The Great Bear: The Adarna chronicles - Book 3 (17 page)

Conlan turned his attention to the task at hand, and his back on the rest of the legion. His eyes took some time to adjust to the dark of the night.
Luck is what we need.
His heart beat against his ribs like an animal wriggling to escape a cage.

As silence reigned again, he wondered why he had followed his instinctive urge to take the fight to the enemy. Five of the red-eyed demons had decimated a branch.
How many more lie in wait?
Reality struck. If five could decimate a branch, then might just ten more be all that was needed to destroy his little expeditionary force? He grasped the sword of Optuss tight, seeking to draw some strength from the magnificent blade; but for all its potent power, it was, nevertheless, just an instrument of death and the strangely smooth and warm handle gave him little comfort. Again the thought trickled through:
What would Martius have done?
He recalled their encounter with Jhan Guttel at the Inn on the Green. The answer was simple.
Martius would have done the unexpected.
His sword hilt felt like polished ivory to his touch. He wondered what beast Lord Terran had killed to fashion it from.

“You iron men, much talk,” said Wulf, snapping Conlan back to the present. “You strange people.” The barbarian seemed relaxed and alert, but the set of his shoulders betrayed tension.
 

“What would your people do?” Conlan asked. These demons had driven Wulf’s proud nation to move north. For the first time Conlan thought he understood the power of the real enemy. He could only guess at the unknowable trials the Wicklanders must have undergone on the long road to Sothlind.

Wulf shrugged his shoulders, and casually stabbed forward with the other sword of Optuss. “We fight, we kill.” His eyes took on a distant cast. “We die,” he whispered softly.

A scream echoed from the west. Conlan jerked his head around, ready to react, but it was far enough away that it was not a hazard. A quick look into the night revealed no immediate threat. The enemy seemed lost and hidden in the night.
Where in the hells are you?
“You’ve fought them before?” he asked Wulf.

Wulf’s eyes blazed. “Wulf fight before. Wulf kill. They strong, many warriors die.” His head dropped, his eyes intense with anger or mourning. “They too strong for Wicklanders. We have to escape them... Or all die.”

From the tone of Wulf’s voice, Conlan was not sure whether the man would have preferred to stay and die, to sacrifice himself rather than run. “How do we beat them? They must have a weakness, surely?” He glanced across at Jonas, who walked silently next to Wulf; but his friend was scanning their surroundings, eyes flitting from one shadow to the next, searching for the enemy, lost in a world of his own.

Wulf’s brows creased as he too looked into the night. “They die,” he said quietly. “Just hard to kill.”

“Where are we going, boss?” Jonas interrupted. They were over a hundred yards from the rest of the legion, the men in the distance just a faint line cast against the backdrop of the campfires and torches that burned behind them.

Conlan realised he had no idea where he wanted to go. That he had allowed his emotions, in the heat of the moment, to tempt him into foolhardy bravado and risk the men with him by doing it. Yet he could not shake the feeling that the only hope he had was to take the fight to the enemy. The glimmer of firelight on the armour of another fallen comrade, lying a few yards away, was enough to spark some inspiration. “Let’s call in the waifs and strays, Jonas.” He could not leave his brothers out here, alone in the darkness, to face the terror. He would not stand by as he had on the palace balcony in Adarna whilst his brothers were slaughtered once more. “Sound out. Let’s see who we can muster.”

Jonas grunted his satisfaction, his eyes lighting up with new passion.

He thinks this was my plan all along.
Conlan realised.
He thinks this is why we’re here
. Perhaps there was no better reason. Perhaps Martius would have understood that too.
 

Jonas gave the signal and the whistles blew. Three pips then two, three pips then one. It was the signal to form up. Conlan hoped that somewhere in the night someone out there would hear and obey. It would be worth it if they saved just one man.
 

Slowly at first, men began to emerge from the night; they came singly, then in small groups. Some were armed and partially armoured; others were dressed only in tunic and hose. Some bore wounded comrades and looked proud or angry. More hung their heads in shame at having been caught unawares, perhaps, unable to defend themselves; a few were clearly in shock, wide-eyed and fearful. Conlan shuddered at the thought of what his comrades might have witnessed in the moonlight. All were legionaries though, proud and true. He knew they would fight to the death for him, even now.

