Breaking an Empire (10 page)

Llofruddiwr found the pickings easy against the more lightly armoured Lianese troops that were now the main foe. The heavies had given him much trouble, for his usual style of twin long-knives worked ill against men encased in such plate, but he had found the openings, and a small pile of them lay dead before the assassin’s feet. Now, against these conscripts and foot soldiers of Niam Liad, openings came freely, and Llofruddiwr struck and struck and struck again, each thrust from his blades dropping another Lianese soldier. Soon, he had built a wall of corpses, and those who still dared the challenge needed to climb over it, exposing themselves to Llofruddiwr’s flashing knives. He paused in his swift slaying, looking about to see that he was a lone Veryan soldier, a bastion amidst a sea of Lianese, and only his fearsome skill and the shaky morale of the Lianese had kept him alive. The shield wall was ten paces behind him, engaged with enemy soldiers. Bursting over the wall of corpses, Llofruddiwr ploughed into the backs of his foes, his long-knives sweeping open a path to allied lines. The Veryan wall split for a moment, allowing the assassin to dive through, and then closed again, shields once more overlapping as they faced their enemy.

***

The battle was hours old, and still the Lianese came up the hill, sending their nation’s men in a great tide that broke again and again upon the firm rocks of the Veryan wall. But such resistance had a terrible price, and now the backs of the Veryan soldiers were at the ring of wagons. The firemages huddled within, fearful and exhausted. Most were still asleep, not recovered from their efforts. Those few who were awake could barely move, and staggering to their feet made them faint and ill. There would be no help from the mages this day.

Squads had broken and died, and now men fought shoulder to shoulder with those they did not know, and only the ferocious discipline of Glanhaol Fflamboethi kept the shield wall whole. The conscripts from Niam Liad threw themselves against it in a rage, urged on by their officers. The Lianese commanders could sense the tipping point, for both sides fought with a fury born of desperation and exhaustion, and soon the facade of one force or another would crack, and that would mark the end.

The Lianese skirmishers had exhausted their arsenal of arrows and javelins, and now the only projectiles that came over the lines were pulled from the bodies of dead soldiers. With no more glass spheres, the few Veryan soldiers not in the shield wall had taken to throwing back all of the javelins and knives they found, and these took a toll upon the lightly armoured Lianese soldiers. Cutters and quartermasters and scribes and those others who supported the army but did not normally fight had donned armour, and many were in the front ranks, trying to hold back the Lianese.

The enemy pressed hardest against the western shield wall, a pressure that had never relented from the moment the heavy infantry had bowed the line. Only by retreating in measured steps had the Veryan soldiers recovered the shape of their wall, and now with the battle reaching its peak, the line was often but two soldiers thick. Wounded men who could barely stand were going into the lines, holding shields in both hands as they staggered into place. They could not fight, no, but perhaps they could block a blow or three, and when the time came, their crippled bodies could take a strike to save the few unharmed soldiers left.

It was at this point that shouts came from the eastern wall, and it bent dangerously, pressed back until the Veryan soldiers stood against the wagons. The Lianese had snuck the few remaining heavy infantry to the eastern side of the hill, and brought them up through the press of conscripts. Formed into a wedge, they smashed into the centre of the Veryan line, and broke through. Conscripts began climbing over the wagons to get at the wounded within the ring, and only a ferocious defence by the officers and the cutters shored that hole in the line. The force of heavy infantry had split into two, each seeking to turn the end of the circle they had broken.

Rhyfelwyr shouted at his squad. Breaking from the line at a run, the five soldiers shot across the narrow gap to find themselves athwart ten heavies. Gwyth, Rhyfelwyr, Taflen and Locsyn formed into a short shield wall, and pressed against the enemy, using all the skill they could muster to blunt the strength of their foe’s advance. The Veryan soldiers around them fought desperately, stemming the tide of conscripts who followed.

The breach held, for the moment, but a lightning glance showed the sergeant that the soldiers fighting at the wagon wall were soon to fall. If the line did not throw out the Lianese interlopers and once more form the circle, the battle would be lost. Growling out orders, Rhyfelwyr pushed the squad forward, driving his sword into the gut of the enemy before him again and again. The blows clanged off the metal, but it stole his foe’s balance, and so when the sergeant slammed his shield into infantryman’s helmet, the soldier fell over backwards, stunned and off-balance.

