Disclaimer: This is not the final version as it will be available from the usual e-book sellers and eventually, bookstores. Rather, it should be seen as an (almost) final draft. If you are interested in becoming a beta reader, or you have any comments, suggestions or thoughts that you feel I should consider before publishing please drop me a line using the contact form.
Phansigar
About two hours later, towards the end of the afternoon, the outriders called a halt, waving a signal to the lead cavalrymen. Lieutenant Hieronymus rode to Caerel after he’d found out what was going on.
“A group of riders has been spotted milord. Around fifteen of them, perhaps a mile down the road.”
Caerel was obviously a little flustered. He didn’t know what to do exactly. Ala wondered if he had ever had to command a formation against a real enemy before. It seemed unlikely. She decided to make a suggestion.
“Perhaps we should try and draw them in, see if we can catch one for information? If they see all of us, I expect they’ll run, we outnumber them.”
That cleared his mind.
“Good idea, Lady Alagariel. We’ll need some bait, uhm…”
“I will be the bait, they’ve probably been instructed to keep an eye out for me.”
Myrthe frowned at her.
“Uhm… I can’t…. let…” started Caerel. Then he thought better of it, absentmindedly rubbing his forehead where Ala had grabbed it to throw him to the ground on the practice field. He raised his arm and pointed.
“Ride the wagons into that copse of trees, together with the mounts we don’t need. Put the archers in that treeline,” he pointed, “and the infantry will hide in that ditch.”
He pointed to a ditch in the other direction, dug as drainage to keep the road from becoming muddy.
“The cavalry will form up behind that rise, then ride round to cut off their retreat when they are in the trap. Lady Alagariel will ride up the road and pretend to run from them, hopefully drawing them in. Any questions?”
It made sound tactical sense. It had taken Caerel only a moment to collect himself in the face of a real fight. It was quite impressive, Ala thought, understanding better what Myrthe saw in the young man. Lieutenant Hieronymus didn’t have much of an opinion about anything, but it was obvious from Brugor’s expression that he approved of the plan, he had spun his horse round to put it in motion the second Caerel had stopped speaking. Ala whispered to Fulgor who started forward. She loosened her shield a bit so she could easily swing it round when needed.
Ala rode forward, hood down. Her red-golden hair was in a loose braid and clearly recognisable. After about seven hundred yards, around a bend in the path, she could see the riders ahead. She stopped Fulgor, telling him to be ready to run back quickly. She didn’t recognise anyone among the riders. They had the manner of soldiers, she could see they wore mail and had shields slung over their backs. Some wore conical helmets others, a chapeau-de-fer, making them better equipped than she was accustomed to for militiamen. Only Bernard’s cavalry had been similarly equipped. The leader had a one-and-a-half-hander at his belt. He was a muscular, clean shaven man. It was customary for riders to stop at a safe distance from one another. The leader did not, and continued to ride in her direction.
“Halt,” she called, “Identify yourself!”
“Show your right of passage, elf! Or you are under arrest by order of the Constable of Thetwick.”
He had an accent. It could be Oakharrow, she thought… or maybe further away.
“You’ll have to catch me first!”
She whirled Fulgor round as she heard the troop spur their horses. It was easier than she had expected. She whispered to Fulgor in elvish not to go too fast and to stay the same distance ahead of them. The leader had a particularly fast horse, however, causing her to have to accelerate. He could not manage to outpace Fulgor, who responded well when Ala whispered to him in elven. She raced down the track, with the riders following her. She held Fulgor back a little to let the riders think they were gaining. A horn call sounded. Brugor had given the signal to close the trap. The infantrymen stood up and climbed out of the ditch. They formed two rows across the path, pikes set low. She could hear the rumble of the cavalrymen coming round behind the pursuing riders. The archers stepped forth out of the trees in a long line. The infantrymen opened a gap for Fulgor to ride through as Brugor bellowed a fire command. The archers fired a volley at the riders, dropping several of them. They walked forward, nocking the next arrows and stopped for a moment for a second volley.
Caerel’s plan was to pin the riders in a triangle. One side was formed by the infantrymen directly in their path. The archers formed another side, and the cavalry, riding abreast rode in to close the triangle around them. Ala had stopped Fulgor and was turning him around when she saw that the leader and perhaps three of the riders were going to make it out of the trap before it could be fully closed. Myrthe, Matt and Caerel were riding out of the woods towards her too. She whispered Fulgor forward, as she was considering how to take the lead rider down without killing him. The man had drawn his sword, in his right hand, which gave her the advantage, as she was coming from his left. A little to her disappointment, she decided this couldn’t be Gordon Marchmain. She felt confident she would recognise him. She concentrated on intercepting him, deciding she didn’t think hurting the horse was an acceptable course of action. She was going to have to tackle him off the horse. She stood up on Fulgor’s broad back, and dived into the Oakharrowers’ leader.
