The Storm's Own Son (Book 3) (6 page)

5. Gift and Sacrifice

Talaos and Honor hurtled toward the waiting enemy. Behind him were the Madmen and the Wolves. Their horses had been at a gallop through much of the battle, and would soon tire. They had to do this first. They had to succeed.

They passed the last of the routing irregulars and broken enemy cavalry. Some tried to surrender to him as he passed. He knew Adriko and Kurvan had more than enough men handle things. Ahead, the enemy had shifted a company of heavy spearmen to guard the flank of the archers and artillery. The nearer companies of archers themselves now faced his way and readied their bows. Further off, enemy light cavalry rode hard their way.

Two enemy ballistae and a catapult turned their way and fired.

Bolts the size of spears and a stone half the size of a man came flying their way.

One of the bolts fell short. The other skewered a horse, it tumbled, and one of his Wolves went flying forward. The man crashed to the ground with shattered limbs. The catapult stone hurtled just behind the rearmost of his Wolves and hit the ground with an explosion of earth.

Talaos snarled in sudden anger and called upon his inner storm once more.

He extended his right arm, focusing power through his body and into his hand. He unleashed a long, single bolt of lightning. It arced far across the plain, beyond the range of anything else but its target, and struck the ballista that had downed his Wolf.

The machine shattered in a spray of fire and splintered wood. Men fell back, roaring and screaming with burned, bloody faces. The crews of the other two siege engines stayed at their posts, reloading. Behind them, the rest of the artillery still faced the main line of Talaos's army.

Three hundred archers drew their bows, aiming at Talaos, his Madmen and Wolves. A hundred enemy spearmen set themselves with round shields in a wall in front of the archers.

Talaos still raged with the storm. His storm.

He stretched his right hand, and a long bolt of lightning arced across the plain.

It struck the front line of spearmen. Electricity blasted through shields and armor, and out the backs of dying men. He swept his hand in a line to the right, sending charred corpses flying. Then he swept back again, aimed further back, cutting through ranks of archers.

Bowmen nearby ducked aside to avoid death, or fell backwards as bodies flew into them. Disorder spread through their ranks. Those further off held fast and prepared for the moment he'd be in range. It wouldn’t be long now.

His eyes flashed with lightning, and it arced in his hand. He swept his line of lightning across the ranks of archers, and back again. Some men at last began to break, backing off in fear or dropping to the ground. A few turned to run. Many fired too soon, in anger, frustration, or panic, and dozens of arrows fell harmlessly to the ground before him.

Then the rest unleashed their bows. A hundred arrows flew across the plain and landed among Talaos and his men. Some struck him, though he paid them little mind. There were shouts of pain and screams of horses. Here and there, Wolves toppled or horses tumbled. 

Imvan and his bowmen returned fire. They systematically picked off not the archers, but the guarding spearmen. Arrows found gaps in armor above or below shields, or went through the open faces of helms.

Now they were drawing into javelin range.

"Men! Draw javelins!" roared Talaos.

A hundred men drew them as one.

Another ballista bolt soared across and ran a Wolf through at the shoulder. He went flying backward off his horse in a spray of blood. Then a catapult stone flew their way. It crashed to earth in front of Talaos, bounced, and rolled toward him. No time to wheel, he thought. He gripped his horse tightly, and it made a mighty leap over the stone.

While in the air, Talaos shouted, "Throw!"

He sent his javelin launching like a thunderbolt into the nearest remaining spearmen. The soldier toppled backward with electricity arcing from his shattered ribs. The other javelins fell among spearmen and archers, throwing their surviving ranks into disorder.

Then the storm reached his foes.

The Madmen and Wolves hurtled into the broken ranks of the enemy, weapons stabbing, slashing, and crushing all around them. They smashed their way through the remnants of the spearmen and the companies of archers. Enemy officers shouted. Other archers, further down the line, turned to face them, but hesitated to fire amid the chaos of their own men.

The enemy's forces on this end of their artillery line were broken in disorder. Behind, Talaos heard Adriko shout, followed by a great shout from his four thousand men. With that, the hillmen began roaring anew, and the combined force came charging at the exposed enemy flank.

To what was now Talaos's right, back toward his own army and Avrosa, Hadrastus gave a mighty shout, and his picked force of shock troops began to advance. Further ahead of Talaos, the enemy's other force of light cavalry had come from the far end of the field to counter his advance. They now formed up before the camp of the Prophet, and prepared to charge his way.

"Men! At the artillery!" he shouted. His Madmen and his Wolves advanced forward ahead of him amid the press of siege equipment. They dismounted to fight. The lightly armed crews retreated. Archers attempted to reposition and began firing sporadically at them. Arrows glanced off the great beams of the siege artillery. Now thought Talaos, he and his men had some cover.

Talaos was still mounted. He went hurtling toward the next body of archers. He judged the distance, stood up in the stirrups, then climbed to the back of his horse. Few but Honor would have accepted it without surprise or panic. Then Talaos vaulted forward. He hurtled through the air. Archers fired wildly at him. He felt arrows glance off his armor and helm. One pierced his thigh, and others ripped his skin, though he paid them no heed.

Power coursed through his body. He drew his swords in midair as power arced and crackled along the blades. He landed, whirling among the archers with scything blades. He spun and cut. A man fell without a right leg, another without his head, and a third cut clean in half at the waist. He dodged a sword and brought his own short blade up through an archer's light chain shirt and then through his ribs. He pulled the sword, spinning, and kicked the man backwards into a group of his comrades with such force that they went flying, too.

Then he remembered the arrow in his leg and ripped it out with a spatter of blood. Behind him at a distance, Honor trotted serenely as if merely enjoying the sunshine. The Madmen slew and burned their way down the line of siege equipment. The Wolves spread out behind and around, driving the now-broken archers before them.

