Duty Calls: The Reluctant War God Book 1 (14 page)

The archers let loose with salvo after salvo into the onrushing Jegu warriors. Their aim was true and it had great effect, but the attackers were not demoralized. They were filled with holy purpose stronger than any drug or potion.

The armies clashed in a shock wave of sound. Steel met steel and flesh, screams of the battle-crazed blended with shrieks of the dying. I closed my eyes. A dark part of my being relished that sound. In a lifetime of lifetimes there were few moments when I felt more truly alive than in the heat of battle. My hands hungered for the feel of a blade. I wanted to rend the flesh of my enemies, to crush them and stand over their mangled corpses. My pulse beat strong in my temples. My music changed. It turned dark and vicious. The men were feeling it too, they were smiling as they slew the Jegu.

I had opened my eyes and I witnessed the carnage. Our men hungered for blood against the Jegu warriors who cared not for their own lives. We were giving better than we got for the moment, but the battle line was slowly backing toward the city walls. The sheer weight of the Jegu and the wantonness with which they fought was beating down against the rapidly fading battle lust of our men.

The priests started up their chanting again as the Jegu regrouped for another press. They were so organized, like a machine. Every man a cog in a wheel. This worked to their disadvantage in the short run, but it was slowly wearing us down as the battle continued. It was unnerving to fight men who did not fear death.

I could go on. I could tell you how we withdrew in waves and of the individual acts of selfless courage that many men made to save their brothers—standing in the breech to fight to the death so that others could withdraw. But in the end, we were forced to withdraw and that is all that matters.

Several Jegu warriors broke through the ranks and came near me. They were gifts. I did my best to slay them and not stop playing, but I must admit that I missed several notes along the way as I used one hand to whip out my sword and dispatch them and the other to keep the tune. I am a god, but I’m not perfect.

I need much more practice on the bagpipes.

From my vantage point I could see that Olo and his compatriots were coming under heaver attack. I saw Olo digging in his heels and bringing the head of the halberd forward to skewer one of those attackers. Olo was a natural. Even at that distance I could tell he was scared, but he wasn’t panicked. He was doing his duty. The farmer had become a warrior.

In the end, we fell back to the city walls. The gates were closed and the portcullis lowered. We slew many who were foolish enough to follow too closely by showering them with boiling oil and lead. The siege had begun and the Jegu were the worst for it. We had decimated their army even though we were eventually forced to withdraw to our position of safety.

Again, I felt that all things being equal, we would win. The winter approached. We had a strong army remaining to us, and we were well provisioned. God or no god, I would like to see Jegu keep back the changing of the seasons. And even mana from heaven could only feed so many for so long.

But all things were not equal, as I soon discovered.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

It was near dusk. The battle had raged for most of the day, but now it was quiet. The Jegu had withdrawn to a distance that was safe from our archers. They then withdrew again when they realized that they could still be hit by the ballista mounted on our guard towers.

Inaccurate, but scary as hell. Nothing like a bundle of ten foot spears shot from a hundred yards away to make you shit yourself.

For the most part, our company was intact. We lost only thirteen men during the battle. I was grateful that Olo, Captain Rosten and even Sergeant Toger were not among the casualties.

We moved quickly to place our fortifications against the first city wall. Civilians had already been moved back behind the secondary wall. The structures built between the two walls consisted of the more disreputable, or malodorous business such as pubs, whorehouses, tanners and smithy’s. Basically the poorer districts of town—expendable and possibly their loss could be considered a form of urban renewal. The final wall was around the inner bailey and castle keep where the royal family were protected.

For the moment it seemed the enemy was satisfied staying where they were, and we were more than happy to let them. We had plenty to do redeploying our forces to their correct locations.

The company was divided in to three shifts. From this time forward, there would be a constant guard set and all would be ready to respond to man the walls if the alarm sounded. If it went like other sieges I had been unfortunate enough to endure, this routine would continue for months.

As the sun began to set, word came down from the top that we could stand down if it were not our turn for guard duty. Olo and I stripped off our blood spattered leather armor. I noticed that Olo had a fine assortment of bruises and abrasions.

“You look like a hero, now. Molly will be impressed.”

“Do you think so?”

“How could she not? You have a fine woman there, Olo. A fine family too. Sally is a lovely little angel and Kip is a fine, good looking lad. I envy you.”

The little man beamed with pride. Together we went to set up our bedrolls in our new improvised barracks. The building was a stable, and there were still horses housed in one section. Likely they would become the main course in a few weeks.

We got cleaned up using water from the horse trough. Olo massaged the muscles of his neck. “So Carl, do you really think we’ll make it through this?”

I lay back on a pile of hay and linked my fingers behind my head. “I don’t know, Olo. All I know is what I see. Right now, I see a well-provisioned city. A fine group of fighting men and a good cause. I think that if it’s possible to beat Jegu, we’ll do it. What I don’t know is what Jegu and his followers are truly capable of. But I figure we’ll find out before this is over.”

Olo nodded. I noticed that he was shaking a bit. It was his first battle, the first time to see wholesale death.

“Something else I’ve seen, Olo. I saw you on the battlefield today. You stood your ground. It’s a hard thing for a man to do. I don’t care who you are. But for a man who’s spent his life trying to make things grow, you did as well as any man I’ve ever seen at his first battle.”

Olo sat down on the dirt floor. “It was,” he said. “Not what I expected. To hear the Sergeant and Captain talk about it, I thought it would be more—organized somehow. It all seemed like it was some crazy panicked nightmare.”

“It’s a nightmare, all right. But like I said, you stood your ground and didn’t run when the Jegu charged. Men were dying around you. Some men ran away. Some men cried like babies. But not you. When it was time to move you moved where you were told to go. That’s being a good soldier, Olo. You’re as good a soldier as I’ve ever seen. You are doing a man’s job protecting your family.”