Taking advantage of the confusion and poor footing the fallen foe caused, Llofruddiwr leapt from his perch atop a wagon onto the backs of two heavies. Heavily armoured though they were, the helmets had not been designed to stop an upward thrust from behind, and the assassin slammed his long-knives under the helmets of the heavies, pitching them to the ground, dead in an instant. A fourth heavy fell, this to a crushing blow from Gwyth, and the others tried to step back and regroup. Locsyn and Taflen did not let them, stepping out of the shield wall for leaping strikes at the unprotected joins on the back of the knee. Two more fell, and then it was five against four, and the squad swiftly overcame these brutes, sending their spirits winging away.

Once more against conscripts, the soldiers of Bhreac Veryan closed the gap in the shield wall, securing the perimeter about the wagons. Rhyfelwyr spared himself a glance to where the other force of heavy infantry had been. There, the Lianese soldiers had made a better go of it, for they had taken two to one or three to one from the Veryan troops, and the line was ghastly thin, barely able to withstand the mass pressed against it. The Lianese were ill-trained, farmers, peasants, sailors, men who had never fought in their lives, and they faced a hard core of Veryan veterans who had been campaigning for months. But the Lianese outnumbered the Veryan soldiers by a great margin, and on the strength of those numbers, the Lianese would win. Rhyfelwyr sighed and shook his head in sadness as he parried away the attack of a foolish boy and cut him down. Two lands were broken today, for Niam Liad would take generations to recover from the scorched earth and murdered manhood that lay all about, while Hymerodraeth Heula was fighting the oncoming twilight, with the military might of Bhreac Veryan scattered about this unnamed hilltop, dead or dying.

The Veryan army had lost eight out of ten men and from up above the thin ring that protected the wagons was no more than a shadow against the horde of peasants. Greater still was the army of corpses that lay all about, for the Lianese had lost so many men they were forced to carry the dead down the hill to have avenues of attack. Bodies were piled at the bottom of the hill, forming great mounds of waste, and it was into this scene that a brilliant flame burst, arcing in a wide band over the heads of the Veryan soldiers and into the Lianese mass. One of the firemages had risen, and Rhyfelwyr turned his head to see Rhocas staggering, his face drawn with a look of starvation, but his hand upraised as the flame jetted into the Lianese soldiers, incinerating many.

Rhocas played the fire in a slow sweep, burning a hole in the Lianese attack that gave moments of respite to the tired Veryan soldiers. Then the firemage turned his attention to the mass of flags that signalled a Lianese command post. A great sphere of flame flew from his hands, floating overhead to smash down upon the officers, spraying fire and sparks. Crying out in joy that the firemages had come to save them, the Veryan soldiers pressed down the hill, the sight of the flame giving them new strength and purpose. The morale of the Lianese had been severely weakened by the horrendous losses of the day, and the combination of fire and renewed assault by a foe they thought was finished broke the Lianese, and the conscripts turned and fled down the hill. With no officers and precious few regular soldiers left to command them, the rout became total, as the Veryan charged after, breaking those few pockets of resistance.

Rhocas had collapsed into a coma after the last assault, and was convulsing upon the ground as cutters sought to aid him. They tried all manner of treatment, and were able to still the jerking of his limbs, but the mage was wan and pale. The cutters carried him to the wagons, where he was covered by a thick blanket. They would wait and see whether Rhocas left them this day.

Rhyfelwyr looked about the remains of the fortifications, and at the field of death the hill had become. It ran red from the summit to the base, grass stained and sticky with blood. He was sore from many nicks and bruises, as were the others in his squad. Gwyth, as was his way, had several deep slices, but none appeared to have truly harmed the giant. They were amongst the lucky few. Most of Glanhaol Fflamboethi was dead or dying, screaming out their last breaths in anguish. Even the firemages had not survived unscathed, for protected as they had been by the cutters and the officers in the very centre of the army, when the attack had broken the ring, skirmishers had managed to slay several where they lay. After today, Rhyfelwyr thought that no one who had been here would fight again.

