Shattered Shields - eARC

by Jennifer Brozek

  So Yael had traded the comforts of palace life for a rude tent among the mud and piles of griffon dung. The Legions of Sharoc set their camp north of the valley, ten thousand tents and campfires beneath the rustling banner of the Lion and Hawk. Yael’s boots of fine Sharoci leather were stained by the muck of the encampment, and he missed the nightly company of palace courtesans. His belly remained empty when he could not bring himself to eat the miserable rations of soldiers. General Anco and his lieutenants dined on sumptuous fare in a great silken pavilion behind the lines. Yet only the griffon-tamers, Knights of the Royal House, would get the fine foods imported from royal precincts. Yael contented himself with a ready supply of wine.

  “Soon,” he reminded himself while stalking from tent to tent, “the battle will be done and I’ll return to the palace.” Tonight he would get little sleep, for General Anco had ordered him to entertain the troops until dawn. Anco knew well the creeping fear, the gnawing dread that quivered in the stomachs of untested men on the night before a charge. He knew that Yael of the Strings would sing courage into his men. The minstrel counted himself lucky to bear such a duty. Most of the men he sang for tonight would die in the valley tomorrow. Far better to sing, for the queen than to die for her.

  Across the moonlit valley assembled the invading Legions of Ghoth. Behemoth spiders moved about their ranks on segmented legs thick as tree trunks. Strapped to the broad backs of the arachnids stood wicker pagodas with peaked roofs. Warlocks also walked among the Ghothians, grim sorcerers of the pureblood caste, each bearing the Mark of the Great Mother on his forehead. Rumor had it that such men shared their very thoughts with the great spiders. When the sun rose the Griffon and the Spider would converge, and a tide of blood would flow into the valley.

  Yael shivered and turned his eyes back to the strings of his guitarra. He finished a performance of “The Hero’s Blinding Blade” to cheers from nine soldiers gathered about a guttering flame. It was the sixth time he’d played the tune this night.

  “Damn, but you’re a fine singer,” said a young man swathed in chain mail. He hoisted a tankard of wine and toasted the minstrel. His fellows joined the salute, and someone handed Yael a full cup. He drank the wine hungrily, and the blinking stars spun above his head.

  “Do you know the “Tale of Voros the Webcutter”?” asked another lad.

  “Of course,” said Yael. He was tired of that song, and the wine had loosened his tongue. “But everyone knows that tale. How about something new?”

  The boy-soldiers exchanged nervous glances. “Like what?”

  Yael smacked his lips and retuned the fifth string of his instrument. He launched into “The Ballad of the Summer Maiden.” His audience listened, rapt with attention. A few more soldiers wandered over to join their fellows, hanging on the song’s every word. When Yael finished there was applause, but no cheers. Half the men were weeping into their cups.

  “Aye, Esmeralda, do I miss you!” sobbed a young man.

  “I miss my sweet Jarethea!” moaned another.

  “I might never see my wife and sons again,” a soldier said.

  Yael blinked. This was not the time for romantic ballads. These lads must be inspired to vanquish their foes, not too long for their distant loves.

  So he launched into “The Tale of Voros the Webcutter,” and the mood of the company improved immediately. He finished the song to another round of applause but refused another cup of wine. Despite the protests against his leaving, he made his way toward another group of soldiers gathered about another flame. There he gave a new performance, staying only long enough to banish the black moods of those who listened, then moving on to the next row of tents, the next fire, the next cup of wine.

  The men of Sharoc listened to the minstrel’s songs while oiling their blades, honing the heads of pikes, and tightening the straps of shields. Yael played, walked, played again. “The Lay of the Laughing Prince.” “The Conquest of Altarro.” “The Valiant Legions.” Many more songs, and many of them two or three times apiece. Every tale he knew that quickened the blood, fired the spirit, and banished fear. He turned frowns into grins, worried looks to determined scowls, and unskilled boys into valorous warriors.

