This was the first time she had been in the thick of battle and the avalanche of sensations was almost too much for her. The noise was deafening and the violence so fast and brutal that she was in danger of freezing completely. She suddenly realised that the knights around her were shielding her from the enemy. Her inactivity was putting them at risk and with a flush of shame she recalled one of the emissary’s lessons on mounted combat.
‘Movement and aggression, not bloody dressage!’ he had roared in frustration, forgetting that he spoke to his sovereign and not to some slow witted knight in training.
Remembering the indignation she had felt at his tone, the Queen took up her reins and drove Souverain into a group of Sciritae that had surrounded a nearby knight. Finally her mind came into focus and she felt the reassuring weight of the sword in her hand.
‘I’ll give him bloody aggression,’ she thought as she began to strike at the Possessed, not the delicate blows of a woman who wore the finest dresses of the royal court, but rather the blows a mother might unleash on a killer who thought to harm her child. Savage blows that clove armour and cut deep into putrefying flesh.
All at once the Queen felt at one with the warriors around her. They were still hugely outnumbered, but they had dealt the vanguard a heavy blow and she began to believe they might prevail. Then, just thirty yards to her left, a horse was suddenly thrown into the air, its rider tumbling from the saddle before disappearing into a mass of stabbing Sciritae. A second knight was smashed aside and even several of the Possessed were sent flying as the bestiarum came into view.
Tall as a draught horse and more heavily muscled than a prize winning bull the bestiarum forged a direct path towards the Queen as if it could smell her royal blood. Two knights moved to intervene but the beast barely broke its stride as it powered past them.
And then it was upon her.
Helpless and transfixed, the Queen felt a flash of terror as Souverain reared up beneath her. The massive creature seemed to fill her entire vision as it charged in for the kill, but then it simply stopped. One of its horns snapped and its face distorted as it struck the wall of force that Nicolas Dusaule had placed in its path. So close was the impact that the Queen felt a percussive blast of air as the enormous beast struck the invisible barrier and slumped to the ground where it was finally dispatched by a dozen stabbing lances.
Heart pounding she turned to Dusaule, but the Silent Crofter simply looked down at the beast with the same emotionless expression he had worn throughout the journey south. He raised his eyes to look at the Queen and she could see a trickle of blood running from his nose, the only evidence of the effort it had required to stop such a titanic creature in its tracks.
With this brief exchange Dusaule turned back to the battle and once again they were fighting for their lives. The momentum of their charge had been spent and the enemy’s greater numbers were beginning to tell. The Knights of Wrath fought like champions, but the Possessed were simply too many.
With Souverain turning and kicking beneath her the Queen killed two more Possessed, but then she felt a sickening pain in her left knee and glanced down to see a Sciritae drawing back for a second attack. She killed the creature with a stab to the face and tried not to faint as she felt the blood running down her leg. With a growing sense of panic she swept her gaze over the battle. For all their strength her knights were beginning to fall as they were overwhelmed by the enemy. The pain in her leg made her head swim and for a moment she thought she might fall from Souverain’s back but then she heard the sound of horns coming from the city.
Looking up she saw a column of troops moving down from the city gates. The garrison of Sophia was coming to their aid.
Despite the first bestiarum’s mighty charge the gates of Sophia had refused to yield. They had buckled and cracked but the Queen’s arrival had prevented the Possessed from breaching the city. The Navarian defenders had finally succeeded in killing the beast and now it was they who rode out to help the Queen. Arrows rained down among the Possessed and light cavalry charged from the direction of the city. They did not have the strength or training of the Knights of Wrath, but it was enough to tip the balance.
With a renewed effort the Queen’s knights were able to break free and they moved up the hillside to regroup. With military discipline they reformed the line and were about to charge back into the fray when Captain Geraldi noticed the Queen’s leg.
‘You’re injured!’
‘It’s nothing,’ said the Queen, although the horrible pain in her knee told her otherwise.
‘Your Majesty has done enough to satisfy her honour,’ said Captain Geraldi but the Queen was having none of it.
‘This is not about honour!’ she snapped. ‘Now, break out the new lances and prepare to move down the valley.’
The captain should have known better than to patronise their commander in chief but his motives were honourable and so the Queen continued in a gentler tone.
‘Sophia’s garrison can deal with what’s left of the vanguard. Now we must do what we can to help Colonel Laville.’
The Captain gave a stern nod as the squires began to distribute new lances to the knights, their young faces pale and determined. In no time at all the knights were ready to move out. They had lost sixty of their original number, including Captain Ney, and a further twelve were too badly injured to continue, but that still saw nearly a hundred and eighty knights moving down the valley where the Legion du Trône was trying to hold back the main body of the Possessed army.
‘They’re still holding the higher ground,’ said Captain Geraldi as they looked down from the slopes. ‘Although it looks like the Possessed are breaking through on the left flank.’
‘Then that’s where we’ll hit them,’ said the Queen.
And without any further argument she led her knights back into battle.
*
Down on the front line Aurelian blocked a Sciritae’s low attack and kicked the creature in the face as it tried to scramble up the bank towards him. Turning to his left he used a concentrated pulse of energy to punch aside a Kardakae that was about kill one of the swordsmen who fought beside him, while to his right Dwimervane struck down anything that was foolish enough to come within her reach.
