Child Of Storms (Volume 1) (2 page)

             
“The wizards!” Wulfgrim was shouting above the din of battle, thinking the same thing. “Target the wizards!”

             
Agnar spotted one of the wizards on his left, but a dozen enemy soldiers blocked the way. Agnar attacked the nearest and sent him flying off his horse and crashing to the ground. 

The wizard raised his hand in the air and sent another of the fireballs flying out at Agnar’s men. Turning to watch it impact, he saw a cluster of men and horses swallowed-up in magical flame. Screams of torment filled the air as men writhed around on the ground in agony, their flesh covered in flames.

              “At the wizard!” Agnar shouted as loud as he could. “With me! With me!”

             
Agnar turned his horse towards the left and crashed headlong into the enemy, screaming like a berserker and swinging his sword to and fro like some madman consumed with bloodlust. He sent warrior after warrior to the ground and slowly forced his way closer to the wizard. His loyal warriors fought alongside him, inspired by their thane’s courage. At the edge of the frozen stream, the ground sloped downwards towards the ice. He had the advantage of the high ground, bringing his sword down on a man’s skull. The blade dented the warrior’s helmet deeply, crushing the forehead beneath it and sending him falling sideways into the mass of churning ice.

Agnar led his men into the stream, its ice crushed by the massive weight of horses charging through. It was already a frothy mix of ice, water, and blood.

Agnar’s horse charged through the stream, up the far bank and back onto solid ground. Four warriors lay between him and the wizard. Two fell quickly to
Grunfaelr
. The wizard saw Agnar and raised his hand out in front of him, shouting strange words in a language unlike anything Agnar had ever heard. The wizard’s hand began to glow and a small, white ball of magical energy the size of a man’s fist shot out towards Agnar. He raised his shield and dodged to the right, the energy ball barely missing him. Agnar lunged ahead, knocking an attacker aside and spurring his horse right towards the spell caster. The wizard, a pale and thin-faced little man, shrieked in horror and fumbled for a knife at his belt.

Agnar took his head off with a single stroke.

Einar took a moment to get his bearings on the battle. On his right, Wulfgrim and some men had broken into the enemy lines and slain a pair of wizards. That evened the odds a bit, but the fireballs had taken a heavy toll on Agnar’s forces. Agnar still outnumbered the enemy, though, and now most of the wizards were dead. What’s more, he knew wizards could only cast so many spells before fatigue became too much for them and they collapsed from exhaustion. Their initial volley of magic over, they became less and less of a factor in the fight. Agnar was starting to believe he might win this little skirmish after all.

“My thane!” one of his men shouted above the din of combat, pointing past the enemy lines.

              Agnar’s heart sank in his chest as he saw emerging from the woods beyond the enemy warriors another wave of horsemen coming at them. It was hard to tell from amid the thick of battle, but it looked like they could have been several hundred strong.

             
“It’s a trap!” Agnar shouted. “Withdraw, men! Withdraw!”

             
He turned his horse around and only then fully grasped how badly he had blundered. Emerging from the same woods from which Agnar had himself charged only scant minutes before was a force of perhaps a hundred enemy horsemen. Agnar was outnumbered several times over and surrounded.

             
“Grang damn them!” he cursed, turning from side to side as he sought any avenue of escape. Straight through the latest attackers seemed the best option left to him. At least if he could break through, he might yet make it out alive.

             
“This way!” he shouted, turning his horse back towards the newcomers to the battle. “Fight your way through!”

Agnar and a handful of his few surviving men charged back in the direction of the stream, swinging their swords furiously. He cut down one enemy and then another as they reached the edge of the stream again. From out of the corner of his eye he saw a ball of flame fly past him and explode amid a cluster of his men. Several of them were knocked off their horses and fell to ground, consumed in billowing flames. There were more wizards in the second wave of enemy troops.

              “Braemorgan!” he screamed, his mind spinning with panic.  “Where are you?”

