Bloodsworn

by Nathan Long

  There were screams too, and the sick sounds of horses falling and snapping their legs and crushing men beneath them, but the rest galloped on, a thundering rapids of armour, horseflesh and men.

  Ulrika saw the Emperor’s retinue of Reiksguard look up and back at the noise as they reached the last turn. Men pointed and cried out, and the leaders picked up the pace, cantering into the turn where they had been jogging. Swords and pistols came out, and a bright wizard on a roan horse dropped back into the rearguard and drew an iron staff from his back.

  Ulrika looked to the base of the hill. She and the lancers would reach it roughly a hundred paces to the left of the road, and at roughly the same time as Karl Franz and his force reached the flat. If she could have angled across, she could have closed that gap to spitting distance, but turning on such uncertain ground would bring ruin. Yasim and the other horses would fall and the lancers would crash down on top of her. All that would reach the bottom of the hill would be horsemeat and broken men.

  The first of the Emperor’s troops reached the level road as the rest of the column continued to wind off the hill behind them. Ulrika hit the flat at a dead run a second later and pulled Yasim’s head as hard to the right as she dared. The Arabyan’s knees almost buckled as the ground rose under her, but she recovered and breasted through shoulder-high saplings and bulrushes as she angled into the sharp turn.

  It was a tight squeeze. The edge of the forest came almost to the base of the hill, and thick tree trunks whipped by inches away on Ulrika’s left. She ducked a low branch and straightened out, but some of the lancers didn’t make it. The legs of some of the horses gave out at the base of the slope, and they went down on their necks, sliding and crashing and throwing their riders. Others barrelled wildly into the trees, unable to stop. More crashed down on top of the fallen, but the men of the Ostermark were not called the Empire’s finest horsemen for nothing. Most cleared the wreckage and made the turn, and were quickly surging after Ulrika with sabres drawn.

  Ulrika glanced back and saw Stahleker still at her shoulder, grinning like a lunatic.

  ‘Madness, bloodsucker!’ he shouted. ‘Madness!’

  She laughed and sped on, closing fast on the Emperor’s retinue as its tail slowly wound around the last curve of the descent. Karl Franz was on the flat behind the vanguard now, hidden between the two files of enormous knights who rode on either side of the column. The knights were beginning to speed up as the road entered the wood, but not by much, for they didn’t want to get strung out along the road. Ulrika bared her teeth. She had them.

  The lancers curved after her as she angled towards the road. Fifty paces now. The Reiksguard’s rearguard was on the flat, and the column was picking up speed. They still weren’t fast enough. She turned onto the road only twenty paces behind them, narrowing her eyes against the plume of mud and grit they kicked up in their wake. She was so close now she could hear their hearts pounding, feel the heat of their blood as it raced in their veins.

  The bright wizard in the rear rank twisted back and pointed his staff at her. She flinched, expecting a wall of fire, but he was having difficulty staying in the saddle, and finding it hard to loose his flames.

  Ulrika chuckled as she let go of Yasim’s reins and drew a pistol. Apparently they didn’t teach riding at the Colleges of Magic. She aimed at the wizard as heat ripples began to form around the amber orb at the end of his staff. He was too small a target. With a grunt of regret, she lowered the gun and shot his horse.

  The beast went down screaming and crushed the wizard under its body as it slammed to the mud. His staff snapped and went flying. Ulrika leapt the mess, cursing. Too many horses had died this night, and not enough men. Well, she would rectify that.

  Ten paces away now, and they were into the wood, the huge oaks rising up on either side of the road to close above it like a temple roof. Yasim was flagging a little, her flanks flecked with foam, but there was still no question. Ulrika and the lancers would be riding up the Reiksguard fundaments in a matter of seconds.

  ‘Vanguard! Peel off!’ roared a commanding voice from further up the column. Even over the rain and the thunder of ten score horses she could hear it. ‘To the rear, charge!’

  Ulrika’s eyes widened. The Reiksguard were sending the front to the back, meeting their charge with a charge in order to give the rest time to form up – or make their escape.

  ‘Charge coming!’ she shouted over her shoulder. ‘Ride through! Ride through!’

