The Chronicles of Caylen-Tor Page 11

  Zyrashana! The Witch-Queen of Mytos K’unn!

  Gazing spellbound into the rutilant vista, Ebonfyre glimpsed the flicker of a serpent’s tongue as it scored the perfect and fulsome lips of his malefic empress. He descried the sheen of viridescent scales glistening in the crimson fire-glow, slick upon her flawless eburnean flesh. And for a fleeting moment, he was certain that he beheld the black slit-pupils of ophidian eyes glimmering beneath Zyrashana’s cruel, alabastrine brow.

  “The covenant of Maalech Xul!” he roared in primal fury.

  The panoply of images abruptly disappeared. A caliginous veil of shadow hung like a pall before his eyes, and Talus Ebonfyre at last surrendered his grip on those tenebrous fetters which held the energumen beast in check.

  “It is time!” hissed Ebonfyre, as if hearing his own voice from afar. “The Wolf-King’s soul shall glut the maw of Chaos! Red ruin and black fury upon the accursed head of Caylen-Tor!”

  Chapter IX

  The Battle of Blackhelm Vale

  “Form the line!” bellowed Caylen-Tor as he scrambled down the rocky slope to the nighted heather of Blackhelm Vale, his wolfhird hard behind him.

  “The empire comes!” roared Oughtred Bearsark, his notched axe gleaming. “We’ve stung the beast to action. They’ll risk the valley after all!”

  The great tribal ram’s horn clarion thundered the call to battle and the army massed around Caylen, swiftly forming a steel-toothed line which spanned the pass at its narrowest extent.

  “Scildweall!” boomed Caylen, hefting the mighty sword Caled-draca. In the moonlight, the great blade seemed to glimmer with a cerulean luminescence. The foremost rank of warriors instantly locked shields, their spears and short thrusting blades at the ready.

  “Nothing gets through!” shouted Caylen. “Hear me, Gylfir?”

  At the centre of the line, a stout warrior with a braided blond beard adjusted his helmet and turned to Caylen. “Aye! Nowt’s getting by us, Wolf-King! This gate’s shut tight!”

  Caylen nodded and took position within the front rank, brandishing Caled-draca. The warriors on either side of the king adjusted position to give him ample room to wield his steel.

  Oughtred grinned at the ranks of archers who had assembled some distance behind the shield wall. “Masterful work, lads!” he said jubilantly. “We’ve given them a night they won’t forget!”

  “I’ve only a few arrows left,” stammered a young bowman, his eyes wide with fear.

  “Don’t worry, boy, they’ll soon give us some of theirs!” shouted Caylen in response. “Archers! When I give the order, keep up the volleys. Oakenbrand! Where the devil are you, man?”

  Wulfric strode from the ranks of a second group of archers who bore the sigil of the Raven-Saters clan upon their jerkins. “We are ready, Wolf-King.”

  “Take your bowmen and get back into the foothills. Wait for Oughtred’s signal for the fire-shafts. After that, when the enemy’s close enough, loose at will. Rain pitiless death upon their flanks! When you run out of arrows, get back down here and join the throng!”

  “Gods be with us!” Wulfric shouted, leading the bowmen towards the shadowed, gorse-covered slopes.

  Caylen shifted to allow a number of swordsmen into the foremost rank. “You’ll have precious little swinging room,” he called to those around him. “When it comes to it, favour the thrust. Shield-bearers, be ready for volleys.”

  Oughtred’s frenzied sleuth of ber-serkr warriors howled their bestial defiance behind the front rank and the surrounding clansmen shuffled swiftly away to give the fearsome reavers ample space to hack and hew.

  “You hold those bear-shirts in check until the lines meet,” Caylen called to the red bearded giant.

  “Don’t you worry about that,” Oughtred replied. “Best they don’t make us wait too long, though!”

  Caylen grinned. “They won’t.”

  “Why did you leave your axe at home?” scowled Oughtred, nodding at Caylen’s ornate sword. “That fancy pig-sticker’s no match for a good long-hafted skull cleaver!”

  “Tonight, the serpent must sing its war-song, old friend,” replied Caylen. “See you in the thick of the fray!”

