Arm Of Galemar (Book 2) (104 page)

“Damn it!  Where in the hells is Errolye?”

“Over there, I think,” the man gestured to the west.

“You tell him to get every cat-string he has over
here, and men who can use them properly!”

The Galemaran soldier saluted before dashing away into
the swirling ranks.  A second soldier with blood slowly oozing from a gash
across the eyebrow ran to him from the rearline.

“Captain, we can’t hold!  Two minutes and we’ll break
apart!”

“I’ve got Errolye hustling.”

“Is he going to arrive in the next minute?  If he
isn’t, then those demons are going to shred my unit!”

The captain continued gnashing his teeth and darted a
glance over his subordinate’s shoulder.  Those gods bedamned monsters were too
much to deal with.

He could see his man was right.  They’d only killed
four of the beasts since they had sprung out of nowhere from behind.  Two
minutes might be optimistic.

“Piss on it all!  Pull back the men!  We’ll have the
center force’s archers redirect until Errolye finds us!”

The subordinate saluted shakily and leapt back toward
his men before an arrow skewered his neck.  He collapsed in a spray of blood
bursting from his lips.

With a mighty oath, the captain dashed to give the
retreat order personally when he realized that shot could not have come from
the south.  Not from the weirdling beasts and the black-souled men who ran with
them.  That shot had flown from the east.

He spun quickly, in time to see the next shot, but far
too late to avoid the arrow.  It buried in his chest.  Icy fire enveloped his
heart.

As he fell, he clearly saw the archer.  A white-haired
man in strange clothing, mostly looking like scrap remnants sewn together in
dangling trails…

Colbey glanced about, searching for any others who
might have heard the traitorous man order a retreat from the Taurs.  A coward
concerned only for his precious life rather than in defending his land, his
home.

“No one flees,” he whispered, though the words would
never find the officer’s dying ears over the battle.  “No one runs,” he husked. 
“They have driven the timid before them long enough.  Now the sheep grow fangs
and the crook is broken.  The sleepers wake, and shake off the dreamer’s dust. 
They stir from the decaying rooms in the forgotten palaces of the dead.”

He smiled as he whispered, lips pulled wide, showing
his gums in their entirety.  The Taurs were roaring. 
:Let them.  It will be
their death knell.:

Yes.  Running is done.  The murderers and betrayers
will kill each other, and both will meet the debt owed.

Starting with this quivering man who had turned
coward.  His death had been merciful.  He’d escaped the protracted agony he
deserved at Colbey’s hands for wishing to sacrifice ground to the thieving,
dishonorable, degenerate murderers.

It will be done.

Colbey shrugged the bundle on his back into position
before disappearing into the chaos.

*        *        *        *        *

A long morning stretched into noon.  The fighting
continued with black soldiers falling faster than Galemarans.  Marik credited
this to himself.  The frontline had bent into a spearhead with him at the
point.  His unstoppable advance had broken the enemy ranks.  Crimson Kings and
kingdom fighters flowed into the opening he forced, expanding it, pushing it
wider as a steel wedge splits a log when struck with a hammer.

Marik felt weariness throughout his arms and back. 
For all that his sword weighed next to nothing, the constant effort and long
morning had taken its price.  He could slip back in the line to eliminate most
of the aches with the stamina technique, yet he feared that without him, the
offensive formation would collapse.

Perhaps half the black soldiers had fallen, he
estimated.  He had lost track of how many he’d killed.  No number would
surprise him unless a cosmic quartermaster in charge of battlefield tallies
claimed it at fewer than fifty.

The enemy feared him.  They had made three major
assaults directed at him personally.  Two had been with soldiers crowding from
all sides, seeking to hamper his blade, while the last came as an arrow storm. 
He had seen that one being prepared with his magesight when he ducked back in
the line to replenish.  Archers being escorted closer to the fighting, near
where he stood.

Marik had returned, ready for them, crushing a
soldier’s neck then using his corpse as a shield to catch the flying shafts. 
Kineta had ordered every allied archer to seek out the enemy bowmen.  She did
not appreciate arrows flying about near her.

The fighting continued and they pushed forward.  A
quarter-mark before they had come into view of the enemy core, made up of
twenty horses surrounded by soldiers.  From the etheric, the silhouettes cast
by their armor were slightly different.  They must be elite soldiers or the
equivalent.

He had targeted the core since he’d first spied it
from the higher plane.  The officers would be there, as was the magic user. 
Henodd had done little, and Marik hoped Celerity would strip his hide for it. 
Spells continually lashed out from the core’s center.  Marik had yet to see a
single one returned whenever he spared the moments to observe.  If Henodd’s
supposed skill could only keep the enemy mage occupied, then Marik would have
to break the magic user’s neck along with the enemy’s command.

Would those elite soldiers prove a tougher challenge
than these useless rank fighters?  Might they be as much trouble as the Nolier
knights had been?

Except those knights would hardly trouble him any
longer.  Not when his weapon’s condition was no longer a factor.

Marik pushed, eager to take apart the enemy
commanders, until he realized the black soldiers were making a fourth attempt
on him.  Nine men larger than average pushed through the ranks to battle him. 
None were armed with the standard issue swords.  Five bore massive claymore
blades, three held long-handled battle axes the likes of which Marik had never
seen, and the last a massive club that might have been from the hell-beasts’
arsenal, except as big as it was, it was still smaller than the ones the
monsters carried.

Might be my first real challenge of the day.  Let’s
see what you boys have.

