Raveler: The Dark God Book 3 (24 page)

21

Champion

A DOGMAN WHISTLED again, and the men of Toth raced beyond bowshot. But not all of them retreated. The dogman who’d killed the first of Branby’s men had held back, like a commander, as the others pursued their attack. He was huge, bigger than any Argoth had ever seen. His sword had to be almost as tall as an average clansman. Around his waist he wore a belt from which hung the scalps of men and other animals. Next to him was a mauler. Around the two of them the arrows of the first volley littered the field, shafts sticking up from the ground.

“Now that’s a big one,” Flax said.

Argoth turned to see him walking down the parapet toward them.

“Dogmen don’t come much bigger than that,” Flax said.

The dogman strode over and scooped up the rider’s severed head.

Dozens of archers released their arrows at the dogman, but he stepped to the side, and all of the arrows fell harmlessly to the ground.

Shim turned in irritation. “Blast you! Save your arrows!” he commanded. “He’s too far out.”

The bowmen lowered their bows.

The massive dogman cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted out something in his rough tongue.

He waited, then shouted it again.

Shim said. “What’s he saying?”

Eresh said, “He’s offering a challenge to single battle.”

The dogman held his arms wide in invitation.

Eresh looked at the men on the battlements, then at Shim. “Someone needs to kill that whoreson.”

“Grandfather,” Flax said to Eresh. “That sounds like a perfect job for you.”

“I’m not going to waste a man on him,” Shim said.

Flax said, “Get him to kneel to you, and you just might take a number of dogmen out of the fight.”

The dogman strode forward a few dozen yards then shouted again. “Shim,” he said with a hard accent. “Oh, puny Shim. Come out and defend your name!”

The dogman’s booming voice carried across the distance. The men on the battlements close to Shim cut a glance at their commander.

“Crossbows?” Shim asked Argoth.

“I think he’s close enough,” Argoth replied.

Shim nodded at a fist of crossbowmen down the battlement. They raised their weapons.

“Kill him,” Shim ordered.

A dozen crossbows thwupped. The bolts sped toward the dogman. He turned to face them, arms held out wide. His breastplate was thick and shaped to deflect arrows and bolts. And he was still a good distance out.

While the skir wind didn’t reach this far, there was still a breeze, and it appeared to be enough to affect the bolts, for a number of them looked like they would hit, but sped past the dogman. Others struck him with a clatter. He turned his head to avoid a bolt that sped right past his face. When all was done, only one bolt had penetrated his armor, but it must not have been by much—probably stopped by the thick padding underneath—for he yanked it out and threw it to the ground.

They needed to wait until he was closer to have a chance to penetrate that armor.

“Cowards!” the dogman shouted. “Rabbits. Have you no loyalty to your brothers?”

He took the severed head of Branby’s man between his two massive hands, crushed it, and broke open the skull. Then with a shard of bone he scooped out some of the brains. He held the shardful of brains up as if in a toast, then ate it.

The Shimsmen on the battlements shouted in shock and anger.

The dogman handed the broken skull to his mauler, and the beast took it in its great maw and munched it like a biscuit.

The monster strode forward another dozen yards. “Send your best pack of sheep against me!” he shouted.

A soldier close to Argoth swallowed and licked his lips. He was younger, and the display was obviously affecting him the way the dogman had hoped.

Farther down the battlement, the shouting of a fist of men rose to a pitch. Argoth knew the men. They were cousins to one of the men that had been torn apart. Part of the big Carver family.

“Open the gates,” the biggest of them called, “we’re going to dine on that dog!” Then the lot of them began to push their way to the stairs to get to the courtyard.

“Grandfather,” Flax asked, “are you going to let that dogman insult your men that way?”

Eresh bored into Flax with his one good eye. Then he cleared his throat and spit to the side.

“You keep that maggot out there talking,” Eresh said to Argoth.

“What are you doing?” Argoth said.

“Keep him talking,” Eresh said. Then he walked down the battlement, took a crossbow from one of the crossbowmen, jumped down to the courtyard, and ran between the trenching men, heading for the wall that faced the canyon and river.

