Healer's Ruin (14 page)

'Keep your head down, Rovann,' he said.

With alarming speed the whole square transformed. Chalos had not even seen dancers move with such economy and precision. The whole formation now became a rank four-deep, facing southwards, the wounded abandoned in the crook of a hillock. Chalos could not see any Riln. The northerners were all gathered in the space between the Tarukataru and the Tarukaveri.

In the killing zone, where we had once been...

Looking to the east, he saw a black block of armoured men bristling with swords. The Corporal's detachment was doing the same as Jolm's, forming into a line in order to charge the back of the Riln.

The Riln have never fought warriors like this,
Chalos knew.
They've never encountered men who fight with the expertise with which a surgeon cuts, or an artist paints. They came here with sheer numbers, but it will be experience – an experience bred through centuries of internecine tribal warfare – that determines who shall be victor, or who shall be slain.

Then the call to attack sounded and every Krune in the ranks bellowed with all his might. The Dauwarks joined in too, their cries loud enough to split the air. Then the thundering of boots began, churning up the mud even further. Beyond the wall of sound could be heard a keening wail as the Riln realised that they were trapped.

'We've won,' said one of the injured Krune, a man who held on to his lower leg with both hands, the limb all but severed clean. 'But once the northerners are gone, we will have to face Agryce.'

Unable to heal the others, and unable to look any more at the face of the unconscious Dread Spear, Chalos slunk away, climbing stiffly to the top of the hillock to watch the two blocks of Tarukataru converge on the Riln. They herded them masterfully, creating a hollow triangular cell of Black Talon – one side led by Jolm, one side by the Corporal, and the other by Agryce – that contained the Riln. The walls crept closer together. The Riln were compressed, crushed, panicked. They died by the hundred as Chalos watched. The carnage was so methodical and bloody that, as the final Riln were slaughtered, he turned away and doubled up, retching drily as his already emptied stomach convulsed. Then he collapsed into a sitting position, groaning.

'What a warm-up exercise, eh, Rovann?' the maimed Krune called up to him. 'Now you get to see the real fight!'

'You want to come up and watch?'

The Krune grinned gleefully.

Getting the wounded man up the hill without losing his leg was a difficult project but at least it took the healer's mind off his own pain. After a few minutes they were seated together on the hillock with the rest of the wounded beneath them, watching two lines of warriors differentiate and form opposite one another.

Agryce's Black Talon had no Gilt Plates but they had more shadamars. And the damn Elite was still on the hill to the south-west, holding the ancient urn on his lap. Also, Agryce had more numbers. Perhaps she had started the march north with the same contingent as Jolm, but the battle with the Riln had softened the Tarukataru considerably. With sad eyes, Chalos saw the trail of dead and dying the Krune had left. There were whole mounds of Riln, all pale skin and red exposed guts, but there were Krune too in the debris, and a few Dauwarks. At a distance the Gilt Plates looked like gold boulders streaked with crimson. One was inching his way towards the ranks, but with every movement life seemed to ebb from him. As Chalos watched, the Dauwark went still.

'I don't think I can watch much more,' Chalos said.

'You're about to miss the best part,' the maimed Krune replied with genuine anticipation. 'A duel!'

Chalos could see now that at the head of each opposing line of soldiers stood a lieutenant, each mounted on a shadamar.

'And then what?' the healer asked with grim fascination, wanting to look away but unable to do so.

'The champions will fight, as the armies fight,' the maimed Kryne replied. 'It will be like two battles, each depending on the outcome of the other.'

'I'm not sure I understand.'

'I'm sure you don't, Rovann.'

Shrieks from the plain caught their full attention. Jolm and Agryce were riding full-pelt towards each other, their forces half a stride behind. Out of some peculiar traditional etiquette, the two sides met but left a roughly circular gap in the centre of the battle for the two lieutenants to fight their duel. As men of each tribe died around them, Agryce lost her shadamar to a canny thrust from Jolm. Without missing a breath she rolled into a crouch before driving her halberd into the Tarukataru leader's mount.

Both of Jolm's malformed legs were dangling over the right hand side of the saddle so he was able to easily slide from the animal as it went down, deftly rolling to dodge the crumpling steed's frantically flailing limbs. He then rushed Agryce, swinging his jagged blade. The Tarukaveri had a triangular shield furnished with a cruelly pointed boss and had now swapped her halberd for a finely made longsword. Jolm hacked his sword into Agryce's shield and with a skilful jink to the side he twisted the shield free of the woman's grasp. Shrieking with fury, the Tarukaveri lieutenant now grasped her sword in both gauntlets, adjusting her stance as the ruined shield tumbled away.

Because of the Tarukataru leader's malformed lower limbs, Chalos had expected Jolm to fight awkwardly out of the saddle but now he could see – even at a distance – how exaggerated the muscle mass was on the lieutenant's legs. The healer pictured Jolm as a youth, cursed and disdained by all Krune for what they saw as a lack of physical perfection, working doubly hard to become fit and strong, and ending up healthier than all the rest. It became immediately clear that the lieutenant had learned to use his deformity to his advantage. He could jink to the side, leaning so severely that he seemed to defy gravity, before darting in the opposite direction with a surety and speed that baffled his opponent. Twice Chalos saw Agryce almost topple as she swung for Jolm only for him to duck her blow and skip around her to thrust at her armoured back. She was constantly turning, chasing him, tripping over her own boots.

