“Alright,” Kulith said to him. “I will tell them to instead stay put and we will go up and talk to the chief of Snake’s Head and see what he will do.” Ovodag grunted back and followed him over to the standing stone by the road. The chiefs appeared to have made their decisions about the battle order, and turned now to see what Kulith wanted.
“What is the decision?” Kulith asked them.
“Red Paws on the left, White Knife in the middle. We want your horde to sweep up on the right side of the line and attack the fortress.” That would put them closest to the water, Kulith knew.
“What about the trolls?” Ovodag asked. “They are numerous, and will cut into whatever formation they stand against on the field.”
“We will coat the heads of our arrows in pitch, light them up, and fire them into their tightly packed ranks,” he replied. “Then your trolls can go up the hill and break their line.”
Kulith nodded back, listening to what the chieftain proposed, while inside he was disturbed. The Snake’s Head chief had broken the tactic of having the trolls fight dispersed among the goblins, something that had been brought about in the West Lands because the knights singled the goblins formations out for heavy cavalry charges. Because he was dealing with garrison trolls, they had never adjusted their tactics for this.
“This battle appears won before it has even started,” Kulith said. “I have been counseled by the others, because of our great advantage here, to ask to try to negotiate a settlement once more. Though I see how the elimination of your old enemy is the outcome you prefer, wouldn’t negotiating now maintain our strength and keep the thrings from trying to join in the fight here?”
“What would you have me do?” the goblin chief said, the sudden loudness of his voice causing the other goblins waiting nearby, massed in their ranks, to turn back at them and scowl.
“We should go talk to Skrot and see if he will instead fight with us down the Sword and across the Tooth Swamp to capture the dead penny.”
“I will not accept this,” the chief of the White Knife said, “after you already offered me your help. By the dark, dreaming devil, you will support me now or everyone will know of it! Let’s go out now and win this battle!”
“This battle is already won: all of us can see it,” Ovodag repeated, which was bad luck.
“That’s no reason why to not fight it! It is their blood today for our blood, long spilled out and lost. ”
“Then we will come up and support you on the right, and fight their trolls after you have shot them full of fire.”
“As it should be,” the goblin chief said, and crossed his arms, and glared up at the Snake Head with his fangs slavering.
Kulith turned back to Ovodag. “Call the little buggers to order and have them step out on the right flank of the White Knife. Have a couple trolls go with every other company, so they don’t get lost and know what to do if the thrings attack. I will command the Shore buggers, and aim for this archer’s nest they speak of.”
Ovodag shrugged, and having tried, knew there was nothing else to now do. Kulith walked over and joined the other trolls in front of the Shore buggers. He drew forth both the Tuvier Blade and the sword he had taken from Vous Vox’s champion after the fight in the hall at Doom Wall.
The goblin horns and drums started up, and they shouted a few times in unison, and then they stepped off slowly, going across the fields that lay before them. Ahead, the Snake’s Head rose in a series of rock and earth platforms, with not much to show but short, goat-trimmed grass and lighter horizontal stripes where lichen grew upon the rocks. It gave all the defenders places to stand, and the attackers a long slope to try and climb up. The trolls and goblins they faced had made spears to take advantage of this, but did not have many shields, or pavis, for adequate cover.
As they approached, the companies of goblins behind them began to fire hundreds of flaming arrows up at the enemy troll and goblin formations, as fast as they could be picked up and set afire. There were bits of burnt rag and ash falling, and where they arrows struck the formations, they not only caused wounds but sometimes started the grass to burning. The entire line of trolls seemed to move about, withering and flinching in turmoil as they were shot into.
It was another time that the trolls were being shown as vulnerable and weak, and Kulith didn’t like it. Some of the others moving in formations near him cursed and muttered. Ovodag had been right in trying to stop this fight, Kulith thought. They were trying to destroy their undead masters, not each other. What if the goblins turned on the trolls, who were on the social rung between them and the thrings? He didn’t think the thrings could put a wedge of hate in between the buggers now, but the trolls could certainly do it to themselves.
