Children of Prophecy (34 page)

He didn’t bother to finish the analysis of the situation. The Swarm was
there
, and he yanked his sword from the dirt to send fire splashing across their front ranks. The Swarmbeasts recoiled for a moment, but lunged back in again.

He met them with lightning and flame, death in every form he could conjure. “Attack!” he yelled at the Battlemagi. “We may not make it out of here, but let’s give them a fight they won’t quickly forget!”

Praying that they would follow, he charged forward, sword swinging. Fire blazed out from the blade and lightning flashed from his free hand, scattering the Swarm before him.

For a moment, he fought alone, spewing death into the heart of the Swarm. Then he felt another presence join his, magic flaring forth. Then another. And another. He felt the Battlemagi put aside their exhaustion and charge into the fray, staffs swinging and magic blazing.

Then the first Beastmen were upon him. Six of the near-men charged at him, a Warrior Magi just behind them. Fire blasted two of them away from him, and he ran a third through with his sword.

He yanked the sword free just in time to parry a descending ax and drop a fourth Beastmen with a blast of lightning. He grabbed onto the handle of another ax with his left hand, throwing the Beastman to the floor as a blast of fire from the Warrior Mage battered into his shields. Tal spun around, running the Beastman between him and the Chaos Mage through, and sending a pure black death lance flashing out from the tip of his sword. The lance punched through the Warrior’s shields to catch the Mage just below the chin and rip off the man’s head.

Tal twisted his sword free of the Beastman and dodged a flashing ax head as another group of Beastmen joined the fight. He sent three of them tumbling backwards with a single blast of lightning, then found himself facing their Warrior champion.

The Mage sent fire flickering at Tal and lunged in with his sword simultaneously. Tal caught the fire in his left hand and sent it hammering into a Beastmen who tried to attack him. As the Beastman stumbled back, its fur set alight by the flame, Tal brought his own sword across to parry the Warrior’s thrust, the sharp clang almost lost in the fury of the battle.

Tal spun the sword, stabbing back under his arm to catch a Beastmen who was charging up on him from behind. He ripped the blade free and used it to cut a leaping Swarmbeast in half before it reached him. Even as he smashed the Swarmbeast to the ground, he grunted as a burst of chaos lightning smashed into his shields.

He turned back to the Warrior to find that a Swarmmaster had joined him. The Swarmmaster gestured, and a dozen Swarmbeasts charged forward. Tal slashed his sword across the front of the group, sending fire flashing across the pass to cut through the Swarmbeasts and smash into the two Chaos Magi’s shields. The two Magi grunted, and then both of them sent lightning flickering at him.

Tal caught the lightning on his sword, twisting to deflect it into a company of Beastmen who were closing on a nearby triad of Battlemagi. He grinned, then sent lightning of his own blasting out from the sword blade to throw both Chaos Magi back.

He stepped forward to deliver a killing blow, but paused as the earth began to shake with an unidentifiable fury.

The image Brea was projecting showed the Battlemage line crumple under the Swarm’s attacks. She glanced around at the army surrounding her, making its way up the rocky slope as quickly as it could.

“We’re not going to make it at this rate,” she said softly.

“Indeed,” her father agreed, equally softly. Then, more loudly, “We have to go faster.”

“They can’t,” the Eldest replied. “Not yet. Save the horses for a few minutes more, High King, then they will bear you all the way to the end.”

The old Mage looked at Brea. “Once we’re there, Brea, you find Tal,” she told the Princess. “All the rest of the Life Magi will be finding Battlemagi to support, but you make certain you find Tal. You two have to be together at the end, I can feel it.”

Brea nodded. “And if anything gets in my way…” she said quietly, hefting the staff she was carrying. “I’ll demonstrate what four feet of solid oak topped with something sharp can do.”

“Indeed,” the Eldest replied. Even as they spoke, they crested the top of the pass, and could finally see the battle for themselves.

