If the Duke was still alive, drawing the Blood Queen away from the Fjall capital gave him a fighting chance at survival.
“So be it.” Zaharis nodded. “Give me ten minutes to get this all in place.”
“You’ve got five!” Aravon turned and scrambled back up the slope. “Watch for my signal to bring it down.”
He didn’t glance over his shoulder for Zaharis’ response; none was needed. The Secret Keeper would handle his business, just as the rest of his men would. Now, it was up to Aravon to deal with his part of the problem. A simple matter of figuring out how to defeat four thousand Eirdkilrs with only sixteen hundred of the Hilmir’s men.
His conversation with Zaharis had sparked the beginnings of a plan. Desperate, with an outcome as unpredictable as anything he’d ever attempted, yet with the Deid abandoning the field, it was the best they could hope for. He wasn’t certain how or where, but they had time to figure it out.
Later. He pushed the ruminating thoughts to the back of his mind. One problem at a time.
Aravon scrambled up the steep, muddy riverbank and onto the flat ground, racing toward the forest bordering the eastern side of the bridge. Close enough that he could see Zaharis working frantically beneath the wooden structure, yet out of sight of the approaching Fjall and their blue-painted pursuers.
The Fjall moved with speed born of desperation. Throrsson and his men, exhausted from the battle and night spent maneuvering into position, couldn’t hope to outrun the Eirdkilrs over a long distance. Their Eirdkilrs pursuers could race a trotting horse and sustain that eight-mile-per-hour pace for hours on end.
In truth, the Hilmir’s only salvation was the Blood Queen’s wary caution. After Throrsson’s trap and slaughter of more than eight hundred of her men, she wasn’t taking any chances with the pursuit. The Blodsvarri had to know her forces outnumbered the Hilmir’s nearly three to one—terrible odds on the best of days. Yet only a fool would charge headlong at the same enemy who had just suckered them into an ambush an hour earlier.
Aravon and Throrsson had counted on that caution to give the Fjall warband time to retreat to the bridge. The Blodsvarri couldn’t possibly know of Zaharis’ alchemical wonders, which gave them an advantage in their current position at the Fornbryggja. The fact that they’d had two thousand Deid to set the ambush made the bridge crossing even more favorable.
Now, however, they’d have to make the best of a rubbish situation. A storm of arrows and Belthar’s bellowing wouldn’t be nearly as good as the Deid warband, but it would suffice. All they had to do was slow the Blood Queen down, make her think twice before committing to the crossing. That’d give Zaharis a chance to work his alchemical wonders.
The harder we bite her, the more she’ll want to bite back. His plan hinged on the Eirdkilrs’ lust for blood and vengeance.
Then the first of the Fjall streamed across the bridge, their boots pounding on the wooden planking in a cacophony that echoed the grim desperation of the situation. Less than a quarter-mile behind, barely a few hundred yards away from the rearmost of the fleeing Fehlans, the Eirdkilrs filled the air with their war cries. They moved at a steady pace, a match for the desperate flight of the Fehlan warriors, inexorable, implacable, relentless.
Aravon’s heart sank as he recalled the Hilmir’s original plan. The Fjall’s instructions had been to race into the forest then, under cover of the trees, re-form into a shield wall and serve as the anvil to the Deid’s hammer once Zaharis brought down the bridge.
But that won’t work now!
Heart hammering, Aravon leapt out of his hiding place and raced toward the bridge. He burst from tree cover just as the first of the Fjall warriors thundered across the Fornbryggja and stepped onto the northern bank of the Ormrvatn River.
“Stop!” he shouted in Fehlan. “Hold here! Form a shield wall!”
The first warriors slowed, curiosity twisting their heavy-bearded faces. Yet, as more and more of the Fjall streamed past, not stopping at Aravon’s shouts, the rest joined suit.
No!
Aravon shouted for the Fehlans to form up, to stand. They had to hold the bridge, had to hold the enemy here.
Yet nothing he did stopped the Fjall from fleeing past. He was no warrior of the Striithlid, no Fehlan chieftain to give commands. The warband simply flowed around him, following their Hilmir’s original instructions.
Aravon’s heart sank as any hope of success trickled away like sand through his fingers. If the Fjall didn’t form up here, it wouldn’t matter if Zaharis brought down the bridge. The Eirdkilrs would have a foothold on this side, and they’d be locked into a fighting retreat. They’d never cover enough ground with the enemy snapping at their heels.