Flax grinned.

Shim turned to Flax, cold anger in his gaze. “Since you came up with the idea, maybe you should go join him.” He said it almost as a command.

“You know that will only cause problems,” Flax said.

Shim pitched his voice low. “I don’t know how things are run in the Hand, but there is one commander in this army.”

Flax inclined his head. “My apologies.”

Shim turned to one of his captains. “Get those Carver men back up to their positions.”

The captain nodded, signaled a number of others to follow him, then made his way to the stairway down to the courtyard.

Across the courtyard, Eresh reached the wall, climbed up to the battlement, then slipped over the top.

Shim said to Flax, “You’d better hope he wins this.”

“Oh, I hope it sincerely,” Flax said.

Argoth said, “He’s a Kish. I suspect he would have done it with or without Flax’s goading.”

Down in the courtyard, the captain and his men ordered the kinfolk of the slaughtered outrider to halt. The Carver men shouted and blustered and tried to push their way through. Then the captain wrestled the ring leader to the dirt while the men following him kept the others back. The captain was a seasoned warrior. He had the arm of the Carver twisted up behind his back in a flash and began to give him a tongue lashing. Whatever he said must have convinced the man to submit, for a few moments later the captain released him and stood up. The man glowered, but he and the others marched back toward their positions. The captain followed them to give their fistman an earful.

Out in front of the fort, the massive dogman shouted again. “Send twenty of your finest warriors!”

“Nobody wants to get near your stink!” Shim shouted back. “Take a bath, and then we’ll talk.”

The grass and the brush on the field where the men had dismounted their horses had been flattened. But there was still much cover in the field. Argoth searched the tall grass and brush along the edge of the field for Eresh, but couldn’t see him. However, the big mauler raised its head and looked in the direction of the river.

The dogman said, “I promise to restrain my companion. Shredder will stay back. It will be man against man! Breed against breed!”

“Was your mother a woman?” one of the kinsmen on the wall shouted. “Or some bitch in heat? I see no man on the field!”

The dogman said something to his mauler and pointed at the body of another Shimsman closer to the wall. The giant dog glanced out at the grass by the river again, then loped in the opposite direction to where the man lay.

“You dishonor your dead,” the dogman shouted.

The mauler grasped the dead man’s leg in its massive mouth.

“Win this fight and we promise not to feed your men to our companions!”

“Go shag your dog!” one of the Carvers shouted.

“Rodents!” the dogman boomed. “Bring your pack and prove your superior breed!”

The dogmen kept genealogies that went back centuries, back to what they claimed was the beginning. They maintained that the first men the Creators had placed on the earth had been large like they were. They traced their blood back to what they called the first packs. To them, the shorter humans of the Western Glorydoms were degenerate breeds.

“Come closer!” Argoth shouted. “My inferior ears can’t hear you!”

“And thus we see the honor that runs in the blood lines of smaller men,” the dogman shouted. “You’re a gaggle of women!”

“Yes we are!” Matiga shouted from another place on the wall. “And we would never breed with the likes of you! Too stinky!”

A roar of laughter rose from the men on the battlements and rippled across the fort.

When it died down, the dogman pointed at the men on the walls. “You will die today! But not before I’ve had your women. You’ll watch. And then you will go to your ancestors as cowards.”

And at that moment, about twenty paces from the giant dogman, Eresh rose from the tall grass with his crossbow. He must have found a small dip or ravine to crawl along.

He raised the crossbow to his shoulder and aimed. “Here’s breeding!” he shouted. “You imbecile runt!”

The dogman turned.

Eresh pulled the release. The crossbow thwupped. The bolt flashed across the distance between the two of them and sank deep into the big dogman’s neck.

The giant dogman staggered back, grabbed the dart.

Eresh drew his war axe and rushed forward.

The dogman saw his charge, grabbed for his sword, but he was too late. Too slow.

Eresh sprang, brought the axe up and over his head in a wheeling blow, and smashed the blade into the dogman’s helmet. The crunch of metal sounded across the field. Then Eresh’s jump took him past the big man.

