Part 40 (1/2)

The Knight Marshal King Ursus joined the marshal on the battlement. ”So the Darkflamme has come to fight. Now we know why they've stayed their hand.” He turned to the trumpeters. ”Sound the alert. I want every man ready for battle.”

A dozen horns blew a frantic call. Knights, soldiers, and archers answered, flocking to the two walls, yet the attack did not come. Twilight faded to dark, a spray of stars across the sky. Most of the men remained at their posts. Huddled beneath maroon cloaks, they leaned against the battlement, s.n.a.t.c.hing a few hours of sleep, twitching awake at the slightest sound. The king and the marshal took turns walking the walls, offering words of encouragement, keeping vigil with the men.

Dawn revealed a new day. The enemy stood arrayed for battle, a long line of black s.h.i.+elds bristling with spears, but this time, a host of cavalry waited near the front. One among them caught the marshal's gaze. Mounted on a magnificent black stallion, he wore silver armor embossed with black. His helmet was fas.h.i.+oned in the guise of a crowned skull, his breastplate like the ribcage of a skeleton. Even from a distance, the armor cast a fearful pall.

The marshal leaned toward the king. ”Sire, do you see that one there? In the armor fas.h.i.+oned like a skeleton?”

The king nodded, his face grim. ”The Mordant comes in the guise of the Skeleton King.” His mailed hands balled into fists. ”I've long thought the tales nothing more than a bard's drunken yarn. Yet it seems a legend has come to fight. Myth so often holds a kernel of truth.” King Ursus took a deep breath, a glint of fire in his eyes. ”By the G.o.ds, he'll learn the Octagon is equal to any legend.” Reaching back, he drew his great blue sword, a gleam of sapphire raised against the dawn's light. ”For Honor and the Octagon!”

The men took up the king's war cry. ”Honor and the Octagon!” The very mountains rang with the shout, echoing the cry a thousand fold.

But the enemy was undaunted. War drums answered, pounding a furious beat. Battle banners snapped above the long dark line. And above them all, rode the Darkflamme, twelve feet of dark silk snaking against the steel-gray sky, flicking back and forth like a serpent's tongue.

A shout rose from the enemy. So many swords were drawn at once that the hiss of steel against leather could be heard on the walls.

The marshal raised his voice to a shout. ”Wait for it!”

All along the dark line, swords pounded against s.h.i.+elds, echoing the rhythm of the drums. The front ranks parted, revealing a ma.s.sive battering ram, unlike anything they'd seen before. Made from a gigantic tree trunk, it was tapered to a point and capped with black iron shaped like a fist. But even more fearsome, were the soldiers carrying it...for they were not men.

The marshal stared. ”What are they?”

But the king had no answer.

Great hulking brutes with lantern jaws and bulging muscles, they dwarfed the men around them. They hefted the ram with uncanny ease. Clothed in chainmail and wolf skin cloaks, they looked like ogres, another nightmare sprung to life.

”Monsters at the gate!” The marshal reached for his sword, needing to feel cold steel in his hands. So these were the monsters the healer had warned of. The nightmare had come at last.

The ogres loosed a ululating howl and then they lurched forward, twenty monsters bearing the ram toward the outer gate.

”Wait for it!”

All along the wall, archers drew their bows to a crescent.

”Wait for it!” He let the monsters lumber five paces from the enemy lines and then he gave the order. ”Now!” Trumpets blared and a volley of arrows hissed skyward.

The ogres churned forward, powering the ram toward the outer gate.

Arrows struck with a vengeance, a hail of feathered shafts falling on the ram. More than a few struck true, sinking into flesh and leather, but the ram did not falter.

”Again!” Trumpets repeated the order, loosing a storm of arrows.

”Stop the ram!” The marshal watched it come, rus.h.i.+ng toward the gate like an impending doom. ”Stop it!”

Arrows struck the ogres, a bristle of feathered shafts. Three of the beasts fell, but the others kept coming. The ram never faltered.

”Fire arrows!” The oil was long gone; exhausted on other a.s.saults, but perhaps flaming arrows would stop the beasts. Trumpets relayed the command and the air swarmed with flames. A frenzy of feathered comets streaked toward the enemy. The marshal watched, willing the ram to falter. ”Stop them!” Fire arrows thudded into the ogres, yet the ram lumbered forward. Ten feet, five feet, the great ram closed the distance to the outer gate.