The eight thousand goblins in the alliance that Kulith had brought from Doom Wall roared out and charged the last fifty feet up the hill and engaged with the enemy buggers protecting the hill fort warren. The spears crashed into shields, and some warriors were lifted up into the air on their tips, or moved between them and were pinned by the thickness of the shafts.
The arrows started coming back onto their formation, but they had all brought shields to keep them out of their faces. Except for Kulith, who now felt rather stupid to have not done it also. They put them up and moved on ahead, up the hill toward the line of trolls. To the right, several of the goblin companies had gone through a gap in the enemy masses and were either falling down into a hidden ditch, or chasing the nearest company of archers off their position. Kulith did not know if this early breaking of their line would amount to, if anything.
The White Knife had pushed in and were standing and fighting warrior to warrior across their line, trying to break the Snake’s Head goblins up, as they stood in a thick rank, stabbing with spears and striking with axes and swords at the top of the shields. The odds were more than three to one, and it was just a matter of time until the warren’s defenders collapsed and ran. Kulith’s goblins were starting to curve around on the far right and flank the Snake’s Head line, and there were still no thrings coming out of the water.
There was a break from the enemy arrows, with about eighty feet of open ground in front of them before the enemy trolls. They waited there for the goblins to stop firing the burning arrows up from the bottom of the hill. When it tapered off, they moved forward and attacked the trolls, hacking the points off the spears and pole arms while trying to avoid being skewered. Kulith went in with his swords, cutting away the first couple of spear and lances, and then he felt one tear into his mail. He twisted to the side, away from it.
He cut it off with one of the swords in a swirling motion and with the next slashed at the face of the troll that wielded it. It was a little bigger than him, but he was accustomed to that. It did not have time to drop its broken weapon for another, and then it was grabbing at its face. A troll to the side swung a long handled hammer at him and he made it glance off the Tuvier Blade and strike the ground instead. The blow still threw him sideways, and he stumbled across the rocks. He turned to see another troll coming down at him with the point of a sword. Kulith struck it away with his blade, and with a quick stabbing movement took the troll in the throat with his other.
As he backed off, the hammer came whistling back around and one of his swords scraped it in the air as it went by. He would have liked to run in on the troll as the thing was being lifted back, but his feet were now headed the other way. The hammer came back at down him, and he had to duck to the side, it scraping off the mail on his hip and striking upon the rocks. It glanced away, and in two steps he was finally up its haft and stabbing the troll through the guts with his sword.
It dropped the hammer and wailed out while clutching at its wound. He came around it and sliced the neck under the mail as he went by. The noise cut off and it fell. He moved past and watched as another troll ran by, on fire from the arrows. On the slope around him, other trolls were being knocked back and forth by each other. They were also standing face to face in little bunches
, using their short weapons, stabbing with swords and hangers, slashing with their axes.
Kulith turned around and looked out across the field. There were some companies of goblins evident, rushing around the skirt of the trolls, but not hazarding to venture directly into this part of the battle. Still no thrings had come up out of the water. A troll stabbed at him with a sword, and he knocked it away and slashed as it passed him. He spun and watched as the troll turned back for more. It swung and tried to bear him down with its other hand. Kulith’s other sword came up and stabbed it, as its hand came down to grab his neck and try to strangle him. He pushed his sword in, the hand slacked after a moment, and the troll shouted weakly and fell to the ground.
He stepped back and looked around again. The trolls that they had been fighting were now pulling back, getting clear of the fight. He shouted out but no one heard him, and he didn’t know what he had said. He let the ones that were leaving pass by him, and he gathered in his own warriors together by lifting up the Tuvier Blade. They made a stand there on their arc of the field and held it.