  As he performed Yael watched the full moon glide across the sky. When the bulk of the night was behind him, his fingers sore from plucking, his voice hoarse from singing, he came to one last fire. The men were busy slipping into breastplates and greaves, but he played “Swords of the Righteous” for them the best he could. His weariness crept into the song, but still they seemed to enjoy it. Anything to take their minds off the slaughter to come.

  Someone offered him a piece of greasy flatbread as breakfast. He paused in his playing and accepted the tasteless fare. Sunrise was less than an hour away. A dim violet glow replaced the darkness along the eastern horizon. The clanking of metal and the shouts of captains rang across the encampment. Every man must now rise and make himself ready for the charge at dawn. Every man but the weary minstrel, who would remain among the tents and try to sleep while the blood tide rushed into the valley. His long night was over.

  As Yael swallowed the last of his meal, a shadow fell across the encampment. Then the howling began, and the panicked screams of men rose into the darkness. The soldiers began twitching, falling, smacking at their legs and arms, as if a sudden madness had fallen upon them. Now Yael saw the masses of hairy spiders moving across the ground, each one big as a man’s fist. They crawled up his tall boots toward his crotch. He leaped atop the wooden crate that had served him as a chair, scraping spiders from his boots with the flat side of his guitarra.

  They came in a suffocating wave, an ocean of tarantulas invading the camps, seeking soft flesh with poison fangs. Yael stamped upon the crate, dislodging more of the deadly creatures. A few had already bitten deep into his boot leather. He slapped the remaining spiders from his legs, but more of them crawled up the sides of the crate.

  The legions wailed and screamed as they drowned beneath the wave of venomous arachnids. Only Yael’s elevated position on the crate and his well-made boots had saved him from the tiny monsters. The men around him were all dead or dying, their young faces purple and bloated by the killing venom. They fell to the earth clutching swollen necks, and they disappeared beneath a carpet of black spiders.

  Yael kicked and stomped at the spiders streaming onto his crate. He would have smashed them with the guitarra, but he could not risk losing the instrument. It was made by the finest artisans in Sharoc, a gift to him from the queen herself. His boots crushed the tarantulas two at a time. If anyone had been watching they might have laughed at his absurd dance. Yet everyone was too busy smashing spiders, or dying, to notice that Yael of the Strings was dancing for his life.

  Someone rushed by with a torch and swept it across the smothered crate. The spider-flesh ignited along with the crate itself. Yael stood as long as he dared on the flaming box while men rushed about him with torches, clearing out the spiders. They were knights in scalloped steel armor, more resistant to the fangs of their tiny foes.

  “Goddess curse the Ghothian warlocks!” someone shouted as Yael leaped to the ground. The minstrel took a flaming brand from the campfire and quickly learned to maintain a spider-free zone about himself while the extermination of the crawling horde continued. Countless dead men littered the ridge, many of the tents were in flames, and the smell of roasting spiders filled the air like a cloying jasmine.

  The sun rose full in the east, shedding flame across the sky. Yael glanced southward and saw the legions of Ghothian pikemen marching into the valley. After them came the ranks of gargantuan spiders. He could not see the Ghothian warlocks who had sent the plague of tarantulas, but he imagined them sitting in the pagodas rising from the backs of the eight-legged giants.

  The knights had succeeded in burning and dispersing the swarm of tarantulas, but the losses among the footmen were great. The sneak attack had not been meant to damage the griffon riders. It had been aimed squarely at the
masses of pikemen, most of whom weren’t even strapped into their leather corselets yet. The spider plague had all but crippled the Sharoci infantry.

  Even now the last tarantulas were scuttling into the weeds or tunneling into the earth itself. The advance of the Ghothians had begun, and now the Legions of Sharoc must rush to meet them or lose the valley in a single hour. Captains and generals shouted commands. Surviving soldiers forgot their dead comrades and continued their hasty preparations. Men took up pikes and short swords and pointed helms. They strapped on leather breastplates and formed into ranks as they were ordered. There were half as many in those ranks as there were yesterday. Dead men lay everywhere, their bodies swollen, their skin gone purple as grapes.