Olo nodded. “But why do I feel like I am going to throw up?”

I laughed. “Because you’re human. Some things aren’t supposed to be easy to deal with. When all the death stops bothering you, then you need to worry.”

I took a moment to reach behind me as if into a provision sack. In reality, I was reaching into a void between world and reaching out for the object of my desire. I turned back to Olo and produced a green bottle. “So Olo, how about a sip of something to celebrate your first battle?”

“You have wine?”

I shook my head. “Not so much, no. Something called Irish Whiskey. I think you’ll like it.”

I popped the cork and took a swig. Hot, smooth, lovely, liquid fire eased down my throat. It made me smile as always. I then handed the bottle over to Olo. He took a sip, and went into a coughing spasm.

“Oh…that is something else,” he said.

“Aye, that it is. To you, Olo. Congratulations,” I said and took another sip.

Just then, the trumpets sounded the call to arms. I knew it was a bad omen. The call had come too soon. There was something very wrong.

“What is it, Carl?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know. But we’d better get ready for something bad.”

I grabbed my sword and a shield that someone else had misplaced. Olo grabbed his halberd and his helmet and stumbled behind me trying to put the helmet on and run at the same time.

When we arrived at the wall, I muscled a few men out of our way and took a look at what was happening to the enemy line. What I saw made me uneasy.

From the light of enormous bonfires lit by the enemy, I could see six great carts were being brought forward, each pulled by four oxen. Upon the carts were huge blocks of dull reddish granite. Evidentially this is what they had been quarrying at their camp. But why?

I saw no evidence of catapult, trebuchet or ballista. No siege towers or battering rams. What is the point of chipping six blocks of granite from the side of a mountain? Were they going to carve some really ugly statues and put them on our lawn to piss us off? I don’t think a few stone lawn jockey’s, donkey carts or bird baths were going to cause us any worry. But I knew Jegu had a purpose, and not knowing what it was concerned me.

I could see that several priests were fanning out to circle each cart. They were doing something that I could not quite see, possibly they were chanting. They were moving their arms about as if concocting some magic.

One priest walked forward to each stone. He reached out to touch each block and lines of fire began to erupt along the side of the stones. It seemed like some sort of writing scattered across the surface, but it was too far away to make out. Then each priest backed away to join the others, and together they continued whatever ritual they had started.

The wind carried a bit of their chanting to my ears, and then I began to feel a drumbeat, soft at first, but deep and resonating through the earth itself and growing stronger.

The men were restless. I didn’t have the pipes or my lyre, but I don’t think I could have mustered a counter spell that would touch whatever was going on out there. I was as awed and unnerved by what I was witnessing as the rest of the men of Guldon.

As the deep heartbeat of the earth continued, at first I feared that the walls would fall as the result of a magical earthquake, but that was not the purpose of their conjuring.

The granite blocks were now almost completely ablaze with moving lines of runes that snaked across the surface of the stones like intersecting trails of fire. They began to shake in time with the earth beat, until finally fault lines appeared on the surface of the rock and something moved within.

In an explosion of sudden, fierce energy, the blocks burst apart, and great red reptilian forms stepped forward from within the granite shell— Dragons, chaotic beasts from the dawn of creation. I had heard of them in stories from my father, but I’d never believed. I had assumed they were bullshit like most of the stories he told. But there they were, rising in the distance,—six dragons, primal and powerful.

They immediately pounced upon the oxen that had pulled the carts. The dragon’s huge claws and talons easily wrapped themselves entirely around the bodies of the oxen as if they were apples. As the animals bellowed and hopelessly attempted to flee, they were grabbed and stuffed whole down the gullet of the great beasts.

The men of Guldon were mortified. Some wept, some moaned, some simply stood silently and stared, glassy-eyed at this demonstration of sheer and terrifying power.

The priests changed their chanting. The dragons, after finishing their meal of oxen, obediently lined up in ranks.

I realized what was happening too late. “Run! We’ve got to get back from the walls.” I ran unashamedly at full speed toward the center of town.

“Carl,” Olo called after me, “What’s wrong?”

I looked back over my shoulder in time to see the small farmer engulfed in the first blast of flame. He was utterly consumed in fire and the section of wall he stood upon crumbled like a child’s sandcastle in the tide. Poor, brave Otto became nothing more than ash.

The dragons were spitting volleys of flaming fireballs toward the city of Tunin. There would be no siege, no battle of attrition lasting months. The war would end tonight, and I had to get Angelina out of there.

“Carl—stop!” It was Captain Rosten. “Come back, we have to protect the walls!”

I observed him standing there, behind him great streamers of fire shot down from the sky. I was deserting him and the other men and I knew it. He looked as if I’d stabbed him.

“I’ll be back,” I yelled, then turned away and ran like hell toward the Black Rose. I would be back, truly. Somehow, after I delivered Angelina to safety, I would return and do whatever I could. But those thoughts sounded like a pale lie even to myself.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Behind me the outer walls were collapsing. The magical dragon fire burned the stone as if it were straw. I knew that before long the Jegu ground forces would begin moving forward, an irresistible force.

Panic spread as realization began to set in, soldiers and civilians alike were running for their lives toward the center of town. I could see the castle above me on the hill. The gates to the inner courtyard were closed and a crowd had already gathered to beat against them and beg for protection. Inside, the king and nobles were locked away. I doubted the king was going to be receiving any guests today, other than Jegu, that is. His own people might die at his doorway but those feeble defenses wouldn’t protect the royal house from their inevitable dark fate for long once the heavy troopers came.