Brea stared down into horror. Her projected image faded as the reality came before her eyes. The Swarm had overrun the Battlemagi lines. Only twirling blazes of lightning and flame marked the locations of the surviving Battlemagi. “Gods. What do we do?” she asked softly.

“From what you said earlier, find the Battlemagi and support them,” her father replied. “As for us,” Brea turned in her saddle to see him shrug. “We’ll do what we came for.”

She saw her father twist in the saddle to face his command group. “Bannerman, raise my banner high,” he commanded. “Let it be seen, by us and by them. Trumpeter, sound the charge.”

He turned back to her, and she met his gaze with a smile. “Good luck, father,” she told him.

“And to you, daughter,” he replied. “And to you.”

With that, the brassy notes of the charge began to ring out, and Kelt’ahrn, High King of the Kingdom of Vishni and Brea’ahrn’s father, put his heels to his horse and led his army down the pass.

As the thunder of horses hammered through the midday heat, Brea turned to the Eldest. The older Mage looked at her for a moment. “Find Tal, Brea,” she said finally. “Find him… and save him.”

As soon as the trumpets began to ring out the call to charge, Shel nodded to his regiment’s trumpeters to carry on the clarion call. The brassy notes sounded, and he put his heels to his horse, urging the creature to go faster. Moments later, his command group joined him. Then his first company. Then the second company, then the entire first battalion, and then the rest of the regiment. A thousand men in his regiment alone, and nine other regiments had ridden with the King and Princess.

The charge thundered down the hill, the distance between the Kingsmen and the Swarm shrinking with the seconds.

“Lower lances!” Shel bellowed, matching his actions to his words and dropping his own lance to ready position. Sunlight glittered off the steel tips as the men under his command followed.

The distance continued to shrink, and Shel couched his lance under his arm. Fifty meters. Forty. Thirty. Twenty. Ten. He braced his feet against the stirrups and the lance against his body. Then the charge struck home.

He felt his lance stab into the flesh of the Swarmbeast he’d hit, heard the shrieks of the rest of the Swarm as the ten thousand strong charge smashed into them. He yanked the lance free, knocking a Swarmbeast aside with the butt as he twisted it into an overarm position and stabbed down at a third.

“Ahrn! Ahrn! Ahrn!” He heard the cry – the battle cry of the Kingsmen – rise around him, and joined his own voice to it, even as he struck down another Swarmbeast. “Ahrn!”

There were Swarmbeasts
everywhere
. His lance flickered down again and again, killing them by the dozen. His men were doing the same, but the Swarm kept coming. Here and there an armored Kingsman knight went down.

He got a sudden glimpse of a larger creature, and his lance lashed out to pierce the throat of the Beastman charging him. For a moment, he had a breather and looked up. The flashes of light where the Battlemagi still held out were still too far ahead. He glanced behind him, where the Life Magi attached to his regiment waited, smashing down the Swarmbeasts that came near them with their staffs.

They weren’t helping the Battlemagi here, he realized. The cost of what they had to do next horrified him… but he didn’t have a choice, did he? “By companies, advance!” he bellowed.

He nodded to his command group, and the two Life Magi who had joined them, then started his charger moving forwards, his lance stabbing out to slaughter yet another Swarmbeast. The advance began slowly, but as the lancers began to cut through the Swarm, they began to move faster and faster.

“Ahrn! Ahrn!” Shel cried, his lance smashing through a Beastman as he led his regiment into the heart of the enemy. The Fifth had somehow become the spearhead of the Kingsmen’s advance, and Shel led his regiment forward with a will.

Then they broke free of the Swarm into a small open gap. They barely had time to wonder why the gap was there before a force of Beastmen, about two thousand strong, charged the regiment. Fire flickered out from the Chaos Magi in the Beastmen ranks, and one of the Life Magi behind him screamed – a scream cut off horribly short.

He couldn’t look behind him to see what had happened. He readied his lance and shouted “Forward the Fifth!” With that, he charged, leading his men forward. The Beastmen didn’t slow, merely raising their spears to meet his men’s lowered lances.

