Bazil Broketail (24 page)

Once more the horns brayed and the whips rose and fell. The imps thrust forward arrayed in a phalanx with spears leveled and shields raised and interlocked. Above them echoed their shrill war cry, adding to the din of horns and drums.

At the edge of the woods the men of Marneri met them with steel and shield, and once again the clang of metal resounded through the trees.

Kesepton gave the bugle cry to set Yortch in motion, and moments later the Talionese broke from the woods on the right and thundered towards the leather-clad horsemen behind the trolls.

In moments they were among them, and a snarling cavalry fight developed that moved away across the plain in a chaos of slashing swords and flying hooves.

Behind them in the thickets the fighting grew desperate. The imp majors knew that the men of Marneri could be easily flanked, and now parties of imps swung round and began to come in on the left and right.

Kesepton and Weald hurled themselves into the struggle on the right and beat back a dozen imps seeking to roll up the line.

On the left things held for a while, but then a dozen more imps broke in at the rear on the extreme end of the line and quickly produced a collapse. Kesepton got there just in time to rally the men and make a stand to hold back the onrushing imps, now baying through the brush.

For a few moments it was touch and go, but Sergeant Duxe killed the trooper leading the attack, and a few seconds later they broke and went streaming away under the trees.

Kesepton leaned against a small tree and took a deep breath. His sword arm already felt as heavy as a piece of lead, and he’d taken a solid blow to the ribs from a shield that sent waves of pain through him every time he moved.

“A well-struck blow, Sergeant,” he said, nodding to the body of the enemy trooper. Duxe stood there, breathing hard, trembling slightly from the exertion and the stress.

“So much for the easy patrol they promised us in Dal-housie.”

“So it seems,” agreed Hollein. Duxe recovered himself and began sorting out the survivors of the flank party.

Weald had brought the horses up. The lieutenant had a cut on his forehead that had bled heavily and stained his face and breastplate red.

“Word from the center, sir.”

Second Dragoneer Heltifer, a pale, slender youth with dirt all over his face, came up. He had terrible news. Sorik was down, a troll’s lance in his guts.

A little frisson of fear lanced down Kesepton’s spine. A dragon down already, reducing his small precious force of wyverns to just five effectives? His small force was overmatched here already—they could not afford many casualties.

What if they could not hold them? Could they last until dark and make a getaway then? With foreboding in his heart he worked his horse through the thickets back to the center and the dragon’s position.

The place certainly looked as if a battle had been fought there. The first thing he saw was a very dead imp, impaled on a sapling. A little further on the brush was all chopped down and bloody.

Dragoneer Rosen Jaib was lying there, bleeding to death from a severed artery in the neck. Hunched beside the boy was the dark mass of his dragon, mighty Vander. Wordlessly Kesepton and the great dragon exchanged looks and then Hollein went on, a great sadness in his heart.

And then beside a pile of dead imps lay Sorik, the stricken dragon. The vast bulk was propped against a tree. Dragonboys were attempting to staunch the blood-flow, but the lance had been well thrust home and was buried in the dragon’s gut. Inflammation and infection would kill him if the blood loss did not.

Two of the other dragons, Nesessitas and great Kepabar, the brass hide, were crouched beside their dying leader. Kalstrul, Sorik’s dragonboy, sat next to them, weeping.

Kesepton went close.

Dragon eyes turned on him with a blankness that was frightening.

“How is he?” Hollein managed to mumble.

Nesessitas heaved a vast sigh. She had been wounded too; there was dried blood encrusting her forearm.

“He dies.”

“I am sorry. He was brave and a great fighter.”

The dragons nodded faintly; none would disagree with such sentiments concerning great Sorik. Kalstrul wept but made no sound. Kesepton squatted beside him for a moment and put a hand on his shoulder. No words were necessary or possible, fortunately.

Dragoneer Tetzarch appeared out of the thickets.

“Captain, you should come and take a look on our front. Something is happening.”

What now
? thought Hollein Kesepton. The day was already black enough. He followed the dragoneer through the smashed brush, stepping over a dead troll which lay like a felled tree trunk in the midst of the tangle.

