The Grim Wanderer (52 page)

‘
Do not
let them get amongst us,’ Logan’s steely voice rang out over the bestial clamour. ‘Keep them downhill,
it is our only chance
. There is no retreat! We stand or fall here!’

Taem saw how the valley floor was filled with over a hundred Nargs, with more on the way. He saw malignant and depraved red and yellow eyes – and some that were far too human – glaring up at the companions, from the jostling sea of monstrous forms. Taem looked at his friends and saw the terror on Baek’s face, and the stubborn resolve on Forgrun’s.

‘So many,’ Jvarna said incredulously.

‘Too many,’ Drual sighed.

‘Enough for a glorious death!’ Ragad held up his massive warhammer.

‘Aye!’ Forgrun roared.

Drual gawked at Ragad and Forgrun in disbelief, ‘I’d rather live–’

‘This slope is just narrow enough for us to hold them,’ Logan cut out the desperate talk, ‘
if we stand together
!’

Baek and Drual shot arrows and bolts off the tor into the snarling Narg ranks below. With a whoosh, a sphere of fire emerged from Hirandar’s palms. The Wizard issued forth a fiery conflagration that grew to be a massive ball of fire as it flew down the slope and bowled into the screaming Nargs, engulfing a handful of the foul creatures in flame.

‘We stand as a few friends opposing the Dark,’ Logan said strongly, ‘against ten or twenty fold our number –
but I say, the Light is with us
!’

A blast of white brilliance surged from Hirandar’s staff, burning through the foul beastmen as they started up the slope. Baek was floating a continuous stream of arrows at the oncoming Nargs, whilst Drual had just reloaded the four bolts of his crossbow and was loosing them down into the enemy. Taem blocked out the fear of those horrific bestial cries as he focused on his Sodan blade. Together, as one. He watched as the sunlight glimmered off his sword, shining blue.

‘I have never stood before a finer group of warriors,’ Logan said bravely. ‘Courageous, strong and skilful – it is my privilege to stand beside you, my companions; my friends. You are each worth
ten
trained soldiers, and
do not forget
we have with us the greatest wizard of our age.’

Hirandar held crackling raw energy in each of her fists. With a cast of the arms the Wizard launched a searing blue sphere of tumultuous lightning. The lightning destroyed the Nargs it tore into, sending countless others sprawling to the floor, clutching their scorched out eyes.

‘It’s times like these when you must discover who you truly are,’ Logan said, ‘ask yourself, how do you want to be remembered?’

Glancing around to his determined friends, Taem took heart. He could not have hoped for better friends than these. They were all great warriors, and he could see each was resolved to kill Nargs.

‘Fight for the Light and each other!’ Logan roared. ‘Fight because this moment could be our last! Fight because none of us deserves to die out here!’ Logan lifted his sword, touching the flat of the blade against his forehead. ‘The Light shine on all your blades!’

Ragad, Forgrun, Jvarna and Taem raised their weapons in a battle salute.

‘The Light shine on your blade, Master!’ Taem cried out the Sodan blessing.

With a start, Taem realised Estellarum was gleaming with a dull blue aura. His breath caught. There was more than sunlight reflecting off the blade now, the Starmetal was imbued with an inner blue light. Taem gazed in wonder at his mighty sword.

The Nargs loped up the tor, swarming forward in a savage mass. Taem saw how their eyes glinted with malice, and they bawled and screamed cries of pure evil. They almost had the bodies of men – each as big, if not bigger than Ragad – but had the heads of bulls or goats. And their bodies were covered in dense fur, their huge hands ended in claws, and their legs ended in hooves.

‘
Gromm
!’ Forgrun roared, as he went berserk crashing the butt of his war axe against a rock. ‘
Gromm
!’ He bellowed out across the valley louder than any Narg cry. ‘My calls do yhee hear! These warriors nay be o’ our kin, but they do fight fer our kind! Let ye spirits o’ ye great warriors o’ ages past – me Ancestors an’ ye ones that do went before – yhee be hearin’ me now! Do heed me call ter be watchin’ o’er this company o’ friends!’

