by T. O. Munro
There was a dreadful menace in the slow deliberation of their advance. “All you need for a charge is enough distance to build up to full speed,” Eadran growled in her head.
“I know.” From Pietrsen’s puzzled expression, Niarmit realised her snapped retort had been accidentally uttered aloud. She tried to reassure the Master of Horse with a small smile.
“They are within a quarter mile of the chateau, your Majesty.” Pietrsen said. The wolves paused to bay a great collective howl at the midpoint of their walk across the no-man’s land between the battle lines. The sound carried on the wind filling the air “That’s within bowshot,” the Master of Horse added when Niarmit did not take his heavy handed hint. “Shall I give the signal for them to engage?”
Niarmit squinted at the chateau standing tall and elegant at the extreme northern edge of the battle lines. It lay slightly closer to Kimbolt’s force than Maelgrum’s. In the initial manouverings the Dark Lord had paid it little more attention than sending a few scouts sniffing close to the mansion’s ornamental walls. The light probing had drawn forth a couple of arrows. Enough to let Maelgrum know it was held, but for the moment he was content for his orcs to ride past its unknown defences and attack the soldiers in plain sight on the ridge.
Niarmit shook her head. “We give no orders to the Chateau, Lord Pietrsen,” she said. “Captain Tordil will know when it will be most timely to act. He needs no instruction from us.”
“But…” Pietrsen began.
Niarmit curtly waved him silent, or perhaps it was Eadran’s impulse to so imperiously urge the man to be quiet. Sometimes she could not tell the difference. “I have faith in the powers of Seneschal Kimbolt and the troops from Salicia,” she said. “We must husband our resources and our surprises, for we have few enough of either to fling at the enemy.”
The walking wolves had come within effective range of the contingent of archers who stood in loose order on the slope behind Kimbolt. The wolves’ pace accelerated as a swarm of arrows arched over the intervening infantry towards them. In seconds the cavalry were at full tilt.
Further missiles were launched into their flank from the archers of Torsden’s division, to the south. A few wolves stumbled, their riders swept under paw by the tide of baying cavalry. Still the Northern Lord dare not send his infantry into the wolfriders’ vulnerable side. There were too many orcish troops waiting to pounce upon him, should he once descend from the protection of the steep high position he occupied. For the time being a flanking fire of arrows was all he could offer in support of Kimbolt’s division.
Wolves were stumbling, riders tumbling as they caught limbs in the carefully laid pits and caltrops placd overnight. The charge’s momentum slackened as wolves and riders tried to navigate a safe path through the hidden hazards.
Niarmit clenched her hands white knuckle tight. “Breathe, girl,” Eadran murmured in her head. “Breathe.” She had not realised she’d been holding her breath.
The sunlight glinted on the speartips of Kimbolt’s front rank. The lead riders still charged, though at a more cautious pace, more a canter than a gallop. When they were little more than a score of yards away, there were sudden bursts of arcane light erupting from half a dozen points along the line. Here a blue arc of lightning which carved a jagged path through the attackers. There a plume of flame that turned riders into randomly charging bonfires. To the north a fan of deadly glowing lights which shot out and felled orcs dead in their tracks. In the centre a white blast of ice tore a shattering hole in the faltering advance.
“These are, er … impressive pyrotechnics, your Majesty.” Pietrsen may have taken pleasure in the destruction of the enemy but the blatant and illegal human use of magic seemed to have constrained his joy.
In the Helm Eadran snorted contemptuously. “Time was when every warrior and king aspired to cast a spell as well as he swung a sword. Such skills won empires.” His tone mellowed as he observed, “mind my granddaughter has a way with ice.”
The shock of the sudden magical assault from within a line of simple spearmen had spoilt the last vestige of coherence in the orcish charge. They broke upon the men of Salicia like a great wave shrunk to a mere ripple by its charge up a beach. The shouts and thunder of battle carried across to Niarmit’s high position. Lupine howls of fury or of pain or maybe both, filled the air. The high clear ring of blade on blade mingled with the duller thwacks of axe striking deep into wooden shields.
