Arm Of Galemar (Book 2) (103 page)

Marik pulled back without opening a channel to the
lines.  The mass diffusion hung thickly around the outer forest.  It should
provide him with energy ample to his needs.  Neither the strength working nor
the physical shield required enormous energy supplies.

It was good to know the lines were there, though.  He
opened his eyes.  The black soldiers had crossed half the distance.  Behind the
mercenaries, the Arm led his forces at a hard gallop.  An even toss of the coin
as to which would arrive first.

Battleground.  He stood at the collision point where
two forces would meet.  Where the battle would be joined.  Marik caressed his
hilt, unleashed his battle instincts, and waited to prove himself.

*        *        *        *        *

Furious.  Had there ever been any point at which his
fury glowed a burning white hotter than this?  Four men had halted to stop him,
stop him,
once they realized they were being pursued.  They dared to
think four spit-bladed novices could prevent his justice?  After the long road
he had followed to meet them here?

Colbey chewed his lip, tasting blood droplets through
the flesh his teeth opened.  The damnable fodder
had
slowed him too
long.  Long enough that the coward had escaped into the advancing invader army.

He had taken too long, dawdling when he should have
pelted.  A delicious anticipation had overtaken him when he’d drawn closer to
the man, delectable as pure spring water after months of only muddy streams to
partake of.  It had slowed his pace to a near skip as he felt the murderer
within his grasp.

Then the trickster’s butchers appeared.  They had
deceived
him into believing the minor camp by the Rovasii was their entire southern
forces.  Once he had broken cover and revealed himself, they sprung the trap
they had built for him.  Foul and dirty tactics.  Only to be expected from such
filth as these.

Sylvia’s cool hand was a counter to Liam’s barking
demands that he attack hard and destroy them to a man.  His feet twitched to
carry him onward…but the cold truth faced him, undeniable, its presence filling
the northern snowfields.  The Dead Man had disappeared into that fresh hoard. 
Rooting him out…that would take…would take…

Colbey shook though the cold did not touch him.  For a
moment he wanted to curl into a ball and weep.

Liam slapped him with a mental shout. 
:Sniveling
coward!  First you fail us to our deaths!  Now you fail us in our vengeance!:

It stiffened his spine.  He wanted to shout back in a
red rage that he would succeed, that he would kill every betrayer and
desecrator as he’d cut down these four rearguard fools.  Colbey kicked the
gaping wound in one throat where his sword had found the opening between helm
and collar.  Blood splattered across the already stained snow.

The head lolled from his blow’s force, the helm
slipped from a seated position on the dead skull.  He noted it, then Sylvia’s
calmer voice whispered a suggestion to him.

Perhaps.  They were not so far off.  Was it not
justice for both?  Betrayers killing desecrators.  Covetous liars fighting
murderers.

Colbey crouched, his fingers fumbling while he
worked.  Moments passed before he understood that his hands had lost their
precision because he laughed, his body shaking with jubilee.

Why should he not laugh?  Liam roared with the old
bellowing guffaws he had always effected.  Sylvia beamed down on him with her
broad smile.  Colbey joined them as two armies closed to squeeze him between
them in a bloody vice.

The Kings led the charge, or perhaps had been pushed
ahead by the thundering soldiers running in the Arm’s wake.  Being the first to
cross swords was business as usual for the mercenaries; they would have felt
odd fighting in any other position.

With the Arm in the point, Galemar’s forces reached
the snowy swell that held the Kings as enemy footsoldiers stormed over a
matching roll in the land a hundred yards north.  The kingdom fighters never
slowed, absorbing the mercenaries and their own hunter force on the fly.

Marik ran unencumbered, holding off the strength
working until the swords started swinging.  Conservation would play a telling
roll over the next candlemark, or several marks if any further surprises lay in
store.  Several times his feet slipped across the frozen ground.  He had
practice in winter fighting though, and had learned the simple tricks to help
maintain balance on slick footing.  All his winter abilities had been garnered
over the last eightdays, which he would mention to Tollaf when he returned. 
Loudly and clearly.  To what use did spending a few marks falling over each
other in a Temperature Reality make when practical experience proved time
without end to be the best teacher?

He pounded across the open field with his shieldmates
in a charging line.  Dietrik, as always, watched one flank.  This time Cork ran
to his right.  Marik would have preferred anyone else in the unit, even
swordless, prissy Arvallar.  They would all have the sense to give him the room
his blade needed.  Cork might not so much as realize being shoulder-to-shoulder
only leant an advantage when every man wielded similar short swords.

Floroes loped in his customary bound to Cork’s
opposite side, with Wyman the next in the line.  Churt pattered behind the
older man.  It had become a given that the two would usually partner together
when given the opportunity.