It was a risky move. She had aimed to impact her left shoulder at the junction of his neck and his shoulder, trying to leverage him over the horse. She missed by a bit and the manoeuvre didn’t quite go as she had imagined it. She slipped past him, only partially making him lose his balance. At this point, it really didn’t seem like the best idea she had ever had. As she was heading head first towards the ground, she came by his sword arm. She let go of her own blade which was still in her right hand, and grabbed hold. That pulled him over the horse thankfully, reversed her direction of fall, and put her on her side in the dirt, weaponless, maybe six inches from the Oakharrowers’ head. She pushed up off the ground, getting back to her feet. The Oakharrower did the same after he had gotten his sword out from under him. Luckily that took him a moment longer. She looked around for her sword, which had fallen a few yards behind them. She immediately ran for it. She wouldn’t have been fast enough if Myrthe hadn’t arrived and taken a wild swing at him with her riding sword. It was a miss, but it distracted him just long enough that Ala could put her right hand on the sword, roll with it and come up reversed with her blade in hand in time to parry the man’s first disorganised swing.
“Drop the weapon, Oakharrow man,” Ala hissed.
He looked around. Caerel had ridden on. He had cut down one of the riders and was gaining on a second one. He evidently decided he could handle one elf and a clumsy priestess. Matt didn’t dare gallop his horse, he was too afraid he’d fall off, so he was still quite a distance away.
“For you? You must be that elf bitch Marchmain spoke of! I think I’ll kill you instead. Mahr will be pleased,”
He didn’t sound like he was from Oakharrow, Ala decided as she wondered who ‘Mahr’ might be. He took his weapon in a two handed grip and raised his sword to swing for her. Ala stepped fully under his attack, her sword marking his wrist as she stepped underneath it and put her left hand on her sword grip too. It caused him to interrupt his swing, and Ala dropped her blade in a cut straight down with his left wrist in the way. He was wearing mail backed gloves so she didn’t sever his hand. Her sword did cut through the mail and put a deep cut across the back of his hand as he frantically tried to step back in time. Ala stepped back taking her distance again.
“I don’t like to repeat myself. Drop your blade and you won’t suffer further injury!”
He looked shocked and angry at the way she had routinely interrupted his attack. He had a bit of a crazed look in his eyes, she thought, almost like he was inebriated. Despite his injury, he decided to attack again with his blade only in his right hand, raising it above his head rapidly to strike. She interrupted the attack again with a long diagonal top-right to bottom left stroke, designed once again not to kill him but to give her space to move close next to him, her legs grouped close together and put her blade in the crook of his right elbow while he was busy trying to recover his sword from its own inertia. She then stepped out extending and rotating outwards creating a very long powerful cut that sliced through the mild steel rings of his mail where she made contact and cut through the skin, muscles and tendons all the way down to the bone. His sword tip fell to the ground as he screamed. He was physically unable to lift the sword now and bleeding profusely from the inside of his right elbow. He still wouldn’t release his sword though. Ala had to punch him full in the face several times to stun him, then stamp on the man’s hand four times before he would let go of the sword. Ala glanced at Myrthe, the two of them sharing a look of concern as Matt rode up.
“What’s wrong, ladies?”
“This man has the drive of ten mindless fanatics,” said Myrthe, gesturing over to the Oakharrower who was lying stunned and bleeding in the grass now.
Caerel came riding back too.
“One of them got away,” he said.
“They’ll really know we’re coming then,” said Matt.
Ala turned her attention to the wounded leader.
“Where is Gordon Marchmain?”
She detected a glimmer of recognition in the man’s eyes.
“Marchmain is a brother…. A true soul… He would not falter, nor will I,” he said in between clenching his teeth against the pain.
It was enough confirmation for Ala. She hoped she would be able to find him this time. He was certainly in the Westmarch.
It was the same story with the other riders. Caerel’s soldiers had had to kill nine of the remaining twelve that had been caught in the triangle. The three who were still alive had been bludgeoned into submission. Four of Caerel’s men had been killed in the exchange, and four more wounded. Ala surveyed the carnage.