The enemy light horse were bearing down on them, but now Adriko and his far more powerful force were not far away. Kurvan's men came behind Talaos's troops, roaring and howling in battle, offering surrender, and slaying all who chose to fight.

The enemy main body, thousands of heavy infantry, took notice. They would have closed to make short work of Talaos and his little vanguard if not for two problems of their own. The first was that behind Talaos, to the south, Hadrastus had reached their right flank with his shock force. The huge, heavily armored footmen wielding great axes, mattocks, and two-handed swords, were already wreaking havoc.  The second was that the main body of Talaos's army now advanced in oblique order, with cohorts marching forward to support Hadrastus against those enemy cohorts bereft of archer and artillery support.

Talaos smiled as archers fled before him. All was as planned, he thought. He had chosen well in Aro, and his trust in the others was being rewarded. But, from his new position on foot, in an area crowded with fighting men, siege artillery, and massed cavalry, he had no way to see what was going on further away in the battle.  The verdant green light had grown stronger over the Prophet's camp, and the slow, sonorous singing went on and on. It rose louder and grew ever closer to perfect rhythmic unison.

Ahead was a catapult still intact, a big, long-ranged thing with a lofty crossbar. The crew had stopped working and withdrawn in good order. Talaos sheathed his swords, sprinted and leapt across the intervening distance. He soared, flipped in mid air and landed in front of the catapult. Then he vaulted upward with his own momentum and landed lightly atop the crossbar.

Once there, he did not like what he saw.

His army was in good order, but at the shore, the enemy had completed their landing of what might be as many as six thousand men, and they marched toward Tescani. The latter looked to have pulled up a great many of the sharpened stakes nearby and set up a hasty palisade. Behind it, his pikes massed in a half-circular line facing the sea. Drevan and the Megasi troops had moved to a position behind Tescani, guarding his back against the original enemy force.

Out at sea, things went ill. The Avrosan navy had engaged the enemy fleet with fire ballistae, and several of the latter were now aflame. However, other enemy vessels had closed on, boarded and captured at least half of the outnumbered and lightly-manned Avrosan ships.

Something else entirely was happening at the camp of the Prophet.

The vast, singing crowd consisted of men, women, and children, young and old. There were very few men of fighting age among them, as those had been sent into battle. Most of them stood close together in a huge circle, swaying in time with their song. That song now approached perfect unison. The entire vast crowd flickered faintly with wisps of green light.

A ring had been dug in the ground around that circle, fully three feet deep, and in its depths was a faint green mist. Just inside the ring, thirty-six tall stakes had been driven into the ground. People stood at them with hand clasped behind their backs. They were not tied, and they sang as they stood there. As Talaos watched, blazing light like verdant fire burst around them.

In the center of the great crowd there was another, much smaller circular trench, with mist like the other. Thirty-six priests and priestesses in robes and white caps and shawls stood around it, spaced regularly and clasping hands as they sang.

Inside the smaller circular trench was one final circle of people. Twelve warriors in heavy armor stood there, facing outward, so close their shoulders touched. They glowed with green light that grew ever brighter and flickered upward like flame.

Six of them were men of Hunyos with large round shields, breastplates, and open-faced helms. Four were Easterners with leaf-bladed swords, scale armor, rectangular shields, and helms with visors in the form of smiling, bearded faces. Another had gear Talaos recognized only from descriptions in history books; the long, heavy chain coat, tall, narrow shield, and lofty, tapering closed-face helm of the knights of old Dirion.

The last warrior was lightly armored, and bore a small round shield and a curved sword. He was short and lean with raw-boned angular features. Talaos remembered Cratus's strange bodyguard from what seemed a lifetime ago. It occurred to him this might be a plainsman.

One of the people standing at a stake was a very old woman. She seemed to wither in the flaming light, dropped to the ground and did not move again. At another stake stood gaunt young mother with a frail, young infant bound to her side. She sang amid the green flames, but her child squirmed helplessly, screamed, and then was still.

The glow around the warriors brightened.

Talaos burst into fresh anger. Rage filled his heart, and furious power arced out from him in all directions. Lines of blue-white lightning wrapped around the catapult and shot into the ground. Others radiated far out into the air around him.

Talaos roared, his voice thundering far across the plains.

Heads turned all around and from all sides, in shock.

He raised his right arm, hand aimed toward the center of the singing circle. He unleashed a massive bolt, a line of lightning searing bright even in the midday sun. There was a flash of green at the outer trench line. His lightning stopped and struck in midair at that point. Blue-white energy crackled and sparked outward. Green light appeared around it, swirling like mist. It glowed brighter and spread until a verdant dome of it became visible, with the trench as its boundary. It rose far over the heads of the singers.

Another singer at a stake, a thin, sickly-looking old man, fell and was still.

Talaos howled like raging wind. He poured forth his power. The line of lightning grew stronger. Energy flickered out from along it in all directions. Enemy soldiers backed away. His Madmen gathered close before him, and his Wolves further off, around and behind. Enemy arrows flew their way and fell among them.

The twelve green-lit warriors turned in perfect unison in their close circle, turned till all faced Talaos. Their eyes lit with brilliant green-white light, like emerald furnaces.

He was aware of a great roar behind him as Adriko and Kurvan's forces arrived. He heard clashing sounds of battle further off to his left, southward, where Adriko's cavalry must even now be fighting the outnumbered enemy. However, he could pay it little heed. There was another battle before him that he must win.

His raw power, searing blue-white lightning, poured with rage into the swirling dome of green light. The dome began to flicker, to falter. Two more singers at the stakes fell.