A War of Stones: Book One of the Traveler Knight

by Howard Norfolk

  Then the enemy pikes arrived and pressed in, all along the line with a great clatter. The bowmen began to shoot across as they could, they trying to pick their targets with care. A glinting metal tip struck at Wayland, and he let it scratch off a vambrace, before bringing down his bill hook on a helmeted head. It hammered down, and then came back up with the helm still attached, it fouled on the edge, and he tried for a moment to shake it free. Another pike tip struck his helmet, glancing off, and was then withdrawn.

  Wayland slammed the helmet and blade back down on another enemy soldier’s head, where it skipped off. He shook it free then, and got hit by another pike tip, and the tip of it went through his armor this time, putting a sting in his shoulder. As it was withdrawn, he jammed the tip of his own weapon back at the man, and felt it connect with something softer than armor, as it raked across the metal and leather that covered the man’s arms.

  An archer fired past his head at one of the enemy swordsmen, and the arrow punched right through the armor and made the man stagger back, and then sit down. The levy to Wayland’s left suddenly dropped his pike and fell, after taking some grevious wound.

  “Bend back men, bend back!” the foot knight called out to them. They all stepped back, closing the gaps in the line, and taking a part of the curve out of it. An enemy in mail with a great sword stepped forward too quickly, and Wayland stabbed him through the leg with the pointed tip of his weapon. He howled and went down on his knee, and then an enemy pike man moved to defend him, stabbing back at Wayland’s helm and upper body, so that he stepped back himself and joined into his own line.

  The lines seemed to then reset, each side poking at the other with the narrow, sharp tips of their weapons. Wayland then saw something off to his left, where a pole was raised up into the air, and then a large blur came down in an arc and hit the Tourade’s pike line. There was a deafening concussion; and a flash of fire that Wayland could only liken to what Leofend had performed once or twice out in the Priwak.

  A gap had appeared there where it had stuck, the men who had been there thrown around, dropping their spears. Agu’s soldiers tried to immediately rush into it with their weapons and force it more open. The archers behind the line stood and shot into them as they came, and then the skirmishers caught the pikes on their shields, and hacked away at the wooden shafts. They pushed back and forth, and then some of the Tourade’s pikes moved forward from the reserve and closed the gap.

  The Sund then pushed forward in a sudden surge, coming on very strong, exposing themselves and taking wounds to do it. A pike point cut through Wayland’s chain mail, stabbing him across a rib. He sprang back and clutched at the wound, thinking it might be mortal. He took his hand away from it and did not see his guts fall out, and found that it was only bleeding, and not too deep.

  He came back over the heads of his fellows with his weapon, trying to break and pull apart the enemy pike row with his hook, by dropping it repeatedly down upon them. A foot knight on the other side of the line was now yelling out orders in a foreign language, and he saw the rows of enemy helms before him looking back and forth across their line, trying to see what was going on for theirselves.

  Then they suddenly all pulled back away, in a rush to preserve their lives and their line in some order. A square of Grotoy’s pike was to the right now, trying to catch their edge. Grotoy came across in front of the Tourade, and quickly cut off perhaps forty or fifty Sund pikemen and skirmishers, and then began cutting them down with a precision and skill the others did not possess. The Tourade’s foot knight saw that the Sund had just disengaged from them, and he called back, asking for new orders.

  “Move forward!” the line marshal yelled out over their heads, from atop his horse, as he rode down the rear of the Tourade’s line and swung his sword around through the air. The Tourade advanced, their pikes like the teeth on a comb, walking over the dead, splitting their own line as it joined with the disorganized pike square of Grotoy. They came across part of the flat, and they could see that the Sund had reformed ahead, and were again waiting for them. A line of Isur bowmen were formed before the trees, in a triangular rank, and they began to shoot into them in a forceful manner, the points popping on shields and armor, the men cursing as they were hit and went down.