They reached the southernmost tip of the camp without incident. There was still no sign of the enemy, just scattered cries and screams in the distance.
 

In a short time, Conlan’s group had trebled in size, and it continued to grow. There were signs of fighting all around. To his dismay, imperial casualties outnumbered the enemy’s by at least ten to one.

Conlan jumped up to the earthen rampart that marked the perimeter of the camp and looked out over the ditch beyond, then left and right along the makeshift wall. At regular intervals, large stakes had been driven into the ground, their sharpened tips pointing outwards. Between the large stakes, shorter, thinner pieces stood out at groin height – enough to disembowel an unwary attacker in the night, enough, according to military theory, to ensure the safety of a legion against a much greater force.

“Those of you who aren't armed,” Conlan addressed his motley group and pointed towards the wooden stakes. “Here are your spears!” They would be awkward to wield but better than nothing, and might, perhaps, keep the enemy at a distance if they attacked. “Jonas?” Conlan addressed his friend.

“Boss?”

“Might not hurt to arm as many as possible. You’ve seen them, we need to kill them before they get in close. Throwing spears if we can find them. Even those with swords should take a stake.” He gestured with his sword to the fortifications. “Looks like we may be fighting like the old days.”

Jonas blinked slowly as if digesting the information. “Alright, boss. You mean the very old days, right? You thinking porcupine?”

“Something like that.” It was an ancient – and somewhat derided – technique, developed in Xandaria before the birth of the founder himself. Xandar had abandoned it long before he formed his army and set off to found the Empire.

Within a few minutes, those men who did not possess javelins were armed with rudimentary weapons and the formation bristled with makeshift spears.
 

Conlan led his force along the fortifications to the west. The whistles of the legion called continuously, like a mother searching for lost young the growing band of soldiers continued their procession around the camp.

A commotion sounded at the rear, the unmistakable ring of drawn steel. Conlan sprinted back through the men with Wulf and Jonas at his side. They arrived to find the aftermath of an attack; the last of the attackers despatched with a javelin to the throat. At least twenty men lay dead. The enemy numbered five.

“What the hell are they, sir?” a blood-splattered legionary asked. He leaned, breathless, on his spear. “One of them jumped clean over me... like it was nothing... never seen anythin’ like it.”

Conlan recognised the man from the legion house, a stalwart, if loud and raucous, member of the Third. “They’re just men like us, Leptus, don’t worry.” He smiled to take the edge off his words.

“Next time one of them jumps over you, stick your bloody spear in his ball sack and see how he likes it!” Jonas added.

Wulf stood over the body of one of the fallen demons, raised his sword to his shoulder and plunged it down with such force that the blade severed the spine and buried itself in the ground below. He looked up with a satisfied sneer on his face. “Dead now,” he said simply, and withdrew his sword. The body stuck to the blade, head lolling obscenely, before the suction broke and it flopped to the earth.

“He was alive?” Conlan reeled, the demon-man could have been captured, questioned; he might have had vital information.
Wulf, you fool!

Wulf simply shrugged and grinned his feral grin, then flicked blood nonchalantly from the blade of his sword. A congealed splatter landed just by Conlan’s right foot. Wulf held the blade up to his face and gazed at it as if appreciating it even more now that he had witnessed its potency.

Conlan thought better of disciplining the Wicklander, there would be no point; the demon was dead now in any case, nothing he could do would change that. He needed Wulf as an ally now more than ever. “Gather the wounded,” He addressed Jonas instead. “We’ll take them with us. I need you to co-ordinate the officers, Jonas. Re-allocate men as necessary, we need a cohesive fighting force.

“Boss.” Jonas jogged away, shouting orders as he went.