Raising her arms, Hirandar beckoned lightning down from the sky. Taem had never seen the like of the carnage that followed. The serrated chains of light scourged through the Nargs on the valley floor, lacerating beastmen flesh to leave lifeless, charred remains. Taem knew the Nargs were feeling the full force of the Firefist unleashed, but the enemy were so many, and so full of bloodlust, that Hirandar’s magic could not deter them. The beasts of Shadow climbed the slope, and Taem knew the Nargs were intent on rending apart the line of warriors, and then feasting on their marrow.

Gathered to the valley by the horn calls, over two hundred of the evil beastmen stood below the tor, and charging up its side. Taem could see the Nargs were in a frenzy, baying for blood, and striking out at each other just to be first to the slaughter. The boar-like Narg-Kul drove the horned Narg-Vak forward, with a few of the weasel-like Narg-Baal jostling amongst them. Taem watched as the rat Nargs, the Narg-Yils, were sent to climb the rock-face to come up behind the warriors. Damn them, Taem thought! Once the ratmen scaled the tor’s rock faces the company would be engulfed by enemies from all sides.

The Nargs stormed the slope, and Baek and Drual shot down the forerunners, but there were many more to surge up and take the places of the fallen. The Aborle and the rogue worked flat out, to scythe down as many Nargs as they could, only moments before the first wave reached the top of the tor. Taem watched as fire from Hirandar’s fist ripped through the enemy as they came on, whilst arrows and crossbow bolts further thinned their number, as the fearsome monsters reached close combat range. Taem waited, filled with foreboding. He remembered how the Nargs were truly terrifying up close. Massive creatures of evil, half man, half beast. The largest ones over eight feet tall. There was great variety amongst them, but all growled with bloodthirsty rage.

Taem looked down at his Sodan blade in awe, saw how the metal was alive with a dull blue glow.

Nargs roared as they leapt on the warriors, and combat exploded. Taem’s blade slashed across a Narg throat. He stepped aside. The bull-headed monstrosity fell to the earth, gurgling through blood for air. A cleaver came across from the left. It was too slow to catch Taem. He ducked and sliced through the Narg’s shin. He leapt forward to strike down and finish the foul creature, as it writhed in agony on the floor. He noticed the trace of blue light wherever his blade flashed.

Taem fought on with fury, and was aware of his friends fighting to either side. Taem felt the air tinge with magic, as Hirandar drove more raw power onto the Narg horde. Forgrun bellowed as his axe chopped down one of the berserker Narg-Kul, and Logan’s blade tore through Narg flesh. Logan’s sword slashed left and right in combination, removing a Narg-Kul’s arm below the shoulder then severing right through a Narg-Vak torso. Bringing his sword down by his side, the Master sprung backwards to elude an attacking goat-headed Narg. He brought his sword up high, knocking aside the beast’s weapon. The Sodan Master cut through its chin and jaw. Logan’s sword dropped back down, a meteor falling from the sky, smashing through its twisted horned skull.

Estellarum was a blue blur in Taem’s hands. The sword’s celestial sheen traced a path through the Narg enemy. Taem dealt them all killing blows, but more Nargs threatened to overwhelm him. An overhead downward swing tore through matted brown fur, flesh and bone. Taem threw out an upward slash, followed by a parry of a strong club blow, and a downward diagonal strike through a rusty breastplate. Two more Nargs fell.

Logan had killed many of the Dark creatures but still more came, with scores more clambering behind the next wave. Logan knew the prospects were bleak. The Hand of Fire would soon be submerged. The Sodan Master saw Ragad fight like a titan, matching the Nargs in strength, but the Croma had been bitten on the shoulder and it was restricting the use of his left arm. Jvarna was fierce as her spear kept the beastmen back, even though one of her sides was gashed crimson. Drual had dropped his crossbow and fought with his broadsword. The rogue reached inside his trench-coat and retrieved a throwing knife with a flourish that embedded the flying blade in a Narg. Time and again Drual produced another glinting dagger from nowhere, and launched it into a rampaging beastman. Forgrun was dauntless as his axe smashed through Nargs. Logan saw Baek fighting alongside the Rhungar, his sword darting as the Aborle evaded the ponderous Nargs, as a willow sways in the breeze.

