A War of Stones: Book One of the Traveler Knight

by Howard Norfolk

  Just behind him came his own formation, hitting and pressing in, using their numbers to force the troops of Vous Vox back, slaughtering them with the downward strikes of their axes and swords. They shoved the goblin and troll line backward, until it bowed out and began to break up, showing just how few had formed it. Horns blew and it fell apart like a mist, rolling back, the warriors running, to reveal several ranks of thrings that stood beyond, all armed with bladed spears and great swords, their bodies encased in tight fitted black iron and leather, with Vous Vox’s barbed red shield device painted on the breastplates and large bosses. Controlled by the vampire captains, they lowered their weapons down to guard and moved forward, standing just far apart as to not hit each other.

  They all struck and reacted almost the same way, using the same stance and moves. They cut down a few with their first swings, but then they began to get mobbed by Kulith’s goblins and trolls. Unarmed and stabbed full of spears and swords, they turned back into the almost mindless undead they were, and pawed about, trying to claw and bite at their attackers. Trolls carrying piles moved up and pinned them to the ground like wood grubs on a feasting plate. There were not that many of them in comparison to the ten thousand buggers who were attacking, and so they were slowly undone, the horde using the same tactics they had used in the West Lands to defeat the stone men’s armored knights.

  Kulith waded into the fight, feeling the Tuvier Blade lead him and give him greater speed than he would have otherwise. When he was struck, there would be pain for a moment, and then it would fade away to a dull ache. He blocked the weapons of the magical army and cut back at their arms, trying to break their hold on the weapons they carried. It was a quick series of bobs and turns, trying to keep track of the points and the arms of two or three of the creatures at once, all attacking and slashing around, landing back blows at him.

  He hacked and blocked, then hacked again, leaving the disarmed thrings behind him to be opened up by the other goblins and trolls. The piles impaled, and they struggled there until they could be beheaded or burned. Kulith and his buggers were making headway, but there were also many dead goblin and troll bodies lying on the grass, and in small piles in places.

  One of the vampires was on him now, as he could immediately tell by the quickly moving body, jumping past the others to get at him. The armor was different, and it wore a great cowl, he supposed to protect it from the weak sun now hanging above the Dimm. It made a last powerful spring forward at him and they came together and fought.

  The vampire had two swords, just as Kulith favored. He had a shield now though, and so he blocked with it, as the demon rained blows that came in and around its edge, while he caught some of the other strikes with the Tuvier Blade. It jumped back from him, and he braced for the impact of one of the enchanted thrings that had come close, as it swung around a great sword to hit him. He was knocked back by the strike, it going across the top of the shield and glancing away, taking some of the wood and a piece of the metal edge with it.

  Kulith backed up a step, dropped low and let the next sweep of the sword pass over him with a hiss. He stepped in after the blade went by and came up to swing his own sword back across. The enchanted speed let him move and bring the Tuvier Blade around to cut off the nearest arm at the elbow, and it dangled there for a moment, holding onto the weapon’s grip before it finally fell away. The monster changed its stance and used the sword now with one arm, but when one of the feet came forward, Kulith was ready and cut it across the calf, going right through the armor, the white meat, and across the bone. The thring struggled to get its footing, and then went down onto one knee.

  Three or four goblins charged forward and jumped onto it, and used their knives and swords to open up the armor and dismember it more. It fell over and began to rock back and forth, reaching out and trying to throttle one of the goblins with its remaining hand. Another troll came up then and drove a pile down through its helm, and with the same blow pinned it to the ground.

  Kulith looked ahead and he could see gaps in the formation of enchanted thrings they had been fighting. Behind them a large mass of goblin archers were spread out, with rows of stakes driven into the ground before them, along with a few infantry for protection. He saw a black billowing cloak off to the right, as it flew in towards him, like a great black bird swooping down to seize on a running rabbit.

  He caught the sword that the vampire swung down at him at the last moment with the top of his shield and slashed back with the Tuvier Blade, taking away a strip of the cloak like a long bandage, and cutting down through the demon’s armor and into the stuff of its immortal flesh. The creature hissed and jumped away, the cloak billowing around it as it leapt over the helmeted head of a nearby black armored thring. It was gone, and Kulith had his shield splintered the next moment by a falchion fixed on the end of a pole.

  He rolled back across the ground as the thring pursued him, stamping across the grass and stabbing forward with the curved sword pole. A troll came in from the side and drove a pike in behind its chest plate, and the thring staggered and tried to wrench it out by turning around. A goblin threw a jar of oil on it, and then a torch followed, and it began to burn from the waist up, flailing around and losing sense of what it was supposed to be doing. Another troll came up and drove a wooden pile through it, and it fell to the ground to move weakly as it burned.

  There were now three black cloaks, darting around behind the remains of the line, fighting as they could. One shot away, skipping across the ground toward the fortress walls. The other two came forward, slipping around the piles that were thrown or thrust out at them. Kulith turned to meet them, and by instinct dropped the remains of his shield and drew out his second sword.