  “Aye!” said Oughtred as he joined the line some twenty paces from the king.

  Brodir Finn took position in the ranks beside Caylen, staring out across the valley to where the imperial army was advancing towards the mouth of the pass. “I didn’t think it would come to a pitched battle,” he said ruefully, donning his battered bronze-rimmed helmet. “But I suppose it was a fool’s hope to think the mist would have been enough.”

  “It’s done its job,” Caylen said, hefting Caled-draca. “And there are a few surprises yet in store for the foe. Faith, brother! The gods are with us this night!”

  Brodir nodded pensively. “I pray you are right, Wolf-King.”

  “And so, we come to it at last,” whispered Caylen. “The night of red steel is upon us!”

  The moon emerged once more from behind a wisp of bright cloud.

  “Warriors of the north!” bellowed Caylen exultantly. “May your swords sing a deadly song in your grasp! The gods have envenomed our blades with the death-kiss of a thousand serpents! Unfetter the dread war-wolves within your hearts! May their claws rend! May their jaws be reddened!”

  A roar of defiant rage arose from the ranks. Swords and spears were beaten fervently against shields in a resonant thunder-song of battle-lust.

  In response to the war-cries of the clansmen, the sound of a single, baleful drum rolled across the vale, beating its rhythmic tattoo from the deep shadow.

  “The foe closes!” shouted a russet-bearded swordsman in the front line as he beheld the imperial legions breach the mouth of the pass and enter Blackhelm Vale.

  “I see them, Guthlac!” thundered Caylen-Tor. “Let them come! We’ll carve the moon-wheel in their accursed hides!”

  * * *

  From the rocky foothills flanking the vale, Wulfric and the Raven-Saters bowmen watched the army of Mytos K’unn move slowly across the threshold of the caliginous ravine. Shifting his gaze quickly to the clansmen’s ranks, Oakenbrand instantly discerned the hulking figure of Oughtred Bearsark behind the shield wall, his great frame etched harshly in the light of the army’s myriad burning brands.

  “Torchbearer, stand ready,” said Wulfric.

  A ranger bearing a guttering torch moved swiftly to the forefront of the line of archers. The bodkin-tipped shafts of the tribal bowmen were nocked and their calloused fingers were poised upon the great bowstrings of sinew and hemp.

  “Light them up!” growled Wulfric.

  The torchbearer swiftly ignited the resin-soaked tows which had been tied behind the archers’ arrowheads.

  A scant second later, Wulfric saw the signal from Oughtred.

  “Loose!” he hissed.

  The volley of flaming shafts arced down toward the valley floor, followed almost immediately by a second wave from the distant opposite slope. Many of the arrows struck imperial troops, but the majority hammered home into their intended target; the pitch and oil-sodden earth where fire-trenches had been dug and concealed across the breadth of the vale.

  “That’s done it!” said Wulfric as he watched thick flames leap up and rapidly engulf the vanguard of the imperial force. Countless men were enveloped by the pitiless wall of fire with sickening speed. The ground upon which stood the foremost rank of the legion was transformed instantly into a raging mass of searing flame. Many troops desperately attempted to vault clear of the inferno, while others raced blindly back through the stricken lines. Officers to the rear of the immolated column desperately barked orders, attempting to control the chaos which had inundated the advancing army.

  “Nock,” barked Wulfric as the torchbearer moved amongst the group of archers once again, igniting a second volley.

  “Loose!”

  The second fire-trench was ignited and another devastating torrent of fire sprang from the earth to consume the front lin
es of the imperial army. The ranks behind were fleeing panic-stricken from the site of the flame pits, opening a gaping fissure in the imperial formation. From the opposite slope, concealed by impenetrable shadow, the second unit of tribal archers then began to harry the imperial army with shafts.

  “Loose at will,” said Wulfric tersely. “Concentrate on their archers.”

  The Raven-Saters bowmen loosed from their lofty vantage point, their aim true. The ranks of imperial archers fell under the withering hail of arrows, scarcely managing to rally and return a meagre volley to their foe’s barely perceived location.

  The shafts from Wulfric’s own ornate longbow were pitilessly accurate, each arrow hammering unerringly into an imperial soldier, every one an expertly placed killing shot.