He shouted until his voice grew hoarse, his throat ragged and raw. In vain. The Fjall paid him no heed. In desperation, Aravon seized one racing warrior in an attempt to slow him. The man simply shoved Aravon, sending him staggering, and sprinted onward.
Then Aravon caught sight of a towering, black-bearded warrior. The Hilmir himself raced across the bridge, his son Bjarni at his side.
“Hilmir!” Aravon shouldered his way through the press of charging warriors. “Hilmir!” The cry set his hoarse throat aching, but he refused to stop. He had to turn the Fjall around before it was too late.
Throrsson was so intent on reaching his rally point deep in the woods that he barely noticed Aravon in time to avoid a collision. Anger flashed in his eyes as he skidded to a halt. “What are you doing, Captain Snarl? The plan was—”
“The plan’s gone to shite!” Aravon snarled. “You need to form your shield wall here, now!”
“What are you talking about?” Throrsson’s eyes narrowed. “What has happened?”
“Just trust me,” Aravon insisted. “We need to convince the Blood Queen that we’re holding this bridge.”
A heartbeat of tense silence passed as Throrsson’s ice-blue eyes locked on Aravon. Searching, burrowing deep into him, the wheels in his mind turning. Finally, after what seemed an eternity, he nodded. “By Striith, we hold!”
Whirling to his fleeing men, he raised his voice to a roar. “Striithlid, shield wall!” His booming timbre echoed loud above the tumult of the fleeing Fjall warriors. “By Striith, we hold the bastards here!”
A handful of Throrsson’s men slowed at his call, heeding his command with an alacrity any Legion commander would envy. One by one, they formed up the shield wall, until two became five, then twenty, then a hundred and still more. With every heartbeat, the Hilmir’s shouts brought more and more of his fleeing men back around to rejoin their comrades until the Fjall line solidified into a cohesive mass of warriors. Gasping, bloodied, and exhausted warriors, many bearing wounds or supporting injured companions. Yet warriors no less ready for battle.
The sight rekindled Aravon’s hope. “Hold them!” he shouted to the Hilmir. “You’ll know what to do!”
Throrsson growled a wordless response and turned back to his men. Though many had already fled out of sight, enough remained to form a solid shield wall. By the time Aravon returned to his place in sight of Zaharis, the Fjall battle line had swelled to fully three hundred warriors, shields locked, swords, spears, and axes held at the ready.
Triumph surged within Aravon as the Blood Queen responded precisely as he’d hoped. The Eirdkilrs slowed and stopped short of the bridge, just out of arrow range of the trees on the northern riverbank. Like any clever commander, she sensed a trap. The position was too perfect—a bottleneck with ample concealment to hide an army. The presence of the Fjall’s shield wall formed up just north of the bridge had to confirm it for her.
Come on! Aravon sucked in a breath. He could almost see the Blodsvarri’s mind working, her eyes narrowing in suspicion.
For long moments, nothing happened. The Blood Queen studied the wooden bridge, the Fjall shield wall, the sparse woods bordering the wagon road. Her Eirdkilrs remained motionless, their war cries falling silent, until it seemed the entire world stood still.
One agonizing breath, then another. Silence, so thick and oppressive Aravon felt it crushing in on him.
Take the bait, damn you!
The Blodsvarri moved. Without looking away from the bridge, she barked out an order, one he couldn’t overhear. This was the moment of truth. Either she gave the command to fall back, or she let the tantalizing allure of the Fjall’s presence entice her onward.
The Eirdkilrs moved. A single, slow step north, toward the bridge. Toward Aravon’s trap.
Chapter Sixty
Triumph surged within Aravon, but he forced himself not to give in to the elation. We still haven’t pulled it off. His eyes darted to Zaharis. The Secret Keeper still worked beneath the bridge, scraping away the reddish-brown clay and re-applying it to the supports he intended to bring down. His movements were frantic, driven by a desperate urgency to complete his task in time.
You’ve got this! Aravon willed Zaharis to move faster. It did no good, but it helped to ease the tension mounting within him.
