Valdemar 11 - [Owl Mage 03] - Owlknight (51 page)

There were no more arrows flying into their lines; the fighting on this side of the barricade was all hand-to-hand, but now the advantage was with the defenders.
They
could continue to rain arrows down on the back rank of the enemy without even taking combatants from the line—the women and young boys stood off at a distance, lobbing their arrows in a high arc over the Raven lines and into the back ranks of Blood Bear. Blood Bear hadn't managed to breach the barricade, as the thorns still held them at bay, and as bundles of thorns were broken and trampled by the sheer press of bodies, grimly determined children came dragging new ones to be shoved into place with boar-spears.

Boar-spears—strangely enough,
those
were proving to give Raven a real edge. They were long enough to reach over the barricade and stab at the enemy without exposing their wielder to the thorns. The blade, long and sharp to piece a boar's tough hide, was about the same size as the short-swords all of the fighters were using, and the iron cross-bar designed to keep the boar from coming up the shaft at the hunter made effective quillons. Anyone could use it to stab; really good fighters could use it to slash as well. Although the only fatal wounds to Blood Bear so far had been caused by arrows, the spearmen were holding the line.

But where was Wolverine?

Keisha stood on her toes behind the shelter of her carved pole, and craned her neck to look over the embattled defenders.

Wolverine had not moved a single pace forward. In fact, some of them looked
embarrassed!

They broke the Shaman's promise, that's why,
she thought, astonished.
Blood Bear has broken the promise the Shaman made not to attack while he and Darian were

fighting.
This wasn't a case of Northerner against outland Southerner, where anything was fair and promises didn't matter—this was tribe against tribe, where strict rules held.

And Blood Bear had broken the rules. No matter who survived this fight, Blood Bear had blackened the name of their tribe. Even their own totemic spirit might choose to desert them, and no tribe or individual would ever trust the word of a member of Blood Bear again. That meant no alliances, no intermarriages, no trade agreements, no intercourse of any kind. Essentially, it meant the death of the tribe. The only way a member of Blood Bear could survive the shunning would be if he somehow convinced the Chief of another tribe that he had not participated in the oathbreaking; then he could be adopted into a new tribe.

Which means no adult warriors of Blood Bear, period. Only the women and children. Wolverine will throw them out as soon as the fighting's over. Skies above
—
I'm actually witnessing the final death of the entire clan that attacked Errold's Grove.

Wolverine wouldn't raise a finger to help Raven, though. Their code of conduct didn't extend
that
far.

Another man fell, and Keisha dashed out to drag him into safety. This time her treatment took even less time; a simple slash wound, shallow, with no arrow to extract. In a few moments he was back in his place, boar-spear in both hands, punishing the man who'd managed to reach him with savage thrusts of the spear.

One of the fighters in the rear of the Blood Bear mob pulled himself back and out of the fight; it was this movement against the flow of battle that caught her attention.

The fighter, who by his elaborately decorated, heavy armor, was someone of high rank, whirled to face the combat between Darian and the Shaman. He grabbed a discarded bow from the ground, took an arrow from the quiver still attached to his belt, and took aim at Darian's back.

Keisha screamed, but her cry was lost in the general outcry. Her heart convulsed painfully, as she cried out a warning no one would ever hear—

But someone did.

A huge, white shape streaked from the far right of the lines, launched into the air, and sailed over the barricade with the grace of a swan in flight. It was Karles, and Shandi clung to his back, her mouth set in a taut line, her never-used sword in hand.

Just as the warrior loosed his arrow, Karles reached him; Shandi's sword licked out and, impossibly, deflected the arrow from its deadly flight.

Their momentum carried them on past; the warrior put a second arrow to his bow, cursing loudly in his own tongue. But now, Shandi was not the only one who knew what he was trying to do.

An ear-piercing shriek from above startled everyone into looking up. Kel had been voicing his war cries before this, but never anything like the one he produced when he realized who the bowman's target was.