The dogman turned, still on his feet. The axe stuck in his helmet.

Behind Eresh the mauler dropped the dead Shimsman, barked, and surged back toward its master.

Eresh ignored the dog, faced the dogman, and drew a long knife.

The dogman took a step forward. He started to take another, but then tipped, and, like a tree felled by a woodsman, toppled onto his side.

The mauler rushed at Eresh.

Eresh turned to face it.

“That dog’s as big as a lion,” Flax said.

A fistman standing a bit down the line said, “I’ve never seen a lion.”

“Well that’s how big they are,” Flax said. “But I think that mauler would beat even a lion in a straight match.”

Eresh crouched.

The dog lunged, all teeth and sinew.

Eresh sprang out of the beast’s path, twisted, then snatched the huge sword from the fallen dogman.

The mauler spun.

The dogman was still alive and swiped at Eresh’s leg, but Eresh dodged him and turned his side to the mauler.

The mauler growled, and the sound was so loud, so full of menace that a number of men down the line all uttered an oath.

The mauler surged forward, armored, intent on the kill. It moved with lightning speed.

Eresh waited for it. Waited too rotted long. The fool!

The mauler lunged.

“No,” Argoth groaned.

But Eresh took a quick, low and twisting step to the side, swinging the big sword around with all his might, catching the mauler’s front leg and biting deep into it.

The dog screamed, stumbled.

Eresh changed his grip on the pommel, grasped the flat of the big sword with his other hand, then stabbed down through the armor on the mauler’s side and sank the sword deep into the big animal.

The creature cried out in extreme pain and flinched away.

Eresh pulled the blooded sword out, raised it high. It flashed in the light. Then he brought it down with both hands and severed the dog’s massive head from its body.

Behind him, the dogman struggled to rise.

Eresh walked over to him and relieved him of his head as well. Then he picked up both heads, turned to the dogmen at the other end of the field and raised them high.

“Here is the breed you face today!” he shouted. “One with the brains you so highly prize!”

The dogmen and maulers on the other side of the field let out howls and shouts that rose to a fevered pitch. Then they raced forward to take Eresh.

Eresh reached down and cut away the dogman’s belt of scalps. Then he ran with it, the sword, and the two heads back toward the fort. The men opened the gates, and Eresh ran in with his trophies.

On the parapets the archers waited until the charging dogmen were closer this time, then let loose their shafts. The metal arrow points clattered against the dogmen’s armor. But this time the dogmen were full of anger and not thinking, running in straight lines. This time they were inside the range of a bow’s fury. Many arrows struck and stuck out of the armor like pins. A good deal of these would have been defeated by the mail and padded tunic underneath, but enough caused injury for a number of the dogmen and maulers faltered.

A pincushioned dogman took an arrow in the side and stumbled. Another took an arrow through the visor, and crashed to the dust. A mauler fell, then the dogmen alphas began to whistle, and the majority of men and hounds turned back and raced away from the arrows. But two dogmen and four of their massive dogs, continued to run forward.

The gate door was caught on the remains of the shrub they’d cut down.

Above, the archers and crossbowmen kept shooting. A mauler went down. Then another. Then the shorter dogman. But the second dogman was still up and running, arrows sticking out of his armor.

The men at the gates finally freed the one side, pulled it closed, and slammed home the weathered crossbeam.

The dogman kept running through the arrow storm, and Argoth thought he might try to ram the wooden doors, but he altered his course at the last moment and sprang up, one foot striking the slightly sloped wall and propelling him higher. He lunged for a crenellation, grasped it, and pulled himself up and over.

One of the Shimsmen on the battlement backed away from the giant pincushioned mass of steel and sinew, but another soldier lunged forward with his lance.

The dogman wrenched the lance, pulling the man forward.

The soldier stumbled, and the dogman picked him up and hurled him over wall.

The man yelled and fell heavily to the ground by the gate, leaving the lance in the dogman’s hand.

Another Shimsman rushed forward with another lance, striking from the side, and succeeded in stabbing the dogman above his hip.

The dogman twisted and struck the Shimsman in the face with the butt end of his lance.