A War of Stones: Book One of the Traveler Knight

by Howard Norfolk

  “The gate! The gate!” Kulith yelled, as he saw the sally port closing, it slowly pivoting back shut. He slapped an axe away with his sword and shouldered the rider who wielded it off his mount. He went shield on shield for a moment, as another rider passed him by. Then he was struck at by a mace, and it broke his shield, so that there was now a crack running down across its face. He pushed the knight back with the end of his own sword, and the rider was unhorsed a moment later by Ovodag, as the larger troll thrust out with his bladed pole and struck him down.

  Kulith slapped the riderless horse away, it bolting back along the wall and out of the melee. A rock came off the tower and knocked a nearby troll down. Another smaller rock flew out and broke a quarter off the top of Kulith’s shield. He shook his eyes clear and watched as one of the trolls, he couldn’t tell which, threw a dead rider into the closing gate, blocking it from sealing back up and being bolted.

  He moved across the wall, over to the gate, using his shield to protect his upper body from the things coming down off the walls and the nearby towers. He could hear the gears in the wheel house above the gate turning and then refusing to move any farther, catching every time the men tried to force it closed, but Kulith was at a loss for what to now do.

  Another troll named Hovus Black Smile brought up a pot of oil, carried by a goblin, and threw it up at the small window above the gate. The rest of the goblin began to do the same. They shattered, splashed, and the oil made it dark, and dripped back down off the wall onto the wood and metal of the door. Another then threw up a tarred torch, and it caught the oil alight, making flames that licked back up the stones and went on inside. Kulith heard the men inside the small room scream, and the gate winch suddenly went slack. He lunged forward with several other trolls, heedless of the burning wall and gate, and under a fountain of black smoke they stuck their poles and weapons into the space between the wall and the big door, and levered it back outward, slowly forcing it to open.

  The West Land knights had charged completely through the goblin mass by then, fighting through, and had then gone over to join the others at the main gate. They were there with about fifty footmen, equipped with long axes, or swords and shields. They began cutting back into the horde of goblins, like a man starting to trim off his beard, only to have any damage they did to its dimensions quickly adjust and fill back out.

  More horses were going down, but the knights still fought, and now began to charge back along the wall, coming toward the fouled sally gate. The goblin archers were now shooting directly at them with arrows, from the top of the breastwork, and this finally caused them to be checked, as they careened and ran afoul, and saw their losses. The men in front of the main gate formed into a wedge and came down the wall, evidently set on relieving them. Kulith knew it was still only a matter of time now until the great mass of monsters he commanded lost their never and ran for it. Only their numbers, pressing into each other at the wall made them now stand. He had to do something soon, before the wild madness of the fight turned to inescapable fear.

  “Inside!” he yelled out, calling on the goblins around and behind him, striking about at the soldiers who had just closed. Kulith was hit by a rock, and and arrow struck off his leg, but he stood there, thaking the missles still coming down in numbers off the walls and towers, trying to get the goblins attention. Between the breastwork and the wall, there were few places for the horde to go and escape the knights and men. But the sally port was now levered open, and they saw where Kulith was pointing and into this they dashed, renewing their shouts, brandishing their weapons in that direction until the trickle became a stream. The trolls wedged the gate open fully, then blocked it with more bodies, and then they followed them on inside.

  A narrow stone ramp led up from the gate into a yard, and from there all of the castle interior could be seen before them. They were met by a thin line of spear and pike men, catching the goblins with their haft points long before they could strike a blow back. The goblins had then remembered their shields, and made a presentable wall. They began to press back against the points, cutting them off, or trying to get in around them. Along one side of their line the trolls and some thyrs now pushed out and rounded quickly on their flank. Others buggers began to look up at the defensive walls around them, and the towers that surrounded this part of the court. The stairs to them were open, and they began to go up, fighting as they went.

  The move into the sally port had built itself up into a wild, roiling mass of goblins, and they soon filled their half the court up and began to push back harder against the spears. The thyrs used their long axes and flails over the heads and shields of the goblins, and it suddenly broke the men, and there were now only some arrows coming down into them from the walls and towers, and through the windows of the great keep tower before them.

  Kulith was nearer the menace from the walls, and so he turned to lead a group of trolls up the closest stair, and they used it to rise up to the battlement walk. They fought along it, in both directions, and began to sweep the archers and the soldiers they encountered in ones and twos off. Those in front were all catching arrows on their shields as they could, or being hit by them, and falling away.

  They cleared the wall and reached the stair of the tower over the gate, and as Fugoe Castle was not a great bastion but a simple frontier post, it was easily broken into and invaded. There were several men in armor standing above them on the upper battlement, their armor chased and gilded over in places, their trappings as rich as wine, sewn over with their heraldry.

  “Their lords!” one of the other trolls called out, spitting the words in hate.

  Kulith let the others move forward and engage them first. As metal rang out on metal, he turned and looked off at the other walls, then as far as he could afield. Some action was taking place along the north-west edge of the village, with two lines of soldiers armed with spears meeting the thrings that he had been promised, and a disciplined looking goblin mass was now holding its own below the south wall, and were working on the larger gate below. The riders and footmen who had sallied out the gates were starting to disengage, the small formation of them that remained breaking free of the bloody massacre between the outer defenses and the castle wall, and they now moved east, toward the broken collection of buildings and farms that had been looted and burned two days before.

