms as Coscar had ever managed. When Neit threw down his axe and drew a slick smooth bronze blade, Coscar knew he had met his match. Despite the heroic actions of his wife, the battle between Coscar and Neit was to be sung as broadly by the bards.

  Davin and Cael were slain, but the line did not advance. In the center of the battlefield, atop the banners of Idris, was the greatest show of swordsmanship any man or giant had ever seen. They stopped, unwilling to break this display with brute numbers and watched. The Daen and the Fomor separated, letting the battle between Neit and Coscar be their center. As they stood on the battle flags of the Fomor, it seemed appropriate that they were the farthest point the line had advanced.

  Neit moved in a simple pattern, cut and back cut, overhand slice. His footwork built the challenge, right, left, sliding step. Each one drove Coscar to shift his stance, to back away or meet blade on blade. He dared not meet Avenger’s slim body against the broad Fomor blade. So he circled, arched, and retreated. Each step risked a trip in the snow, a tangle in a flag, or a broken blade.

  Switching up, he moved forward, sliding Avenger along the giant’s arm. Blood welled forth, but the Dancer didn’t pause. Coscar risked a deeper stroke, slicing Avenger into his elbow, but Neit caught at the blade with an armored hand. Coscar was lucky to pull Avenger free before his skull was split with Neit’s downstroke. Coscar rolled away but was shaken.

  It seemed that the battle was put aside for the time of this fight. The enemy lines formed up into half circles, ringing these great warriors. Coscar risked a glance at the giant’s line but didn’t see Idris. He was comforted, and his strength renewed. Coscar had faith in his wife and knew Brea would defeat Idris; he only had to hold on long enough. With the death of their leader, this rebellion would fall apart.

  The Fomor king himself was old and did not want to die in the snow. He was old now and lacked the will to die as a warrior. His sons had been hidden away in the temples for more than thirty years. Perhaps one of his secret princes would come out of hiding, gather his warriors, and continue this war. Idris would have been wise to gather them from the temples and bring their troops, but there was no royal banner on this field. Perhaps Idris’s example would caution those princes against open rebellion.