Steel And Flame (Book 1) (73 page)

A Nolier flood churned northward, and Colbey met them
with the cold disregard that formed his nature’s core.  He kept no count of the
number that fell before his blade.  Unlike the foolish mercenaries he endured
due to necessity, he needed no specific number of heads resting at his feet to
measure his worth as a warrior. Soon, though he knew not how it happened, a Galemaran
following gathered to him.

Outlanders and fools though they might be, Colbey
never passed up an opportunity once presented.  He led them to the easternmost
curve of the crescent where it would be a straight shot to the catapults.  When
they broke into the open they saw it would not be so easy.

In the distant burning engine’s light, the field burst
at the seams with soldiers.  Colbey glanced to the wall.  Through the darkness
he could see the gates remained shut fast.  Where had all these Nolier soldiers
sprung from?  Could they all have followed the river south?

Colbey could only guess.  Numerous enemies noticed the
new entrants on the battlefield and turned to welcome them.  Before they
clashed, Colbey noticed the Noliers were concentrating on attacking the two
remaining engines.  The Galemarans fought with passion to prevent the
destruction of their precious war machines.

While his own skills far surpassed the average
Nolier’s, the volume washing against him and his defenders soon took its toll. 
For every man Colbey cut down, two blue-uniformed fighters took his place. 
They were forced back to the field’s edge, and Colbey, along with the remaining
men who had flocked to him, retreated into the city of tents and bonfires and
chaotic madness.

Unsure exactly where to go, Colbey decided south would
serve, through the canvas walls and over wooden wagon beds.  No one seemed to
be in charge and every man fought for his skin.  Any rallying force, if it
came, would likely center around the remaining catapults.  He would angle
toward the engines once he drew even with them.

His ragged group had fought their way half the
distance south when an arrow storm assaulted them.  The Galemarans slumped to
the ground, either dead or screaming hysterically.  Cat quick, Colbey rolled
underneath a nearby wagon and crawled to the opposite end to survey the damage.

The men who had gravitated to him were dead or
scattered.  Colbey did not much care which since he had never asked for their
presence in the first place.  Large groups called down arrow strikes, while a
solitary man could slip through the lines.

He thoroughly studied his surroundings, spending
several moments locating the archers.  They had stationed themselves a hundred
feet away, so he only spotted them as they released their next flight.  The
archers had taken over a sector filled with empty wagons used to haul the
endless supplies and equipment this army of outlanders needed.  Stationed in
the center, they had left several abandoned wagons along the perimeter to
create the illusion of non-occupancy.  Colbey, making his way through the camp
to reach the old road that cut through to the bridge, had entered a well lit
area they must be using to pick their targets.

Well lit because the Noliers had refrained from throwing
the torches into the surrounding tents. 
You should have recognized what
that meant immediately.  Living with these lackluster apprentice fighters is
starting to affect you.

There were fewer than a dozen archers.  Perched in
their wagons, they only took shots of opportunity.  Most had chosen different
perches.  The darkness over the wagons loomed thick as the forest at night. 
None wanted a light source to betray their presence.

Colbey pondered his next course while men ran past in
both directions, none of them
having any idea what to do.  Several fell
to the concealed archers, and Colbey decided to act against the shooters after
all.

First he made his way several yards back into the
gloom of the camp.  The gloom would last only a short while longer he knew. 
Dawn fast approached, and the many areas where the camp blazed helped thin the
darkness.  Though blacker than the outside areas, the wagons would soon lose
their thick concealment.

Colbey circled, using his skill to pick his way toward
the archers.  This was unfamiliar territory, unlike the terrain in the Rovasii
both along the ground and through the hidden roads in the canopy.  He called on
his Guardian training to enhance his senses and increase his awareness.

Soon, he reached the first wagon.  Colbey chose to
crawl beneath.  He secured his sword and crouched low.  In a style he had
learned for traversing the topmost tree branches that would otherwise snap
beneath his full weight, only his palms and the sides of his feet touched the
ground.  It strained the muscles of the untrained but he had long practice in
it and the advantage of his stamina boosting method.

Silent as a ghost, he crisscrossed the ground, peering
between slats and wagon sides until he felt sure he had fixed the positions of
the eleven men above in his mind.

Fortune favors the bold.
 Always a preferred saying of his, it came to mind as
he crept beneath the farthest wagon containing a Nolier archer.  Colbey peeked
between two wagons.  His target sat with an arrow nocked, turning his head this
way and that while he looked for Galemarans in the torch lit areas.  Movement
from the next nearest archer told Colbey that he looked the other way.  He rose
fast in a whispery breeze.

If he dragged the archer over the wagon’s side, he
would surely make noise.  Instead, he clamped a hand over the surprised man’s
mouth and twisted his head.  A quiet snap told Colbey when the man’s neck
broke.  He let the corpse slump into the wagon before returning to the
undersides.

With his senses enhanced, Colbey could see further in
the dark than these Noliers.  Not much further, yet enough to give him the
advantage.  He took the second archer in an identical move, leaving him propped
in his wagon, seemingly crouched but not lifeless.

Two down, nine to go, except the next would be
trouble.  Three archers occupied the next wagon and he could never take them
out one by one without them noticing.  Instead, he rose enough to peer over the
side until the right moment.  It came when all three focused on a band of Galemaran
soldiers running through an illuminated killing zone.

When the three prepared to launch their volley, Colbey
leapt, one hand on the side rail, and vaulted into the wagon.  He landed with a
soft thump that alerted the three.  His sword cut with a chirurgeon’s precision
and a panther’s predatory speed.  None had time to draw on him.  Only their
cries alerted their fellows.