*        *        *        *        *

Colonel Harbon swore, sweat pouring down his face
despite the cold air freezing his lungs.  This…
this
…jumped up
peasant
mage!  Challenging him!  A master in his own right, a specialist in shielding
techniques, and this
peasant
had defied him for hours!

Harbon allowed the peasant no opportunity to
counterattack, yet it wounded his pride the amount of trouble he had
encountered in breaching the insect’s shields.  They were blended shields,
which was the only salve to his ego.

A simple shield could be disassembled once the
structure had been deciphered.  Shields blending multiple talents increased the
difficulty, not simply doubling the complexity, but usually by a factor of
five…if not ten.

And this peasant was a clever one.  He had created
multiple blended shields, each mixing his talents in different proportions,
before weaving them together with a tapestry maker’s skill.  It had been
difficult to determine where one shield ended and the next began, every
different piece showing through in a patchwork quilt.

But he finally understood it.  Harbon, hovering in the
etheric, held a mass of fiery energy ready to be unleashed.  With separate
channels, he formed two other attacks.  One, a needle lance, adroitly slid
beneath and pierced a hidden bubble shielded behind two outer layers.  At the
same moment, the second, an ice razor, sliced through the etheric ring the
peasant had used to ground his constructs.

The shields folded, then collapsed in on themselves. 
Harbon could see the presumptuous man struggling to reform them, frantically
groping to re-center them on a foundation that was no longer stabilized.

With the last shield melting away, he released the
fire.  It engulfed the mage and the twenty men guarding him in a rising column
of flames.  The pillar rose fifty feet, yellow and orange and red curls
writhing furiously within a perfect cylinder.

“A pity,” he murmured as he reentered his body.  “A
clever mind as yours would have found rich rewards in the cardinal’s service.”

Harbon glanced around.  The annoying peasant mage had
consumed all his attention.  Startled, he saw that half the soldiers had
fallen, that these lost, ignorant souls had nearly pressed forward to his very
feet while he was occupied.

He snarled, and almost demanded of the guardsmen why
they had not taken action.  Except that question needed no mindless
muscle-bound oaf to answer it.  They were bound to Adrian, and would never move
until danger threatened him personally or until he ordered them to.  With the
general sitting his horse like a hollow lump, they had maintained position
until new developments forced their hands.

Which would have happened in three or four minutes. 
Harbon could see the fighters, could probably hit them if he threw his belt
buckle in their direction.

Curse the officers under the lord’s name!  How could
they have let the situation spin so far beyond control?  Every officer present
would be remembered, and after the Day of Glory, they would be the first on the
altars!  He felt a moment of regret that he had sent Mendell back north to take
control over the sub-majors securing the taken lands, confident that he could
quash the petty forces aligned against them without Mendell’s aid.

Which he would have easily, if not for the cursed
peasant delaying him.  With the only magic wielder taken care of, he would
direct his talents against these rabble and teach them to fear god’s power.

A faint tickling along his spine halted his attack
before he released it.  Fluctuations in the local power networks.  Energy was
being redirected and expended.  The only magic wielder?

He quickly searched about, finding the disturbance’s
source very near at hand.  Close enough to throw a belt buckle at, in fact.

The man disturbing the etheric energies stood still
while others fought.  To judge by the massive Heavy Squadsmen littering the
ground surrounding him amid broken weapons and a shattered club, he must be
catching his breath.

Peculiar, and a mystery.  That man was no one of the
power.  Not an oaf as muscle-bound as those standing by his stirrup.  And a
sword that size only testified to the fact.  The larger the sword, the smaller
the brain.

Except…the disturbance clearly originated from him. 
Stranger yet, under magesight that sword glowed with power, shining as no
nonliving object should in the etheric plane.  And the aura on the man…another
bizarre mystery.  Shaped to his body, as if the dissolving energies were being
consumed before they could form the nimbus.

That sword…a Tool?  No.  Magician-made Tools could not
draw on power outside that which they had already been imbued with, and he
believed that sword drew its power by consuming the wielder’s life force.

An Artifact then?  Harbon licked his lips, uncertain. 
Artifacts were rare enough, their uses as varied as their shapes, and always
dangerous unless they were completely understood.

Whatever it might be, it possessed power to make it,
and the man wielding it, a significant threat.  Dangerous enough to slaughter
his way through an army.  This must be dealt with.

*        *        *        *        *

Dietrik had returned, pushing through the ranks to
rejoin him in the combat thicket, Marik noticed.  He smiled at his friend, only
to receive a bitter look in return.  Odd.

Others were about.  Not everyone, and Marik hoped they
were either resting for the moment or having minor wounds looked after.  Cork
flailed away in a fight with a soldier, not half-bad, but only about
half-good.  Would he have been re-classed if the band had marched at its usual
spring departure time?

Wyman fought well, requiring no aid from Churt’s
crossbow, which claimed a kill with roughly sixty percent accuracy.  Chiksan
used his spear as if it were part of his body, and Talbot gave as good as he
got.  It kept him alive, though the other Kings mostly gave better than they
got from these black soldiers.

His reserves were at half-strength.  Those giants
had
provided a tougher fight, tough enough to seriously drain his reserves.  He
better replenish before pushing onward to the enemy officers.

Marik opened his magesight…and felt it a single
instant before he meant to drop his workings.  The same as those spells being
sent against Henodd.  Except not at Henodd.  At him.  Straight at him!

Less than an instant, but instinct took over.  He
dropped his strength working to free his channels. 
Every shield
, Errant
Energies, Spear Point,
every shield
, Whiplash, Astral Protection,
every
shield
, Physical, Hammer Blow, Cutting Blade, Ocean Wave,
every shield
…