Steel And Flame (Book 1) (74 page)

Behind the mounted lord-knight flowed a steady column
of fresh Noliers, entering the field in an exodus from the Hollister.

*        *        *        *        *

Orders were quickly shouted.  The Galemarans ran to
reestablish their defensive lines around the siege engines.  Colbey watched the
Nolier lord-knight lead his men against the northern engine, intending to burn
it, then crush the center between his two forces.

The Galemarans met the charge and bowed, yet held
fast.  They had fought all morning though, and Colbey knew it was only a matter
of time before the fresh Nolier reserves broke the defense.  He pushed to the
front to reclaim his point position and soon faced one of the heavy knights.

Colbey brushed aside the first strikes long enough to
find the holes in the horse’s armor.  Heavy barding protected the horse from
mindless slashes on the field.  Added to the heavy rider, the weight slowed its
speed.  He located the opening he wanted and, after deflecting another blow,
struck between the barding into the horse’s neck.

His blade sank only inches, the opening smaller than
his entire sword width.  Enough penetrated that the horse screamed and reared. 
The knight might have been thrown but for his training, which enabled him to
cling despite the rearing.  He would have recovered, perhaps even regained
control over his wounded mount, had the horse not pivoted on its hind legs. 
When it came down, it did so atop several Nolier footmen.

They had crowded forward in the press and left
insufficient room for the rider to control his mount.  The iron shod hooves
spilt their skulls open.  Off balance, stumbling and still in pain, the horse
toppled, throwing its rider.

The knight landed away from the Galemarans and,
incredibly, showed no signs of injury.  His armor protected him from the worst
of the fall.  Foot soldiers aided him while he awkwardly regained his feet. 
Colbey observed how a man in that much armor suffered the same weaknesses as a
turtle flipped onto its back if he fell.  It could prove useful knowledge.

The Noliers continued to charge and the knight
advanced on Colbey.  Probably the man wanted to take Colbey down personally in
revenge for his horse, which still writhed and shrieked, one leg visibly
broken.

Colbey met the knight’s attack, returned it, surprised
by the armored figure.  His slower speed in so much armor did not hinder his
skill with the blade.  The scout found himself fighting a skilled opponent for
the first time since coming to the outlands.

He might have been faster, but the crush of men
afforded him little room to maneuver.  It cut his speed advantage by half. 
Unable to circle, he could make no strike from the rear while the knight spun
like a weathervane.  This forced him to meet the knight’s attacks head on and
return them in like fashion.

Colbey turned aside the incoming blows, his own
strikes bouncing or sliding from the steel plates.  Gaps in the armor appeared
only when the man flexed his joints.  These openings disappeared too fast to
take advantage of.  Also, the undersides on every joint appeared to be
protected by thick leather flaps that would be difficult to pierce with a
sword.

They traded blows, Colbey quickly growing irritated. 
Were it not for the crowd and the armor, he could take this man down.  The
knight’s fresh onslaught interrupted the frustrated thoughts.  Colbey blocked
without finding an opening to attack.

A great gust of flame startlingly near roared into the
air.  Only daring to take his eyes from his opponent for a moment, Colbey stole
a quick glance.  The lord-knight had broken the defense around the catapult. 
Men behind the foot soldiers had fired it with war oil casks they carried.

The northern defense faltered, then was pushed back
into their camp by fresh Noliers reversing the fortunes of the battlefield. 
Galemarans near Colbey turned to retreat, leaving more Noliers around him than
friendly fighters.  The press still bulged as thick but Colbey’s peril
heightened.

No good.  He hated to back down yet he knew even he
could never hold for long against numbers of this magnitude.  Colbey retreated,
his lighter clothing allowing easy escape from the knight he battled.  Curses
were heard from behind which he paid no heed.

The Nolier lord rode beyond the new pyre from Colbey,
his fluttering banner marking his battlefield location.  He would drive south
as soon as he secured the north, joining the battle around the last siege
engine.

