Master Of The Planes (Book 3) (78 page)

Gregor wiped his borrowed blade clear of the black blood of his last orc foe.  A few feet away the seneschal, his own weapon still stained from the bloody work of battle, thrust the blade high and cheered his own soldiers.  “Men of Salicia, the hour is yours!”

“But not yet the day,” Gregor muttered softly into his ill-fitting gorget.  Arms and armour where one thing that had not been released from the Helm with him and, for all the generosity of the camp, there was no escaping the fact that armour was best tailored to each particular wearer.

He looked at Kimbolt as the seneschal strode along the line, dispensing words of praise and encouragement; a clap on the shoulder, a playful punch, a ruffling of hair set free from a helmet’s sweaty embrace.  Gregor and Kimbolt too went bare headed. The morning was growing warm, like their work; a moment of respite was a chance to escape some portion of the metal ovens in which they had all encased themselves.

Gregor frowned as Kimbolt strode back along the line.  What make of man was he? He had been a mere captain before his elevation to the exalted and hereditary rank of seneschal.  The king’s frown deepened. “My daughter affords you much honour, Seneschal,” he said guardedly.

Kimbolt responded with a sunny smile. “She flatters me, your Majesty, with undeserved favour.”

Gregor raised an eyebrow.  “But still you take it, her favour that is.”

The seneschal’s smile faded, his forehead wrinkling in puzzlement at the king’s line of enquiry.  “The queen is precious to me, your Majesty” he said.  “More precious than anything, even my own life.”

“She is certainly a fine prize,” Gregor said.  He drew in a heavy breath and, breathing out, added the rider.   “A fine prize for a captain of the guard.”

Kimbolt swung a hard sharp stare at the king.  “I hunt for no prizes, your Majesty. I am merely grateful for whatever I am given.”

“That humility, admirable as it is, may still not make you worthy of the gift, Seneschal.”

“If I may be blunt, your Majesty.”

“I would prefer it if you were.”

“What business is this of yours?”

“She is my daughter,” Gregor said.  “And, if the Goddess blesses our endeavours here today, she may enjoy a long and happy life.  I, on the other hand, know my time here is limited.   I have but the hours of daylight to make some redress for a quarter century of neglectful and unacknowledged fatherhood.”

“Your Majesty, we have a battle to fight,” Kimbolt said stiffly.  “If there are undischarged parental duties you wish to express then you would serve them better by talking to your daughter rather than to me.” He gestured up the hill to where Niarmit’s standard fluttered next to that of the Master of Horse.

“I am concerned for her, Seneschal, that is all.”

“So am I your Majesty,” Kimbolt hissed. “And to that end I will crush whatever orc or undead skulls are necessary to make her kingdom and her person safe, and in that determination I bow to no-one.”

The two men who loved Niarmit stood and stared each other down, the guarded king and the bright eyed soldier.  Until the arrival of two fellow fugitives from the Helm gave Gregor a pretext on which to break the withering contact.

“Ah, Lady Mitalda, my Lord Thren,” he said as the Vanquisher’s grand-daughter and the Kinslayer’s bane approached arm in arm, for all the world like a couple promenading in the Temple Gardens at Oostport.

“Lord Gregor,” Thren greeted him.  Mitalda offered the seneschal her hand and he bent to kiss it with precise courtesy.  They turned then to survey the battle field.

“Where will his next blow fall?” Thren asked.

“Ha!” Kimbolt cried.  “They are on the move.”  The whole enemy line was lumbering forward on a broad front, orc archers walking ahead of the infantry.  The seneschal flung his helmet back on his head.

“It is a feint,” Thren said.  “See, he is sending the northern most tribe to try and circle round and outflank us, while the rest pin us down.”  

Gregor nodded in agreement with his ancestor.  Five thousand orcs were swinging onto a north-easterly path, along with two thousand or so of the cavalry that had survived the charge on Kimbolt’s position.  “They will pass within a few yards of the chateau,” Mitalda said.  “How many do we have holding it?”