Kel dove down out of the sky with terrifying speed, shallowing his arc the faster he went and the quicker he approached the ground, fore-talons outstretched. The fighter had only time enough to cringe down, trying (in utter futility) to hide. Kel hit him with more force than a levin-bolt, doubtlessly breaking the warrior's back in an instant, and pushed him level to the lay of the earth for over five horse-lengths.

Then Kelvren rose again into the sky, wings laboring, talons set firmly into the fighter's shoulder and torso. The man screamed shrilly, writhing in what must have been incredible pain, for Kel's talons had wrapped right around the protective shoulder plates and penetrated the joints between them and the rest of the armor, and the thumb-talon of the other foreclaw was surely right through the stomach. Blood oozed from the wounds, streamed down the armor, and splattered down on the heads of his fellows as Kel lumbered higher and higher into the sky.

Then he let go.

Still screaming, the man plummeted toward the ground, hitting it with a
crunch
that made even Keisha wince. The screaming stopped instantly and there was a moment of terrible silence.

Kel had dropped the man practically on top of the Wolverine lines. The Wolverine warriors drew back from the mangled body—then, incredibly, turned their backs on it. No one bothered to see if the fighter still breathed, or render him aid in any way.

The shunning had already begun.

None of this seemed to give the Blood Bear fighters pause for more than a few moments. A heartbeat after their fellow hit the ground, they were back at the barricade again. If anything, their fury had redoubled.

But now they had another target besides the Raven fighters behind the barricades.

A handful of them turned on Shandi and Karles; the Companion reared on his hindquarters, lashing out with fore-hooves, then dropped back to the ground to kick those trying to take him from behind. Shandi laid about her with her sword; together they accounted for three of their assailants, but more turned on them.

Shandi was screaming, but it was not in fear or pain. She was screaming, “For Valdemar's honor! For Valdemar's honor!” again and again, with each slash of the blade.

Steelmind vaulted the barricade, racing to Shandi's defense. Hashi and Neta joined him, helping him fight his way through the packed fighters to Shandi's side. Steelmind wasn't trying to use any weapons; he seized fighters before they were aware that he wasn't one of them and physically flung them out of the way, while Neta used her horns and hooves to good effect in clearing the path, and Hashi attacked any pair of legs that wasn't protected.

Steelmind got to Shandi with only a minor gash on his head; once there, he pulled his climbing staff from the sheath on his back and began to use it with lethal efficiency. Neta and Hashi made a stand on her opposite side. Together, the three guarded Karles' rear flanks, allowing Shandi and Karles to keep their attention on the enemy in front of them.

Steelmind's staff—a deadly device with a spike on one end and a sharply-pointed hook on the other, with several grab knobs at regular intervals—seemed as light as a straw in the Hawkbrother's hands. His buzzard, no longer slow or sleepy, joined the battle with a series of heavy stoops, knocking helmets forward to obscure vision, knocking helmets off completely, then returning to lacerate the unprotected heads with his raking talons.

Kel remained above, kiting on the strong wind, keeping watch over Darian. Meanwhile Shandi, Karles, Hashi, Steelmind, and Neta began working their way back toward their own lines. Kelvren then folded wings in for a moment and dropped to attack again, someone unseen, identified only by a short scream an instant later and the gryphon taking off again with a human arm in his beak.

With a dry mouth and a pounding heart, Keisha watched the horrifying battle her friends were engaged in, oblivious to the fighting going on immediately around her, her hands clasped tightly under her chin. She was afraid to pray, for who should she pray for? Her sister, or her beloved? Her friends, or her family?

 

Darian wasn't aware he'd been in danger from outside until an arrow arced high over his head, piercing both walls of the magic circle. The Shaman's smile warned him that he'd become a target, but he didn't dare take his eyes off his opponent.