  Wayland found himself in a reserve, and lifted up his bill hook to rest his arms and follow along. Another pike square of Grotoy now passed in front of them, far in front of Wayland, going forward into the great hail of arrows to press in their attack, and they struck the new enemy line first. The Tourade’s archers quickened their own fire, shooting at the other archers, shooting at any targets they could find. A foot knight began calling for the pike to get back into files, but it was no use, as they were all mixing together, with no one seeming to be in command of Grotoy at their front.

  Wayland looked about and realized what had happened, and moved quickly to call in men himself, and join with a small file, and then they slowly formed a new line. Grotoy had angled the point of their square at the Sund pike, and now axes came out there and were used with bills, smashing down rapidly to cut a hole through. The Sund line fell apart at the tip of Grotoy’s square. They went to work ahead, laying about them, to cut at the pike men in from the sides. The Tourade pushed in now also, as Grotoy’s wedge got larger.

  Then the tip of Grotoy’s square surged inward like an arrow and burst, to push a hole completely through the enemy pike formation, and all the other men picked up their pikes and charged across into it. One of the odd weapons the Sund had used earlier fell down toward the soldiers, looking now like a pole with a barrel attached at the end, but it was hastily aimed. It exploded in a flash of fire between both lines, throwing out a mixture of wood and metal bits. The skirmishers from the Tourade ran in behind Grotoy’s charging arrowhead of pike, through the smoke, their swords raised up in the air, flashing down in sweeps, reflecting the sun.

  “Tourade! Tourade!” Wayland yelled out with the others, and then they ran in behind the skirmishers and began stabbing at the exposed sides of the Sund pike men, working their way down the line, with some moving on ahead to kill the archers and footmen. A whole section on the Sund Amash line gave way before them, dripping off through the trees. Those close by lifted up their weapons and ran back, to try and reform again.

  Across the field now, seeming to have cleared the fort, another pike square from Grotoy was cutting in from their left, and a long part of the enemy line that Wayland saw now stood within a forming, deepening metal jaw of lance heads. More turned around, to try and find their comrads, to rally and defend both sides of their line. It was to no effect, and the ranks of enemy soldiers withdrew or disappeared beneath a sea of closing, flashing pikes.

  The field had opened up again, and Wayland stabbed an enemy pikeman running by him, and then used his bill hook to cut a fleeing archer across his leg. He was surrounded then by only the men of the Tourade, they moving forward with their weapons held up, as the enemy withdrew before them. He stopped, panting, and looked back up the slow rise, at the battlefield they had just fought on and advanced across, and then he looked forward again, to survey the front.

  It looked like it had been more hard fought in the middle of the line, where Grotoy had gone up into the fort, but he had missed it. The bowmen behind them were still shooting across at men, but individual targets were becoming harder to find, since they were now standing in the trees. Grotoy’s squares, wearing blue, white snd gold were atop the fort, acrodd the center, either mired there, or having taken the walls holding in place.

  The Sund had kept several groups of secondary troops in reserve, and these were moving up or falling back through their wooden breastworks and their camp. To the left, Aukwen seemed to have not moved at all, and were standing there protecting a great mass of archers who were firing now over into Agu Kalla’s camp, showering the enemy who lingered there with arrows.

  Wayland put up his arms and crouched down as some archers near the trees singled them out and fi
red out into them. He heard the arrows pass by, with a little jerk to his tabard or chainmail. That got Wayland and the men with him all moving again, attacking now with a group of other pike men, their helmets all bobbing back and forth as they fought and moved.They broke up the enemy archers who stood there, and then brought down a mounted Isur lord, by his colors, who shouted, and struck out at them with his sword. The horse scremed and went down, and the pikes darted forward, then moved on, chasing the men who had tried to stand with the knight.

  Then the cavalry squadrons returned, riding through the gaps made in the center of the Sund, but stopping short of the wooden walls and stakes set up around the camp. They cut at the fleeing soldiers, riding them down. Wayland raised his bill up with the other pike men of the Tourade, and they let the cavalry flash by on their coursers and chargers. They rode and struck into an unfinished line of Sund pike ahead, and after a great roar and smash of weapons, broke through and scattered it.