  Their reluctance to continue was partly explained by a great host of buggers now approaching from the south, perhaps ten more companies of goblins, that had come up to occupy a harvested field and watch with interest what was going on. Their uniforms and banner rags appeared black, and Kulith figured they were Sterina’s troops. The White Child, as she was called, ruled over one of the dead courts in the Great Swamp. They had so far only shown themselves and not committed to the battles Sarik had fought. They watched, probably informed their mistress what happened, and waited for her orders. But everyone had now seen the castle open up, and they all wanted to be a part of that looting and rape.

  One of the trolls fell back from the line of knights, his armor and flesh burning, seeming to have caught on fire. He bowled into Kulith and almost pushing him out between two of the merlons merlons and off the tower stair. Kulith caught himself as the other troll fell, and then withered on the stones in pain.

  He turned his attention back then to the fighting on the tower top. A basket helmed knight with a plume of black feathers had just bested the troll and knocked him back. Kulith moved around and faced the knight himself with his sword. As his feet took position, he saw a golden glow radiating from the blade of the enemy, and flame seemed to roil, as it struck across at him.

  Kulith hissed out, cautious of this unexpected and dangerous turn of events. Magic was here, and not just rotten thring magic, but the kind that was very rare among humans, so that it was not seriously counted on. They talked of such things around the pot fires, but in real life seeing it was as rare as a hen’s tooth, and he had never seen one of those. Now he was here, testing the edge of his
black blade against it.

  The glowing sword sparked as it took a bite into his blade’s edge. He knocked it out to the side, too far off guard. The blade flashed back in, like a withering serpent, and tried to skewer him, as he tried to strike to the knight. Their blades slapped together, and then the knight’s sword knocked his away and cut right through his shield’s rim down into the wood, as if it was nothing more than a round of cheese.

  He angrily struck back, using his great, dull black blade to hammer at the glowing weapon and push the warrior away. The golden sword came up and met his, then made a smooth flick, swinging under his weapon so that its tip nicked his leg. The pain was excruciating, like boiling fire. It had to be magical, there was no other explanation. It was exquisite, it was unbearable. The tip had moved back up to guard, battering his blade, but his leg still felt like a hot poker was laid into it. He dared not look down for fear that he would see himself on fire.

  Kulith went mad. He howled and heedlessly pushed forward, and the magic blade sliced into him again as it came over the top of his own sword and the remnants of the shield. He didn’t care. He rushed forward and struck with both his arms, and threw the man by his weight and his blow off the tower top and watched him spin down through the air to bounce against a lower walk, before breaking upon the rear of a wagon. He caused the barrels of oil and water loaded on it to splatter their contents about, as they were moved and crushed.

  Kulith felt the wounds he had taken: the burning lines across his body, and the pain brought him down on his knees, as the others bested the rest of the knights and lords there on the tower top. His vision cleared after a few moments, and he rose and saw their victory. He stood up and immediately he swayed, and was not sure if he should try and fight any more. Instead he worried that he might be dying. He tied up the still hissing wound on his leg, and stumbled down the stairs dragging his sword, batting away an archer who surprised him by suddenly emerging out from a door.

  He limped across the courtyard, to where the trolls, goblins and thyrs were now working on the geate of the keep tower. They were also still running back and forth across the inside yard, fighting, looting, and killing people indiscriminately, but most had focused on the big prize. Some arrow fire was still coming out of the windows of the keep, and off from the east wall, which was still being cleared. The wolf-like thyrs were timing the shots coming at them from above, catching most of the shafts on their shields, or avoiding them.

  The golden sword that had burned him now sat lifeless: turned the color of dull silver, and lay a few feet away from the fallen knight. Kulith pulled a coat off a body and wrapped the weapon up without touching it. It was the kind of gift he thought Sarik might appreciate; one that would pull his interest away from whatever else was distracting him for a moment. Kulith also didn’t want anyone making off with it now, and making some mischief with it later. It had a jewel and gold chasing on the hilt, something he had never imagined before being done to a weapon. When he rolled the knight over from where he had landed and burst the barrels, the man moaned.

  “Still alive after that fall?” Kulith wondered aloud, as he looked down at him in surprise. “That is a trick that you will not repeat.”

  Hovus Black Smile had now gone across the courtyard to the keep with his pole arm raised up, a white cloth tied to the tip. He was calling for the surrender of the holdfast, in front of the door where the wooden ramp had been disassembled to prevent the easy use of a battering ram. Some goblins and thyrs were still shooting arrows back up at the windows and slits in its face, it all a great chaos and probably a waste of time.

  “You have not gotten their attention,” Kulith called over to him, as he jerked his shield up and caught an arrow shot from the roof. Hovus moved to the side, as a stone came wheeled down from the top of the battlement and struck the flags where he had just been with a crash. He moved back more from there, to where several other trolls waited for their moment to come.

