"Got quiet. Like the gits might have had enough," growled Kyrax.
Epos, without turning, answered in his deep, flat voice, "Most of them will be dismounting for an attack on foot, using their long spears as pikes. The remainder will stay mounted, in reserve for either a breach in the shield wall, or a route through the hills and around our defenses."
"How do you know all that?" asked Firio's awed voice, though he himself was unseen in the wooded shadows.
"The terrain and situation are much like at Caunea, six years ago," replied Epos.
"Now that's more words than you've said in three days," added Larogwan.
Epos did not reply.
Talaos raised a hand, and the others grew quiet. Up ahead and above was the hilltop. Adriko would have some men up there, and if they had any traps for the enemy, Talaos didn't want to find them the hard way.
"Imvan, Firio, take point and watch for sentries. We don't want to get ambushed by our own men."
Without a word, the Hillman and the man of the streets did so. After a little while, Firio's voice whispered ahead, invisible in the darkness.
"How're you doing, Anwyn?"
There was a startled motion, and a voice with an accent of the Seven Realms answered.
"Firio! Where are you lad? We thought you were all dead!"
"I don't think we are. Not yet anyway."
"Now that is good news. Want me to take you to Adriko?"
"Nah. Just let him know we're here. We're going around to say hello to the enemy."
~
Talaos crouched low in the shadows of the lowest trees with the Madmen behind him. The slope here was steep, but further around and down it leveled off to merge with the gentle slope of the pass. Before him was the scene of battle, lit here and there by torches.
True to Epos' assessment, the enemy had massed ranks of men on foot, shields up and long spears raised. They were close packed, thirty files across and fifteen ranks deep. Among them were some ready with javelins, at the back were archers. Behind that was a chaotic area, where soldiers cleared the corpses of men and horses, fallen weapons and gear, and the remains of fire logs, then piled them out of the way. Other soldiers led wounded men and riderless horses back out of the battlefield. At the rear was another body of perhaps two hundred, still mounted and ready for the right time.
In front of the enemy was a wide, blood-strewn area. Corpses and hastily strewn earth now filled the trench, and little remained of the palisade atop the earthen rampart. The spearmen looked to have taken heavy casualties, but not anything like as many as Talaos had expected. At least eighty men still stood firm, in good order. Many had bandaged wounds. Lurios stood on the rampart with a bloody bandage around his forehead, watching the enemy.
Days earlier, Talaos had considered the trim, aristocratic, almost vain captain a sort of parade ground officer, and the Aledri men an afterthought to their expedition. He saw how wrong he had been.
On the eastern hillside, opposite from them and to the enemy's left, was Adriko, sitting thoughtfully on a rock. He had bandages on his forearm and his left leg. Irregular archers stood in a group around him, as well as Drevan and a few dismounted cavalrymen.
Adriko's little army had held. But the enemy was now better organized for the sort of fight they faced, and despite their losses, they still had nearly five hundred men on foot ready to advance with what were effectively massed pikes.
Talaos looked down at his own wounded body. He was covered in dried blood, but the bleeding itself had stopped and healing had started. While it wasn't actually fast enough to see in progress, it was so fast as to be unnatural... or would be, if it weren't so natural to him. Still, he could feel the cumulative toll of it all, and black weariness was creeping upon him.
But he had given his word, and would see this through.
Down below, the man who seemed the most senior of the surviving enemy officers, in blood-stained green crest and cloak, raised a tall spear with small pennants in the colors of many towns, and began to shout orders. Two men nearby blew horns. The enemy began to advance in close ranks. Those toward the front lowered their long spears.
The enemy troops in their close formation, filling the pass from one side to the other with their long spears, were well organized to overwhelm the vastly outnumbered defenders. They were also, thought Talaos, not in a position to maneuver easily.
"Here's our cue, men," said Talaos in a low voice.
