A War of Stones: Book One of the Traveler Knight

by Howard Norfolk

  CHAPTER ONE

  KULITH

  WESTERN GECE, OUTSIDE FUGOE CASTLE

  The wind blew across the hollow they stood in, rustling the tops of the pine trees that surrounded it, high above their heads. Kulith raised his nose and sniffed for any new scents it brought him. He only found the slightly different stink of the goblins he was talking to over the old familiar stench of the horde. He looked back down and glared out of the side of his helmet at Rat Ears. What he thought he smelled was magic. He thumbed the chipped pommel of his great sword as he thought about the orders the goblin captain had just given him. Like usual, they seemed arbitrary and suicidal. But what did those who were already dead care for his logic and life?

  “Did Sarik really say that to you?” Kulith asked Rat Ears with a growl. “Tell me now, what exactly did the great master say?”

  The creature grimaced and backed away, suddenly losing much of its earlier pretense and brashness. He had figured that the orders would be humbly accepted, or perhaps Sarik had compelled him to go forth and face Kulith’s wrath, to see what would happen between them. The leather and ring mail clad little monster shifted his crude scimitar forward, into a casual guard stance.

  “Those are the orders of the dark lord. Lead my brethren now against the castle and the defenses before it. The greater thrings will come from the north through the village with their dead. You are to go directly across from the forest to the south, at their breastwork and their wall.”

  Kulith turned his head from the goblin to look over at Ovodag, his half brother from the Sunless Gorge in the Priwak Barrens, now two weeks walk away to the south. “What do you think?”

  Ovodag stood a head taller than him, with grayer skin and some patches of fur like a proper troll. He lifted the visor of his helm up to show his more troll-like face and small tusks, and he spit out so it hit the ground just to the right of the goblin.

  “More troll corpses for his thrings to raise up and order about,” he rumbled. “More plunder for him, less mouths to feed.” He shook his head. “There has to be some chance of success or we won’t budge. Threaten to kill us, to kill our old ones, our sows, our young ones, and still we will not move. We’ve heard that all before and not budged then one black neck.”

  Rat Ears had flinched at the spit, but then he had listened attentively to Ovodag’s words, and now he sneered back. The creature quickly thought better of that, when Ovodag began to raise his own oversized sword higher up into the air.

  “Very well!” the goblin captain shouted. “I’ll go back and inform the great lord.” Its tongue went dry mid-sentence as it considered what it was saying. The messengers never lasted long, they all knew that. The goblin began to back off anyway, taking his guards with him, waddling a little on his short legs.

  Kulith frowned as he watched the retreat. He was supposed to make these exchanges work out for the rest of the trolls and goblins. He could easily be killed or dismissed back into the ranks, depending on Sarik’s mood and what the horde around him decided.

  “Wait!” he said, quickly throwing out his hand. The creature froze, not sure of what was about to happen. Kulith’s other hand had stayed across at his waist, atop the grip of his own great sword.

  “Let Sarik know that I have discovered a weakness in the front of their bulwark, and in the castle’s defense. We will mass there and attack at sunset.” The wide-eyed goblin captain listened, and then nodded its head back. It was an acceptable message that spared them all, at least until nightfall.

  “As you hazard it,” he said. “I return now to the great master.” They turned and moved off, trading haughty stares with the trolls and other goblins assembled there who were watching and listening. As the messengers mounted up on their shaggy ponies and rode away, Kulith motioned for all of his band’s leaders to come in closer.

  “Get shields. As many as you can,” he told the gray, black and yellow faces hovering around him. “Build wicker and wood ones for those that don’t have any, and steal them from the dead if you have to. Cover them over with wet hides. I think we’ll go down that old ditch line we saw in the field. If nothing else goes right, that and the setting sun at our backs will give us an advantage against their archers.

  “Get it done!” he barked out, and they moved to obey.