  Agu Kallah must have seen the hopelessness of his situation then, and he began pulling all his men away with a series of flags and horns from the area of the fieldwork, and from the camp. Trotter found Wayland where he had stopped there, looking around now at his armor and his wounds.

  “Ah, you survived,” Trotter exclaimed. “Good for you!” He took off his helmet and sat down on it, and then showed Wayland a bloody pike point wound across his leg. “That was quite some fun, wasn’t it?” he said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if we get something extra, for breaking their line so hard.”

  “Done is done,” Wayland said, still looking to his own wounds, which seemed numerous but not fatal. He was a ragged mess, and his helm had been dented in several places, from the points of pikes or other weapons, He didn’t remember receiving so many blows. He displayed it to Trotter, who just smiled back and shook his head. Trotter then looked off toward the fleeing enemy army.

  “Same as what happened in the Great Pass,” he obaerved. The East Goloks had come up from Kraxika too quickly, and had not got enough men into the Golden Slopes to attack Gece and be successful. They had gone against the forts in the Great Pass, and been repulsed several times.

  “If this war goes on long enough,” Trotter said, “I might just end up the new Duke of Donneybar.”

  Wayland nodded and he looked around the near battlefield. They stood under the trees, with several hundred other men, resting, all glad they were still alive. He would need to have some objects to display, to the Prior of Zinsy, and to the people there at the next audience, to show he had indeed fought and done his penance. He took a sheared Sund lance point, and cut a surcoat from an enemy body. He picked up the helm of the dead Izur knight he had helped defeat, from where it had fallen into the snow, mud and grass. The man had been dragged away from his mount by the others in the Tourade, he knew not to where. He came back over to the Ballatch, who was now about doing the same kind of things.

  “Nothing can keep me here anymore Trotter,” Wayland told him. “My wounds will freeze shut to match my cold heart. Let luckier men go forth into Gece and gather up the accolades. I will never again allow my blood to be spilled out so wontonly and callously. The Geciks are insane in a very simple way, so that you cannot even trick them into doing the right thing. I would not be here at all if I had not helped them, and upheld the Grand Prince’s law a time or two.”

  “I heard they wrote a song about you though,” Trotter pointed out.

  “It’s about his grace Johnas Tygus, the Lady Tazah, and that damned crazy troll. Anytime you are figured into a story with a prince, a magic sword and a troll, you are hopelessly upstaged. It’s time now for someone else to ape about and give them a show.” Trotter had secured his own little collection of battle proof, to present to the church and the Tourade, and he now hefted up his battered lance and pointed with his hand back toward the iced up ford.

  “We’re both well wounded. Let’s go back to camp and get looked at by one of Grotoy’s surgeons.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  KULITH

  OUTSIDE PREZET

  “You look lost,” she said down to him, as she stood there with her basket of bread and large clay crock of pickles. She blended into the snow covered fir saplings behind her, as she stood there in the distance against the sky and the trees in a brown dress and a heavy, draping white shawl. “No, not that kind of lost, but that you are lost in this place because you certainly do not belong here.”

  “Do you know me?” Kulith asked the old woman.

  “I know that you do not belong here,” she said, as if that was all that mattred, and perhaps it was. She stood on the trail where the slope rose and then ran straight back from there under the trees, across a pasture, to end at the village. “There has not been a troll seen east of the road through the forest in five centuries, but one was spotted there today.”

  “I would prefer that you let that record be left to stand,” he said back to her, showing more of his head by moving back away his hood a little, displaying his bronze skin tone, receding bush of black hair, his small skull ridges, and his heavy, thick jaw. He hoped it would put her to flight, and leave him alone again. It didn’t work, and instead the pickles she carried began to tempt him, smelling more and more appetizing, as if they were just there to devil him. He was continually surprised at how fine his sense of smell had become since leaving the Dimm.