  “Bring oil, bring wood, and bring pitch!” Kulith said to the goblins and thyrs standing around him. “We will light them up like a big, greasy candle.”

  A goblin chief got his warriors to work, and they started rolling barrels over from the wagon near the main gate, as others got pieces of wood and threw them down, below the door of the entrance. The soldiers inside the holdfast saw what was happening and began to spill buckets of water out the drains and windows to try and wet the door, and the wood, to try and prevent the burning.

  Kulith called up to the keep in the tongue of the Kavvek Princes of Gece. “Surrender now and I promise to release half of you!”

  Someone had heard him, and the arrow fire and rocks diminished, and the buggers waited for a reply. The sun had gone down by now, the clouds off the Dimm streaking across through the sky in chains of umber, red and violet. The goblins pawed about, making angry noises and fighting each other over bits of loot. It was always hard to get them to stop killing once they got started, Kulith mused. Their lives were the grease on the axle of the wheel that Sarik had told him to roll, when he started this war in the West Lands, but they were still not to be wasted.

  “How do we know you will keep your word?” someone called down to him, out of the wood hoarding that hung over the tower’s door. Kulith spread his hands as he replied.

  “It might take a couple of days to get you out otherwise. We don’t have that kind of time. Surrender now and you may draw your own lots, with the old and young also free to pass. If I lie, the next keeps we attack will never yield to us, and you know we have made such bargains before, and kept to them.”

  “Bloody troll! Why have you come into Gece?” a woman yelled down. He thought it was the scathing voice of the castle’s lady, for some reason.

  “You would have to ask the great lord Sarik, the Overlord of the Dimm why he has done so, for he is my reason,” Kulith replied. He looked around. “I have heard of this place in our stories. We once lived here ourselves in the old days. Who then, is the uninvited?”

  He waited for a response. When none came after a while, he just called up, “Are you coming out?”

  “Aye,” an angry voice came back. “Give us some time to draw our lots.”

  Later after the doors opened and the slaves and ransoms were being separated apart from those to be freed, Kulith had his wounds tended to by one of the White Hoods. These goblins were known primarily for traveling behind the attacks and dispatching with their mercy knives the buggers too wounded to go on or fight again. They also gathered up the usable dead bodies and returned them to the surface of the Dimm where an attempt was made to turn them into thrings.

  In casual perversity, the trolls had stripped the fallen knight of his armor, bandaged him, and then they had made a game of pulling out all his broken bones and setting them with splints. There had been a lot of betting, and now one of the White Hoods was wearing the knight’s dented breastplate and helm, and capering around, causing the others to laugh.

  “Sir Theodor of the barrels,” Kulith said mockingly over to the prostrate, bandaged knight. “Theodor stolen-sword,” he added, as he thought of it a second later. He hefted up the bundle containing the man’s magic blade, but he did not show it to anyone. While the others took loot and ransoms, Kulith had decided that the sword was the most valuable object he could take as plunder away from Fugoe.

  “That is an heirloom of the Tuvier Kings of old,” Sir Theodor said to him, as if in warning. Kulith smiled. He cared a great deal about that fact. “It is kept on the mantle of our city house in Aukwen Yard, when not being used against great evil. Once a year, it is carried on an ark through the city, during the pageant of Saint Tepus.”

  “Yes. Well perhaps you should have not put it into such jeopardy then,” Kulith replied. “My master loves the breaking of such toys. A knight should be worthy of the sword he carries, or so they say.”

  “You are a great monster!” Sir Theodor spit back. “You threw me off that tower top. It was hardly fair!”

  “
Yes, but then you are the great knight of Gece, and I am just a monster. You know, you are lucky to be alive. Perhaps your saint has saved you today.”

  “I will someday have my revenge for this!” he warned, his moustache flaring, his eyes daming the troll from his ashen face.

  “Perhaps you will,” Kulith replied. “I said before the battle that the warriors first through the gate would get a slave, and that those who blocked it open would also get a slave. At least that is what I think I said. Since you are in several pieces now, perhaps my many deeds account for the all of you. I am freeing you to go, Sir Theodor, because you are worthless, because you are beginning to stink worse than a bugger, and because I want you to someday try to get your revenge.”

  Kulith snorted like a pig faced bugger to be rude. “You will have to live with the shame of this defeat and with your loss of this holy relic. I want your people to see you and know that. You are in for a rough trip to Aukwen, Sir Theoder. Carry my message with you that the great, dark Lord Sarik will not stop here, and for the Prince in Kavvar to be afraid.”

  Kulith stood up, gathered his kit and moved off, away from Sir Theodor’s wimpering retort. He was limping now, from the wound to his leg, and he cursed again the blade that he now carried. He went to where Hovus Black Smile and Ovodag were overseeing the general sack of the castle. They had placed the slaves and ransoms on one side of the court and given the refugees a wagon in which to carry away their wounded, the children, and some water. The goblins had slaughtered and were cooking most of the other animals they had found over spits, and likewise consuming the other food stores. Some were fighting duels for choice bits of spoil, and some goblins were arguing with the trolls about how many had died, and to who those shares should go.