  Hours had passed, and the sun now sat low across the plain of burned over fields and wrecked farmsteads out in front of Fugoe Castle. The golden disk of fire had almost touched the far off tree tops of the next hill line out to the west. Fugoe’s gray walls and earthen bulwark stayed vigilant to their east, with one in every five men standing ready on the fighting walks while the others rested. As Kulith stood and looked out over the barren approach before him, he wondered what the rest of Sarik’s goblins were doing right then, and of what the great lord himself was thinking. He wondered about the unseen maneuvering of the thrings, and of how they would figure into the battle. Would they even show up?

  Ovodag came over to him as he stood there with one foot stepped up on a rock, one of the ones marking a field’s boundary. His brother looked back and forth across the reaped fields, at the thick, forty foot stone walls and towers of Fugoe, then at the long horizontal scar of the bulwark that the men had thrown up before them because they could all not fit inside the castle.

  “Damn Red Mark goblin chief is coming up now,” he told Kulith, “trying to get together his rat-faced nerve and challenge you.”

  Kulith was a smooth, golden tan in color, where his half-brother was ragged and gray like old dirty plaster. His front teeth had been filed flat long ago so that he could go about in the West Lands with a hood on and try to spy, and from the mouth up he looked almost human, something that had been passed along from his mother who had been ransomed back to the humans after dropping two pups.

  Ovodag was a little bigger and could use a sword like a knife, so that he fought instead with bucklers strapped to his arms and usually wielded a great bladed pole. He was an even match for a knight on horseback, and could break three pikes hafts with just one powerful, downward stroke.

  “How many shields do we have?” Kulith asked him.

  “The three hundred we had before, now six hundred and some.” he added an explanation. “You know that the little buggers don’t like shields.”

  Kulith drew out his sword from the flap of leather it hung in. The iron was crude made, but of substantial length and weight, more for bludgeoning than for sharp cutting. “Tell them to form up here. We are going in, just like I told them.”

  “Will this work?” Ovodag asked him, as he moved around nervously and scratched himself under his leather and ring hauberk with his thick fingers.

  “We were sure dead as it was before.” Kulith answered. “Maybe, maybe now we get lucky.” Ovodag turned and spit out to the side.

  “We should have never come back out of the caves. The bone mage would not have found us then. I hate living from pot to pot like a dog-faced bugger.”

  Kulith nodded back in agreement, but did not take his eyes off the trenches and battlements before him, made rosy now by the setting sun. He was running out of time to make use of this slight advantage. He put on his helm and tied it tight. The risk Ovodag had mentioned had certainly not paid off for the Priwak trolls.

  “Let’s get it on then,” Kulith said. He turned back to the trees and lifted up his shield and sword. Commands were barked out and the trees swayed as the horde moved forward into line, and turned their natural disharmony into ranks. Kulith turned and stalked away, starting down the faint ditch line, to lead them all, to get the goblins and other dark creatures pointed in the right direction. Ovodag slipped away behind him, back into the trees to work with the other trolls and shout at the goblins.

  Kulith stopped in the sag in the swale before Fugoe Castle, the cut standing out like an old drain that had once ran up right to the walls. The beady little over-chief of the Red Mark goblins was late, or maybe had only been threatening him, trying to make him move. He had eit
her lost his nerve, or gotten the thing that he had wanted.

  Instead they all came out at one, and the goblins ranks broke through the trees and massed up behind him in a thick line, twenty abreast, extending back through the forest and the ruins along the hill crest. They were a swaying river of helmeted heads, of shields and spear points that fell away down the back of the slope. The mass was being kept in good order by the larger trolls, they spaced about to the sides, holding their longer weapons and calling out both warnings and orders.

  Kulith tested the play in the strap on the captured shield he held. It was still a solid piece, despite several splintered nicks to the rim and some dents. The first goblin band, a stinking mass of swords, shields and bits of armor with rat, pig, and dog faces closed up with him, panting, grunting and waiting for his word.