“Seven hundred,” Kimbolt told them. 

“Seven hundred? Against seven thousand?”  Mitalda shook her head.

“Yes,” Kimbolt agreed with a smile. “It is long odds.  I’ll certainly not be betting on the orcs.”  Mitalda gave him a puzzled look so the seneschal elaborated.  “Not when they face seven hundred elves.”

Elves, stay with the elves, Kimbolt had told him. Well not just told him, so much as ordered him. So here he was, trapped in a chateau whose pretty walls looked a lot stronger and thicker from the outside than they revealed themselves to be from the inside.  And on that outside it seemed that half of Maelgrum’s army were advancing upon them.  Jay gulped back his fear and took a glimpse through the elegantly carved first floor window at the approaching orcs.

Was it too much to hope that Maelgrum might walk with them and might, by happy chance, stumble within reach of Jay’s blade. He pulled his dirk free and dug the point into the palm of his off hand. A little pain to stiffen his courage, to remind him whose memory he fought for, to remind him how and why and at whose hand his father had suffered.

“Keep your head down, boy,” Elyas leant across and yanked Jay down on the polished wooden floor.   Jay leant against the wall and looked about the room.  The faux fortress had far too many windows to be a properly defensible position.  The late morning sunlight flooded in, casting sharp shadows of the elegant chairs and tables that had been too heavy for its long fled owners to take. The drapes were gone though, a few rich brocade pelmets hinting at the lost splendour. 

Silent shapes crept across the oak floor, noiseless elves taking up position just out of sight beneath every window that faced the approaching orcs. Jay guessed a similar scene was being played out above and below him and out behind the garden walls.

He could hear the grunts of orcish infantry, he could even hear the jangling of metal as their booted feet grew closer.  A brief draft ushered in a foul orcish odour, fetid feet and rotten meat mixed in with inhuman ordure.   Despite Elyas’s command, Jay shifted onto his knees and peeped over the window sill.

Shit, the front rank couldn’t be more than fifty foot away.  A column of orcs fifty wide and a hundred rows deep with a close knit wing of wolf riders on either flank.

There was a flash of lilac light as a starburst spell exploded in the air and, in smooth sinuous movements elves filled every window, arrows notched and ready to fly.  And they flew.  The air was so thick with white shafted arrows that Jay could not see the orcish target, but still with graceful rhythm, the elves plucked arrows from their quivers, drew strings and loosed shafts of death into the dense packed orcs.

Screams and shouts filled the air.  The orcs were struggling on, but from every floor and wall, through every window and doorway they were met with the deadly white arrows.  From the sides and from on high the missiles punctured orcs as far back as the tenth rank.  The unharmed soliders further back found the wasteland of dead and dying was a significant obstacle that they had to trample over. As they pressed on with their dogged advance, the withering fire continued and bodies fell on bodies until the corpses were piled so high that it seemed to Jay the elves at ground level must be aiming up to hit fresh targets.   

The cavalry wings made a half-hearted effort to charge, but plumes of flame and lightning shot with morale shattering force from the high towers of the chateau, with archers pouring in a still more deadly fire.

And then, with simultaneous precision the firing stopped and Jay could see the fleeing orcs running pell mell from the chateau of doom.  “We won,” he said.

Elyas clapped him on the shoulder.  “Not yet, my boy.”  He beckoned to Caranthas and another half dozen elves and the small group sauntered towards the door.

“Where are you going?” Jay called.

“To retrieve any unbroken arrows,” Elyas replied.  “We have a long day here.”

“You’re going to pull the arrows out of orc bodies?”

Caranthas and Elyas exchanged a look before the lieutenant admitted with a shrug, “yes, Jay.  That’s where the arrows are.”

“Even from the wounded ones?”   Jay rose to his feet anxious to try his dirk on any orcs that the arrows had partially spared.