***

That evening, he and the squad gathered weapons and armour from their deceased friends, and stacked them high in wagons no longer needed for food. Then the bodies of the Veryan dead were formed into a massive pyramid, and a firemage, still shaky and weak, played flame across its face. The funeral pyre lit the sky for miles around, and even the fleeing Lianese stopped in their tracks to look at the column of fire that split the night. Rhyfelwyr wished he could say a prayer for the dead, but there was nothing within him now. He was an empty shell, scourged clean of thought, and soon claimed by the night.

The next morn no one stirred, and it was only as the sun reached its peak in the sky that the first of the Veryan soldiers rose from their sleep. Some few wandered about, only to collapse as they recalled the final stand of a friend, but most had no energy for tears or emotions. Instead, they stared with blank eyes, a ruined world all that greeted their sight.

Gently, those few officers left chivvied the men from their beds and into a column, and by the glimmer of a full moon, Glanhaol Fflamboethi marched to the north. The Lianese watched them go, for neither side had any more stomach for blood.

Rhyfelwyr’s squad had been broken apart, each man placed in command of their own, but only for the journey home. They would turn in their blades at Bhreac Veryan, and would never fight again so long as they lived.

Rhocas woke in the bed of a wagon, and sat up in great pain. Movement was difficult and breathing more so, and he would live the remaining few years of his life as a cripple, his magic gone forever.

The sun set that night as it had so many others, but this night it set on Hymerodraeth Heula and the dreams of men.

The End

We hope you’ve enjoyed this Deepwood Publishing story. As part of our mission to give readers the best of up and coming fantasy and science fiction, the following pages contain a glimpse into
Tarranau
, the first full length novel from James Tallett and Deepwood Publishing.

Tale of the Apprentice

Tarranau sat upon the cliffs, looking into the clear blue sky, matched at the edge of the horizon by a darker sea. Ocean and heavens blurred into one grey-blue mass as the ocean mist softened the view and removed all hard lines until it became one seamless whole, air and water together. Below him, the sound of waves crashing into and over the rocks of the seashore provided background music to his relaxations and contemplations. It was the end of the day and one of his favourite moments: waving goodbye to the departing sun as it slipped below the horizon, the glowing rays reaching out through the low lying mist. Molten gold running across the water to greet him, a last warm caress before the darkness of night fell over the island.

The apprentice lay there for an hour after the sun disappeared, enjoying the fading warmth of the day and idle contemplation of the clouds, sea, and sky. Finally, the light had sunk low enough that the young student knew he needed to go back to the dormitory and head to the dining hall, for idle contemplations and golden rays had stirred and filled his mind, but done little for his growling belly. Grinning at the idea of eating sunbeams for dinner, Tarranau moved on down the path, loose gravel and worn away earth marking a trail that had been used for a long time, so long that it overrode any right to close it.

Lazy strides took Tarranau down from the cliffs, towards Tregonethra where it sat in a depression between natural walls of stone, walls that sheltered a wide inlet in the western shore of Bohortha Eilan. The city wrapped around the inlet, a mass of tall wooden buildings and shore front warehouses, with wood and stone docks reaching out across the beach and into the water, fingers stretching towards the open ocean. It was the home of the largest fleet that sailed anywhere in the world, a fleet comprised of deep sea fishing boats and heavily laden traders, carrying goods up and down the coastline, to and from the outer islands, of which Bohortha Eilan was the largest and most populated. It was on one of these boats that Tarranau hoped to make his career as a marine mage, as one of the guild.

It was back to their school that he went now, a school of which he had been a part since his tenth birthday. The guild of mages that ran the school sent out small parties to the communities that were within their scope, including Tarranau’s. The marine mages examined all boys at the age of ten, testing them to see if they had magical talent. Those who did fell into two categories in the eyes of the mages: those with a simple affinity, and those with real potential. Having an affinity meant being tied closely to the water, often able to manipulate the element slightly. They were given a few years of training, until the age of fourteen, and then sent off, to become whatever caught their fancy. Usually, these boys worked as sailors or fishermen; knowing the waters as they did, they felt more at home there than upon dry land.