Yet the spearmen held, while more fire and ice burst from the monarchs embedded within the battle lines. On the orcs southern flank, Torsden’s archers had moved closer to pour deadly volleys of arrows into the unengaged orcs behind the main line. The torment drove a few hundred orcs to break free of the assault on Kimbolt’s division and instead charge down the impertinent archers.
Torsden’s troops, like the Northern Lord himself, reacted with a surprising turn of speed and agility. The archers fell back through columns opening in his own lines. Then the spearman stepped lightly back into position presenting a front of spearpoints. The breakaway charge faded to nothing two score yards short of closing with the foe.
And then it was over. A thin stream became a flood as wolfriders broke away heading back west down the slope away from the ruinous spears arrows and spells. The beaten but not routed riders gathered just beyond arrowshot. They faced their enemy and flashed various parts of orcish anatomy that were better left hidden at the seneschal’s soldiers still in command of the ridge. It was a lewd challenge which laid some claim to a victory. However, the hundreds of orc and wolf corpses and the equal numbers of injured crawling past the dead gave clear testimony as to which side had won the opening round. As if in emphasis a great shout rang out from the troops of Salicia, a cry so loud its refrain reached Niarmit’s position.
“Why your Majesty, I do believe they are calling out ‘for the Goddess and the queen’,” Pietrsen said.
“I heard,” she replied.
“They got them in the wrong order,” Eadran snarled. “I never had much truck with the Goddess.”
***
Gregor wiped his borrowed blade clear of the black blood of his last orc foe. A few feet away the seneschal, his own weapon still stained from the bloody work of battle, thrust the blade high and cheered his own soldiers. “Men of Salicia, the hour is yours!”
“But not yet the day,” Gregor muttered softly into his ill-fitting gorget. Arms and armour where one thing that had not been released from the Helm with him and, for all the generosity of the camp, there was no escaping the fact that armour was best tailored to each particular wearer.
He looked at Kimbolt as the seneschal strode along the line, dispensing words of praise and encouragement; a clap on the shoulder, a playful punch, a ruffling of hair set free from a helmet’s sweaty embrace. Gregor and Kimbolt too went bare headed. The morning was growing warm, like their work; a moment of respite was a chance to escape some portion of the metal ovens in which they had all encased themselves.
Gregor frowned as Kimbolt strode back along the line. What make of man was he? He had been a mere captain before his elevation to the exalted and hereditary rank of seneschal. The king’s frown deepened. “My daughter affords you much honour, Seneschal,” he said guardedly.
Kimbolt responded with a sunny smile. “She flatters me, your Majesty, with undeserved favour.”
Gregor raised an eyebrow. “But still you take it, her favour that is.”
The seneschal’s smile faded, his forehead wrinkling in puzzlement at the king’s line of enquiry. “The queen is precious to me, your Majesty” he said. “More precious than anything, even my own life.”
“She is certainly a fine prize,” Gregor said. He drew in a heavy breath and, breathing out, added the rider. “A fine prize for a captain of the guard.”
Kimbolt swung a hard sharp stare at the king. “I hunt for no prizes, your Majesty. I am merely grateful for whatever I am given.”
“That humility, admirable as it is, may still no
t make you worthy of the gift, Seneschal.”
“If I may be blunt, your Majesty.”
“I would prefer it if you were.”
“What business is this of yours?”
“She is my daughter,” Gregor said. “And, if the Goddess blesses our endeavours here today, she may enjoy a long and happy life. I, on the other hand, know my time here is limited. I have but the hours of daylight to make some redress for a quarter century of neglectful and unacknowledged fatherhood.”
“Your Majesty, we have a battle to fight,” Kimbolt said stiffly. “If there are undischarged parental duties you wish to express then you would serve them better by talking to your daughter rather than to me.” He gestured up the hill to where Niarmit’s standard fluttered next to that of the Master of Horse.
“I am concerned for her, Seneschal, that is all.”
“So am I your Majesty,” Kimbolt hissed. “And to that end I will crush whatever orc or undead skulls are necessary to make her kingdom and her person safe, and in that determination I bow to no-one.”