“This doesn’t make sense. These men aren’t mercenaries. They fight like they’d rather die than be taken. Mercenaries would want to fight another day. Normal Oakharrowers would want to go home and bandits would run at the first opportunity.”
Caerel looked at her.
“You don’t think they’re just well paid mercenaries?”
Brugor shook his head.
“I agree with Lady Alagariel and the Priestess. This kind of devotion is unusual. It’s…. it must be religious or the like, milord.”
Ala walked over to the corpses. As she moved she cleaned off her sword and sheathed it. She then pointed at two infantrymen, “you and you, come here and give me a hand. We have some distasteful work.”
Together with the two men, she searched the corpses and then stripped them. They didn’t have anything particularly strange on them, but each man had the same tattoo on his left forearm.
“Anyone have any idea what that might represent?” Ala asked, loudly.
Caerel, Matt and Brugor all had a look and all shook their heads. Myrthe, with her vast learning, had a contribution to make, she put her teeth on her lower lip as she always did when she was thinking.
“Part of it looks a bit like something I once read about. A cult of some sort if I remember correctly, related to a demon-king, I think he was called Mahr.”
“Mahr? Their leader said something about Mahr being pleased just before he attacked me,” said Ala.
“I don’t know about religious, but certainly like a cult, at least. This symbol has an addition to it though, compared to the one I saw in the book, underneath. Look it’s like two curved swords, under a set of spread wings maybe? I think the wings were related to Mahr’s cult. The swords weren’t in the book I read. But it was an old book, and it spoke of it as ancient history. Sorry. That’s all I know.”
“It’s more than the rest of us put together,” mumbled Caerel appreciatively, straightening himself up.
“Lord Caerel, may I send riders to the Duke? We have to assume word will get to Thetwick soon, we need men to ride swiftly to minimize the chance of them being headed off at the ford.”
“Yes. Sergeant-Major. I agree. Send two men at once.”
“May I make it two groups of two, by different routes, milord?”
“That will sap our strength too much. With our current losses, even sending two men is a large drain on our resources. Just send the two, that will be enough.”
Ala didn’t think that was the best course, and tried to catch Myrthe’s eye. She thought maybe Myrthe could change his mind. Myrthe saw Ala looking and shook her head. She didn’t think it was a good idea to question Caerel’s authority right now it seemed. Ala decided to trust Myrthe’s judgement.
Caerel quickly wrote two notes to the Duke, explaining what they had encountered, beseeching him for more forces, the folded and sealed them and handed one to each of the men.
“You will take this message to the Duke of Taladaria. It is of paramount importance that the message gets through, if you have to abandon one another to achieve it, do so. In case you lose the letters, you will memorise the message as well. Repeat after me.”
It took about twenty minutes to get the messages written, the freshest and fastest horses assigned, and the best riders selected. They had to repeat the message back to Caerel several times, then he sent them on his way. They soldiers quickly dug shallow graves. One for the cultists, and the other for the Guardsmen. The location was carefully marked on the map so they could be reburied properly later. Once the messengers had left, it was late afternoon, and Caerel called then all together for an impromptu conference.
“Lady Alagariel, you know Thetwick. Is there perhaps a reasonably defensible place we can travel to in order to rest for the night?”
“We already passed Brightfield, that was that caravan stop we came by. It’s more or less half way between Thetwick and the Ford in. Between here and Thetwick I think we’d better press on. I know of a place near Thetwick that’s reasonably defensible. A few miles from Thetwick, there are some ruins which we sometimes used as a campsite on militia patrols… the locals call it the… err… Maiden’s Tower. I know it well, I used to visit it often.”
Ala decided that she should omit the fact that that was what it was called was because she’d had a habit of practising sword work encased in fire there when she was younger. She continued with her explanation.
“It’s ruined, but is does offer a fair view towards Thetwick. It was once a keep or tower of some kind, there’s natural springs and it has a commanding view of its approaches. At the pace we managed with the cavalry screen, I estimate we will be able to get there perhaps a few moments before sundown.”
Caerel nodded before turning towards Brugor and Hieronymous.
“Lieutenant, Sergeant-Major, how does that sound?”
Lieutenant Hieronymus nodded.
“Sounds defensible, milord, it’ll do. Probably best if Lady Alagariel rides out ahead with a scout or two to look it over before the sun sets,” said Brugor.
“Agreed.”
If you wish to receive the weekly installment to this story in your inbox, please subscribe to the newsletter below.