  “If all the horses and all the men of the Lady of Berize cannot find you now,” she said, “then I suspect that if I told them I saw you hrtr, they would just still continue to not find you. It will take something bigger than me to uncover and expose you in these woods and hills.” She was right. Little Toad’s soldiers and knights were avoiding him on purpose, probably to cause her trouble. It was a very odd thing to do, but they were of course human, and held to conventions that would make any bugger draw his sword and fight.

  “But I don’t plan on telling anyone anything, except to you,” she continued. “What I propose is that we make a trade, a trade of what we know.” It was a real witch he was talking to, Kulith had no doubt about it now. That would be the only kind of person who would really see him, and purposely try to make contact with him. He reached over and grasp the hilt of the Tuvier Blade protectively, and not as a greater, more threatening gesture towards her. He was puzzled, as to why he had just done it.

  “Yes, there it is,” she said, after he had moved his hand. “There is the thing that the Green Caps have been talking about to the Brown Caps. To see magic so openly and powerfully used has not happened in these parts for a longer time than the sighting of a troll.”

  Kulith had heard those names and descriptions used before. The woman was talking about fairies, about the unseen folk. He had a passing reverence for them himself, but had not really considered their existence as real or crossing into his and affecting it. He had never even seen one he thought, until he had encountered the Lannan that Vous Vox had kept in a cage of black crystal. He had broken that cage and let it escape out into the world, or back into another, to do there as it wished.

  And she had also talked about the sword, and though he hated to admit it to himself, it had often as not used him for its own ends. As his brother had once accused, he was being possessed by it, and it caused him to sometimes act foolishly, against his own self interests. He knew it had clouded his judgement gravely, making him attempt to steal back Little Toad.

  “What would this trade be for?” he put to her.

  “I would give you a story from the past, for your story of today. It has been a long time since any of us have heard about what is happening in the Deep past the Rim. Tell me about what has happened now, out in the Dimm.” She said it all in a sing-song way that combined the two words, finally bringing them together into one. He was intrigued.

  “I could use some warmth today, and perhaps have one or two of those pickles, from out of that jar?”

  “More than that, I will tell you of a hunter’s cabin that is currently vacant. You could use it, instead
of that drafty old cave.” Not only had she found him, it appeared that she had been aware of him for awhile, and she knew where his present lair was. He pushed his hood back all the way off his head, letting it fall onto his shoulders. His ears poked out, their points rising up through his hair on the sides of his head. She had named his place, but he could always find another just as good.

  What he had found out about the places beyond the West Lands, beyond the Khaast Forest where the men of Gece lived in peace was that it was boring, and this woman was not. He had been seeking something in his exile from the Dimm, and this person offered him a possible key to it, to an understanding of the magic in the land. He held the pommel of the golden sword, and swept his other arm out, to give her a stiff armed bow.

  “Then I agree, and I will tell you what you want to know, though you may not like all that you hear.” She nodded after he had stood back up, and then pointed with her arm down another trail, leading off from the first.

  “This is the way to my cottage,” she said to him.

  EPILOGUE

  The fire of a candle had momentarily caught Arles’ eyes, and as the bard finished up the last part of the tale, he could almost see the people standing there: the monster with his magic sword, with the white witch of the forest, making a pact with him. It was fanciful, and full of beasts and gold, and colors he had never seen before, and places he had not thought likely to exist. The best though had been the things that the people and monsters had done, sometimes contrary to their own nature or best interests.

  He was Ricard of Tyrie’s man then, for the hour at least, and he beamed over at him as the player made a final melody with his fingers upon his instrument, and then took a bow. The people in the front threw coins onto the old Mancan tiles at his feet, and he picked them up as they all made a final toast to close off the night. The doors of the hall were opened up, and the people streamed out into the dark, to go by some of the soldiers who had already made their leave.