The enemy troops with javelins hurled them into the Aledri spearmen, then raised their own long spears. From the back of the enemy column, arrows fired at targets on the rampart. Here and there Aledri men fell, were carried back, and their places taken by others. The enemy closed, spears low, crossed the treacherous corpse-ground of the ditch, and ascended the rampart. Their massed spears clashed with those upon the rampart, and men began to die.
Without warning, six men charged down the hillside on the enemy's right. Vulkas roared like some colossal beast. Kyrax, Larogwan, Halmir, and Epos ran in great loping steps behind him. Behind them, quietly and furtively, a small figure darted downhill among the shadows. Still on the hillside, Imvan found a large stone that gave some cover, and set up shop with his bow and several full quivers.
To the left of the charging Madmen, farthest from the rampart where the slope was steepest, Talaos made a great soaring leap. High through the air he came, an apparition in blood soaked black with his tattered black cloak spread around him like a raven's wings. His swords glittered in the moonlight beneath flickering blue eyes.
Men turned up to see him with fear in their own eyes.
Vulkas reached the closest, rightmost file of enemy soldiers, at the center ranks crossing the ditch. He hurtled into them like a rampaging bull, smashing left and right with his war mattock, and treading corpses under his feet. The head of one enemy disappeared in a red mist, another went flying back through the air, crashing with havoc among the enemy further away.
In Vulkas' wake, and on his right, Epos coolly cut down a startled man in the front ranks of the enemy. To the right of Epos, Kyrax scowled and stabbed through the side of an enemy's neck, then stepped low inside the shield of another to gut the man. On the left was Larogwan, who brought an axe crashing through the helm of an enemy as the man hurriedly tried to turn his long spear. Farthest left, to the enemy rear, Halmir leapt and turned, dealing death around him.
The enemy files on the right of their formation, nearest to the sudden onslaught, began to turn in confusion, long spears turning unevenly amid the press.
Then the apparition landed, close behind them with whirling blades. Talaos spun and lunged, short blade and long working in perfect coordination to bring death to the soldiers in the last rank of the enemy formation. Pressed close together under their long spears, they turned with difficulty. Like death made manifest, he scythed under his tattered shroud of a cloak, and men fell before the reaping.
The entire right flank of the enemy army began to dissolve in confusion and spilling blood. The commander shouted orders, and from the left of the army, the two rearmost ranks detached. Some of them formed up in a new formation of two compact ranks behind, and perpendicular to, the main formation. They charged with lowered spears. Others, the archers, dropped their spears and readied bows for new targets.
On the enemy's right, havoc unfolded. Vulkas cleared a mighty path, and the four at his side widened it. Talaos wreaked whirling slaughter. The enemy's front ranks, at the rampart and caught between the Aledri men and the Madmen, withered and died. Behind the front wave of destruction, a small, furtive, seemingly insignificant figure, brought sudden death to enemy survivors still fighting, and swift passage to those dying.
The enemy commander shouted another order. Horns blew.
The reserve of cavalry, nearly two hundred strong, advanced up the hillside.
The small detached formation of enemy spearmen charged as arrows flew over their heads and at the Madmen. Arrows lodged in Larogwan's shield. One struck
Kyrax in the thigh at a shallow angle, and he spewed curses as he ripped it out. From the hillside high above on the right, answering arrows came, and enemy archers began to fall, one by one.
Talaos, moving and slaying, took in the scene.
With the disruption unleashed by the Madmen, the main enemy body lost momentum. The Aledri men and the irregulars were holding, with hard bloodstained fighting, at the rampart. The right side of the enemy formation was roiling in battle as the Madmen fought the onrushing enemy spearmen.
But now the cavalry was advancing. They were coming up the hill at a trot, in an unbroken formation of two hundred. Soon, very soon, they would close, and then his men would be fighting on two sides, or three. Even they would likely fall.
And his men, the Madmen, even if they held, must grow weary sooner or later.
As would he.
Even now it was coming, like a shadow in his soul.
And the depleted men on the rampart would face the full force of the enemy alone. The men at the rampart, the men who had stood fast as a vast eagle of fire screamed at them from above, would die.