They moved along the wall, the night appearing to take on a life of its own as every flicker of a shadow made men jump or raise shields. A low mist had risen and it only deepened the uneasiness of the troops, seeming like some eldritch spell conjured from the darkness. Eventually, close to the eastern edge of the camp, they came upon the bodies of about fifty soldiers. The men had clearly formed up in a defensive circle in an effort to keep the enemy at bay, but it had done them no good. Four of the demons lay dead around the piled bodies of the legionaries.

“How many men do you think we have now?” Conlan asked Jonas, voice low, unable to tear his eyes away from the carnage before him.

“About four hundred all told.” Jonas looked towards the centre of the camp as he spoke, but they were too far away to make out the rest of the legion. “Why haven’t they attacked us again, boss?”

“I don’t know, Jonas.”
At least I saved a few
, Conlan thought. But what difference would it make in the end? They would probably all die in any case.
They lost four against our fifty
. What hope was there when the enemy had such strength that trained soldiers were rendered helpless as children? Perhaps the enemy had been after Optuss all along.

Shocking realisation dawned and Conlan found the certainty he craved. His decision made, he addressed Jonas. “We should head back to the centre.”

The relief on Jonas’s face was clear to see. “That’s the best decision you ever made,” he quietly affirmed. “Spookiest damned thing I ever did, walking round this bloody camp in the dark.”

As if to support Jonas’s opinion, a great roar sounded to the west. It was a noise that Conlan knew too well; the clamour of a legion engaging in battle. The enemy were attacking, and by the sound of it in force.
 

Cursing himself for an idiot, Conlan began jogging towards the noise as if his body knew what had to be done even if his mind did not. He prayed that he would not be too late, then recognised the hopelessness of the prayer. There was little promise of survival if the demons were in force. He would be leading his men to their doom. “Form on me!” he shouted into the night, heedless of death, hoping that Jonas and the other officers would relay the order. “Form line, four deep!” It was a risk to spread the force so thin, it would be vulnerable to attack from the flanks and to penetration by the enemy’s preternatural strength. But he gambled that they would have their attention focused on another goal: Optuss lay at the centre of the camp.

As the four hundred hurtled through the night, the battle ahead began to resolve into view. A tight knot of about thirty demon-men battered the centre of the eastern line of the legionary square. The line had buckled back so far that Conlan feared it would break any second. For a moment he hesitated, knowing that to form a wedge would give his ragged little band the greatest chance of breaking the enemy and destroying them between his own force and the thin line of defenders; but to shout an order would risk alerting the enemy to his presence and destroy the element of surprise.

They took down fifty seasoned fighters and lost four of their own
. The strength of the enemy was so great that numbers might mean nothing.
How would Martius react?

There was no other answer than to laugh in the face of death.

With thirty yards to go, Wulf sprinted ahead of the formation. His sword arm pumped manically back and forth in his eagerness to reach the foe.
 

Conlan felt a bizarre sense of relief that he would not be the first man to join the battle. A few seconds of life might yet remain.

Then Wulf let out a bellow that was half howl half scream, and as he did so two of the enemy swivelled their heads to face the new threat to their rear.

So much for the element of surprise
. Conlan raised his sword high above his head. “Death and gloooryyyyy!” he roared, and brought the sword down in a sweeping arc that drove it through the shoulder and deep into the chest of a foe who faced the other way; the demon dropped like a stone. Conlan’s sword swept up with ease, not catching in the body and betraying him as a mortal blade might.

“Kill them all!” he screamed as the frenzy overtook him. All fear departed as he gloried in battle. Gloried as he never had before. The blade of Optuss became an extension of his soul as it screamed vengeance at the unwary.

He killed two more in quick succession, then turned and looked for more to engage, but the remnant of the enemy were further south, and they were quickly impaled on stakes, dispatched with vicious savagery as the pent-up rage of the legion was unleashed.

It was over before he had time to think. The demons caught unawares in the open between two desperate forces. For the first time, the enemy dead outnumbered those of the Empire.

It felt good. It felt like justice.

Wulf howled, but where before, at the burial mound in Sothlind, he had howled in grief and despair, this time he did so in victory. The barbarian held aloft the severed head of a demon-man, the furious joy on his face clear for all to see.