  “Keep your ears down and your shields up,” he told them, as he looked them over. “We’re going in running, like a big snake with legs. Hold your shields above your head and make the snake’s scales with them to protect us. Our archers will come up and shoot into the ramparts and at the walls as we charge. A plate of silver and a slave to anyone who kills a horse or man that blocks their gate open. A gold coin and a slave to the first ten who get inside the castle. Don’t go too close to the walls, or you will be killed for sure!”

  He saw some commotion now along the enemy earthwork, and atop the walls of Fugoe. Perhaps the thrings were attacking from the north through the town as promised, but he could not tell and doubted it. The head of Kulith’s “snake” was plain to be seen to them, though their enemy could only guess at what it meant or at the great unseen depth that ran out along the hill under the red sun. They were getting ready, perhaps adjusting the archers and men around, to better defend the wall.

  There were several goblin companies and thyr groups fighting in Sarik’s hoard that had rejected Kulith’s battle plan because it was unusual, or did not give them a greater chance at glory and plunder. Any one of those groups could have started their own attack from another direction, but he also doubted that. Things would not get better if they waited any longer.

  Kulith raised his shield up over his head and hoped no archers across the field were luckier than he was. He had counted the spots for archers on the walls, and knew roughly how many arrows they would receive before running into the first barricade of ditch. He turned and let goblins move, to close themselves up all around him,. He adjusted the shield down to match the height of theirs. It stank among them, but it felt solid, powerful, and it was the best he could do.

  “Keep it tight! Up we go!” he shouted.

  The narrow line of beasts surged forward across the spoil toward the bulwarks, walls and towers. There was crop stubble on the fields, Kulith thought it must have been corn, and their feet snagged and stubbed on it as they ran. Immediately, arrows began to fall from the towers, from the curtain wall, and from the outer fortified embankment. They rushed into it as a steady loud pop echoed off the front of their shields. The arrows tugged the lighter goblins around, and they began to scream and go down as they were directly hit. Kulith started to lose his troops and the gaps were not being closed up because they were going in too fast.

  “Close up! Close up!” he yelled back, and then the other bands that had chosen to go it alone gave them some relief, by emerging in ranks from the trees near the south side of the castle, where the original attack was supposed to be, and they charged forward in a ragged line. The pops of arrows slackened in front, as some turned to shoot over at them.

  Kulith, the other trolls and the goblins seemed to find their stride, and they moved over the ground quicker, moving from under some of the arrows that were being shot down at them. Then parts of the walls and the nearing bulwark made it so that the archers could not effectively shoot as much. The trolls and goblins realized it, and they roared out as the popping suddenly fell away.

  This made them all surge ahead. The snake formation behind them had loosened up, with the goblin archers in it even breaking the line to stop and shoot, and move to get better range. Another mass of goblins then moved past them to the left, in a frailer looking snake.

  “Keep it together you fools!” Kulith yelled at those around him, motioning with his great, crude sword back at the other goblins.

  “Make the head of the snake,” he said to those that were still with him. “We will show them our fangs!”

  They bunched up in a solid wall, fifteen to twenty deep, and it wasn’t what Kulith had meant to do, but it worked. The trolls loosened themselves from the smaller goblins at the last moment, as they went down into the ditch and struck out beyond it at the men behind the low wall who were holding pikes, spears and sword. The ditch had been made wrong, perhaps figured to repel away men on horses, and it had proved not to be much of an obstacle. It had even allowed some of the goblins to come up under the shafts of the defender’s spears and cut off the points.

  Kulith shouted, waved his sword, and all the trolls down the line bellowed and moved forward, catching and striking the soldiers, mostly above their own weapons, which were being thrust down at the goblins. They pushed their way up on top of the palisade, cutting, crashing, and breaking their way into the enemy ranks.

  Archers had been waiting behind the pikes, and as the trolls stuck themselves up, they began to get hit from above and across by arrows that easily found their armor and flesh. Rows of goblins had started across the ditch and up the embankment to join the trolls, and they were staggered by the defender’s blows, many falling. Kulith went with the goblins, and he broke the arrows off the front of his shield by smashing it into the first man he saw over the wall, a knight wearing black mail.