“Ahrn!” The battlecry rang out as the two forces, miniscule against the overall conflict, slammed together. Shel felt his lance break apart as it drove through a Beastman’s armor and pinned the creature to the ground. He dropped the broken weapon and drew his sword, riding down another Beastman as he did.

Yet another Beastman stabbed at him with a spear. He knocked it aside with his sword, then ducked in the saddle to avoid a second spear. A third spear lunged at him and he cut off the spearhead and drove his sword down into the Beastman wielding it.

He yanked the blade free, hissing in pain as another spear smashed into his shield arm, skittering off the steel bracer he wore but still bruising his arm. He twisted in the saddle to stab down at the Beastman who’d attacked him, the blade skittering under the near-man’s helmet as the spear came swinging back around.

A whistling sound warned him, and he turned to bring his shield between him and a descending flight of black-feathered arrows. The arrows struck down the Beastmen around him, allowing him to assess the situation for a moment. His men’s armor had stood them in good stead, and most of them were still alive, and more importantly, still with him. Even as he turned to assess the area, the Beastmen force, shattered first by the Kingsmen’s counter-charge and then by their own arrow fire, broke and fled.

The regiment followed in pursuit, swords already darkened with inhuman blood hacking at the misshapen creatures. Shel followed, riding in the middle of his regiment. He saw the fire lash out from the Warrior Mage who’d led the Beastmen, claiming dozens of his men.

He turned his horse towards the Mage, raising his sword. The Mage continued to flail the regiment with fire and didn’t notice the single horseman charging towards him until it was too late. The Warrior yanked his own sword free with his right hand, his left sending fire hammering at Shel.

Shel somehow managed to pull his left foot free of the stirrup, half-falling to the right to evade the flame and swing his sword at the Mage. The Mage managed to parry, and thrust at Shel, to find that the Kingsman had pulled himself back up onto the horse.

He watched the Mage’s thrust drift through where he’d been hanging, then stabbed down as the Warrior’s momentum carried him into reach of his longsword. The sword stabbed into the Mage’s throat, spilling his blood onto soil already tinged red with human and inhuman blood.

Shel pulled his sword back up and stood in his stirrups to survey the field. His regiment was off in the distance, caught up in a swirling melee with at least four times their number of Beastmen and Swarmbeasts. He began to ride towards them, his sword lashing out to bisect a Swarmbeast, when a bright flash of light caught his eye.

He turned in the saddle towards it, and saw it again, fire flickering around a single figure. The figure stood alone, and dozens of Swarmbeasts and Beastmen burned in the flame. The Battlemage was fighting a group of several Chaos Magi, and holding his own.

Then Shel saw the other Warrior Mage, the one sneaking up behind the Mage. He turned his horse and puts his heels to its flanks, charging across the battlefield, yelling a warning. A Swarmbeast got in his way, and he rode the monster down without even slowing.

The Warrior twisted at the sound of his shout and sent a chaos lance flashing out. The burst of magic slammed into Shel’s horse’s chest, killing the charger instantly. Shel somehow managed to stay upright as the horse fell, slamming its five hundred-kilo bulk into the Mage.

Shel landed on his feet heavily, but managed to bring his sword swinging around to cut the Warrior in half. Then he felt a searing pain as the
second
Chaos Mage sent lightning flickering into his armor.

He screamed, and turned. The bulky armor slowed him down and conducted the lightning across his entire body. He could
feel
his limbs start to stop working, but he managed to lunge across the distance between him and the Mage, driving his longsword into the Mage’s chest with a two-handed thrust.

More lightning flickered out from the Mage as he died. Shel’s legs failed under him, and he felt himself fall backwards towards the ground.

Tal heard the warning cry and turned in time to see the Kingsman fell the first Mage. He was jerked back to his original opponents by a blast of flame against his shields. He turned back towards them, flashing lances of darkness cutting two of them down.

The third panicked and Shifted, trying to fly away. The crow got maybe ten feet before Tal burned it out of the sky, and turned back to the man who’d warned him.