The two men who loved Niarmit stood and stared each other down, the guarded king and the bright eyed soldier. Until the arrival of two fellow fugitives from the Helm gave Gregor a pretext on which to break the withering contact.
“Ah, Lady Mitalda, my Lord Thren,” he said as the Vanquisher’s grand-daughter and the Kinslayer’s bane approached arm in arm, for all the world like a couple promenading in the Temple Gardens at Oostport.
“Lord Gregor,” Thren greeted him. Mitalda offered the seneschal her hand and he bent to kiss it with precise courtesy. They turned then to survey the battle field.
“Where will his next blow fall?” Thren asked.
“Ha!” Kimbolt cried. “They are on the move.” The whole enemy line was lumbering forward on a broad front, orc archers walking ahead of the infantry. The seneschal flung his helmet back on his head.
“It is a feint,” Thren said. “See, he is sending the northern most tribe to try and circle round and outflank us, while the rest pin us down.”
Gregor nodded in agreement with his ancestor. Five thousand orcs were swinging onto a north-easterly path, along with two thousand or so of the cavalry that had survived the charge on Kimbolt’s position. “They will pass within a few yards of the chateau,” Mitalda said. “How many do we have holding it?”
“Seven hundred,” Kimbolt told them.
“Seven hundred? Against seven thousand?” Mitalda shook her head.
“Yes,” Kimbolt agreed with a smile. “It is long odds. I’ll certainly not be betting on the orcs.” Mitalda gave him a puzzled look so the seneschal elaborated. “Not when they face seven hundred elves.”
***
Elves, stay with the elves, Kimbolt had told him. Well not just told him, so much as ordered him. So here he was, trapped in a chateau whose pretty walls looked a lot stronger and thicker from the outside than they revealed themselves to be from the inside. And on that outside it seemed that half of Maelgrum’s army were advancing upon them. Jay gulped back his fear and took a glimpse through the elegantly carved first floor window at the approaching orcs.
Was it too much to hope that Maelgrum might walk with them and might, by happy chance, stumble within reach of Jay’s blade. He pulled his dirk free and dug the point into the palm of his off hand. A little pain to stiffen his courage, to remind him whose memory he fought for, to remind him how and why and at whose hand his father had suffered.
“Keep your head down, boy,” Elyas leant across and yanked Jay down on the polished wooden floor. Jay leant against the wall and looked about the room. The faux fortress had far too many windows to be a properly defensible position. The late morning sunlight flooded in, casting sharp shadows of the elegant chairs and tables that had been too heavy for its long fled owners to take. The drapes were gone though, a few rich brocade pelmets hinting at the lost splendour.
Silent shapes crept across the oak floor, noiseless elves taking up position just out of sight beneath every window that faced the approaching orcs. Jay guessed a similar scene was being played out above and below him and out behind the garden walls.
He could hear the grunts of orcish infantry, he could even hear the jangling of metal as their booted feet grew closer. A brief draft ushered in a foul orcish odour, fetid feet and rotten meat mixed in with inhuman ordure. Despite Elyas’s command, Jay shifted onto his knees and peeped over the window sill.
Shit, the front rank couldn’t be more than fifty foot away. A column of orcs fifty wide and a hundred rows deep with a close knit wing of wolf riders on either flank.
There was a flash of lilac light as a starburst spell exploded in the air and, in smooth sinuous movements elves filled every window, arrows notched and ready to fly. And they flew. The air was so thick with white shafted arrows that Jay could not see the orcish target, but still with graceful rhythm, the elves plucked arrows from their quivers, drew strings and loosed shafts of death into the dense packed orcs.
Screams and shouts filled the air. The orcs were struggling on, but from every floor and wall, through every window and doorway they were met with the deadly white arrows. From the sides and from on high the missiles punctured orcs as far back as the tenth rank. The unharmed soliders further back found the wasteland of dead and dying was a significant obstacle that they had to trample over. As they pressed on with their dogged advance, the withering fire continued and bodies fell on bodies until the corpses were piled so high that it seemed to Jay the elves at ground level must be aiming up to hit fresh targets.