Logan’s blade tore through two Nargs with one strike. His sword was a powerful enchanted blade, but was eclipsed by Taem’s Sodan blade, fighting somewhere to his right. The Master could sense the magic of Estellarum being unleashed against the enemies of the Light once more. Logan cut up through a Narg-Kul’s chest, and stepped off and clove down through the horned head of a Narg-Vak, before he glanced at Taem. The Master was sworn to protect his apprentice, and he made sure to stay close. Even Logan was startled to see, Estellarum was alive with blue light in Taem’s hands.

Masses of Nargs were gathering to assault the tor.

‘
Hirandar
, do something!’ Logan cried as his sword point split through a Narg heart, the blade sinking up to the hilt.

The tor was deluged with Nargs. The company fought for their lives. Taem knew they would soon be swamped. Taem’s sword clashed with the cutlass of a Narg-Baal – unlike the giant Narg-Kul and Narg-Vak, the snarling weasel-Narg was similar to a Man in size. Again, the swords crashed together. And again, as the combatants fought. The Narg could not hold out long, before Estellarum removed its weasel head from its shoulders.

Hirandar’s magic had been quiet for a while, but Taem soon saw why. A roaring firewall spurted from the earth at the base of the tor, separating the Nargs already on the slope from the ones off it. Taem cleaved through another Narg, before he glimpsed how the Nargs reared back in fear from the firewall – an impenetrable barrier of leaping flame, a hundred foot long, that reached up ten foot high.

‘
Hurry
!’ Hirandar cried. ‘I can’t hold it for long,’ the Wizard strained as she fought with all her might to maintain the magic firewall.

There were twenty Nargs trapped on the slope between the firewall and the warriors. The moronic beasts were bewildered by it. Their vacant stares transfixed by the magic blaze. They still had stupid looks on their savage faces as Baek started shooting them down with arrows. Enraged by their fellow Nargs dying, the beastmen charged up towards the warriors, whilst the fire held back the rest of their brethren.

Waiting for the Nargs to come, the warriors closed around Hirandar, shielding the Wizard as she stood deep in a vulnerable trance, her concentration devoted to the firewall.

Baek drew back his bow and killed another Narg, before the company was again beset with fighting the enemy hand-to-hand. This time the company did not fare so well, being already so tired from having killed so many before. Drual was cut deep across the chest by a fierce Narg-Kul, but Ragad – who himself had numerous injuries – killed the Narg before it could finish Drual, smashing his warhammer into the Kul’s skull. Baek was gouged across the leg, but could still just manage to stand. Forgrun had been nicked on one of his shoulders, but was not letting the flesh wound bother him. Nevertheless, Taem saw the blood seeping into the Rhungar’s bright clothes. The wound on Jvarna’s side was opening further, dripping blood to the ground as the brave woman fought on.

Taem attacked with fury. He thrust Estellarum through a Narg windpipe. He ruined another Narg with a colossal downward strike, which split the enemy in half with a flash of blue light. Logan cut open a bestial stomach with a mighty sideways swing. He ducked a Narg axe then pounced forward. Logan’s Sodan blade slashed three times before he landed, and three horned Nargs toppled to the ground. Forgrun chopped down a beastman as it closed on Drual, his axe reaching up to decapitate the Vak’s massive head, and Ragad smashed a giant horned Narg-Vak as it made for Baek. The Croma’s great hammer thumped into the Narg’s chest with such force that the eight-foot tall monster was knocked fully off its feet, rolling backwards down the tor’s slope to stop limp, in a crumpled heap.

All the Nargs on the tor were dead. Their altered corpses littered the ground. Over a hundred waited on the valley floor below, held back by Hirandar’s firewall, giving the company a brief respite.

‘Behind us!’ Baek screamed, swivelling awkwardly because of his injured leg, to bring his bow to bear.

Narg-Yils had reached the top of the tor, having scaled the cliff face. The warriors that could still stand charged across the tor to engage the enemy. Each Narg-Yils was only as tall as Forgrun, and only half the Rhungar’s bulk. Logan chopped through three Yils, each step a different scything strike. Taem cleaved down another. His blade flashed out horizontally, deflecting a different Narg’s attack, then answered with an inward swing. Forgrun dropped two with one enormous swing of his axe, whilst Ragad hefted one of the ratmen up with one hand. The Yils bit and scratched the Croma, trying to elude his wrench-like grip, as Ragad hurled the creature off the edge of the tor. The Yils were all dead as the warriors stumbled back to Hirandar and the others.