He saw Ovodag moving on over to him, the troll cutting at the enemy trolls right and left with his great sword as they passed. A foe’s weapons had scraped and jamming upon his plated armor and stuck out, but had otherwise done little damage. Kulith held up his swords and howled, arching his back, and blood flowed down into the sleeves of the padded jacket he wore under his chainmail. Some of his trolls roared back to him and lifted up their own weapons. The battle had only lasted for a few minutes, and for that he was glad.
The allied goblins had turned back to the left and were destroying the Snake’s Head horde. The walls and arrow slits on the sides of the high fortress were now alive with activity, and shafts hissed down and tried to hit them. But there was not enough room there for many archers, and because of the shape of the sloped walls, the sighting was limited. There were too many goblins and trolls from Doom Wall with the horde on the hill for the arrows to make much difference.
The Snake’s Head horde tried to get back behind their walls along the lower curved body of the snake, where other ramparts could be seen, and where gate ports surely existed. But it was not enough, and too slowly done. The allied goblins and trolls physically pushed and threw the Snake’s Head horde off the height and occupied it, and began to fight down into the warrens along the roadway, where they could find entry. The castle on the height shut its doors and held out.
“Ovodag!” Kulith shouted. “Ovodag, get them together and send someone over to the trolls and see if they will quit fighting us. Too many of us have died already.”
His brother looked back at him and they both called in the trolls and formed a new line, on the side of the hill below the height. There were still some arrows coming down from the embrasures, and the buggers put their shields up to guard. Beyond them, the White Knife goblins were trying to burn down a set of gates leading into the fort, or one of the warrens. There was quite a bit of confusion and some small battles along the front of the warren walls to their left, on the lower part of the head, as the enemy continued its withdrawal.
It wasn’t a panicked flight toward the tail of the snake, like what he had seen happen in the West Lands when an attack went wrong. It was slow, and perhaps some of the warriors confronting one another were now shouting, and trying to agree to terms for surrender. The routing of a horde was a great disgrace to the thring who led it and a notch of pride for the humans over in the West Lands, the Golok March, or wherever else it had been done. Kulith didn’t feel satisfied at all with the feat. This fight had just needed to be fought, to get him to the Stone Pile as quickly as possible with ten thousand buggers.
The trolls withdrew back down the slope to get out of range of the arrows, and they waited there for the eventual outcome of the battle. They also watched the water, to see if Vox Vous or Sterina would attack from there, but they never did. Kulith was sure dead eyes were watching them, but it was a warm afternoon and the sun was showing through a scatter of white-gray clouds overhead. Thrings stuck to their orders usually, and there would be no advantage, or sudden surprise to be levered here.
After about an hour and the burning of two of the lesser warrens, the fort on the top of Snake’s Head stopped firing arrows and white smoke was made to rise up its chimneys by pouring water on all the hearths inside it. The White Knife goblins cheered, as did the other attackers to a lesser degree. There would be no hide and seek for plunder in the fortress, or much ravishing of its breeding sows and slaves. The buggers would all get paid in meat and loot directly by Kulith, who was now putting the trove they had found at Doom Wall to work. His push to the Stone Pile would probably last just as long as those gold and silver reserves did, to provide tump, meat and salt.
After getting to the Stone Pile it would be different, he knew. His army would be allowed to pillage the fortresses and villages along the way and on Big Stone, but to get them to fight Vous Vox he would have to promise them of a part of the great treasure, of a sharing out of the dead penny that they could count on. It was a new idea, as the only promise they reacted to with certainty was the sure threat of death and torture. The peace would be harder after that, but with the thrings off the lake, the goblins and trolls could relax for awhile and try to figure it all out. There was only one problem Kulith could possibly see, to stand between him and giving the sword what it wanted. He turned around and talked to him then.
