Sir Ralamean’s breath smoked in
the frigid air. Frosted plumes curled from his mouth and nose and ghosted away
through the needled branches of his refuge. Here atop the hill the mercenaries
had chosen to make their last stand. The Manxman could feel the iron resolve of
his blade-brethren gathered about the crown of the tor
as if it were that—and not the hoary old pines—which provided ward against the
inevitable final onslaught.
It’s pissing cold.
What the hell am I doing here? It was not the first time those thoughts had
occupied Sir Ralamean’s mind at the Frostwar—nor, he was certain—would it be the last. Of
course, it all came back to his brother, Ser Maelgrim.
Sir Ralamean had long since let
his sword-work rest untested and dusty as the sword and shield above his
fireplace. For many years now he had dedicated himself with nearly religious
fervor to the theory and composition of music—music that those fools at the
College could not comprehend in their narrow scope. Year after year, he
answered his brother’s summons to war, and wondered why he did so.
Ser Maelgrim, while no expert, was
a reasonably accomplished swordsman, and wielded dagger, billhook and lance
without travail. It was not, Ralamean knew, as if Maelgrim would be helpless without his aid. Yet he had
rarely refused the summons.
Perhaps, he mused,
I require this release from the cloisters
of the College from time to time. No matter the reason, he had answered
faithfully this year—and for the first time feared that he might not return to
the Lands of Mist and Rain. Though he fought with the savagery and passion of
the alphyn which decorated his shield, he knew that
luck had contributed in equal measure with skill to ensure his continued
survival in the battle of the field not far gone.
And still the hordesmen came.
The adder-hiss of loosed arrows and the almost inaudible twang of Lady Cynara
and Scotus’s ambush had carried through the
crystal-etched air of the early afternoon to the top of hill where stood the remaining mercenaries. However, these sounds were
quickly followed by the quick footfalls of skirmishers and Cynara’s
cry of “Pax!”
Darkly, Ralamean had muttered that
whether these hordesmen recognized the convention of
the call for peace was open to speculation. The tense spring-coiled postures of
his fellow mercenaries echoed his distrust. Yet no sound of execution carried
to the hill, and the knight had joined his kith in hoping that the Azathoth wolves—no matter how implacable an enemy—had some
semblance of civility to them.
The minutes crawled by, and Ralamean
deafened himself to the impatient rustling of Sir Gengulphus
and Ser Owen beside him, to the angry bravado with which Sir Trian spoke of his plans for the victory feast this
evening, even to Ser Maelgrim’s quiet, unshakable
conviction that defeat could be forestalled by the mercenaries’ resolve.
He focused instead on calming his nerves. A glode of sap sagged and dripped from the branch before him
with unruffled deliberateness. Ralamean found himself
wondering abstractly how he might convey that same natural disinterest to the
deeds of men in song. But then the time of waiting came to an end.
This time, when the hordesmen
came, it was without the ferocious chaos they had embodied upon the field to
the south. Rather, they stalked forward, encircling the hill with the wary
steps of a predator that knows it has cornered lethal prey. Ralamean
allowed himself a fierce curl of the lip; mayhap the wolves of Azathoth would find themselves the hunted soon enough.
A thin rattling sound echoed from the army of
cold-embittered evergreen trunks, and swelling into a dull pounding. The hordesmen were beating the backs of their shields, taunting
the mercenaries at the top of the hill.
Come out, the
feral drumming said. Come down and test
your mettle against us.
Apparently, Maelgrim heard the
same message in that rhythm, for Ralamean heard his
hoarse growl to hold position from the other side of the wooded hill. “We will
not play to their strengths,” the white-and-sable knight said loud enough for
all on the hill to hear. “We will rely on our own strengths to win this
encounter—stay close, do not exhaust yourselves, and
maintain discipline.”
Ralamean leaned towards Sims—near
the end of the arc protecting this side of the hill. “I bet I get five.”
Georgia
giggled—the sound was incongruous with the gore staining her gold and crimson
shield and the bruises and dents which covered her body and armor.
It was Trian Gaeth
who answered, “A bottle of berry-mead says you’ll be lucky to get three before
they skewer you.”
Smirking, Ralamean said, “Suppose
I lose? You won’t get your mead from a moldering corpse.”
Trian Gaeth
shrugged. “You can pay me in hell.”
And as Ralamean laughed in answer,
the warriors of Sanctus Azathoth advanced up the
hill.
* * * * *
Madoc swallowed and braced his
winged partisan. Though he had blooded his blade in other wars, his experience
had not prepared him for this. The slaughter of the field battle was still
fresh in his mind, as was the exchange he and Georgia had shared with Pickles.
The warriors moving cautiously up the hill had become as
familiar to him over the past hours as the faces of his own comrades-in-arms.
Though he knew but few of their names—and those mostly from reputation—he
recognized them.