Caranthas laughed and Elyas graced him with a sad smile.  “There are no wounded, Jay,” the lieutenant said.

“These are elvish arrows and eleven archers, boy,” Caranthas added.  “We hit what we aim at and what we hit we kill.”

“Still, you can come help us,” Elyas offered.

“Two attacks, your Majesty,” The Master of the Horse punched the air with a gauntleted fist.  “Both repulsed with heavy losses.”  He grinned stupid with delight at the queen.  “We will surely have the victory.”

“We have done well, for now,” Niarmit admitted.  “But he still by far outnumbers us and we have now shown him all our surprises.”  She looked at the sun creeping towards its zenith.  “We have a long day ahead of us Lord Pietrsen and from here it can only get more difficult.”

Eadran sniffed contemptuously.  “In neither attack did he commit much above a tenth of his force and the losses he has suffered have been more than paid for in the information he has gleaned.”

Niarmit kept her focus firmly in the Helm so as to direct her response solely at the Vanquisher.  “I know that,” she told him.

“I know you do, girl,” Eadran admitted.  “Though this fellow here is lacking in the sense any good soldier is born with.”

Niarmit let her ancestor’s rant pass without comment.  Eadran had grown loquacious with his brief experience of solitude.  She had no desire to encourage his idle chatter, which would have been to the detriment of both their concentration on the still young battle.  She felt his grumpy tug for control of her eyes and let him once more scan the battlefield.  “Where is he?” he said.  “We need to find him and finish this.”

Niarmit grimaced.  She was in no particular hurry to confront the Dark Lord.   It was one thing to know in her head that the task must be done and to feel the twin reassurance of the blades, The Father and The Son one sheaved across her back the other at her side.  The reality of the combat was quite another matter. Her heart beat faster and her mouth grew dry at the merest thought of it.  She could not shake the memory of her last encounter with Maelgrum. The dark cavern where he had had her chained to a stone block with broken hands to be nothing more than dragon bait and an expendable key to unlock the Helm.  Or the last time another had taken command of her body to duel with the Dark Lord, Chirard’s moment of hubris outside the citadel in Morwencairn which had nearly done for them both.

She shivered.  She had fought Dema twice and been lucky to survive on both occasions.  To expose herself to Maelgrum’s power a third time seemed a folly on a colossal scale.  The Goddess’s favour had been lost to many who had indulged in far less idiotic risks. 

She clutched at the ankh around her neck, its gem freshly prepared to be the Dark Lord’s new prison.  All they had to do was cut the bastard down in single combat.  She shook her head in disbelief.  “Forgive me my Goddess,” she said.  “And guide me when the time comes.”

She felt a twinge of guilty relief when Eadran was once again unable to pick out Maelgrum’s form in the milling thousands on the valley floor.

“Have you seen anything like that before, your Majesty?” Kimbolt asked Niarmit’s father as he turned away from the strange spectacle in the valley floor.

Gregor shook his head.  “They had nothing like it at Proginnot.”  He threw the question to his other side.  “My Lord Thren, is this within your experience.”

The slim monarch stroked his chin.  “No, Gregor, it is not.”

Mitalda squinted at the enemy lines where a strange convoy of contraptions was assembling.  “Some kind of chariots?” she ventured.

“But not pulled by horses.”

Kimbolt frowned.  “It is the undead they are yoking to those shafts, cumbersome pack horses at the best of times and each vehicle seems to need so many.”

Each chariot had a team of at least thirty undead arraigned in rows of four, two either side of a long central shaft.  As the seneschal and his royal compaions watched, the zombies leaned as one into the horizontal drawbars to drag their burdens forward.  Sixty chariots began an awkward lumbering ride towards the battle lines of the Salicia garrison.  Followed at a distance by a line of orcish infantry.

“I had thought that chariots were meant for speed,” Mitalda said.  Even allowing for the limited mobility of the animated corpses that drew them, the chariots were making exceptionally slow progress.