Covering Dietrik’s left flank was Talbot, which might
also cause problems stemming from the man’s good-intentioned efforts.  Edwin
ran with his bow held low behind the bumbler, arrow loosely nocked.  Perhaps
the archer could provide enough distraction that Talbot could make use of the
skill that had earned him a place in the band.

Beyond Talbot ran a First Unit swordsman, name
unremembered by Marik who never made much effort with the mercs outside his
unit.  Chiksan jogged one man beyond with his spear leaning on his shoulder,
the pole arm’s head nearly braining the man behind him at times.

Everyone knew this would be a hard battle with a high
death count.  Their numbers were too closely matched to make anyone optimistic
in spite of the baritone rallying calls from the Arm, which only enthused the
soldiers.  Equal clashing forces meant a death-battle.  The only worse
propositions were being cornered by a larger force or walking unknowing into an
ambush. 
A commander who finds his forces in a battle where the odds are
even is a commander who has not planned properly.
  One of Landon’s
observations, recalled so clearly by the situation that Marik nearly heard the
voice true.

But the Kings would fight their best, and with him at
the fore, they would destroy most any soldier force which they might face.  Let
the army soldiers get themselves killed off.  They could see in person how a
Crimson King battled.

The two lines closed.  Only ten steps away, and Marik
could see the fabled whites of his enemy’s eyes.  Matching the mercenary
frontline was a line of black-armored soldiers.  Behind them stretched a
seeming sea wherein roiled foe upon waiting foe.

Combed helms atop black cure-belly vests, greeves and
cuisseses and rerebraces…their strange armor would not hinder him this time! 
Marik tapped his inner reserves with his mage talent, allowing the usual amount
to flood through his body’s inner channels.  He carefully prevented the
outpouring channels from forming into a single aqueduct.  With raw willpower,
he kept one channel separate from the rest turning inward, using this one and
the energy it directed to craft the physical shield around his sword.

Marik swung with his superior might from the left,
trusting Dietrik to stay aware of his blade.  The blow arced into the black
soldiers.  His timing was perfect as both lines ran into each other with the
force of an unchocked wagon crashing into a wall footing a steep hill.

Their line had maintained tighter ranks than the
mercenaries’ owing to the identical swords carried by each.  Marik’s sword met
a blade that swung in an opposite arc to his.  His strength forced the sword
backward with hardly enough resistance for Marik to notice it.  The shielded
blade crashed against the man’s chest, knocking him hard sideways into the next
fighter.

Cork nearly got caught in the rebound.  He had dashed
forward until Marik’s blow caught the two men at once, including the enemy Cork
had meant to engage.  The soldier who had taken the blow fell, his sword
slipping from his grasp.  His leather vest had caved-in and was molded to the
crushed ribcage beneath.

The second soldier had taken no damage beyond the
fall.  He scrambled to regain his feet, and Cork gave over his goggling to act
as a proper mercenary ought to.

Dietrik had not earned a kill on first strike, an
accomplishment several men prided their abilities by.  He gave no consideration
to such matters.  Two soldiers were pairing against him.  They busied him with
deflecting their quick sword lashes, leaving him very few openings to
counterattack with his faster blade.

Marik swung in an opposite slash to his first before
the second line could push forward, filling the hole left by the first two
Marik had brushed aside.  Dietrik’s soldier saw the strike coming but his blade
did as little to stop Marik’s broadsword as the earlier had.  His sword struck,
bent the foe’s wrist back, forced the blade against the soldier’s upper arm,
then continued to crush blade, arm and ribs together into a shattered mess.

That soldier too was hurled sideways by the terrific
force.  Dietrik killed the second soldier without hesitation.  His blade tip
ripped under the man’s chin before he finished falling.

Marik brought his sword back around to fend off an
attack by the second line soldiers who had leapt over the first corpse.  He
continued to fight, marveling at the beauty of his shielded sword.

Without need to worry over the blade’s edge or
weaknesses due to cracks in the steel, he could be less discriminating in his
attacks.  As long as they connected with his opponent, they would severely
cripple, if not kill his foe outright.

A casual swipe from the west caught the next in the
gut, folding the man in half despite his treated leather.  The reverse stroke
glanced off a different soldier’s shoulder guard, dropping the man to his
knees, howling.  His shoulder might be broken, or simply dislocated.  That arm
would not hold a sword for the rest of this battle.  Other Kings or Galemaran
fighters would finish the man off.

After six blows, he estimated his reserves were down
twenty percent.  The constant drain from his strength working had always
consumed energy in surprising amounts.  Every contact the sword made with an
enemy degraded the shield around it, requiring nonstop patching to keep it from
collapsing.

But his power had become unstoppable!  He might be
able to cut his way straight through to the invaders’ rear guard!