It hadn't taken the Shaman long to blast himself free of his earthy prison—but it
had
taken time and physical energy, and the Shaman's legs were badly bruised and lacerated from the effort. Darian had those few moments of rest, which the Shaman had spent in labor.

Now they circled warily; the Shaman staggered, somewhat the worse for wear, and Darian tried to split his attention, using peripheral vision, trying to spot the archer who'd taken that shot at him while keeping the Shaman under his eye as well.

Suddenly a shrill scream rent the air and stunned everyone on the field into momentary silence. Riding the scream down out of the sky came a bolt of golden-brown power, which hit someone in the melee and rose again, a shrieking bit of man-flesh dangling from his talons. It was Kel—and Darian hadn't known the gryphon could lift and carry a man off before this. He wanted to gape in astonishment, but didn't dare. He wouldn't underestimate this opponent for a moment; the Shaman still had plenty of raw power, and the will to use it.

But he had weaknesses. He didn't look for attacks that
weren't
purely magical power. He only used visible magic manifestations. And—

The Shaman's attention flickered away, as Kel dropped his screaming burden. The man hit the ground with a curiously wet crunch, and the screaming stopped. The Shaman turned his attention back to Darian, his mud-streaked face set in a snarl.

But not before Darian had managed to snatch up and conceal a rock in the palm of his hand.

They began to circle again, and Darian sensed the Shaman draining power for another strike.
Now I have to put you right where I want you—

He circled, feinted back, moved forward again. The Shaman followed his maneuvers with narrowed eyes, suspecting something. Then he glanced to the side, saw the shallow crater where he had blasted himself free, and graced Darian with a grimace of contempt. With exaggerated care, he stepped past it, then Darian felt the quick drop in ley-line power that warned he was about to strike.

That was when Darian threw the rock at him.

Startled, expecting it to be a magical attack, the Shaman redirected his power and shattered the poor rock to powder with a single blast. In doing so, he faltered back into the crater he had so contemptuously avoided.

But Darian's meddling with the groundwater wasn't over. As the Shaman stumbled into the crater, he sucked the spring's water out of the area again; between his efforts and the Shaman's, that particular piece of ground was on the verge of becoming a sinkhole big enough to swallow a house, and when Darian removed the groundwater, the surface layer of sandstone gave way.

Instead of swallowing a house, it swallowed the Shaman, who disappeared into the earth with a hoarse cry. Darian fused the stone, using the same technique he had used to create the water channels for the bathing spring at the Vale, and the startled Shaman was buried up to his knees in sifting, crumbling earth while his ankles and feet smoldered.

Then Darian brought back all the water, and more, dancing back to avoid getting dropped into the sinkhole himself as the earth crumbled around the rapidly growing—and filling—crater.

Ten heartbeats later, the Shaman's half of the wall winked out of existence.

Darian took down his own half, and stood staring into what was now a roughly circular pond of very muddy water, but the only thing that arose from the depths was a few bubbles—then nothing at all.

He looked up, slowly, to face the Wolverine lines.

For a long moment, he stared defiantly at the warriors, who stared back at him wearing expressions of incomprehension and dismay. No one moved. He clasped his hands before him in the same gesture he had used at the beginning of the duel, and waited.

Then one of the men at the far right broke, babbling, and ran, stumbling away as fast as his legs could carry him. That was all that was needed; a heartbeat later, the retreat had become a rout, the brave fighters of Wolverine taking to their heels as fast as they could, even casting off armor and shedding weapons so that they could run faster.

 

In a sudden reversal of tactics, the Blood Bear fighters turned from the barricade and flung themselves at the easier target within their midst. Steelmind's staff moved in a lethal blur, but there were too many around him, fighting to take him down; he went down under a pile of bodies. Shandi wrenched Karles' head around and forced her Companion back, coming to
his
rescue; the Companion bit, lashed, and kicked like a demon-horse as Keisha watched in agony, certain she was going to see all three of them die before her eyes.

Then, just as suddenly, the warriors of Blood Bear broke and ran.