Two were positioned in the next wagon.  He leapt the
rails while they shouted.  They fell to his blade as the remaining four drew to
fire.  Their arrows cut through the air where Colbey had stood a moment before.

Two jumped across from further wagons to locate their
assailant and check their friends.  When they found no one, they shuffled in a
circle, nervously searching for the specter in their midst.

One of the other two archers cried out from three
wagons away.  The first pair rushed to his side, bowstrings pulled so hard they
formed a V.  They found him disemboweled from crotch to chest, then they heard
the shriek from the remaining lone archer.

The two remained in their current wagon, arrows nocked
and ready.  They turned wildly, glancing in five directions, sweat stinging
their eyes, the smell of fresh offal curling their noses, desperately seeking
the phantom stealing their lives.

A high-pitched
whish
split the air.  One Nolier
archer fell, feebly pawing at his chest.  His partner turned and, too late,
understood their foe had armed himself with one of their bows.  He jumped the
rail to the next wagon, but a second arrow pierced his unprotected back before
he landed.

Colbey dropped the bow onto its former owner’s corpse
and checked the last two he had shot.  A clean shot had killed the first.  The
second still shuddered.  His weak struggles made it plain he would die soon
enough but it went against all teachings he had received as a Guardian to leave
an animal, or an enemy, in such pain when mercy could be quickly granted with a
swift stroke of his knife.

Those who delighted in the suffering of their enemies
were no better than the enemy they slew.  Thomas had taught him that.

He left eleven corpses behind when he resumed picking
his way south through the camp.

*        *        *        *        *

 The entire camp devolved into a roiling war zone. 
When the soft morning rays illuminated the destruction, it could be seen that
fighting had, at one time or another, reached every corner and between every
tent.  After causing what the damage they could, the Noliers turned from the
camp to join the battle around the catapults.  Noliers struggled to destroy the
devices while Galemarans strove to hold back their lethal tide.

As the battle coalesced to this single struggle,
leaders on both sides reorganized.  The Noliers sent their remaining horse
calvary in waves to break the ring around the catapults.  They crashed into the
swell, causing tremendous casualties, but the horses were unable to reach their
most devastating speeds over ground littered with corpses.  In the press, the
defenders pulled many riders from their mounts.

The Galemaran officers slowly reestablished the
command structure in the midst of the swirling pandemonium.  Under coherent
orders, the soldiers were retaking the ground between the catapults and the
camp.  When Marik arrived at the edge, he did not have to fight his way across
the stretch as hard as he would have a quarter-mark earlier.

Other men also ran to join the battle.  Marik found no
one from the Kings, or at least none from the Ninth.  He paused in the
temporary safety behind the line long enough to catch his breath, wishing there
were water barrels nearby.

Rather than a refreshing drink, when he glanced around
he saw the mages, or the remnants of them.  They had gathered on the safety
zone’s southern side, placing the catapult to their backs.  All in their group
ignored the bedlam surrounding them.  Marik could scarcely believe them,
standing apart and doing nothing, until he opened his magesight.

The etheric energies boiled in a torrent.  Far more
spell casting transpired than he had first thought.  Further south along the
river he found a matching nexus of swirling chaos.  Marik concluded that the
Nolier and Galemaran mages were so busy countering each other’s spells, and
countering the counterspells, that little in the way of attacks succeeded in
breaking through the tumult.  Unless a major shift in the mage groups altered
their numbers, neither side’s fighters would receive help from them.

He could hear shouting over the pandemonium and see
people running in every direction.  Orders sent people to a faltering spot on
the line or shifted defenders armed with different weapons to where they would
be most effective.  Knowing nothing else to do, Marik walked to frontline’s
rear, sword drawn, only feet from the fighting.  When the front men tired or
were killed, the swordsmen behind stepped forward to replace them.  Men
wielding bows stayed behind the first row.

The fighters around him all shouted.  One picked a
stone from the ground and hurled it at the Noliers over the defenders.  Marik
thought that a good idea and found his own missile, chucking it after the
first.

Time slipped, becoming an eternity, though a look to
the sun showed midmorning had hardly arrived.  The fighters on the front
retained no sense of time in a battle, their senses warping as the survival
instinct crowded out everything else.  Marik had fought on the front twice,
ducking back between the rear men when his strength flagged.

Most rear men were armed with pole arms of various
types.  While the swordsmen occupied the attacking Noliers, the rear would
reach their weapons past to inflict grievous wounds.  Marik judged the kills
made by the Galemarans could mostly be tallied to them.

While Marik defended the middlemost catapult, Colbey
had made his way to the northern machine.  Like Marik, he filled positions on
the frontline, pushing back the Noliers.  At midmorning, the Galemaran line
still held while the Nolier losses mounted, their dead trampled into the soil
underfoot.

After the Nolier forces thinned, the defenders pushed
hard to force them back across the field toward the curtain wall around the
Hollister garrison.  The Noliers rallied when they felt the pressure,
redoubling their efforts, fighting tooth and nail.  It was unsustainable for
long.  Within minutes the blue-uniformed men faltered, reversing their
direction yet again, tripping over the boulder-strewn ground.

“Keep the lines tight,” a hoarse voice behind Colbey
shouted.  “We’ll grind them between us and the wall!”

But enemy strategists initiated plans to prevent such
a turn.  With that hoarse optimism’s echoes still in the men’s ears, the gates
in the wall, closed tight hence, labored open.

Colbey thought the Noliers inside were opening a
retreat for their failing forces until men filled the dark passageway through
the wall.  They streamed out, not in, and at their head rode a mounted force of
knights in heavy armor.  One wore silvered armor enameled with intricate
designs and a mighty helm resplendent with sweeping silver wings.  By his side
rode a banner bearer, holding aloft his lord’s flapping crest for all to see.