             
He kept riding on ahead, right through the stream, desperate to fight his way ahead to safety and swinging his sword with the renewed vigor of a cornered beast. One foe he beheaded, another he sent to the snowy earth with a crushed skull. A third warrior, a huge man in a bearskin cloak with massive shoulders and a long black beard came at him brandishing an immense war hammer before he could react. The man swung the heavy hammer in a wide arch, impacting against Agnar’s shield with a terrible force and almost knocking him right out of his saddle. The black-bearded giant raised the hammer high above his head and then brought it down on Agnar’s upraised shield before Agnar could do anything. The hammer hit with tremendous power, throwing Agnar off balance and stunning him for a moment. Only sheer luck kept him upon his horse.

             
Agnar desperately started to slash back at the huge warrior, but a second attacker came charging at him from the other side, sword upraised to strike at his neck. He shifted in his saddle and parried the blow from the second warrior just in time. As he did so, the hulking man swung the hammer yet again. The weapon impacted with Agnar’s back, between his shoulders. The blow knocked him right off the horse and onto the ground with a great jolt. He landed on his sword arm, knocking the weapon out of his hand in the process. The ground was cold and as hard as granite.

             
Agnar struggled to regain his feet, unable to find his sword in the chaos. The world had become a confused mass of noise and screaming men. Snow and sky and blood all became one amidst a cloudy haze of pain.

Agnar forgot his sword, wanting only to escape the battle. He stood, clutching his shoulder in agony. The hammer-blow felt like it had broken his shoulder blade as waves of pain pulsed through his torso with every step. He knew he was very likely crippled from the wound, perhaps permanently. Without thinking, he reached down and picked up some random sword lying in the blood-stained snow. Looking up, he saw an enemy charging towards him on foot. He somehow managed to parry the man’s blow and cut him down. A wave of new pain pulsed through his body as he dealt the killing blow. It staggered him, and he nearly passed out. He stumbled and almost fell. The world grew foggy and started to fade around him, the shouts and cries of the battle growing distant and muffled.

Agnar looked all around, desperate to find a route through the battle to the trees beyond. He needed a horse, but he couldn’t find one. Damn it, why wasn’t there a horse? Before he could think of what to do next, another blow struck him in the back, knocking him roughly to the ground by the edge of the stream. He lay there for a long moment, face down in the snow, before rolling over onto his side. He looked up. The world was spinning and he could make little sense of what was going on above him. It sounded like at least one of his remaining soldiers was coming to his aid. A man in armor fell to the ground right next to him, a spear protruding from his chest. Agnar could see the man’s body heat escaping visibly from the wound into the bitter cold air, the warrior’s face frozen forever in agony. He recognized the dead man. He was a good and loyal soldier of The Westmark, but Agnar could not recall the man’s name.

Agnar pushed himself up with one of his arms, struggling to get to his feet. Grimacing in pain, he managed to stand and stagger forward a few steps. He was still lucid enough to a see the giant warrior with the terrifying hammer looming over him on horseback, the weapon descending once again. He had no time to dodge the blow. He raised his sword-arm as if to parry,
but his hand was empty. The hammer fell and the world went dark as Agnar fell to the cold, hard ground one last time.

______

Wulfgrim grappled desperately with an enemy soldier, exchanging powerful blows with the man in rapid succession. He finally slew the warrior and looked again for the young Thane Ravenbane. He had last seen Agnar leading a foray into the enemy lines against one of the wizards as Wulfgrim did the same, but had since lost track of him in the chaos of the battle.

Wulfgrim spotted Agnar as the young thane was knocked off his horse by a huge man bearing a massive war hammer. He pointed his horse towards Agnar, digging his spurs into the sides of his horse and charging through the enemy ranks desperate to reach Agnar. He knocked a pair of enemy warriors aside who blocked his way and struggled violently with a third. He managed to stab the warrior in the belly with the sharp point of his axe, looking back up in time to see the gigantic warrior with the war hammer bringing the hammer down upon Agnar’s head. Wulfgrim watched helpless as Agnar fell to the ground lifeless. He saw the warrior with the hammer raising the huge weapon high above his head as he roared loudly. Several enemy warriors around the giant man raised their own weapons in the air.