  At the centre of the imperial formation, Wulfric suddenly descried a giant steel-clad warrior with a great curved sword stalk resolutely toward the undulating walls of fire. For a moment the figure stood immobile, his gleaming armour reflecting the baleful glow of the flames. Then, to Wulfric’s astonishment, the towering warrior promptly strode through the first blazing conflagration apparently unscathed. Standing now between the two barriers of flame, the armoured giant slowly lifted his gauntleted hand. As if caught in the grip of a great storm wind, the two flame-walls abruptly guttered and died, leaving only glowing embers upon the scorched and smouldering earth. The fearsome figure then motioned to the waiting army and the imperial force surged forward, bounding heedlessly over the charred and lifeless husks of their fallen comrades.

  “Ebonfyre!” breathed Wulfric.

  “We’ve spent our arrows, ranger!” called one of the tribal archers, drawing Wulfric’s attention from the disquieting occurrence below. “Have we done enough?”

  Wulfric’s gaze returned to the imperial army as it advanced on the waiting shield wall. “Mayhap. Their skirmishers have fallen. It’s in the hands of the gods now!”

  The dolorous drum of the legions quickened its resonant beat and the first wave of imperial troops continued to hurtle toward the entrenched clansmen. Several sporadic volleys of shafts arced high over the shield wall, loosed by the vastly depleted ranks of imperial archers. For the most part, the arrows embedded themselves in the broad shields of the tribal army. A return volley was launched at the command of Oughtred Bearsark, accompanied by a storm of slender, ash-hafted throwing spears. Wulfric watched intently, straining to perceive the events in the gloomy half-light of the moon-swathed valley, as the missiles hammered mercilessly into the onrushing troops. The first line of imperial warriors fell and those behind them vaulted over the slain, their martial pace unhindered. From his vantage point, Wulfric could see that the imperial charge was approaching the narrowest point of the pass where the mountainous walls flanking the vale constricted to no more than fifty paces across. And behind that incapacious, lithic channel waited the steadfast tribal army of Caylen-Tor.

  “Bare your steel, clansmen!” Wulfric bellowed, dragging his twin scramasax blades from their leather scabbards. “Time to join the fray!”

  And with the others close behind him, he scrambled to the steep, rocky trail which wound its way back down to the embattled valley.

  * * *

  “Another volley inbound!” shouted Caylen-Tor as he watched the distant imperial archers bend their recurve bows once more. He swiftly gathered up the broad elderwood shield of a fallen clansman and crouched low to the heather. “Shields!”

  Five score howling shafts, practically invisible in the semi-darkness, pelted down upon the clansmen like a parlous iron torrent. The bodkin-tipped arrows tore into the tribal shields and flesh with a harrowing clamour, piercing wood, earth, thews and bone.

  “That was the last one, lads!” Caylen barked, throwing the shaft-studded shield aside and hefting Caled-draca once more. “Get the wounded clear! Prepare for steel on steel!” Slowly, he dragged Wolf’s Tooth from its leather scabbard and brandished both blades reverentially, his eyes gleaming with the exultant joy of battle.

  The beat of the imperial drums boomed in the darkness, their report like distant rolling thunder. Then, a war-horn sounded three strident notes and the onrushing imperial troops shrieked an ululating battle-cry.

  Caylen-Tor grinned wolfishly as he watched the foe surging toward the interlocked wall of carven elder and lindenwood. “Come on, you dogs,” he bellowed. “Come taste the edge of good northern steel!”

  The lines met with bone-shaking ferocity. The initial wave of imperial troops was hacked down and rent to red ruin by the blades of the clansmen. In a sanguineous maelstrom of blood and iron, scores of legionaries fell like wheat before the scythe, crashing in vain against the wall of shields like a black tide against an unyielding cliff-face.

  “Get back, devils!” Caylen thundered. “You’ll not pass this vale! Such is the Wolf-King’s vow!”