Colbey knew the objective of this nighttime strike had
been to destroy the catapults and retreat, except the Noliers had performed
surprisingly well against the unprepared Galemaran soldiers.  Better than they
must have thought they would.  Would the lord-knight decide to press his
unexpected advantage after destroying the last engine and continue the assault
while he held the upper hand?

It depends how well the last defense holds out.  The
outlanders are matched man-to-man, but the command structure of the Noliers is
still intact.  If these fleeing battle rats return to the fight, and if the top
commander of the Noliers falls, the tide may yet turn a third time.

Colbey searched for the Nolier lord’s banner, finding
it and the surrounding figures in heavy armor. 
Nice of them to scream out
their field positions like that.  I wonder what the point is, other than asking
to be killed?

He skirted the trampled tents, heading for the last
defense of the Galemaran army.

We’re in trouble.
  The thought filled Marik’s head.  He pushed himself hard to keep
fighting.  There were no breaks, no waterboys running with dippers, no end to
the eternal flow of Noliers.

Exhaustion sapped him, though the surrounding men were
in worse shape.  Whenever he slipped back through his line to rest he would
revitalize with Colbey’s boosting technique.  It restored a margin of his
stamina and he could retake his place on the frontline before long.

When the northern catapult burst into flames, Marik
knew they would lose unless a drastic counterweight tipped the scales.  Already
they fought heavily on their south and east flanks when the Nolier knights
turned to squeeze them from the north.

They’re going to grind us between them like a
millstone.  I guess desperate times call for desperate measures.  Who told me
that?

Marik pulled back through his line.  When he stood out
of direct danger, he opened his mage talent, gathering as much energy as he
could hold.  Despite the raging chaos in the etheric stirred up by the mages,
siphoning energy was no more difficult than normal, except he needed to reach
farther than usual for it.  The true mages among the magic users had yet to
completely deplete the diffusion.

So many had died in this battle that their freed life
energies saturated the plant life covering the ground.  The various life forces
would later join the lines to grow wild or diffuse into the air.  For the
moment they still retaining the slippery fish-like feel of his own aura.  In
time those energies would lose the personal signatures of the men who had
birthed them.  Touching the freshly separated life energy with his mental hands
sickened Marik.  He shied away, knowing he would never use such power despite
its availability, restricting himself to the impersonal energies available in
the etheric plane.

Not too much at once now.  You’re still too new at
this.

He had wanted to avoid using this working with it
still so untested, yet he’d reached the same conclusions as Colbey, and he
meant to meet the charging knights with all the ability he could muster.  Marik
touched his reserves, opened the floodgates and inundated his body with raw
energies.

The rush battered at his senses.  He refused to let it
carry him away.  Instead, he stepped back through the lines.  Between his
position and the knights raged a turbulent sea of men that prevented the mounts
from charging.  Despite that, they chose not to dismount to fight on foot
though the crowd nullified the advantage their horses afforded them.

With what felt like the strength of a garrison, Marik
returned to the fight, becoming a new force to be reckoned with on the
frontlines.  The first Nolier he faced attacked with a blade.  Marik countered
with his own.  His sword’s weight felt no more than an autumn leaf.  His blow
rent the weapon from his opponent’s shocked grip, catapulting it into the air
behind the Nolier.

Suddenly disarmed, the Nolier whirled to escape.  Any
mercy Marik nurtured lay fathoms deep after a day such as this.  He struck at
the man’s back, chainmail splitting under the strike’s terrific force.  The man
howled when his spine ruptured.

Others took his place, the details of what Marik had
done hidden in the larger battle.  They soon discovered for themselves.

Marik quickly learned how to use his new advantage. 
His strength soared phenomenally, and without the normal weight of sword and
mail his speed reached new heights as well.  He needed to be careful though. 
Too many strikes against mail such as that first would destroy his sword’s
edge.

After skewering a Nolier soldier on his sword’s
length, he reared back, actually lifting the man from the ground.  With a turn,
he faced two Noliers who had been advancing and presented the dying man as a
shield.  They stopped, staring in awe while they struggled to comprehend what
they were facing.  He placed his foot on the Nolier’s chest and kicked hard as
he yanked back on his blade.

