Battle for Peace: An Epic Military Fantasy Novel (The Silent Champions Book 2)

by Andy Peloquin

  Any number of things could have gone wrong. Colborn and the others could have drowned attempting to cross the Standelfr River. Jokull scouts might have spotted them and slain them in the marshes. Quicksand would drag the Legionnaires to a muddy grave. An Eirdkilr arrow could bring Snarl down—the thought drove a pang of sorrow into Aravon’s gut.

  No matter how much he wanted to appear calm to the Legionnaires, he couldn’t help his worry. Only something truly dire could have kept Colborn from sending Snarl with the message that his men were ready.

  No, Aravon told himself. You can’t think like that! It’s not dire—they just got delayed.

  They’d expected the fifteen-mile trek across the marshlands to take the better part of the day, and Colborn’s pace would slow as they approached the Jokull and Eirdkilr camps south of Rivergate. It could be nothing more than a slower-than-anticipated travel speed, a particularly difficult stretch of marshes to cross, or any number of things that didn’t involve his men or his Enfield lying dead.

  Yet, as Aravon glanced up at the sun—now disappearing behind the western horizon—one last time, he knew he could delay no longer. Even with every draft horse, ox, and donkey they’d commandeered from Bannockburn, the five-mile journey to Rivergate Bridge would take the better part of three hours. Tack on the time required to maneuver Zaharis’ construction into position, and they would barely be in place ready to attack by midnight. The time for waiting had passed. Now was time to act.

  Turning on his heel, Aravon stalked down the hill toward the Legion camp. The moment Belthar caught sight of him, he began shouting orders—orders that every Legionnaire had been expecting for an hour. The crack of whips echoed loud, followed by the lowing of heavily-burdened oxen and the braying of donkeys. Ropes creaked, men shouted to each other, and the clatter of armor filled the air as the fifty Legionnaires of Topaz Battalion’s Second and Third Companies prepared to march to battle. A neat, perfectly ordered column of row after row of disciplined men following the command of Captain Lemaire, who rode at their head. A hundred and eighty brave men marching off to a battle from which many—far, far too many—might never return.

  Though it took every shred of willpower, Aravon kept his gaze away from the sky, his eyes fixed on the men below him. Snarl would come. The Enfield had the keen vision of an eagle and the hearing and smell of a fox. He’d trained to find Aravon anywhere on Fehl. Colborn had no need of tucking a written note into the tube on Snarl’s collar—the little creature’s presence would be all the message he needed.

  And, when the message came, Aravon would be ready. The future of every Legionnaire and Westhavener in Rivergate depended on it.

  Chapter Seventeen

  This was the part Aravon hated most. The calm before the storm of blood, flashing steel, and flesh. The breathless, heart-pounding moments of silence leading up to the battle horns ringing, the first shouted orders to “Forward march!”

  After the frenzied hurry of getting everything into place—the heavily-cloaked Legionnaires tucked away in the shadows of the forest bordering the Marshway—they had nothing to do but stand ready. And wait. Wait for Colborn’s attack from the south, an attack that none of them knew for certain would come.

  The waiting always seemed interminable. Expectation, tension, and fear of the inevitable clash added to the anxiety boiling like a thundercloud within Aravon. Sweat trickled down his forehead, stinging his eyes, and turned his palms moist. He clenched and unclenched his fists, willing himself to remain calm, stay crouched out of sight of the enemy holding the bridge.

  The Jokull and their Eirdkilr allies were alert. Thirty-five fur-clad barbarians had taken up station at the bridge, backs turned to the chaos howling through Rivergate, eyes fixed on the darkness north of the Standelfr River. Despite their certainty that no one would cross the ruined Rivergate Bridge, the experienced warriors took no chances. If anything moved on the Princelander side of the river, they would spot it.

  Well, not anything. Aravon and the Legionnaires remained well back from the swaths of open ground bordering the Standelfr and the Marshway, trusting the tree cover and shadows of the night to conceal them from enemy eyes. Yet Skathi, Woryn, and the five men she’d deemed “not quite rubbish marksmen” had already begun their slow, steady move toward the cliff’s edge bordering the Standelfr.