At the edge of the woods, Dragonboy Relkin was waiting; he pointed across the meadow.

It was hard to make things out at first, there was a haze and the late afternoon light was deceptive, but then he realized what he was seeing and his heart sank.

“More of them,” he groaned softly.

Another mass of imps was pouring out of the forest on the far side of the meadow, under the direction of a small group of horsemen. With them came more trolls, three at least.

“Where are Yortch and his men?” said Hollein, grasping for straws.

Tetzarch gestured down slope to the left.

“Somewhere far down there, pursuing the defeated foe.” The Marneri man’s contempt for the Talionese was plain.

Hollein cursed. Yortch was off on a wild cavalry jaunt, forgetting the main battle entirely. Possibly he had even decided to take his men out of it, back to the landing with the news that the Marneri unit had been annihilated and the Talionese were the only survivors. With Yortch anything was thinkable.

With an effort he controlled himself and muttered quietly, “Let’s hope they get back here in time.”

With grim faces the men of Marneri watched the new mass of imps join the first. The imp majors called for another charge and soon the mob came on, their infernal yipping cries rising high above the shock of battle.

And now it was very grim, for the flanks were bent back and back into a U and soon, Hollein knew it would be a circle and they would be completely surrounded. Meanwhile the trolls were back to full strength and the dragons were having a desperate time of it.

Men were going down here and there, and the imp arrows were coming in from all directions.

Hollein realized that the position was untenable. He convened with Duxe and Tetzarch. Weald joined them a moment later.

“We don’t have much choice. We must retreat, pull back to the ruins of that temple and try to hold them off there.”

“We cannot leave our wounded.”

“Of course not.”

“Some cannot be moved—they must not be left.”

“Troll meat if we do,” said Weald.

Hollein’s mouth was dry, his pulse was racing. The imps were all about them, readying for another charge. Any time now they might break through and then it would be doom for all of them.

He made his decision.

“We cannot hold here, we must pull back. Give the orders. Ready the men for the cornet, on the third note we move as one. Detail men to bring those wounded that cannot walk.”

“And Sorik?”

“Sorik is dead,” said Tetzarch.

“Damn, that is bad news. To your stations—remember, on the third note we move.”

Hollein ordered one badly wounded man lain over his horse, and then he gave the bridle to Kalstrul.

The cornet blew and the men and dragons moved back in skirmishing formation, lurching through the woods until they found the temple ruins once more, where they dug in and turned at bay.

“Here we stand and here we triumph or die,” Hollein told Weald and Duxe.

Weald licked his lips. Death too soon was all he could think. He had had a long life ahead of him, ten years service in the legion and then retirement and a farm in Dalhousie. And now instead of that dream, a terrible death loomed with the subsequent ignominy of being devoured by trolls and imps.

Liepol Duxe merely straightened up and then spat on the ground. “We’ll hold them. We have to,” was all he said.

Kesepton concentrated the men on the corners of the temple dais with the dragons in the center. Anxiously they awaited the onslaught.

Suddenly huge rocks began landing among them. The trolls were pulling stones out of the outlying ruins and lobbing them into their position. Frantically the men huddled against the ruined wall for shelter.

The dragons moved for safety too, but not before poor Kepabar was struck on the helmet by a stone block and knocked senseless.

And now the horns resounded around them in the forest and the imps came piling in. Bazil and Relkin, with Nesessitas and Marco Veli, found themselves back beside the upturned head of the long forgotten god. The head lay between them and the enemy like a wall.

The enemy was coming, the yipping and drumming rising to a frenzy. But Relkin found himself floating beyond fear. An extraordinary calmness had come over him. Smoothly he loaded his bow and placed three other quarrels handy on the stone beside him. Then he turned to Marco Veli, an overeducated youth if ever there was one among the dragonboys.

“So Marco, who was this temple dedicated to?”

Marco laughed, for he had studied much of the lore of ancient Veronath.

“That’s easy, this is one of Asgah’s temples. He was the war god of the kings of Veronath. This very head is from one of his statues. In those days Veronath put fifty thousand pikemen in the field under Asgah’s banner. Now he is a forgotten god.”