The dying corpse did not fly across the space to crash
into the pair as he had envisioned, yet it did land at their feet after a short
flight.  A flight further than he could have normally sent it.  They backed
off, seeking weaker prey.

Marik continued to battle as a man possessed.  Soon a
void surrounded him.  Nolier soldiers shied away, wide-eyed from watching him
tear them apart, leaving an area encircling him free of fresh targets.

The Noliers suddenly parted when seven mounted knights
arrived, their leader in his enameled armor with the banner bearer by his
side.  Blood and gore stained the gleaming silver, giving him the countenance
of a mad demon.  Clearly this leader enjoyed taking the point in any fighting.

In the Galemaran line, fighters tightened ranks while
they waited to meet these new warriors, but one figure stepped forward to face
the knights.  Marik saw Colbey holding his blade low, waiting for the knights
to make their move.  He felt no surprise at seeing Colbey challenge the most
dangerous threat on the field, only surprised that they had run into each other
at all in this endless roiling confusion.

The Galemarans might be steeling themselves to resume
the fight, except none stepped forward as Colbey had.  Marik already stood
alone due to his own fighting.  He did not want to consider facing seven
knights on his own.

Soldiers ringing the void froze.  Others ran to their
lord to report on the happenings.  Galemarans and Noliers glared at each other
across the space.  Marik considered taking the fight to the knights but Colbey
held his ground, waiting for them to come to him.  He followed suit.

The lord-knight listened to the reports.  A brief
interval passed where he gazed at the two men standing apart from the line,
then he signaled to the nearest knights.  At a sedate pace, two armored warriors
separated from the larger company while soldiers pushed further back, enlarging
the void’s area.

What are they playing at?  Why aren’t they charging us
down?

Marik furiously ran through everything he had ever
heard about knights.  They were a higher class of fighter in many respects. 
Battle honor had always been a defining point of their character, right?  Did
they think Colbey and Marik were challenging them?  Well, they were, but only
in the sense they were challenging every Nolier on the field.  Yet if the
Noliers thought they had stepped forward as a direct challenge to the
knights
,
that could be different.

If that was the case, their code of ethics might
demand they meet their challengers in one-on-one combat.  Marik hoped so,
because that might give them the chance to escape in one piece.

The fighting immediately beyond the ring’s edge
stopped while the first knights advanced.  They halted ten feet away.  As one,
they dismounted.  Foot soldiers ran at their lord’s command to take charge over
the mounts.  After drawing their swords, they stepped toward Colbey and Marik,
and the battle commenced.

Killing men in full plate armor with a sword is a
difficult feat.  Despite his new strength, Marik had no hope of sheering
through the steel with his blade.  If he used pure force against this foe he
would only damage his sword.  Their armor slowed them, and that would be his
only advantage.

He met his foe’s attack with his blade.  The force
behind the knight’s blow would have caused him serious problems under normal
circumstances.  Marik parried while he worked out how to defeat this steel
encased enemy.  No one else had stepped forward from the frontline, and they
chose not to interfere now.  Fighting still waged further away.  It irritated
him that the battalion of idiots to his rear just stood still to watch.

The knight swung low.  Marik deflected it then ran
behind.  He circled continuously, lashing with his sword tip, tapping against
the man’s armor, probing his effectiveness.  Any chinks between the armor
pieces were too small for Marik’s blade as well as protected by leather
underneath.  Piercing such leather required a hard thrust combined with exact
precision.  He could never pull that off.

Colbey, on the other hand, seemed capable of it.  A
howl to his left caught Marik’s attention while his own knight spun around and
around.  The scout’s knight collapsed as he dashed beyond the Nolier’s reach. 
Blood gushed between gaps in the armor on the knight’s leg where Colbey had
sunk his blade through the leather.  A fast torrent bubbled through.  It
quickly coating the lower leg in a crimson finish that surely meant Colbey had
severed a greater vein.

Unable to support his armor’s weight on the bad leg,
his howls sounded hollow where they echoed from his helm.  The knight’s
defenses crumbled.  Colbey’s in-and-out dashes found many chinks in the armor. 
Before long the man lay flat, unmoving, surely dead.