  Aravon’s eyes went to the bush-looking forms that had now advanced within fifty feet of the riverbank. Colborn had taught her the Fehlan tactic of weaving together a screen of boughs and using them to disguise their movements. The deception worked best at night, when the shadows blended with the branches and leaves to conceal their forms.

  But even with their figures camouflaged, their movements were glacial, little more than a forward crawl anytime the Eirdkilrs’ attention wavered or the Jokull turned to glance at the burning city behind them. They had been on the move since the last light of twilight faded to night. Three hours to cross two hundred feet of open space and get into position on either side of what had once been the Rivergate Bridge.

  That required a degree of patience Aravon wasn’t certain he possessed. His heart hammered a rapid beat against his ribs, his pulse pounding in his ears. Every second brought them closer to the inevitable attack. But, until the signal came, they had no choice but to wait.

  And wait.

  Someone muttered in the woods to his right, eliciting a hiss from one of the Sergeants. Armor clattered, a shield thunked against the trunk of a white-barked birch, and a leather-wrapped sword sheath clanked on the ground. The Legionnaires grew impatient, nervousness growing with the expectation of the coming battle.

  And still they waited.

  Aravon tried to push the gruesome images from his thoughts—he’d already envisioned his companions’ deaths a half-dozen times, each more creative than the last. As Mortius, his old Swordsman Adept trainer, had loved to say, “What you don’t know is always more terrifying than what you do.” The imagination had a tendency to fill gaps in knowledge, inevitably turning to the grim and ghastly. Not knowing what had happened to Colborn’s company led his mind deeper into darkness.

  His only hope was to focus on something else. At the present, that meant yet another scan of northern Rivergate. The city’s outer wall ended at the riverbank five hundred yards east and west of Rivergate Bridge, the circle broadening the farther one went into Rivergate itself. The northern edge of the inner keep stood close to a thousand yards south of the bridge, the area between populated by the homes, shops, and businesses of Rivergate’s populace.

  The inner keep occupied less than one-quarter of Rivergate’s surface area, dominating the center of the city. The Marshway ran in a direct line from Rivergate Bridge toward the gates of the inner keep, and a marketplace had sprung up alongside the broad avenue. Now, however, the shops were empty and dark, the wooden stalls shattered and canvas roofs destroyed beneath the assault of Eirdkilrs and Jokull.

  The piercing, bestial war cries of the enemy rang off the city walls, and a thick pall of black, choking smoke rose from the burning buildings, blotting out the stars. The Eirdkilrs and Jokull had finished their rampage through the city hours earlier; Rivergate had been one of the smaller fortresses along the Chain, a fact the enemy had taken full advantage of.

  Fires blazed among the homes of northern Rivergate. It seemed the barbarians didn’t just intend to starve out the Princelanders; they would destroy everything they held precious, including their possessions, merchandise, and valuables.

  Anger surged within Aravon, setting energy coursing through his muscles and scouring any last traces of fatigue. Just you wait, you bastards! he snarled inwardly. Let’s see how you celebrate once we get across!

  Yet, even as he watched his enemies destroying Rivergate, heard their delighted cries and the shouts in their guttural tongue, he could do nothing but wait. Wait for Colborn to give the signal.

  And then it came, a blinding flash of light that illuminated the darkness beyond Rivergate. Fire sprang into
the night, a wall of gold-and-orange flames that stretched burning fingers skyward with such intensity that Aravon had to shield his eyes. A whooshing so loud that it echoed above the screams and shouts of the enemy. Yet even as he turned away from the fire, elation surged within him.

  Yes! He would have laughed aloud, if not for the necessity of remaining hidden. That didn’t stop him from driving a clenched fist into the soft earth. By the Swordsman, they’ve done it!

  Quiet gasps echoed from the woods around him, silenced immediately by hissing Sergeants that whispered threats of floggings and endless latrine duty to any fool careless enough to draw attention.

  But the enemy paid them little heed. All thirty of the Eirdkilrs and Jokull guarding Rivergate Bridge spun at the sudden brilliance, the shouts of alarm and confusion that echoed through the city. All eyes turned toward the towering mass of flames that consumed the land south and southwest of Rivergate.

  Zaharis had come to play.