  A few seconds later hurtling forms surged around either side of the retreating column – two files of knights, thundering down the narrow gap between the road edge and the trees that flanked it, whipping past their comrades and charging straight for Ulrika and Stahleker’s lancers. As they came, they formed up into a line six wide and three deep and lowered heavy lances. Even as her guts shrivelled in trepidation, Ulrika had to admit it had been neatly done. Even the Gryphon Legions of the North would have had difficulty with such a manoeuvre.

  ‘Brace for it!’ she shouted. ‘Drive through!’

  A knight in a red cape aimed his lance straight for her heart. Only her unnatural strength and the temper of her stolen blade saved her. Wolf’s Fang beat the lance aside at the last second, splintering it, and it shot past her arm, a hair’s breadth from tearing it off. Unfortunately, she could not avoid the impact that followed.

  Yasim slammed chest to chest with the knight’s massive warhorse as the lancers crashed into the Reiksguard all around her. Ulrika’s jaw clacked shut at the collision, and her brain bounced around in her head. The two sides surged up like surf hitting a wall, horses rearing and falling, men crushed, men impaled on lances, men trampled underfoot, but eighteen knights, no matter how heavy their armour and mounts, could not hold back two hundred lancers. Even as Ulrika and Stahleker and the rest of the front rank were knocked about like nine-pins, the rest of the lancers drove forwards, shoving them inexorably on and swarming past them on all sides.

  The knights were like tortoises caught in a swift stream, swiftly dragged down and rolled under by the weight of numbers. Ulrika sheared through the helmet of her opponent, sending him pitching backwards off his saddle in a fountain of blood, to be lost beneath the crush of lancers.

  In seconds, his seventeen brothers were all dead or downed, but they had done what they were meant to do. The lancers’ momentum was lost. They had broken through, but at the expense of their speed and formation.

  ‘On! On!’ shouted Ulrika. ‘Form up and ride! Hurry!’

  The lancers struggled to obey, ranking together as best they could, and spurring their weary and wounded horses on. All the men at the front were battered and bleeding, their armour dented and torn away. Stahleker’s helm was gone, and he had a cut on his forehead that bled like a river. He spit blood as he echoed her orders.

  ‘Form up, you whoresons! After them!’

  Ulrika looked ahead dispiritedly as they picked up the pace, expecting to see nothing but horse tails and lance tops vanishing into the darkness, but to her surprise, she saw the rearguard turning and making a line. No, it wasn’t just the rearguard! It was the whole column. Karl Franz was coming back for them!

  Ulrika whooped and whirled Wolf’s Fang around her head. ‘The prize is still in reach, you horse thieves! Take it! Hit them before they make their line!’

  Stahleker fell in beside her as they kicked their horses into a gallop. She flashed a wild smile at him.

  ‘You think I’m mad?’ she cried. ‘Your Emperor is insane!’

  ‘Brave,’ rasped the sergeant. ‘Like you.’

  This second charge didn’t have the impact of the first. The lines were too ragged on both sides, and neither had the speed. Instead, the two forces crushed together in a plunging, brawling swirl, swords and maces and warhammers rising and falling and clashing against armour both bright and black, polished and scarred.

  Ulrika fo
ught in the centre of it, howling, Yasim wheeling and rearing beneath her as she lashed out on all sides with Wolf’s Fang. It was bliss. She and the sword and the horse were suddenly one, a single, steel-clawed centaur that moved all its parts in perfect harmony. As a dancer knows instinctively where her feet and hands and torso are at all times, Ulrika knew where Yasim would step and how her weight would shift. She knew where the blade would strike and where to block the next attack. And she knew just how to turn and duck and stretch to complement their movements.

  Knights fell away from her in showers of blood, their breastplates cleft and chests carved to the heart as the terrible blade glowed like a red sun. She severed hands and snapped weapons in half. She cut throats and broke ribs. She crushed heads and let guts spill to the ground. The world turned crimson. It rained blood. She bathed in it. She fed just by inhaling.

  Then, through the crimson haze of battle-lust and the clamour of battle, she heard a voice – clear and rich and strong.

  ‘Take her alive! I will know who is behind this!’

  Another voice, darker, harsher, answered. ‘We will, my liege, but you must retire.’

  ‘I do not lead from behind,’ declared the first voice.