  The man jabbed out at him with his sword. He struck it aside with his shield and then swatted the man down with his great, rough blade. He then dropped down, behind the embankment onto the fighting walk and hit the man again when he started to rise. Then he knocked away a thrusting spear point from another.

  The second wave of goblins and thyrs, heedless of the points of the lances and spears all surged forward, some pinning themselves immediately upon the ends of the weapons. The trolls broke through the line of soldiers with their size and height, and their longer weapons played around and did great damage, and they waded forward into the men. They goblins also did this, but it was possible only by their sheer numbers, as they went mad with battle frenzy. They roared back as men on the walls shot down at them with bows, or threw rocks at their heads. Dust rose in a dark fan that went over them and made it hard to see, in the twilight that had fallen: a red, fading light. Clots and stringers of blood flew up around Kulith, spattering on friends and foe equally, accompanied by the great din of blows, and the screams of those being cut or pierced.

  “Settle down, get your shields up!” Kulith yelled out to the goblins around him. “Don’t run for the walls!” The goblins piled up anyway, moving around, surging forward, and pushing the men off the fighting walk and across the ground that remained in front of the castle. He saw arrows hitting the walls above him, and the archers ducking back. The goblins fighting around him didn’t hear or seem to care, and as arrows popped again on his raised shield, he watched dozens get hit and knocked down by a steady rain of shafts and stones. The rest of them were just mindlessly lucky.

  “Move to the left, to the small gate!” Kulith yelled out. He swung his sword around to point toward it as he felt pain, as an arrow stuck him in the shoulder, going straight through the leather and bits of chain armor that he wore. Then his leg stung from another shaft, but it stayed true and didn’t buckle. He reached down and yanked the arrow out, and threw it away. The goblins were moving around now, massing into groups, chasing down or holding up the remaining soldiers in a fight, goaded on by Ovodag and the other trolls, and by their own leaders.

  The tall, thin sally gate in the castle wall to the left moved, its wet wood glistening and steaming as it opened by swinging on a pivot. Someone threw a pot of oil, followed by a torch, spinning out
to land at its base. There was a little fire, but it did nothing to stop the gate from opening all the way out, and the horses within were then guided through it by men in heavy armor, with raised swords and shields.

  They rode out, turned, and then smashed itno Kulith’s goblin rabble. Arrows popped off their breastplates, their helms, and even off the armor on their mounts. They moved down through the goblins, with only one of the horses going down, perhaps tripping on a body. The rider was thrown off to crash into the grass, but the rest continued, bowling through three ranks of tight massed goblins who tried to stop them. They brought their swords and other weapons down, in a quick killing rhythm on the heads and shoulders of the smaller buggers.

  “Get ready, it’s starting to happen!” Kulith barked out to the trolls, and he swung his great sword around above his head to try and signal over to the others. The trolls had mostly turned back from what they were doing though, and raised their poles and great swords to hit the armored riders, as the goblins before the wall panicked, and began to run. The main gate was now also beginning to open behind them; it built at one corner of the outer square. The goblins were darting around, showing their fear of the horsemen, and of being pressed in by the soldiers who were now forming up again over in front of the main gate. It was either time for his plan to work, Kulith thought, or they were all about to die.

  “We must get in now or we will be run down!” Kulith yelled out to those around him, to the Priwak trolls and the fearful, milling mass of goblins. “Charge now, charge through and up into their smaller gate!”

  The knights continued to crash into the trolls, they weapons flashing quickly forward as they made their hits, and the fewer trolls striking back as they could, starting to be outnumbered. Goblins, never much against mounted men, now squirted out and scattered from the forward press, in any direction that gave them relief.

  Kicked by hooves, or just fighting back in defense, they milled around as several of the trolls now looked back over at where Kulith was pointing. They looked about, and then a few began to shout orders, and they went past the horsemen toward the smaller gate, as it now began to be close.