There was the mad Norseman with the rune-graven crimson
shield, its decussated golden hammers like miniature silhouettes of the one he
used to wreak havoc upon his enemies. There was the youth in black, bearing a
shield patterned like a tortoises’ shell. The man with the odd face-paints—striped,
like a cat—had often been one of a group attempting to flank Madoc and Georgia during the field battle.
And there was the woman with the long spear: Madoc thought he had heard Ser Maelgrim
call her a gypsy. What was her name . . . ? Ferko? Madoc
thought perhaps she was the leader of the group about to contest his part of
the defensive ring.
Dropping his center of balance, he jabbed the partisan’s
wicked spike at the face of the nearest foe. Though he failed to draw blood, he
felt a savage twist of satisfaction when the hordesman
lost his footing while evading the spear and slipped on the snow-treacherous
slope. Instinctively, he surged forward to attack, but stopped short of
commitment. The battle will be won by
determination and a cool head, he reminded himself. Content that he had
made an enemy wary, he shifted back and resumed a defensive stance, waiting for
the next target.
* * * * *
Ser Owen stretched his leaden arms and frowned. The battle
had gone surprisingly well so far. Maelgrim had taken
new heart when he saw his lady wife being led captive—not dead—to the edge of
the clearing at the hill’s frozen foot where the wounded of Sanctus Azathoth now congregated, sharing their poultices and their
woes. The glittering sweep of his greatsword through
the wintered air had taken on a more energetic snap, and Owen found himself
thinking that between the remaining knights and mercenaries, victory might yet
be attained.
Owen’s halberd had kept the
marauders at bay for several minutes, giving him some time to breathe. However,
his breath and heart had stopped for a moment when Lady Faelan
fell under the stroke of an enemy. Her labored breath was a sound that relaxed
the muscles of all the suddenly-tense mercenaries.
Except for her husband, Sir Gengulphus. Like an avenging demon, he plunged down
the slope, striking in all directions with his oft-notched war-brand. To the
amazement of the mercenaries and the hordesmen alike,
Gengulphus had dispatched Rain—he who had been swift
scourge to the slower mercenaries not an hour past—as well as two other
warriors, before returning, bloody and ragged of breath, to the hill’s top.
The battle had fallen into a sort of pattern then—the Azathoth forces striking at targets of opportunity when the
mercenaries grew tired, and the mercenaries lashing out with weapons like
embattled vipers when their foes drew near enough. Once, a small knot of hordesmen had assailed Owen’s
position on the hill, attempting to cleave the head of his halberd from its
staff with a greataxe.
Owen smirked at the recollection. Catching the haft of the
axe of his halberd, he had wrested it from the grip of not just one hordesmen, but also the second who had laid hands on the
weapon in a vain attempt to pull the great man off his feet.
Not long after, a ragged cheer had rippled through the
mercenaries as Sir Trian captured a spear from one of
his assailants. Now free to concentrate on the dwindling number of skirmishers
without fear of spearmen, the tide appeared to have turned in the mercenaries’
favor.
Still, Owen frowned.
Where was Bloodoak? Now that he
thought of it, he hadn’t seen the Lord Castellan of the self-declared colony
since before the beginning of combat. Now suddenly Owen suspected a trap. Might
not more hordesmen lie in wait over the next ridge,
led as reinforcements by their leader?
Conrad Hohenstaufen—the Chancellor
of Reeves himself—still stalked the perimeter of the mercenaries’ defenses
armed with shield and a strange, spiked sort of sickle. Owen wondered briefly
if the Italian had performed a coup d’etat, replacing
Bloodoak as the leader of the Azathoth
warriors.
The mercenaries continued to fight in testudo—now successfully since
the hill and the trees did as much to hamper their foes progress and offense as
the desperation-driven thrusts and strikes of the mercenaries themselves. Owen
noted with pride that Pickles, Georgia and Madoc all
still stood, though Gengulphus had descended the hill
under a flag of truce to see to his wife’s hurts—and his own.
The air grew suddenly quiet, and Owen knew that now was the time. Without being able to
explain why, he shouted, “Now! Drive them back!”
In less-than-perfect synchronization, the remaining
mercenaries of the Far-Flung Lands of Sun and Snow hurled themselves down the
slope. The gleam of their blades was now dulled by toil and blood. Their armor
and surcoats were battered and torn in dozens of
places each. The warriors beneath were surely a mapwork
in bruises, scabbed lacerations and sore joints.
Yet they responded to Owen’s
command as if they had all been waiting for it.
And within moments, it was over. The hordes of Sanctus Azathoth had beaten themselves to bloody exhaustion at the
base of that miserable, snowy knob of land, and now sat in mute resignation
while the mercenaries dragged their wounded and dead.
Victory it was not. But they had survived.
For now, it was enough.