  Ulrika snapped from her blood fugue and looked around. My liege? The first voice was the Emperor! He was close. There. A tall, clean-limbed, clear-eyed man, armoured no more elaborately than any of his knights, but mantled in crimson and ermine, with a plain circlet fixed to his helm and an aura of command that was almost tangible. He was pressing his horse into the pack with his sword unsheathed and a cloaked, black-bearded giant of a knight beside him, who seemed to be trying to keep between him and the fighting. This must be Ludwig Schwarzhelm, his champion, whose name was nearly as famous as his master’s.

  ‘My liege, you are ill,’ said Schwarzhelm. ‘This is not the time.’

  Ulrika cut down another knight and wheeled to face the pair over the surging melee. ‘If you wish me alive, Emperor, come take me!’ she cried, pointing her sword at them. ‘Karl Franz, Prince of the Reikland and Emperor of the provinces, I–’ She broke off. She shouldn’t name herself, but what name should she say? Von Messinghof had said he wanted the Empire to think Lahmia had killed Karl Franz. Ha! Yes! ‘I, Countess Gabriella of Lahmia, Herald of the Queen of the Silver Mountain, challenge you to single combat!’

  ‘And I, Karl Franz, accept–’ began the Emperor eagerly, but Schwarzhelm pushed ahead of him.

  ‘No, my liege,’ he said, firmly. ‘I am your champion. It is my duty to protect you – even from yourself.’

  ‘Ludwig,’ said Karl Franz. ‘I am still a knight.’

  ‘You are the Emperor, my liege,’ said Schwarzhelm, shouldering his massive horse through the press towards Ulrika. ‘And you are not at your full strength. You need prove nothing to fiends like this. Ride on. They will not follow you.’

  Ulrika sneered. If this bear in a tin suit wanted to die for his Emperor, then she would oblige him. Karl Franz would keep for another few seconds, for he did not seem eager to go. Instead he watched as his champion closed with her.

  Ulrika drove forwards to meet him, her bloodlust still singing its joyous song of mayhem in her head. It was only as Schwarzhelm raised his long sword that the faintest note of doubt added a discord to its melody. She had never seen such a blade before. The weapon did not burn with arcane flames. It did not glow with red power as hers did. It was not black, or fitted with spikes or skulls or sawed edges. It was as stark and simple a sword as she had ever seen, and yet it radiated a sense of purity and power that made her shrink back as if she were staring into the sun. This blade stood against everything that she had become. It was a ward against the darkness. It was the doom of the enemies of mankind.

  Another sour note added to the growing cacophony. A sword like this was never wielded by a ‘bear in a tin suit’. This was a hero’s sword. It would only be bestowed upon a knight as pure and powerful and perfect as itself. When she had thought of it at all, she had thought the title ‘Emperor’s Champion’ was an honorary one, a post given to some honoured general, now retired. Ludwig Schwarzhelm did not look retired.

  She snarled and spurred on, driving the doubt from her mind with a howl of fury. What did it matter? Hadn’t she killed Kodrescu? Wasn’t she faster and stronger than any living man? Didn’t she have a powerful sword of her own?

  She ducked a whistling sweep from the great blade as they slammed together, and lashed out at the champion’s side. Wolf’s Fang rang off his breastplate as if off stone. Ursun’s teeth! He was armoured as well as he was armed! That was gromril plate!

  The shining long sword slashed at her again and she had to bow over Yasim’s neck to avoid it. She urged the horse around and struck at the back of his helm. That blow hit as well, but glanced off just like the first. She was indeed faster, but did it matter? A fox was faster than a turtle, but it was never going to kill it.

  The champion hacked down at her head. She parried with Wolf’s Fang, and the shining blade sheared hers in two in a blinding flash of red, then sliced through her pauldron and found flesh. She shrieked and dodged back, reining Yasim into a rearing retreat, more shocked by the destruction of Kodrescu’s dread sword than the shoulder wound. The champion had just destroyed a sentient, centuries-old weapon, more powerful than any she had ever known but for Gotrek Gurnisson’s starmetal rune axe, as if it were a dry branch. She had faced strong enemies before. She had faced skilled enemies, but this…

  ‘Alive, Ludwig!’ called the Emperor. ‘I want her alive!’

  ‘Fear not, my liege,’ growled the champion, pressing forwards again. ‘Vampires take a lot of killing.’