Then it would be over.
Now though, he had something to do.
Up the moonlit slope rode two hundred cavalry with lowered spears.
Down the slope to meet them went one man
One man in tattered black, covered from head to foot in blood, with his black cloak flapping in shreds in the wind.
The enemy horsemen looked at him in surprise. He looked at them with the intent gaze of a hunting wolf.
The front ranks spurred their horses to run him down.
He sprinted, he leapt, with the dropping slope he seemed to take wing like a raven in the moonlight. He spun in mid air as he descended. Blades flashed, scything, and two horsemen died with bodies falling one way, and their heads another.
In their midst, he ducked low, circling, and with grim necessity cut men's horses from under them. Beasts and men toppled, spreading havoc in the close ranks. All around, the cavalry were thrown into confusion. Talaos rose from the ruin he'd made, leapt to the back of a fallen horse, and from there to the back of a living one with a rider. He sliced the man from shoulder to waist, then flew to another horse and another foe to slay.
Then a long spear found his flesh. He ripped himself free, leapt backward, spun as he went, and impaled the throat of the enemy who'd stabbed him. He whirled over fallen horses and slew another man. Horsemen circled all round him now, stabbing, as he circled with flashing blades atop the corpses. Another spear stabbed him, and another.
Talaos could hear the shouted orders of the enemy commander. He heard the command to kill him at all costs. He felt his strength ebbing. His fresh blood made red streams down the caked brown blood on his clothes and body. Enemies approached to slay him, and he killed them as they tried. His pile of corpses grew.
Higher up the pass, he heard the Madmen shouting. Vulkas roared as he sent the shattered corpses of men flying before him. Higher still, he heard clear shouted commands from Adriko and Lurios. He heard a horn, and then a new sound. Soldiers advancing forward his way from higher up. The enemy? The brave spearmen of Aledri? He knew not. He merely fought and slew.
The blackness grew within him.
The enemy was all around him. They pressed in, stabbing at him with spears as he dodged and whirled.
From high up the pass came more sounds of horns. Then there was a sound, another new sound. Cavalry riding down from on high? Illusions felt in the shadow of death, he thought. The cavalry, the enemy were right here, all around him, and he slew them.
And they him, cut by cut.
Spears pierced his flesh. He sliced them apart, but more came. A hundred aimed his way.
His blood flowed from many wounds.
Cornered at last, he thought.
So be it.
A mighty life, but short.
He prepared to make a worthy death.
Men all around fell before his scything blades. All around him. But more came.
Then blackness took him.
This is not the end of the story.
It continues with The Storm's Own Son, Book Two.
A preview follows.
Preview of The Storm's Own Son, Book Two
The center of the enemy front line stood ragged and shattered. Talaos and his five beasts tore into the wound, slaying as they widened it. Behind them or around them, here and there, other enemies still lived, or came forward past their own ranks to surround the invaders. Firio and Imvan, like a pair of predatory birds, or ravens seeing prizes, descended on them.
Now, up the ladder and over the battlement, came the rest of Talaos's men. Grim and terrible, they advanced on the wavering enemy. Talaos, even as he slew, looked back at his advancing men and laughed. The enemies all round wavered, seeing their deaths upon them.
And then eighty grim and merciless men charged, like the flanks and claws of a beast with Talaos and his Madmen as the jaws. With them, death arrived. They howled, roared and slaughtered. It was over swiftly, and then they had only corpses around them. The rain poured from the sky in sheets as lightning flashed overhead.
Talaos laughed. Victory, he thought. But only the first. They had work to do.
The front left tower of the keep was a graveyard of shattered wood and bones. The other three still had ballistae, and even in this wind, they could hit at such close range. The crews in the towers were working furiously to reposition their weapons to do exactly that, while archers took aim at targets close enough to have some chance of success.
"Vulkas!" roared Talaos, voice echoing like thunder, "Take those doors out!"
The doors at the bases of the towers were iron-bound and strong, built to withstand assault. Vulkas ran, massive as a hurtling boulder, to the one at the front right of the keep.