  Aravon would have given anything to see what manner of “magic tricks” Zaharis had conjured up with his Dragon Thorngrass—he’d described the effects as “a little spark to get their attention”, an understatement of the highest magnitude—but he had his own part in this charade.

  Triumph blossomed bright in his chest as the Eirdkilrs and Jokull rampaging through northern Rivergate loosed a howling war cry and surged south, in the direction of their new enemy. Even half of those holding Rivergate Bridge joined in the frenzied stampede, leaving fewer than twenty men guarding the rear as they raced toward the enemy. They wanted Legion blood, and if they couldn’t get at those within the keep, they would slaughter the fools that dared to attack from within their own territory.

  Aravon spared a worried thought for Colborn’s company. Noll, Zaharis, and Rangvaldr were capable warriors in their own right, and they had more than a hundred Legionnaires at their backs. Unarmored Legionnaires unaccustomed to fighting outside the standard Legion shield wall, but brave soldiers nonetheless. If anyone could pull this off, it was the half-Fehlan Lieutenant and his hand-picked men.

  Our turn.

  He had no need to give a signal or call an order; Skathi knew her business, and she’d prepared her chosen archers for their moment. The archers at the edge of the riverbank leapt to their feet and cast off their camouflage. Six longbows bent and, with only a breath of pause, released the arrows with a thrum of bowstrings.

  Two hundred-fifty yards separated Skathi and her archers from the enemy. Shadows sliced the darkness, leaping across the distance in the space of a single heartbeat.

  Three Eirdkilrs fell in silence, arrows buried in their throats, chests, and, in one case, an eye socket. Skathi’s shot, no doubt. Even as the first volley found their targets, the archers loosed a second flight of shafts. Six more arrows sliced the darkness of the river and buried into Eirdkilr and Jokull flesh. One fell with a piercing cry, the red-feathered fletching protruding from his gut. Another toppled forward off the cliff, landing in the fast-flowing river with a muted splash.

  But before the third volley flew, the enemy had already been alerted by the agonized cry of their comrade. The ten remaining men—five towering Eirdkilrs and their smaller Jokull cousins—spun toward the attack, raising their round wooden shields to ward off the next flight of missiles. Five of the six arrows clattered off the leather-bound shields. Only the sixth arrow found its mark, slipping just above the steel rim of an Eirdkilr shield and buried into the man’s throat.

  Cries of alarm pierced the darkness, the Jokull crying out for reinforcements. Bowstrings thrummed again and two more enemies fell, but still seven remained. Five Jokull and two Eirdkilrs blocking Aravon’s way to help the people of Rivergate and his men beyond.

  The Jokull clustered together, forming a wall of interlocked shields that kept Skathi’s arrows at bay. The two Eirdkilrs, however, turned and raced south, deeper into Rivergate.

  “Skathi!” Aravon’s voice echoed across the cleared space. “Take them down!”

  Before the words finished leaving his mouth, two bowstrings thrummed in perfect unison. Twin streaks of black streaked through the night. One of the Eirdkilrs fell without a sound, a red-fletched arrow buried in the base of his spine, just beneath the metal rim of his helmet. The other cried out as the second arrow punched through his leather leggings. He stumbled and fell hard, a stream of Eirdkilr curses mingling with his cries of pain. Skathi silenced him a moment later with an arrow to the chest. The Odarian steel head punched through leather armor, furs, and flesh. Blood sprayed from the man’s lips and he fell to the cobbled road of the Marshway.

  But the five Jokull remained. One howled in agony as an arrow drove through his exposed calf, but it did little to stop him from retreating with his comrades, one step at a time, still locked in the shield wall. The arrows loosed by Skathi’s archers clattered off their shields or spanged on their metal helmets.

  Damn it! Aravon’s mind raced. He could give the order to advance, but there was no way they’d get across in time to stop the Jokull from escaping and summoning reinforcements. They had seconds before—

  Movement flashed in the corner of his eye. A huge figure burst free of the woods and raced toward the river’s edge. Belthar, sprinting at an impressive speed for one so large, held his cocked and loaded crossbow in both hands, his long legs eating up the ground. The big man ground to a halt beside one of the archers—broad-shouldered, with long red hair hanging in fierce war braids—and raised the crossbow.