“Bazil thought it would be a war god. We ought to dedicate the corpses of the enemy to old Asgah.”

Marco chuckled mirthlessly. “Asgah, dead god of a dead world, if you hear us know this, the imps we slay here we dedicate to you!”

Marco looked to Relkin. “There, if he lives still in the shades, then he will know what we do here in his ancient place and he will approve.”

And then the imps were upon them, running out of the brush with cutlasses waving above their heads. Behind them came the trolls, and Bazil and Nesessitas lurched out and met them head on.

Bows sang, arrows flew and a couple of imps crashed to the ground. The rest came on in a hurrying horde.

Huge swords whirled and clanged off troll shields and helms. Bazil evaded the thrusts of two trolls with lances and Piocar snapped back in their faces. Then a third troll swung a heavy mace at him and missed by a hairbreadth and struck the huge head of the long dead god.

The head wobbled alarmingly as if it might roll over. Relkin jumped back—if it rolled it could crush them like grain beneath a millstone.

And now a troll clashed up against Bazil, their shields rang noisily on the first clash and the troll was knocked back.

The troll pushed its helmet more tightly on its head and surged back to the attack with a snarl.

Piocar sang in Bazil’s hands, but both behemoths were restricted by the stone walls around them, limiting their swordplay. Bazil did get in a solid blow to the troll’s shield however, and knocked the creature to its knees for a moment.

Then it recovered and brought its axe round in a whirling slice that would have sundered Bazil’s neck had he not pulled back sharply.

An imp ran in, his sword out, looking to slice the dragon’s hamstrings, but Relkin was there and he met the imp with an arrow at close range that suddenly sprouted from the imp’s right eye.

Bazil struck the troll again it wobbled backwards, almost trampling on some imps hemmed in behind its bulk. Arrows flew from both sides. Bazil had three sticking out of his right shoulder in a moment.

Relkin shot another imp and then the troll was back, joined by a second. Bazil exchanged snarls with them and then they were at him.

He was protected by the stone head of Asgah and dodged a lance thrust. Piocar swung in a massive overhand cut and clove the nearest troll’s shield in half.

That troll staggered away with one arm half severed at the elbow. The one with the lance drove in again and Bazil only just put his shield up in time to deflect it.

The troll clambered over the tumbled stones and grappled with the dragon. Bazil was hampered by his shield and was jerked off balance for a moment. A huge maroon fist slammed into Bazil’s tender nose.

The Quoshite bellowed with pain and jabbed his sword hilt into the troll’s face. It stumbled backwards, roaring. The other one was getting back on its feet. Relkin put an arrow into its chest with no visible effect. Then the imps surged back around the trolls and climbed the wall. Men pushed past Relkin and engaged them at the crest. Relkin strung another arrow and loosed it into the packed mass of imps.

Bazil struck with Piocar and again steel shrieked in complaint and great sparks went sizzling over the heads of the hurrying imps.

More men came up, surging forward to stem the tide of imps. Two more trolls appeared, and while one engaged Bazil again the other hammered at the men, knocking them down with stunning blows from a giant mace.

Relkin ducked under the enormous sweep of that mace and thrust with his own sword at the creature’s knee.

It bellowed in pain and black blood spurted. A hand swung down surprisingly swiftly and caught Relkin a glancing blow that was enough to send him staggering back against Asgah’s head.

All the breath was knocked from his body. He could barely move. An imp closed in, its sword swinging, ready to take his head.

And Bazil’s tail mace struck backwards and smashed the imp across the back and knocked it flat.

Relkin got to his feet, slowly, and dodged back out of the way of an imp with a spear. The spearhead sank into a small tree with a crisp sound. Relkin used his sword to deflect another spear and tried to slice the imp wielding it but missed.

A soldier beside him suddenly staggered under an arrow through the throat, and before he could move again an imp thrust a sword through his belly and he went down.

Relkin parried the next thrust from the imp and saw Cowstrap, the company smith, knock its shield aside and hack it across the belly.