The lord-knight barked a command.  A second knight
stepped forward to challenge Colbey.  Angry and far more aggressive, he
attacked as soon as a soldier took his mount’s reins.

Marik’s knight refused to fall so easily.  He spun to
attack Marik relentlessly, seeming never to tire.  His strength appeared to
know no limits, a problem that suddenly confronted Marik.

He felt his inner power reserve draining every moment
he maintained the strength working.  Unable to draw fresh energy while he
enhanced his strength, he would have to cancel it long enough to replenish,
which would leave him exposed.

He must finish this fight immediately.  Then he could
draw fresh reserves while the next knight stepped forward to take his fallen
companion’s place.  The last dregs in his reserves evaporated like water spit
into a dusty field while he circled.  Desperation forced Marik to bet it all on
a single thrust.

The knight’s helm bore a visor, the style being seven
thin slits in the metal with equally thin steel bands between, rather than one
thick horizontal cut.  Thrusting his sword would give him a fifty-fifty chance
of hitting the open space.  He prayed for luck.

With a tremendous lunge, Marik struck when the knight
swiveled to face him.  The sword tip streaked forward.  Marik’s stomach lurched
as he felt it strike a steel band, yet he had put his phenomenal strength
behind it.  Even while he realized the vibration meant he had stuck metal, the
thin steel bent and broke.

His blade continued forward until a jarring jolt
halted it against the inside back curve of the steel helm.  The knight slumped
to the ground.  He lay motionless while blood sprayed through the visor,
pooling in the dirt.  Marik wasted no time yanking his sword free.

When the next knight advanced, Marik reset his
strength working with fresh power reserves.  Unfortunately due both to his own
haste and the steady decrease in available energy from the mages consuming
every free-floating particle of the mass diffusion, he failed to fill his
reserves to the maximum.  He would need to make the best of it.

 Except he had no intention of re-fighting the
previous bout.  Marik quickly scanned the watching Galemaran soldiers who
waited for the outcome of this strange dueling match that had formed in the
midst of the larger battle.  He saw what he wanted and sprinted back to the man
holding it, to the soldier’s surprise and the knight both.

The knight stopped, thinking Marik intended to cry off
the challenge, having come too close to death with the previous combatant.  The
soldier looked alarmed, clearly fearing Marik would haul him forward to join
the match.  What Marik wanted rested in the man’s hands.  He quickly snatched
it and turned his back on the soldier’s protests, returning to the waiting
Nolier knight.

Marik wielded his sword in his right hand, thankful
for his additional strength.  The hand-and-a-half blade could be wielded
one-handed, if with less control.  His left hand now wielded a war hammer made
for exactly this battlefield purpose.  One side on the hammer head was a thick
spike used for splitting helms.  Its reverse side looked like a traditional
hammer, yet covered with nine pyramidal points about a quarter inch in length.

This weapon had been designed for breaking armor. 
Precisely what he needed at the moment.  The hammer’s wooden shaft stretched
three feet long.  Marik thought it would serve well.  Still, he had never
fought with two weapons at once.  He would need to play it carefully.

Colbey and his second opponent were well underway. 
His new adversary appeared to be giving Colbey a greater number of attacks to
deal with.

Marik advanced slowly.  He waited for his knight to
attack first.

It nearly turned into the first battle after all.  His
opponent would strike, the heavy blade and armor slowing him until Marik had
little trouble avoiding the blows.  These knights were clearly trained in the
fighting of other heavily armored warriors.  They were meant to meet enemy
knights in combat and were unaccustomed to facing lighter, more agile fighters
when on foot.  Lighter enemies unencumbered by a crushing crowd.  While
circling, Marik could lash out long before the knight recovered from his
attack.  After assuring himself of this, he decided to try the war hammer.

His first blow slammed the hammer end against the
knight’s helm.  Marik’s enhanced strength gifted the one-handed blow with power
beyond what both his arms would have normally lent it.  A terrific dent
flattened the crown.  He thought that might be the end, for surely the man’s
head must be broken.  Instead the knight stumbled several steps before turning
to counterattack.