“Hengist! Hengist!” Wulfgrim could hear them chanting.

All around Wulfgrim, Agnar’s doomed army was surrounded and being slowly overwhelmed by the growing disparity of numbers. Even as Agnar fell, a pair of fireballs fired into the center of the slain thane’s forces. There was still a chance for a few of them to survive the day, however. To the left was a thin spot in the enemy lines, an opening if one acted quickly.

“Make for the trees over yonder!” Wulfgrim shouted to a pair of younger warriors next to him. “Grang’s Teeth! We’ll make it out of this hell yet!”

Wulfgrim turned his horse around and dug his spurs into the animal’s sides as hard as he could. The horse surged forward, charging toward the trees and leaping over the corpse of another horse which lay in the snow. A trio of warriors moved to block Wulfgrim and the two Westmarkers. Wulfgrim did not slow his steed but instead met the enemy warriors with all the remaining strength he could summon. A few moments later, they sent the trio of enemy fighters out of their saddles and into the snow. They reached the forest’s edge as several arrows flew through the air towards them.

One of the arrows pierced Wulfgrim’s leg as they reached the trees, penetrating deep into the flesh right above the knee. Another struck one of the young Westmarkers in the back, sending the lad falling backwards from the saddle. Wulfgrim and the remaining young warrior turned their horses onto a thin path leading away from the battle in the general direction of Loc Goren, riding hard from the grisly scene behind them.

Wulfgrim did his best to cope with the pain from the wound in his leg. It hurt terribly, every bounce sending spasms of white-hot pain through the length of his leg. Even so, he was glad the arrow had hit him and not his horse.

“Ride on!” Wulfgrim shouted, glancing back at the young warrior. They charged down the trail, driving their exhausted horses through the snow without mercy. After a few minutes of such riding they could see no one was pursuing them and slowed their horses down from a full run to a trot.

“They’ve stopped chasing us,” the young warrior said, a look of profound relief on his face.

“We’re not worth the hunt,” Wulfgrim said, pulling up on the reigns until his horse stopped. 

“You’re wounded,” the younger man said, looking down at Wulfgrim’s leg.

Wulfgrim glanced down at the wound. The arrow was lodged deeply in his upper leg. Blood covered his entire thigh, steaming in the cold air. He reached down and grabbed hold of the shaft. He snapped it off with a grimace and tossed it into the trees.

“I’ll live,” he said.

Wulfgrim reached into a pocket on his saddlebag and produced a small metal flask. Leaning over, he poured some of the amber liquid within over the wound and then took a healthy swig. He offered it to the young soldier, who accepted it and took a drink.

Wulfgrim took out a long piece of linen from another saddlebag and tied it tight around his wound. It still throbbed with pain but he figured he wouldn’t bleed to death before they made it back across the river.

The young man handed the flask back to Wulfgrim.

“What’s your name, lad?” he asked the young warrior, taking a second swig of whiskey.

“Gosward, son of Gosmund,” the young warrior said.

“Well, Gosward Son of Gosmund,” Wulfgrim said, putting the flask away. “Give thanks to Grang. You’re going to survive this day.”

Gosward said nothing. They continued on their way, riding along the path a few minutes more and then turning off onto a barely-visible track which ran down a slight incline to the right and disappeared from view as the winter sky grew darker with the rapid approach of night.

_____

              Faxon hated the cold of Linlund, even more than the barbarous mercenaries he was being forced to work with. He was born in Llangellan, far to the south, and never imagined such bone-freezing extremes as they had in the northlands. The Westmark was only on the very southern edge of the northlands, too. The ice-locked Kingdoms of Frostheim and Copperwald were still hundreds of miles farther north across endless untamed forests and vast frozen marshes.