The first Eirdkilr stepped onto the bridge. Silence from the Fjall warband, save for the clattering of armor and shields. More followed, ten, twenty, thirty, crossing in clusters of threes and fours. Even their towering, seven-foot-tall frames seemed dwarfed by the enormous bridge.
Just as they reached the middle of the Fornbryggja, the first of Skathi’s arrows whistled from the cover of the forest. Two red-fletched missiles flew before Colborn’s joined in and Noll answered from the opposite side of the wagon road. Before the lead Eirdkilr fell to Skathi’s first missile, a dozen more arrows—including a few from Rangvaldr—sliced through the air.
Ten arrows found their marks, and eight Eirdkilrs dropped with screams, grunts, or wet, gurgling cries. A moment later, Belthar’s enormous crossbow bolt sped toward the enemy and punched into them from the side. Without shields raised, packed so tightly together, the three-foot missile plowed devastation through their ranks. Five more fell beneath the hail of arrows.
Then came Belthar’s roar, a mighty bellow that echoed from the trees and set the ground rumbling. That cry was echoed by hundreds of Fjall throats, and the Hilmir’s warband clashed swords and axes on their shields.
Thank you, Swordsman! With the Fjall taking up the cry, the Blodsvarri wouldn’t know that one big man with a powerful set of lungs was the only army baying for their blood.
The surviving Eirdkilrs on the bridge raised their massive shields against the hail of arrow fire, and quickly pulled back out of range. Aravon’s jaw dropped. He’d never seen the Eirdkilrs retreat, no matter the odds. It seemed the Blodsvarri was far less prone to bloodlust and impulsivity than he’d given her credit for. Instead of simply throwing her men across in endless waves, she’d given the order to pull back.
His eyes sought out the Eirdkilr’s leader. Her heavy, blunt features were twisted in a pensive half-snarl, half-frown. Now what are you going to do?
Every muscle in his body coiled tight, his breath hitching in his chest. Her actions now would decide the outcome of this battle.
For long moments, the Blood Queen remained motionless, her gaze roving across the assembled Fjall warband and the trees lining the riverbank. Aravon imagined he felt those eyes resting on him, but dismissed it as simply his imagination. She couldn’t possibly see him in his mottled armor, tucked away behind a thick oak tree.
Come and get us, you savage!
With a snarl, the Blood Queen thrust a finger at the Fjall. “Death to the traitors!” she shouted in the guttural Eirdkilr dialect.
The howling war cry split the air, and thousands of blue-stained Eirdkilr faces twisted into barbaric snarls. Slowly, the huge figures lumbered forward, picking up speed as they crossed the hundred yards of grasslands to reach the Fornbryggja.
For an instant, Aravon held out hope the Blood Queen would lead the charge in true Eirdkilr and Fehlan fashion. Yet she remained unmoving, holding her place while her warriors charged past. Aravon’s estimation of her rose a fraction higher. She might be an Eirdkilr, as savage and ruthless as any of her kind, yet that didn’t stop her from being cautious and cunning.
That’s going to make this battle a whole damned lot harder to win!
As the foremost Eirdkilrs thundered onto the wooden planks of the Fornbryggja, they raised shields in anticipation of the arrow storm. It never came. Doubtless Skathi had—wisely—chosen to conserve her arrows, a fact that Colborn, Noll, and Rangvaldr appeared to agree with. As did Aravon. Their actions had fulfilled their purpose.
The clamor of booted feet grew to a thundering roar as the Eirdkilrs raced across the bridge, setting the ground trembling. Closer they drew, packed in a tight mass of shouting, snarling, howling giants. The steel heads of two thousand axes and spears glinted bright in the sunlight, so brilliant it nearly blinded Aravon. Yet their approach held no fear for Aravon, only grim satisfaction.
Keep on coming. Aravon’s eyes fixed on the bridge, on the Eirdkilrs charging across. To his surprise, the giant barbarians slowed as they reached the middle of the bridge. Instead of a headlong charge, they moved slowly, purposefully, with a cohesion any Legion company would envy. They had no need to rely on the brute force of a stampede, not against an enemy far inferior to them. Though the Hilmir’s shield wall had swelled to nearly a thousand, stretching across the entire wagon road, more than four times that number marched toward them.
Aravon’s gut clenched as the first Eirdkilr stepped off the bridge, onto the northern bank of the Ormrvatn River. They seemed almost surprised to find themselves unassailed by the army lying in wait in the forest or the Fjall warband.