  They met him in a quick series of blows, where one would come at him from one direction, as the other circled around and waited for a chance. He took a slash to his side, the heavy armor parting a little along the cut. Then the other danced with him, trying to stab him down through the face and neck. Their blades clanged, sparked and skittered, as he knocked the sword away. They passed close by each other, and the face of a human female gnashed her fangs at him. She went by him and spun back, trying to cut off his head with a strike from her sword.

  He caught both her blades with his magic one, and then forced them up by his brute strength. Their silvered points came back and he caught them in turn on his swords, their blades ringing out three times before he forced one of hers out wide. He used the Tuvier Blade to cut her across the throat. She tried to avoid it at the last moment, by jerking her head back and away, but to no avail.

  They moved past each other and then the thring collapsed with black ichor pumping up from the wound that had nearly taken off its whole head. Buggers and humans always pictured these creatures as stonily dead, but Kulith now knew better. In exchange for their blood drinking and fiendish gluttony they received unnatural speed, strength and agility, like a river cataract suddenly rushing ahead to sail off through the air and make a waterfall, splattering its energy on the rocks below.

  But this one was done. He knocked off the helmet with his sword and held up the thring’s head by its long pale hair, the fangs still gnashing at him. The sun and the Tuvier Blade now both worked to turn it to ash, and it shriveled up, burning, and fell from his hand. The other vampire had disappeared. The trolls and goblins were going forward beyond him, putting up their shields to ward off the arrows being shot at them from close range by the mass of archers. Their great numbers began to break through the line of stakes and charge into the guards and goblin bow that were now starting to use their clubs and hand weapons instead.

  As the numbers surged, the archers broke toward the right, moving across the field to where Kulith had expected the hidden goblin cavalry to be waiting. They were pursued by about half of the first wave of goblins and trolls, with a second wave moving across the slope behind to finish off the few armored thrings still fighting there in pockets, and a mass of enemy trolls anchoring the right si
de of the line, acting as a door for the rest of them to get away.

  Kulith just stood there, looking down at the gold skull bosses on the vampire’s body armor, as the body smoked and continued to burn away inside. He was tired, and he had done what he had said he would do. He wondered if he, if all of them had the strength and will left to go on and get the job done. They could be here in siege for a long time, time that he was sure Sterina would use to land her forces and attack them. But today, it seemed that the campaign had moved on to its final objective.

  He was able to walk forward for less than a hundred feet and reach the area where the goblin archers had once stood, it now littered over with bodies from each side and many dropped bows, arrows, and other equipment. He took the Tuvier Blade and pointed with it out at the walls of the Stone Pile, now laying just a couple hundred yards ahead. A couple of the goblins on the gate bartizan shot arrows out at him, until someone told them to stop.

  Minutes later as he still stood there resting, several of the chieftains and war band leaders found and approached him. They looked up at the fortress beyond as he just had, and they all realized that they were finally there, and what the task was now before them. Two of the trolls clapped each other’s shoulders and shouted, while the goblins all stayed cooler, possibly already starting to size up each other for what might happen after the Stone Pile was taken. The little buggers were like that, and Kulith couldn’t do a thing to change their fundamental instincts.

  “We will collect all the gear that they have dropped,” he told them. “We will loot whatever camp they had, and burn all the corpses. Tomorrow we’ll start moving the main camp down the valley, closer to the Stone Pile, and that should take about three days. Where did the rest of Vous Vox’s army retreat to?”

  “They are still fighting them down in the valley,” Ovodag said. “They are off that way about a mile, but it looks like they will continue to retreat and seek shelter at Ghost Harbor.”

  “They will probably start sneaking up to get back into the castle at night,” another chief said. “Or perhaps they will wait for Sterina to reinforce them, or go to her now so that they can come back and attack us later.”

  Which they all knew would be hard for them to do. Ovodag had scouted the Ghost Fleet several days earlier in some of his faster boats and found that Vous Vox had not maintained his fleet of vessels. Half the rowing ships were broken up or in need of repair. Some of them had been filled with rocks and sunk in a line across the mouth of the harbor, perhaps to prevent the rebels from coming in and directly seizing the village, Kulith reckoned. A whole series of extremely tedious and damaging fights upon the surface of the lake had been avoided because of the lich’s negligence.

  Kulith again considered moving down and directly attacking Ghost Harbor, and then decided it was not very important as far as his overall objective. The whole south end of the island would theoretically put up the white smoke if the Stone Pile was taken and Vous Vox destroyed. And there were several groups of goblins who would with little provocation take it upon themselves to move about and systematically capture and loot the south end of the island on their own.

  What he needed now was his wood from the forest, and a plan of how best to use it to get inside the Stone Pile’s walls. He swore he had seen one of the vampires go back up over them right before the archers were routed, the creature doing it in two jumps, only pausing for a moment on some irregularity before making its second leap onto the fighting walk. It wouldn’t be so easy for them to get in, he knew.