The snapping of his shielding channel quickly brought
him back to his senses.  He had allowed his concentration to slip too much. 
Just as well he could afford to focus less on the fighting, that a casual blow
from him dealt massive damage.  Dual channeling still required most of his
mental strength.  Marik paused long enough to force the channel to separate
from the primary outflow from his reserves.

Arrows streaked past his shoulders into the churning
enemy mob.  On several occasions a quarrel would puncture the cure-belly vest
on a man Marik meant to kill.  He always forced his eyes to look straight ahead
when that happened.  Churt would not backshoot him in battle no matter how much
the boy disliked him.  Probably.  Besides, unless he could resupply from the
kingdom forces, he only had a few quarrels left to shoot.

Battle currents swept Cork away after the first few
minutes.  Bancroft edged into his position to fill the gap.  Dietrik was forced
to retreat through the frontline after a sword got around his rapier’s guard
and gashed his arm.  He would be back soon enough, Marik knew, once an
emergency bandage had been wrapped around the wound.

Whoever these strange soldiers might be, wherever they
came from, they were no more or less worthy than any other fighters Marik had
ever faced.  In the grip of battle, the old, comfortable rhythms settled into
him.  Private guardsmen, blue uniforms or black armor, the enemy always
screamed the same way when they were defeated, always fell to superior skills,
always smelled of the same sharp, hot stench when their kidneys were ground
beneath uncaring boots and their intestines stretched from where their stomachs
had been sliced open to where they had finally stopped crawling.

Eight minutes after the first clash, Marik stepped
back between Bancroft and Talbot.  His reserves had been expended.  He reached
for the mass diffusion.  To his surprise, the mists surrounding him had thinned
considerably.

He switched to magesight to find the diffusion
shredded in many places.  The density in the immediate area had changed enough
that he’d noticed by its feel.

Marik glanced around.  For the first time he saw the
fires among the stands of trees to the east.  A moment after noticing them, he
saw an energy mass burning through the etheric plane.  It streaked from the
invading force’s heart and burst across a shield.  He could not see it, but
that must be what happened.  The energies cascaded across an invisible convex
barrier without breaking through.

Heads of the men around him blocked his line of sight,
yet he hardly needed to crane his neck when a building-sized fireball erupted,
consuming the upper tree boughs.  It rose in a black and orange mushroom,
capped atop a smoky stem that elongated as the crown rose higher into the sky.

Must be Henodd.  And these damned bastards brought
their own magic user!

Not his problem this time.  Henodd would deal with
it.  That was his job, not the job of a piddling apprentice who would as soon
never talk to any full mage ever again.

Arrows whistled overhead.  At a guess there must be
close to two-hundred archers firing volleys into the Galemarans’ deeper ranks. 
Too close to the front would endanger their own soldiers as well.

The shrill arrow screams filled his ears in a familiar
song, a counter melody to a thousand swords ringing off each other, battle
cries of defiance and alarm, orders flying over the din, and weaving throughout
it all, the dying.  Their chorus possessed endless variety.  Each dying man’s
final vocals were unique.  No two men ever died the same way.

It made every battle different.

It made every battle the same.

Except this battle had an accompanying chorus.  The
surviving beasts had finally been brought to the fight.  Thirty monsters
collected by whatever white-robes had escaped were led into the rear Galemaran
flanks.  Their throaty roars provided a new, eerie contribution to the music of
war.

Marik stepped back into the fray after reinstating
both workings.  He set to a continuous pattern, endlessly swinging his sword
whether an enemy stood in its path or no.  At such times, he swiveled and found
new foes to throw into his meat grinder.

He swung upward at a diagonal, curved the sword
around, then slashed upward in a matching opposite.  His sword described a
figure eight, one lain on its side, the space before him slashed twice a second
by his ceaselessly moving blade.

Every blow that connected brought damage ranging from
broken bones to bodies hurled several feet away.  Other Galemarans sweated and
worked to find openings in their enemies’ defenses.  He advanced relentlessly,
staving in ribcages and shattering spinal bones.

In his mind, he pictured using a cudgel to knock away
a line of sticks stuck only inches into the ground by children.  One by one, as
he walked down the line, he struck them aside with casual ease, breaking a
handful, hurling others.

None could stand against him.  No force on this
battlefield could match him.  He had already killed twenty or so soldiers,
crippled at least as many to match.  His raw strength wrought massive
casualties among their ranks, and he had not yet needed to bring his superior
sword skills into play.  With him at the head, as the strongest warrior should
be, he would lead Galemar into driving these foreigners back where they came
from!

And the Arm could stand among the twisted corpses
littering the snow and watch as he proved that noble blood alone had
never
been what the Arm of Galemar was about.

Marik gritted his teeth while grinning at the same
time, and set to pounding as many of these black-armored soldiers as he could
reach.

*        *        *        *        *

“That isn’t working at all, captain!  We need bowmen,
not swords!”