One turned to two, then five, then ten, and still more. The number of Eirdkilrs swelled to fifty, a hundred, every heartbeat bringing additional reinforcements across.
Aravon’s eyes snapped to Zaharis. The Secret Keeper was still moving frantically, his hands a ceaseless blur of motion as he re-applied the alchemical clay to the bridge.
It’s taking too long!
Too many Eirdkilrs had already crossed the bridge. Two hundred grew to three hundred, approaching four hundred, and still Zaharis worked at a feverish pace.
Aravon waited for the Secret Keeper to turn, to seek him out for the signal, but the man was too focused on his task, leaping from spandrel to spandrel with the agility of a sailor clambering through ship’s rigging. With every second, more Eirdkilrs streamed across the bridge and spread out, forming an ever-widening solid shield wall in front of the Fjall battle line.
Finally, Aravon could wait no longer. “Do it now, damn it!” he roared in Fehlan.
The Secret Keeper whirled at the sound of his voice and shot him the signal for “All good!” Then, turning back to the wooden bridge, he drew out a firestriker, lit the wooden stick, and touched it to the nearest patch of reddish-brown alchemical clay. In a heartbeat, clay caught alight, and Zaharis slithered beneath the spandrel and slid down the nearest wooden column, dropping into the water just short of the muddy riverbank.
But the Secret Keeper wasn’t the only one who heard his signal. The Eirdkilrs tensed, scores of them glancing in his direction. They whirled toward the west and formed a solid wall of shields against the expected attack.
The Hilmir heard his command as well. With a roar of “For Striith!”, he set his warband surging toward the Eirdkilrs.
The Eirdkilr shield wall—all but those who had turned to face Aravon—was ready. They met the Hilmir’s charge with howls of delight and a solid wall of steel, flesh, and bone. Shields clashed on shields and the Fjall staggered, repelled by the unmoving giants, then threw themselves at the Eirdkilrs once more. Swords struck and blood sprayed. Enormous axes sheared limbs and clubs crushed helmeted skulls. Eirdkilrs’ spears punched through Fjall armor and found flesh beneath. Fjall warriors hurled curses and screams at their enemies as they hacked, chopped, and thrust. The cohesion of the Hilmir’s shield wall shattered in an instant. The battle degenerated to a frenzied thrashing of men crushed against each other, stabbing, punc
hing, biting, spitting. Chaos and bloodlust reined before the Fornbryggja.
Aravon’s eyes snapped back to the bridge’s support. Zaharis was nowhere in sight, but where he’d been, a thin stream of fire trickled upward toward—
BOOM!
Fire blossomed in the bright morning light, tongues of brilliant orange and red flame that consumed a five-yard section of bridge and blasted away the supports holding up the Fornbryggja. Wood splintered or crumbled away to ash. The massive structure groaned beneath the weight of the Eirdkilrs. One burned plank broke away from the bridge, then a second. Gaps opened in the bridge and Eirdkilrs fell, screaming, through the opening. More and more of the Fornbryggja gave way, a girder collapsing without its redwood support beam. Then, like a sandcastle in the face of the ocean’s waves, the center of the bridge sagged and collapsed.
Those Eirdkilrs caught atop the crumbling section fell and splashed into the fast-flowing Ormrvatn River. Crashed atop the sharp stones, spraying blood and shattering bones. Screaming, crying, shouting, they were sucked under the current and dragged downriver.
The weight of the Eirdkilrs atop the bridge brought down larger sections, and dozens more, locked in step with their companions, plummeted into the icy river or onto the jagged rocks. Rivulets of red threaded the white-churned surface of the Ormrvatn, a grisly companion to the fur-clad, armored bodies being towed away and dashed against the river’s stones.
But Zaharis’ alchemical fire hadn’t just brought down the bridge. The concussive blast staggered the Eirdkilrs nearest the explosion, sending them stumbling into their companions. Those on the southern side of the ruined bridge simply fell, bringing down the Eirdkilrs marching behind them, or toppled off the crumbling wooden planks. Those on the north side jostled their comrades in the shield wall facing the Fjall, throwing them off-balance. For a heartbeat, the cohesion of the Eirdkilr line shattered.
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