He made a turning leap, war mattock swinging wide.
"ONE!" Vulkas bellowed.
The mattock smashed into the door and sent it flying backward. Soldiers on the other side were crushed in a spray of blood against the opposite wall. Beyond the doorway were stairs, up and down. The giant charged toward a second tower, that on the back right.
A group of Talaos's men charged into the open door, and both up and down the stairs.
"Larogwan, take charge of the men below! Halmir, lead the men up top!" shouted Talaos.
They nodded and ran.
Vulkas reached the second tower.
"TWO!"
The gigantic warrior turned low, mattock swinging around and upward like the mallet in a game of ball. It smashed the door inward from the bottom, flipping its jagged remnants backward to cut a soldier behind it in half at the waist.
"Kyrax, up! Epos, down!" roared Talaos as he followed Vulkas to the final tower.
As they went, another group of Talaos's men poured behind Kyrax and Epos through the shattered tower door.
On top of the first tower, Halmir was leading a swift slaughter.
"THREE!" roared the giant, as he reached the last tower.
Vulkas whirled, mattock upward, then down again in an arc that cracked the door in half, with splinters flying inward. This time no one had been so unwise as to guard behind it.
"Vulkas, clear the tower!" bellowed Talaos, "Firio! Imvan! With me!"
As Vulkas crashed his way up the stairs, smashing foes foolish enough to stand in his way, Talaos descended. He grinned with the feral joy of the hunt, ready to face the unknown prey below. His beasts, he thought, were now leading hunts of their own. Behind him, companions on his hunt, were his ravens, Firio and Imvan, and his wild, ravening men of death.
About the Author
Thanks for purchasing this book!
Anthony Gillis resides in Denver, Colorado, at the feet of the Rocky Mountains. He is the child of hippie adventurer parents, and lived on his father’s sailboat, an island off the coast of Costa Rica, a converted school bus, and a ramshackle house in Ft. Lauderdale with a leaky roof and a sand yard, before settling dow
n to something resembling a normal childhood. Somehow, all that made him decide to enlist and serve in the United States Air Force, and then earn a bachelor’s degree in history and an MBA. He worked in accounting and finance for many years, but has recently been making the transition to full time writer.
A lifelong voracious reader, including fantasy, science fiction, and adventure stories, his influences are wide-ranging, but include J.R.R. Tolkien, Robert E. Howard, C.S. Forester, and Ayn Rand. He is the author of several other books, including the science fiction epic Alien Empire, pirate adventure Jamaica Rum, and the Blood on Bronze sword and sorcery series
More information on the author and his works can be found at anthonygillis.com
Other Books by the Author
BLOOD ON BRONZE –They kicked in his front door. They took his family and seized his business. Powerful and corrupt, they fear nothing from one young man. They underestimated him. Arjun is a bronze maker in Zakran, vast and wicked city of a thousand thousands. Inina is a beautiful young rogue. Bal-Shim is a smiling and suddenly prominent man, loved by rich and poor alike. All their lives are about to change forever. Join them, and enter a world of magic, an age of bronze, a tale of vengeance.
ALIEN EMPIRE – When the aliens came, the world changed forever, but not even they imagined how. Haral Karden is wry, skeptical, and the longstanding leader of his field, the history of first contacts between cultures. When aliens arrive in a fleet of beautiful ships, with benevolent words, and bearing amazing technological gifts, he asks the simple question – what do they want in return?
JAMAICA RUM – Freedom, wealth, and power… or the hangman’s noose? Follow the merchant sailor turned buccaneer Diego Cargrave and the crew of the Sea Drake through wartime adventure. The 1670s were a wild time when pirates were as likely to end up rich as on the end of a noose, and Henry Morgan himself was an English admiral. A realistic pirate tale, there are no magic items or sea monsters here, but plenty of duels, battles, lusty wenches, and rum. Oh, and the rum here is NEVER gone, but with a crew of pirates, is that really a good thing?
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