All along the edge of the bluff the soldiers of the Legion were fighting to prevent the Possessed from bringing their greater numbers to bear. They fought with strength and courage but it was only the lay of the land that prevented them from being overrun.
Still shielding the Queen’s army with his cloak of faith, Aurelian muttered a curse as he saw the Possessed surging across the river on their left. If the enemy managed to get around their flanks then the Legion’s advantage would be lost.
Closer by, Aurelian saw a group of some two hundred Toxitae moving to the front of the seething horde, their eyes bound with black and bloody rags. It was said that these blind archers were able to target a human soul and that their eyes had been taken to remove all earthly distractions. Whatever the case, the way they were able to hit their mark was truly chilling.
Aurelian watched as hundreds of black arrows stabbed up at the defenders. The attack broke the line of defence and the Possessed rushed in to fill the gap. Hundreds of Sciritae charged up the rise, scrambling over the mounds of dark bodies that lined the base of the bluff. The attack might well have proven successful had Aurelian not sent a fireball screaming into their midst. This was not like the small fireballs he had used in Falco’s training, this was an elemental burst of fury that blasted a hole in the ranks of the Possessed. Dark bodies flew in all directions and the momentum of the attack was broken. Aurelian scattered the Toxitae with a second blast of fire, giving the Legion the time they needed to reform their defensive line.
As the fireballs dissipated, Aurelian’s head swam and he took a deep breath to steady himself. He had forgotten how much energy it required to launch a truly damaging attack. But it also felt good to flex his powers and he could feel his strength surg
ing to the fore as his soul remembered what it had been born to do. With the battle raging around him he turned back to the main body of the Possessed and locked eyes with the demon.
As the Legion moved into position the Possessed had surged forward but the demon had stopped, allowing the dark army to simply flow around it. It seemed almost wary, but Aurelian had never known a demon hesitate like this before. They were normally so arrogant, so self assured. Caution like this was uncharacteristic and it gave him cause for concern. For a while he thought it might have been trying to summon another demon, but now the towering figure was surging towards them, a huge bestiarum keeping pace beside it.
Dwimervane had already killed one of these massive creatures. The terrible beast had ploughed through the Possessed before launching itself at the soldiers on the edge of the bluff. Infantry were trained to give ground before such beasts, surrounding the huge creatures before attacking them from all sides. However, to give ground in this situation would have left the way open to the Possessed so the soldiers had tried to hold their ground. Eight had died before Dwimervane reached them.
The blue dragon’s injuries hampered her movement, but still she struck with a force that no soldier could ever hope to match. The bestiarum actually had a man in its jaws as Dwimervane attacked. With one paw she landed a blow on the beast’s shoulder, her talons leaving four deep gashes in its blackened hide.
The bestiarum dropped the soldier and spun round to confront her, its wicked horns slashing towards the dragon’s chest. Dwimervane lurched backwards but the scar tissue on her body restricted her movement and the tip of a horn tore into her shoulder. With a roar of pain she grabbed the creature’s other horn and forced its head upwards while her tail whipped forward to stab at its side. The bestiarum reared up to grapple with the dragon but she flipped it over onto its back and drove one of her own horns deep into its ravening face. The beast let out a horrible sound and tried to rise, but Dwimervane opened her mouth and killed it with a blast of dragon fire that stripped the flesh from its hideous skull.
The bestiarum’s body went slack as it slumped back against the scorched earth, a cloud of noxious smoke rising up from its twitching corpse. Then Dwimervane heaved it over the edge of the bluff and moved aside, allowing the soldiers to close the breach. They did so with wary respect. They had all seen Dwimervane limping along as she followed the army south, but none of them had ever seen a dragon fight in battle and the sight was more than a little unnerving.
After that, Aurelian and the dragon had fought together at the centre, providing an immovable point that steadied the entire line. But now the demon was moving to the front of its army and the bestiarum that came with it was much larger than the one that Dwimervane had just killed. The sound of battle seemed to fade away as Aurelian watched the huge shapes striding towards them. There was no uncertainty in the demon’s movement now.
‘I know,’ he said as Dwimervane growled beside him. ‘We’ll take them together.’
*
The demon looked up at the Defiant, standing with its wyrm at the edge of the rise. The other ‘great soul’ was further up the valley near the city, but he was of little consequence, his mind crippled, as it was, by guilt.
The sudden appearance of this army had come as a surprise and the demon had paused as it sensed the presence of the wyrm and not one, but two Defiants. The Faithful had flowed around it while it tried to gauge the strength of its opponents. One was old and physically diminished while the other had been neutered by grief. Even the dragon was a limping shadow of what it might once have been.
But still, they were dangerous and the demon held back while it reached into the nether planes of hell for aid. It was not powerful enough to summon another demon, but it had sufficient devotion to drag another bestiarum onto this earthly plane, and this fell creature was more powerful than any of those that currently walked the field. Even now the demon could feel the beast rising towards them. All that was needed was a final prayer to bring it crashing into the world. But the demon would wait. It would choose its moment to unleash this hidden hound of hell.