  Yael stumbled through the chaos toward his private tent at the rear of the lines. A knight rode by him on a griffon, its wings still folded against the glistening coat of its leonine body. The griffon’s claws sent mud spraying behind it, and its hawk-like head crowed with excitement. A long red plume rose from the knight’s helmet. He raised a silver sword high as he shouted commands. The griffon-mount’s passing almost knocked Yael over, but he stumbled onward in the opposite direction of every other man.

  A war horn sounded somewhere, followed by two more. Men’s voices raised in cries of anger, defiance, and raw bravado. At last Yael reached his modest tent. He collapsed on the cot, still clutching the guitarra to his chest. The thunder of griffons’ wings filled the sky. The knights were launching. The charge had begun.

  Yael clutched his instrument and thanked the Goddess that he was no soldier.

  The flap of his tent opened. An armored knight without a helmet stalked inside. His iron-gray beard and long mustache were unmistakable. He was Sir Carracan, General Anco’s first officer. He carried a footman’s pike and a muddy broadsword in his hands, yet these weapons were not his own. They were far too crude for a rider of griffons, a commander of the queen’s legions.

  “Minstrel!” Carracan bellowed. “Up with your lazy ass!”

  He tossed the pike and broadsword to the ground beside Yael’s cot. He turned and exited the tent.

  Yael sat on the edge of the cot. He stared at the rusted scabbard of the sword and the long pole with its razory iron head. His hands clutched the guitarra as if it would defend him from any enemy.

  Sir Carracan returned a moment later with a bronze shield. On its pocked face were the images of Lion and Hawk. “Up, damn you!” shouted the knight. “You’re fighting with us today!”

  Yael shook his head, stood up to face the knight without realizing it. “Impossible,” he said. “I’m not a soldier. I am, as you have said, only a tired minstrel.”

  Carracan snatched the guitarra from Yael with gauntleted fists. He raised the instrument high above his head so that it raked the canvas of the tent. Yael’s breath stopped. The knight brought the guitarra down across his armored knee, shattering it into a hundred pieces. Its silvery strings, made from the best sheep’s gut money could buy, snapped like the tender wood of its body.

  “Today you’re a soldier,” said Carracan. “We’ve lost too many pikemen to those damn spiders. Every squire, cook, and boy who can lift a pike is joining the charge.”

  Yael could not have been more stunned if the knight had slapped him across the face. No words came into his mind. Only dread, and fear, and a terrible irony that crept like an arachnid across the back of his skull.

  Carracan grabbed him by the shoulders and bellowed into his face. “Serve your queen, boy! Or I’ll run you through right here.” The knight placed a hand on the hilt of his silver sword. “Make your choice, warbler. Serve or die.”

  Yael bent and picked up the pike. It was longer than he was tall. He had studied fencing at the palace, as the upper classes were wont to do. But he had never fought for his life. Had never taken a life.

  “I know not the use of this weapon,” he said.

  The knight showed Yael how to brace the pike for a charge. “Hold it like this. Run toward the enemy. And stick him with this end!”

  Yael nodded. Carracan picked up the round shield. “And don’t forget this. The spider-lovers will be trying to stick you, too.”

  Yael strapped the broadsword to his waist as Carracan gave him a last piece of advice.

  “When the ranks have joined, the battle will turn to close-quarters fighting. You won’t have room to use the pike anymore. That’s when the sword comes in handy. Do not hesitate to kill these Ghothians, or they will kill you first. Do you understand?”

  Yael nodded, his head swimming. Sir Carracan marched him out of the tent and sent him toward a group of pikemen jogging for the front line. Up ahead griffons filled the sky above the valley, already swooping to engage the great spiders. Yael joined the ranks of marching footmen. The smells of sweat and shit and fear suffocated him. The heat of the day rose with the sound of blaring horns, and the downward march began.

  One of the pike-bearers marching beside Yael looked more like a stable boy than a warrior. He noticed Yael among the ranks. “Minstrel!” the lad called through the forest of raised spears. “Sing us a song for battle.”

  Yael’s throat was dry. Fear had stolen his voice. He sweated and marched and said nothing.

  “Sing a fighting tale!” called another. Others joined in. “Sing! Sing!”