  More imperial troops clambered desperately atop the corpses of their brethren only to be met by the hungry spearheads and honed blades of the clansmen. Black iron thundered against elderwood again and again, the sound of battle splitting the night like a deafening coronach of carnage. Steel rang defiantly against steel, iron bit deep into wood, bronze and flesh. Shields were sundered, bones were shattered and blades were broken as a tumult of screams and war-cries crested the clamour of battle. Hot gouts of arterial blood spattered upon shields and armour, anointing the ranks with the primal red blazon of war. Bodies that had been rent asunder shed their steaming innards to the churned earth, turning the ground beneath the front lines into a crimson mire of slime and viscid ichor.

  The ravening! The red rage of battle! The black song of slaughterfall!

  Caylen-Tor furiously knocked aside an imperial sword thrust with Caled-draca, then drove his broadsword Wolf’s Tooth deep into the attacking legionary’s exposed neck. With blood bubbling from his lips, the soldier crashed heavily to the earth to join the growing ranks of the sundered dead.

  “Bleed for the gods of war!” howled Caylen as he arced the great tribal sword in a devastating strike, effortlessly cleaving off the helmeted head of another warrior and sending the corpse careening into the path of his comrades. Hot blood splashed onto Caylen’s cold hand and he parried a desperate blow from a snarling legionary, driving the man’s curved sword down and immediately thrusting Wolf’s Tooth into the soldier’s sternum. The impact of the blow thrummed through Caylen’s forearm and he felt the blade grating against bone. Pulling his sword free of the lifeless body, he turned aside a brutal spear thrust and riposted with a harrowing strike which cleaved open the attacker’s chest. Steel tore through leather, flesh, sinew and bone as Caylen dispatched the legionary and kicked the blood-drenched corpse to the earth. A black javelin thrust silently from the teeming throng of legionaries towards Caylen’s throat, but Brodir Finn’s rawhide-rimmed shield deflected the blow, unbalancing the legionary and causing him to stumble forward. Caylen instantly hammered Caled-draca down to cleave off the attacker’s arm in a shower of blood and jagged shards of bone.

  “My thanks, Finn!” barked Caylen.

  Brodir Finn flashed a wide grin, his teeth and face streaked with blood.

  Suddenly, a curved sword slid beneath Caylen’s guard, its point striking his scale-mail cuirass. Roaring an oath, Caylen drove Caled-draca down to shatter the scimitar into a myriad fragments, then he swept Wolf’s Tooth upward to bite into the abdomen of the imperial swordsman. Shrieking in pain, the legionary was hauled from his feet by the force of the blow before Caylen dragged the blade free and propelled the man backwards into the enemy ranks.

  “Let not one of these bastards through the shield wall!”

  Caylen glanced to his right and briefly glimpsed the great crimson whirlwind of slaughter that was Oughtred Bearsark, dealing carnage unto the foe with his vast brain-flecked axe. The general’s ber-serkr warriors were rending the foe’s ranks like the pack falling upon the herd; pitiless in their desire to slake their primal hunger, ravening red in tooth and claw. Wulfric fought sev
eral paces further down the line, a cool and emotionless executioner whose bright steel danced in an elaborate and merciless web of death. By his side was the veteran chieftain Grimm Ironhand, his white beard now clotted red, his notched and well-worn longsword once again bloody as it had been so many times before in numberless battles over the decades.

  Suddenly, the unseen imperial war-horn gave vent to three strident notes.

  “They’re falling back!” bellowed Guthlac as the remnants of the first wave of legionaries disengaged and began to lope back into the darkness.

  “Prepare for the second assault!” shouted Caylen, wiping blood and sweat from his eyes.

  Scant seconds later, another wave of imperial troops emerged from the shadows, their black armour glimmering balefully in the moonlight.

  “The mounds of their own dead shall bar their way!” roared Caylen-Tor, lifting the reddened Caled-draca high. “Heed me! Tonight we witness the harrowing of the Witch-Queen’s empire!”

  The second wave of legionaries hurled themselves into the fray, their charge slowed by the multitude of ravaged corpses which littered the blood-gorged heather. A slender throwing axe crashed into Brodir Finn’s shield, its iron head embedding itself in the gore-kissed wood. The clansman next to Brodir was abruptly dashed to the earth, a blackened javelin transfixing his neck. The imperial warriors thundered furiously against the tribal shield wall, their own metal-rimmed shields hammering upon the clansmen like a black storm.