“They must be very heavy then.” Thren peered at the vehicles.  “There is some form of hood or canopy at the back of them, like on a cabriolet, such as there used to be promenading in the streets of Oostport.”

“They still do promenade, your Majesty,” Kimbolt said, biting back the thought that it was in just such a vehicle that the Lady Maia was wont to flaunt herself riding unchaperoned and only half hidden from view with many a different fine noble.

They watched the slow progress of the approaching chariots as they came just within bowshot of the archers.  Kimbolt pursed his lips.  No point in firing at extreme range.  The design was clearer now, lower chassied and smaller wheeled than the elegant society vehicles that Maia would flirt in.  In that respect they were more like the chariots he had first assumed them to be.  But the great dark hood on the back, shaped like a half a clam shell had no place on a war machine.

“Why are they so heavy?” he muttered as the zombies strained to pull their burdens closer.

“I reckon the enemy’s about to surrender,” Stennal growled out in the front line.

“And you do you reckon that,” his friend Trajet snapped.

“’s obvious.”  Stennal was unfazed by his companion’s short temper.  “Them undead things is towing up all his gold to give us.  He means to pay us to let him run away.”

That brought a laugh from the ranks.  Even Kimbolt smiled, but the monstrous charges had come close enough.  He waved his hand at the captain of the bowmen, and a volley of arrows arched over the heads of his soldiers whistling their way towards the strange zombie beasts of burden.

Quite a few struck home, piercing the unarmoured zombies, but without inconveniencing them greatly.  Though some were bristling like pincushions they soldiered on. It was only where a luck shot had punctured knee or foot that the arrow might disrupt their work, by creating a purely mechanical obstruction to their dead limbs juddering movement.

Kimbolt beckoned a runner.  “Call for the priests,” he said.

“Hey,” Thren said.  “They’ve stopped.”

They had indeed.  Just drawing within short arrow range the zombies had stopped and now began lurching sideways they pushed their carriages laboriously round, swivelling them through one hundred and eighty degrees so the strange black hoods faced towards Kimbolt’s lines.

“What now?” Mitalda asked.

As if in answer an ill disciplined salician arrow shot through the air, its steel tipped head hit the shell shaped canopy with a metallic clang.

“That’s not cloth or leather,” Gregor exclaimed.   “That’s iron, an iron shell.  No wonder the things were so heavy.”

Before Kimbolt could muse as to who rode in these cumbersome vehicles, a narrow slit opened momentarily in the smooth iron surface which now faced them. A sizzling jet of fire shot across the gap and exploded in a ball of flame in the midst of his divisions crowded ranks.  The same assault was repeated all along the line as three score of spells unleashed fire and death within the cramped rows of the salicia garrison.

Instinctively the archers had returned fire in support of their beleaguered comrades, but the rain of arrows bounced off the iron plate.

“Shit!” Kimbolt cried.  “Sorcerers, sorcerers in armoured chariots.” He spun round to bellow at his sergeants “loose order!” The man blew three short one long blast on the whistle around his neck and, as the command was relayed along the lines, the Salician troops spread out in a less packed formation, but not before another volley of explosive spells had torn into their ranks.

The spell casting monarchs within the lines cast counter spells.  Shimmering shields were flung up to deflect the incoming balls of flaming death.  Mitalda doused one of them with a cone of ice. But there were too many of these infernal chariots and their concealed wizards.  Two thirds or more of the deadly spells broke with morale shattering force deep within the Salician lines.

Discipline held.  The wounded were carried to the rear in the pauses between spell castings.  The concealed wizards could not sustain the frantic pace of hurling magical missiles, the effort must have sorely depleted the foul energy that they drew on.  But still the assault went on in a steady, if slower rhythym. The spell bursts were generating fewer casualties amongst Kimbolt’s  dispersed troops,  but still they were taking casualties and giving none in return.  It could not be sustained.