And then it struck. Kaboom!

A giant thunderclap rocked the world.

Atop the second wall, the marshal staggered backward as if punched by a giant fist. Knocked on his back, he struggled to stand, desperate to know if the gates still stood. Gripping a merlon, he stared below.

Wood and stone flexed and groaned. Men atop the first wall screamed a warning. For half a heartbeat the gates stood...and then they disappeared, consumed by a cloud of black. When the dust cleared, the gates were gone. They were gone! A great hole gaped in the outer wall. Nothing remained within the gap, not rubble, not even the bodies of the ogres and their fearsome ram. Stone and wood and iron had disappeared, swallowed by a single thunderclap.

”Magic!” The marshal stared, struggling to understand. So this was the power of magic. But how could swords fight such a power?

Beside him, a young squire whimpered, a pitiful sound, like an animal caught in a trap. All along the wall, men stood frozen in fear, gaping at the missing gate. He had to do something.

A shout of triumph rose from the enemy.

The marshal gripped his sword and forced himself to think. The outer gates were gone. Without the walls they'd be overrun in less than a day. They needed the walls to survive...but the gate was gone. But not the walls! And then it came to him. ”Sound the attack!”

But nothing happened. No trumpet obeyed his command.

He ran to the nearest trumpeter, a young lad with sandy blond hair. ”Sound the attack!”

But the young man just gave him a befuddled look.

The marshal shot a glance at the king, relieved to see he understood.

The king towered over the young trumpeter, sunlight gleaming on his crowned helm. ”You heard the Lord Marshal, sound the attack!” And the trumpeter obeyed. Other trumpets added their throats to the call. A trill of notes summoned the maroon to war.

The marshal grabbed the nearest squire, shaking the lad till the daze left his face. ”Run and find Sir Mallory. Have him lead a charge of horse out through the gate. We need to hold the gap in the wall.” He shook the lad again. ”Do you understand?”

”Yes, Sir!”

”Then run like the devil's after you.”

The squire sped away. The marshal turned and strode toward the rampart, desperate to learn the state of the battle. Out in the steppes, the enemy prepared to charge, while down in the narrow three hundred foot lane that separated the two walls, chaos reigned. Men in maroon abandoned the outer wall. Some of them blackened and burned, some without weapons, others unharmed, they fled the first wall scrambling for the gates of the second. All discipline was gone. To the marshal, it looked like a rout, the death knell of the maroon. Leaning on the rampart, he shouted down to them, ”Heed the trumpets! Stand and fight!” but it was like yelling into the wind.

But then, in the middle of the muddy lane, a single knight stood firm. Blackened with soot, his helmet and s.h.i.+eld lost to the fray, he raised his sapphire sword to the heavens and commanded the men to attack. And they did! Men, who'd been fleeing a moment before, stopped and stood with their prince. At Ulrich's command, they formed a bulwark across the gap, a ragged line of men with swords, and spears, and axes, plugging the hole in the outer wall.

The thin defense was just in time...for the enemy charged.

Like a nightmare unleashed, the horde rushed forward, a dark tide racing toward the sundered gate.

The defenders braced for the attack.

Steel clashed against steel, a mighty crash. But the outer walls still served their purpose, blunting the enemy's charge, forcing a horde of thousands to funnel down to a narrow spear of men.

The fighting in the gap was fierce. Hand to hand, men fought and died, turning the muddy gap to a churn of blood, but the maroon did not give ground.

”Loose another volley!” The marshal screamed the command and the trumpeters echoed his order.

All along the second wall, archers loosed volley after volley. Like a swarm of angry hornets, the arrows struck the attackers at the gate. But it was not enough. For every enemy that fell, two more leaped to fill the gap. Tens of thousands pressed forward, like grains of sand rus.h.i.+ng toward the neck of an hourgla.s.s. The maroon was running out of time, the marshal needed a different plan.

”The Mordant is the key.” The realization struck like lightning. The marshal raced along the wall, looking for Hadrian, the master archer for the maroon. He found him on the crown of the second drum tower, a tall blond-haired man with broad shoulders and muscled arms, an eight-foot longbow in his hands.