The cavalry wings made a half-hearted effort to charge, but plumes of flame and lightning shot with morale shattering force from the high towers of the chateau, with archers pouring in a still more deadly fire.
And then, with simultaneous precision the firing stopped and Jay could see the fleeing orcs running pell mell from the chateau of doom. “We won,” he said.
Elyas clapped him on the shoulder. “Not yet, my boy.” He beckoned to Caranthas and another half dozen elves and the small group sauntered towards the door.
“Where are you going?” Jay called.
“To retrieve any unbroken arrows,” Elyas replied. “We have a long day here.”
“You’re going to pull the arrows out of orc bodies?”
Caranthas and Elyas exchanged a look before the lieutenant admitted with a shrug, “yes, Jay. That’s where the arrows are.”
“Even from the wounded ones?” Jay rose to his feet anxious to try his dirk on any orcs that the arrows had partially spared.
Caranthas laughed and Elyas graced him with a sad smile. “There are no wounded, Jay,” the lieutenant said.
“These are elvish arrows and eleven archers, boy,” Caranthas added. “We hit what we aim at and what we hit we kill.”
“Still, you can come help us,” Elyas offered.
***
“Two attacks, your Majesty,” The Master of the Horse punched the air with a gauntleted fist. “Both repulsed with heavy losses.” He grinned stupid with delight at the queen. “We will surely have the victory.”
“We have done well, for now,” Niarmit admitted. “But he still by far outnumbers us and we have now shown him all our surprises.” She looked at the sun creeping towards its zenith. “We have a long day ahead of us Lord Pietrsen and from here it can only get more difficult.”
Eadran sniffed contemptuously. “In neither attack did he commit much above a tenth of his force and the losses he has suffered have been more than paid for in the information he has gleaned.”
Niarmit kept her focus firmly in the Helm so as to direct her response solely at the Vanquisher. “I know that,” she told him.
“I know you do, girl,” Eadran admitted. “Though this fellow here is lacking in the sense any good soldier is born with.”
Niarmit let her ancestor’s rant pass without comment. Eadran had grown loquacious with his brief experience of solitude. She had no desire to encourage his idle chatter, which would ha
ve been to the detriment of both their concentration on the still young battle. She felt his grumpy tug for control of her eyes and let him once more scan the battlefield. “Where is he?” he said. “We need to find him and finish this.”
Niarmit grimaced. She was in no particular hurry to confront the Dark Lord. It was one thing to know in her head that the task must be done and to feel the twin reassurance of the blades, The Father and The Son one sheaved across her back the other at her side. The reality of the combat was quite another matter. Her heart beat faster and her mouth grew dry at the merest thought of it. She could not shake the memory of her last encounter with Maelgrum. The dark cavern where he had had her chained to a stone block with broken hands to be nothing more than dragon bait and an expendable key to unlock the Helm. Or the last time another had taken command of her body to duel with the Dark Lord, Chirard’s moment of hubris outside the citadel in Morwencairn which had nearly done for them both.
She shivered. She had fought Dema twice and been lucky to survive on both occasions. To expose herself to Maelgrum’s power a third time seemed a folly on a colossal scale. The Goddess’s favour had been lost to many who had indulged in far less idiotic risks.
She clutched at the ankh around her neck, its gem freshly prepared to be the Dark Lord’s new prison. All they had to do was cut the bastard down in single combat. She shook her head in disbelief. “Forgive me my Goddess,” she said. “And guide me when the time comes.”
She felt a twinge of guilty relief when Eadran was once again unable to pick out Maelgrum’s form in the milling thousands on the valley floor.
***
“Have you seen anything like that before, your Majesty?” Kimbolt asked Niarmit’s father as he turned away from the strange spectacle in the valley floor.
Gregor shook his head. “They had nothing like it at Proginnot.” He threw the question to his other side. “My Lord Thren, is this within your experience.”
The slim monarch stroked his chin. “No, Gregor, it is not.”