  Ulrika drew her rapier from its sheath across Yasim’s rump and danced the horse back away from the big man, fighting the urge to just turn and run. If Kodrescu’s blade had been a dry branch, then the fencing blade was a burnt twig. How was she going to do this? There had to be a way. She had come so far. Karl Franz was right there! She couldn’t give up now.

  She looked around. Perhaps the lancers could bring Schwarzhelm down while she kept him busy. But without her slaughter distracting the Reiksguard, they were faring poorly – the knights’ freshness and better arms were turning the tide, and Stahleker and his men were being pressed back on all sides, bloody, bruised and demoralised. They would be no help.

  The champion closed on Ulrika and hacked at her torso. She twisted aside and chopped at his wrist, trying to stun him into dropping the weapon. He grunted, but his grip did not weaken, and the blade hissed towards her again, too close this time. Were she any slower, the cut would have taken her left arm. Instead it tore her vambrace as she pulled away, and only cut her to the bone.

  She fell back, hissing in agony and rage, then lunged forwards again, slashing and stabbing in a mindless frenzy. Again and again she struck home, but to no effect, and the champion was raising his sword again.

  ‘Emperor!’ cried a hoarse voice. ‘Another force! In the woods to the east. They are coming!’

  The champion checked his swing and looked towards the woods. Ulrika wheeled Yasim away from him and followed his gaze, her heart leaping. In the thrill of the chase and the rush of battle she had completely forgotten von Messinghof. This was where he had meant to ambush Karl Franz, and if he was coming, it must mean he had defeated the Lahmians. They could win after all!

  But as she peered into the forest her hope faded. It wasn’t von Messinghof who led the cavalry that thundered through the trees. It was Lashmiya of Mahrak, ruler of the Serpent Coast, and emissary of the Queen of the Silver Pinnacle, head to toe in gold and lapis armour, with red magic swirling around her upraised fist and four hulking shieldmaidens flanking her.

  chapter twenty-eight

  THE BETRAYER

  Ludwig Schwarzhelm turned his horse and raised his foghorn voice. ‘Ambush! Reiksguard, fall back and protect the Emperor!’ He surged back
towards Karl Franz as his knights began to fight their way free of the lancers. ‘My liege, you are leaving – now!’

  ‘No!’ cried Ulrika, and spurred Yasim past him, slashing at his eyes as she went. The Lahmians would not steal this from her! If she was going to die here, she would take Karl Franz with her.

  Schwarzhelm ducked, and her blow struck his helm instead of his eyes, knocking it from his head. He plunged at her, raising his sword as she tried to drive through the Reiksguard line to the Emperor. The knights closed ranks and slashed at her as Schwarzhelm slammed into her from behind. His rune sword slashed down in a diagonal arc. There was no way to block it or twist out of the way. She threw herself out of the saddle and heard Yasim scream as she fell beside her.

  She looked up. The Arabyan was collapsing, her knees buckling. Ulrika rolled aside and Yasim whumped to the ground where she had crouched, her saddle split in half by a sword cut that had also severed her spine.

  Ulrika stared at the dead horse for a long second, uncomprehending, then raised burning eyes to the champion, who was hurrying with the Reiksguard line to his Emperor’s side. She growled in her throat and started after them, her rapier white-knuckled in her fist. She would kill the Emperor swiftly, but his champion would die by inches for this slaughter.

  ‘Captain!’ shouted Stahleker. ‘Captain! The Lahmians!’

  Ulrika turned. The Lahmian force was less than a hundred feet away, swarming through the trees to the left of the road like the hordes of the Wastes were after them. She cursed. It was the champion she wanted to fight, not them. She wanted the Emperor’s head and Schwarzhelm’s hide!

  But as she looked around at her men, all turning to face the new threat as the Reiksguard broke from them and galloping after Karl Franz, her chest clenched like a fist. The lancers looked like the walking dead – battered in the battle behind the castle, run ragged in the charge across the killing field and the plunge down the hill, and overmatched against the Reiksguard on the road. There wasn’t one of them unwounded. There wasn’t a helm undented or a breastplate unscarred. Their faces and hands were red with blood and their eyes glazed with weariness. They had followed her so well, and she had led them so poorly. She was ashamed of herself – chasing an impossible target while they died all around her. And she had been about to do it again, charging after the Emperor and his champion single-handed and leaving them to their fate. This was not what she had promised them. This was not the bargain she had struck with Stahleker.