“Ovodag,” he said, “find the trolls we just fought against at Snake’s Head and tell them to come down to our camp. All the trolls need to have a meeting now.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
SUNNIL
THE LONG BONE
She had watched the troll take the buggers up the hill just three hours before. Now part of them were coming back down, the rest either dead, despoiling the goblin castle, or on detail burning the dead before night fell. It was assumed that in the dark the thrings that had been watching the battle would finally rise up out of the water and try to drag the dead away, to make more of them. Pyres of black smoke rose now, from several points along the shore, pouring out a dreadful, sweet smell.
The guards that watched her were restless. One of them had used the Golok word for witch earlier, and something unusual had happened in their camp a few nights before. She had woken up to find herself standing by the troll. Had he done something to her, she was sure, or was she finally just losing her mind? She was not sure he would do such a thing, as he had shown distaste for her at times before, but he was also a great lecher. Perhaps it had just been a bad dream, but the ugly goblin had definitely said the word witch to the others, as he had looked at Sunnil, and so she was now concerned.
Her servant Edou, an Alonic archer taken from Fugoe Castle was sitting off to the side watching the aftermath of the battle, resting while he could. The wooden crutch she had paid one of the goblins to make lay beside him. He could with it easily limp over every few minutes to tend the fire, the food today consisting of cooked alligator stew in a pot, with vegetables and a deer carcass, to be served with crocks of beans and rice. There was also tump waiting for the victors, in three hogsheads the goblins kept a close eye on. She had been exposed to so much tump now that the smell of it alone made her gag.
Edou shuffled over to her, and they both stared off out at the tall headland to the east. Across the lake they could just see a line, where the hills came down to the water’s egde and make little inlets and bays. That coastline supposedly belonged to the West Lands, to Gece, and it helped her to think that salvation and safety were only that far away.
Edou had a small knife hidden his belt, but what could it do, and what could he do with his crippled leg? A devil with a bow from all his accounts; that was the one thing they would never let him near. The goblins made a game of Edou trying to protect her, and the trolls were mostly amused by it and watched it happen. Perhaps it was the ability of the goblins to do whatever they wanted, at any time which kept them both alive. She was an impotent witc
h with but one spell, but it was just great enough to presently charm and keep in check all the monsters that surrounded her.
There had been a call to the battle made by many horns, and banners and totems had been raised up and displayed. The dark haze of arrows went back and forth between field and hill, and one formation of goblins had almost encircled a smaller line of defenders. They were driven, but the victors did not then approach and attack the castle at the top of the motte. In all it had gone on for a little longer than an hour, as it went to evening, with no clue to the real outcome, but a sense from observation that the battle could only have gone one way. Then the defenders had broke and rushed back down the opposite side of the hill, trying as they could to fall back out of the encirclement and flow into some walls and earthworks running between the strongholds they called warrens.
But the pursuit was too quick and too powerful, and a short, second battle took place all along the earthworks where the defenders tried to hold out, or surrender. One after another, the smaller warrens started going up in flames. Then she saw smoke also coming from the castle, and that had made the goblins around her cheer. It was gray, and one of them said it meant that the Snake’s Head had capitulated, and would now have to open up its gates.
The troll came back then, not greatly injured from whatever part he had played in the battle. He was covered in blood though, and his mail and jacket were torn. He sat down on the stump of a log he had chosen and turned a bucket of water up over his head. His shock of black hair sagged down over his eyes and he brushed it back out of his face. He picked up a second bucket of water and drank from it, then spit some out, and used a rag to clean off the blades of his two swords.
The other trolls were gathering around, using the water that was available there, and eyeing the kegs of tump that were always present in Kulith’s camp. Ovodag drew a cup for himself and sat down and drank it by the fire. They had shot birds, storks and ducks while coming down the Long Bone, and these had been set roasting over another fire that had now gone to coals. Ovodag started to eat one as more and more trolls began to arrive. They used up all the camp water and sent the goblins out to get more. Another wagon was brought up with more food, and they began to roast or boil whatever came out of it. Then they killed the donkey pulling the wagon with overhand sword chops, and began to butcher it as well.
A War of Stones: Book One of the Traveler Knight Page 17