Secure in the knowledge that it now had more than enough strength to defeat its opponents, the demon came on.
*
Colonel Laville muttered a curse as he watched his left flank begin to crumble. The Possessed army was just too large and he could not afford to divert any more troops from the centre. He had already committed his reserves to shore up the right flank and now the demon was making its move. The Legion’s defensive position was slowly being overwhelmed and he simply did not have the numbers to go on the offensive.
Had he known that the army of King Tyramimus was now less than four miles away he would have raced for Sophia and placed his back against the walls of the city.
But he did not.
The Possessed were coming round his left flank and it seemed like there was nothing he could do to prevent his force from being encircled, but then he noticed a line of lance pennants streaming down the valley to his left. For a moment he thought it was one of his own cavalry units moving out of position, but then he noticed the royal banner flying in their midst and his heart soared.
Somehow the Queen had managed to defeat the vanguard of the Possessed and now she was riding back down the valley to join them. Even from here he could see that her numbers were greatly diminished but still, it might just be enough to secure the left flank and push the Possessed back across the river. If nothing else, it might buy them another hour.
Feeling a great swell of emotion he brought his attention back to the main battle and led his cavalry over to the right where more than a hundred Sciritae had broken through onto the higher ground. His knights charged into the Possessed, cutting them down before they could do too much damage. Then suddenly the twilight was split asunder as the demon unleashed a great gout of dark fire that carved out a hole in the centre of his line.
The sound of screaming filled the air and the acrid smell of burning flesh assaulted his nostrils as Colonel Laville watched men staggering away from the location of the attack, an attack that was centred on Aurelian Cruz and the blue dragon called Dwimervane.
Surely nothing could survive such an explosion of hell-spawned fire.
*
Aurelian only had enough strength to protect the three soldiers fighting closest to himself and Dwimervane. The rest were simply engulfed in a storm of Baëlfire. The screams were horrible to hear, but Aurelian shut them out as he concentrated on resisting the fire that was trying to consume their souls. Even within his sphere of protection the heat was almost intolerable and the air scorched his lungs with every painful breath. But as the dark fire faded away he unleashed an attack of his own. His skin was raw and soaked with sweat, his grey hair singed and smoking, but his eyes were fierce as he straightened up.
Summoning his power he swung his sword and sent a curving blade of light scything towards the demon. The blade cut clean through several Possessed, but the demon had just enough time to summon a dark shadow of protection. Even so, Aurelian’s attack was so strong that it clove the darkness and burned a glowing line of agony from the demon’s right hip to its left shoulder, cutting across the palm of one outstretched hand. The creature bellowed in fury then it lowered its head and charged. Beside it the bestiarum also broke into a loping run and together the two behemoths stormed their way towards the bluff.
Aurelian’s face was set like stone as he watched them come. He gripped his sword and even felt the muscles in his left shoulder tense as if he could still feel the weight of the shield he used to wear. Beside him Dwimervane was also readying herself for battle. They both remembered the last time they had fought such opponents. Then it had been two powerful dukes and they had barely escaped with their lives. Now they were older and diminished but the stakes were as high as ever.
Barging Possessed warriors aside the demon surged up the bluff towards Aurelian, the bestiarum beside it clearing the rise in a single bound as it closed on D
wimervane. The hellish monsters looked terrifying, they looked unassailable, but this was not the first time Aurelian Cruz and Dwimervane had faced such beasts and neither man nor dragon flinched as the two great souls began to fight.
*
The Queen’s charge was enough to secure the Legion’s left flank and, as the Possessed were pushed back into the river, she finally agreed to move back from the front line.
‘I will charge again if I see the need,’ she had told Captain Geraldi.
‘I know you will, my Queen,’ replied the Captain and with that she had moved behind the centre with Dusaule and ten knights from her honour guard.
They retreated onto the higher ground where units of cavalry were fighting to contain small groups of Possessed that had managed to break through. The Legion was stretched out in a line along the edge of the bluff, but the line was growing thinner and it would not be long before it collapsed completely.
As they came to a halt the Queen suddenly swayed in the saddle as a wave of pain and exhaustion swept through her. The movement did not go unnoticed and Dusaule dismounted to see what he could do to help, but before he could apply his healing powers their attention was drawn to the centre of the battle where Aurelian and Dwimervane were fighting the Demon and the last of the bestiarum.
Above the jostling ranks of the Legion they could see flashes of light and bursts of fire. Bodies flew through the air and the rest of the battle seemed calm compared to the tempest that raged at its heart.
‘They’re getting closer,’ breathed the Queen and it was true.
Aurelian and Dwimervane were still fighting but they were being pushed back. And as they retreated so the Possessed surged onto the higher ground, driving a wedge into the heart of the Queen’s army and splitting the Legion in two.
Suddenly the Queen’s location no longer seemed safe. One of the knights insisted that they escort her to the city, but the Queen was not listening. She and Dusaule were watching as the storm of violence drew closer. They were now so close that the combatants were visible through the thinning ranks of the Legion. They could all see their outlines, but only Dusaule could sense their minds.
Battle Mage Page 81