  “Tomorrow we will meet and discuss different plans for how to get into the Stone Pile,” he told them. “I’m going back to camp now to have my wounds tended to.” And then he limped away, hurting all over from the sword strokes he now remembered hitting him, and a few others that he did not, but were now telling him painfully that he had reached his limit. As he walked away, he went alone, and gained his strength back slowly, the Tuvier Blade feeding him just a tendril of its healing power. It was not fair, after he had killed the vampire. There was a great battle ahead, but more often lately he wondered if he was riding the sword like a horse to his victory, or if it was riding him.

  He came back into the camp ahead of most of the other walking wounded, but buggers with news of their victory had already made it known. Behind him on the gradual slopes of the rolling hills a lot of the horde was still either fighting the knots of trolls and pony cavalry, or chasing the goblin archers down to the harbor. The way it was going, he knew there would be a lot of fresh meat coming back to the camp that night. There had been some threats from the little buggers that they would have a hero roast after the battle, if they didn’t get an adequate meat provision. It didn’t seem like that would happen now, but it could always happen later.

  Kabi met him and looked worried as he went over and sat down in his chair. Little Toad just avoided his eyes and looked sullen as she hauled over a bucket of water. The archer was watching them all, more restless than usual.

  “Get me an old clay pot and boil some water in it,” he told Kabi. She went back and got one of the White Knife sows to help her with the task, and they soon had it set out on a flat rock beside the fire. Kulith took a piece of cloth and dumped its contents down into the boiling water. He had been too close to the vampire, and now he felt ill. He would dose himself with the root tea, because he feared going white. As the tea brewed up he drank some water from the bucket, and listened to the far off clash of arms still going on up the slope. His hand rested over on top of the Tuvier Blade, and it slowly continued to revive him from wherever door to hell he had recently just paused on the threshold of.

  But that was getting to be an old game for him. He felt around for an arrow point he thought he had taken in the leg but there was nothing there now but a big bruise and a crease to the flesh. It had not gone in but only kissed him, and he knew he had been a little lucky today, though he did not feel like it now.

  “Let’s take your armor off and see how badly you are hurt,” Kabi said him, sounding concerned, almost matronly. She had turned herself in the last week into a proper high status sow, now in wool hose, a green dress like something the great thrings put their dolls in, and she had a long silver chain wrapped around her neck several times. He looked away from her and chuckled to himself, realizing that he had finally gotten ahold of something that was worth keeping.

  She took it as a possible slight against her, and showed him her fangs. Before she could say something and make an argument, he took out a second piece of material; this one cut off from a long black cape. He opened it up and revealed its contents to them. There were several rings, two gold armbands, and a gold necklace set with a green stone. They were crusted over with blood, and after he had drank off two cups of root tea, he dropped them all down into the clay pot, to boil the ichor and grime away from them, and perhaps make them safer to wear.

  “I have brought you both some presents picked up from the battlefield,” he said. “Look through this loot and take what you will.” Kabi had gasp in surprise, and she stared back at the pot as she helped him get out of his heavy armor. When Kulith was free of the coat and it had been set aside with his helm, he came back to the fire and kicked the clay pot off the rock, then shattered it with his boot heel. He used a splash of water from the bucket to cool the jewels off.

  Kabi picked up one of the beaten golden armbands and sniffed at it, looking for thring taint. She had the gift like him to identify curses, perhaps even more strongly, and this made her all the more valuable. She slid it onto her wrist and admired its look and workmanship. She tried on a ring and found it would not fit, and so she threw it over in front of Little Toad, who just stared down at it in disgust.

  “Give her the other armband,” Kulith told Kabi. “She is after all a countess, and my last sow robbed her of all her other jewels.”

  Kabi had found a ring that fit, then played with the length of gold chain and its jewel for a moment before removing the silver necklace she had on. She
tossed it over, like the ring before, to Little Toad. She put on the gold, then picked up the other gold armband and looked at it. Instead of throwing it to Little Toad as Kulith had told her, she slipped it onto her other wrist and stared defiantly back at him.

  “Don’t act like a dumb sow,” he said to her. “You have more gold on you right now than a thring toy and a goblin chief standing right next to each other. What will they say, and what will they do when they see it all on you? I’m not around enough to always protect you and keep the other buggers from dragging you off. They might not touch you out of respect and fear for me, but neither do you have a kingdom threatening to invade us like Toad here.”

  “Wear enough to make them want to be like you,” Sunnil said to her. “Make every one of them who has a sow want to get her the same, and every sow demand such, and contentment will follow if the means are within their reach. If it is too far beyond them, then there is just envy, and hate.”

  Kabi stopped trying to adjust the gold chain on her neck and held the bracelets up close to her chest, covering them protectively with her hands, crossing them as she did so. Most of the time what came out of Little Toad’s mouth was just devilish scorn, usually in observation of something that Kulith had just done wrong, or not done. But this time it seemed like she was making a good point, speaking from her nobility.

  Perhaps she would turn out to be a good leader of the other stone men beneath her, and that might become a danger to them all in the far future. He was reminded that he needed to get rid of her, based on the fact that two armies had now mustered in the West Lands to try and do something about the situation. A goblin had reported to him what Hovus Black Smile thought about the situation: that the third time it happened it would be the last.