  Yael glanced about at their desperate faces. He saw the same sweat, the same fear as his own. He began singing “Triumph of the Red King,” his voice pitched low and matching the cadence of the march. The men about him began to sing as well. It was a well-known song about a beloved king who marched into battle without his armor yet killed a hundred foes. His wrath was so great that no foe dared to approach him. His true armor was his courage and his noble spirit, and thus he survived to win the day.

  The men of Sharoc marched toward the overwhelming ranks of Ghothians. Diving griffons harried the rows of colossal arachnids. Knights drove their lances into the bulbous monsters. The spider-beasts squirted silvery ropes of webbing into the sky, bringing knights and griffons tumbling to earth. The Ghothian pikemen closed about the fallen ones, stabbing them to death in seconds.

  The marching armies grew closer and closer. They would meet in the valley’s exact center. The spider-banners of Ghoth rippled in the autumn wind, and the yellow banners of Lion and Hawk streamed forth to meet them. At a certain distance, the archers on either side took to ground. Volleys flew into the sky, each a black rain of barbed death. The footmen paused, sank to their knees, and raised their shields for shelter. When the arrows had fallen, the footmen rose and marched again. Another volley shot into the sky, and the footmen paused again and raised their shields. A soldier next to Yael took an arrow in the eye and died instantly.

  Again and again the arrows fell, until the two armies came together in a rush of shouting, charging pikemen. Then all sense of ranks and order was lost, and the slaughter truly began. The wicked pikes of the Ghothians impaled their foes, ripped sideways to spill guts from bellies. Others hooked men into immobile positions of lasting pain. In such cases the Ghothians pulled forth their scimitars and took the heads of wounded men.

  Yael might have dropped his pike and run from the fray like a coward, but the press of men behind him made this impossible. So he marched into the forest of barbed and glittering blades aimed at his gut and face. The Ghothian pikes were grotesquely made, barbed and hooked to inflict maximum carnage. The screams grew louder. Dying men wailed and clutched at their spilled intestines on the ground as others trampled them into the mud.

  Now came an opening, and Yael faced a howling pikeman of Ghoth. Like all his folk he wore a black turban instead of a metal helm. He thrust his hooked spear at Yael, who turned it with his shield and shoved his own pike forward. He aimed directly for the turban and winced when the blade of his pike punctured flesh and bone. The Ghothian died leaking blood from his nostrils, sinking to his knees.

  Another Ghothian swept his scimitar at Yael’s head. The minstrel’s shield caught the edge of th
e blade. Yael’s pike was caught in the dead man’s skull, and already the field was too crowded to use such a long weapon. Yael grabbed at the hilt of his broadsword. The scimitar came at him again in a downward swing. Once more the shield saved his life. His arm went numb beneath it.

  Yael swept the big blade from its scabbard. It was far heavier than the rapier he used for fencing. The scimitar resounded from his shield again and slipped sideways to slice his arm open below the shoulder. A shallow cut, but painful.

  He drove the point of the broadsword forward with all his strength, as he had done with the pike. It caught his assailant in the shin, and the Ghothian howled. Yael sprang at him shield-first, knocking him backwards across a corpse and landing on top of him. He drove his sword deep into the Ghothian’s gut, far enough to pierce the earth beneath him, and he watched the eyes of his enemy grow soft. A great silence seemed to fall about him in the midst of the roaring chaos.

  Yael stared into the face of the man he had killed. Only a youth, at least ten years younger than himself. Probably conscripted into the sultan’s army. His skin was brown, a shade darker than that of most Sharoci, and his eyes were dark pools of light. But the light faded swiftly, until there was nothing but lifeless flesh beneath Yael’s heaving body.

  Time had slowed so that each moment was an eternity. The roar of battle was like the roar of the ocean in Yael’s ears. Droplets of red blood spilled through the air like tiny jewels, splattered across the muddy ground. Dead boys lay all about him, their skulls and hearts and bellies split open, spilling the red secrets of existence into the black dirt. The whiteness of an ancient bone poked through the mud, a remnant of some historic battle. How many bones, how many skulls, filled the earth beneath this valley? The soil was rich with decayed humanity.