  Polus’ special creation, the “artisan’s masterpiece” of which he was exceedingly proud, had metal limbs six feet across—far too large for a man of average size and strength to carry, much less load and shoot. Belthar was anything but average. His huge shoulder muscles corded as he raised the crossbow, took aim, and pulled the trigger.

  The whomph of the releasing crossbow sounded like a ballista being loosed. The bolt, three feet long and two inches thick, with an Odarian steel tip, leapt in a blur across the Standelfr River. Two hundred and fifty yards was a long way to shoot for an inexperienced archer, but Belthar didn’t need Skathi’s pinpoint accuracy. Not with the Jokull packed so tightly together in their shield wall.

  Belthar’s crossbow bolt punched through the centermost shield with a massive crack of splintering wood and tearing leather. The missile hurled the Jokull back a dozen yards, and the dying man’s flailing limbs and shield brought down two of his comrades. More than that, it broke the shield wall, giving Skathi, Woryn, and the archers an opening.

  Six arrows whistled toward the Jokull. Two men fell with agonized cries, arrows buried in their legs and guts. A third died a moment later as Skathi’s follow-up shot, loosed with the impossible speed and precision of an Agrotora, punched through his armor, buried in his chest. Five more arrows rained down around the last Jokull, still staggered by the blow from his flailing comrade’s shield. One caught him in the shoulder and spun him around, while another buried in his back. His legs flopped uselessly, spine severed. He died with a cry of pain on his lips, the shaft of an arrow from a Legionnaire—likely Woryn—blossomed in the side of his head.

  Silence fell, breathless, excruciating, punctuated by the thump, thump of Aravon’s pounding heart. He found himself suddenly exhaling, air bursting from his lungs. He sucked in a lungful of air, his eyes scanning the darkened streets and marketplace of north Rivergate. Nothing moved, not so much as a breeze fluttering the canvas of the ruined stalls.

  No reinforcements would arrive to defend the bridge crossing. The first half of their plan had succeeded.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Triumph burning in his chest, Aravon turned to Captain Lemaire—who stared wide-eyed at the archers and Belthar clustered at the river’s edge—and gave the order. “Now!”

  To his credit, Lemaire recovered from his shocked surprise in an instant. He whirled to his left, toward the Legionnaire who had remained by his side for this very purpose. “Go!”

  Mudden, a Third Company Legionnaire with the h
arsh accent and dark brown hair of a Drashi, leapt to his feet and raced off east, deeper into the forest. He’d been chosen for his speed, and within a few seconds, Aravon lost sight of him within the dense tree cover opposite the highway.

  Come on! They hadn’t had time to test Zaharis’ construction; either it worked and they got across, or it sank like a stone and Colborn’s company faced the enemy alone.

  Aravon turned back toward Rivergate and studied the city once more. The stillness of the night was broken only by the dull roar of the fast-flowing Standelfr and the distant cries of the Eirdkilrs and Jokull scrambling to comprehend the fiery attack from the south.

  Colborn had bought them a few minutes at best. They had to make the most of it.

  “There!” Captain Lemaire’s sharp intake of breath echoed in the darkness.

  Aravon spun toward the east, and his eyes scanned the dark, rushing ribbon of the Standelfr. His heart leapt as he spotted the hulking shape racing toward them, carried along on the icy, fast-flowing current.

  Calling it a boat would be an offense to every shipwright on Fehl; the construction looked less like a proper barge and more like an enormous system of builder’s scaffolding mounted on dozens of shallow-draft boats. Boats that had been cobbled together so quickly they would sink if not for the sheer number united in the effort to remain afloat, and a massive keel in its center as a counterbalance to keep it stable. Forty feet tall, a hundred and eighty yards long, and five yards wide, the thing was, for all intents and purposes, a massive pontoon bridge, raised on beams and supports to create a flat “roof” that the Legionnaires could march across. Belthar had dubbed it “the Coracle”, a name the rest of the grim-humored Legionnaires had quickly adopted.

  Fifteen Legionnaires ran alongside the riverbank, struggling with the five tow ropes secured at various intervals along the length of the Coracle. They could never hope to compete with the river as it dragged the enormous boat-thing downstream; their only task was to keep the prow from pulling too far away from the northern bank of the Standelfr.