The battle raged round the two lieutenants. It was impossible to judge who was winning but one thing was certain – while they were fighting, the Dauwarks were causing mayhem. Dolga had directed them to focus their attention on the mounted Tarukaveri who greatly outnumbered the mounted Tarukataru and the Gilt Plates were executing their task with grim precision. With a perfect blend of brute force and skill they would parry the assault of the mounted Tarukaveri before using one tree trunk-like arm to batter the enemy soldier's shadamar into submission. The sound of snapping bones and hapless, whinnying beasts was almost drowned out by the continuous clashing of sword and armour, the bellowing of fighters and the howls of wounded. All these sounds bled together into the noise of war, a sound that Chalos was sick of hearing.

'He's a clever one,' said the maimed Krune from his place at the healer's side. 'See how he toys with the foe?'

The wounded warrior was right. Jolm spent most of the duel staring at his opponent's back but not making the killing blow. He was instead focusing his swings at the panels and links of Agryce's armour. With each blow the Tarukaveri lieutenant seemed to visibly buckle, her movements becoming sluggish.

The fight, for Jolm, was getting easier with each attack he made with his restless blade.

'But why?' Chalos said, shaking his head. 'Why not just end it? Isn't he tempting fate?'

'Fate?' the Krune frowned. 'Fate is a word used by the powerful to mask their tyranny or by the weak to justify their lack of ambition. Fate is a word for fools not for warriors.' He shifted with  grunt, still holding his leg in place, his knuckles white with effort. 'He's dragging it out to give his men time to put as many of the Tarukaveri in the ground as they can.'

'But what if the Tarukaveri kill more Tarukataru?'

'What?' the Krune snorted. 'There is a reason we Tarukataru sneer at Tarukaveri. They have spirits of ice. You either melt them with promises of imperial largesse, as the King did, or smash them with violence. They have always been a weasely tribe.'

'But there are more of them than there are of you.'

'So what? How many Riln did we kill today?'

The man made a good point but Chalos could not help wondering where Jolm's expertise ended and his arrogance began. The enemy Krune may have been of a tribe considered less courageous but they were still Black Talon. And they had more numbers and more mounted. Would the Gilt Plates be enough to balance the fight? Perhaps, but could they tip it?

Jolm is trusting his men to do as much damage as they can before he ends the duel... but he's not up here, he can't see the whole battle. The two lines are entrenched, neither is giving way. It's a dead heat.

I need to help them. But I can't.

He looked over to the Duke's Elite and saw Mysa circling over the man's helmeted head. The healer's heart quickened and contradictory thoughts assailed him. He worried for the bird's safety, especially since the Krune around the Elite were  trying to get a bead on her with their crossbows. But he was also desperate for her to dive and seize the urn from the Elite Guardsman's hands.

The crow weaved a pattern in the sky over the Elite, threatening to drop onto him before arcing away in an agonising tease. Chalos could just make out the crossbow bolts as they whizzed past her. The missiles slowly became visible the higher they got, until they seemed to hang in the air before twirling harmlessly down to earth.

Then, all of a sudden, and for no apparent reason, the Elite's horse reared and the man was deposited on the ground. Chalos hunched forward, squinting, desperate to see exactly what had happened. It hadn't been Mysa's doing, she was now swooping on the crossbowmen, clawing at their heads as they took aim at something on the ground.

The Elite was clambering up onto his feet now, but the urn was gone. Chalos watched with giddy delight as the Elite frantically looked left and right, scrutinising the earth for the artefact. Then, a few metres away to his right, a white outcrop of rock suddenly flared violet. The blast wave threw the crossbowmen off their feet and flayed the flesh from their bones, turning their Baldaw armour into brittle black flakes that drifted clear from their skeletons like dust motes from the surface of a slapped old book. The Duke's Elite, protected it seemed by some sort of superior armour or magical defence, remained standing for a few moments only to collapse when the wave of energy subsided, his body turned to ash and his armour clattering into a heap of loose pieces.

'Gods and bones!' the maimed Krune exclaimed, glancing over and frowning against the flash of unnatural light. 'What was that?'

Chalos saw Mysa circling high in the sky. She was cawing with jubilation.

'Sixt!' said Chalos, realisation dawning. 'It was Sixt!'

'What's a Sixt?'

Chalos rolled up his sleeves, flexed his fingers grinned at the Krune.

'It's your lucky day,' he said. 'Let go of the leg.'

Chalos sprinted across the open ground, all pain in his shoulder and foot gone. Beside him, running on two perfectly healthy legs, was the Krune warrior. Snatching up a discarded sword and shield without breaking his stride, the Black Talon soldier gave a savage smirk.

'I feel better than ever, Rovann!' he laughed.

'Good,' said Chalos. 'Because your fellows need your help.'

It took only a few moments for Samine and the other Krune from the pit of wounded to catch them up. All had grabbed the nearest weapon to hand and wore expressions of vicious determination except Samine who had rolled her sleeves back and contorted her hands into claws.

'All right,' she called out as they closed in on the battle, the backs of the Tarukataru just metres away. 'Let's win this!'

It wasn't much of a speech but it had not needed to be. The freshly-healed Krune launched themselves into the mass of fighters, pulling fatigued comrades aside and planting themselves in their place. Chalos threw himself into the Tarukataru line, plunging his hands at every wound he saw, no matter how light. Fallen Krune blinked back into consciousness, grabbed their swords and leapt at the enemy. Even broken shadamar clambered to their hooves, shaking their manes in bafflement before a Black Talon grabbed their reins and jumped into the saddle with a blood-curdling cry.

Samine planted her feet wide and jabbed her hands into the air at an angle. The air before her tore open with a slamming sound that seemed to press the grass flat to the earth for miles around. Then a torrent of flame, blazing purple at its core, emerged from a space a few inches from her twisted fingers. She curved the line of flame over the Tarukataru and onto the heads of the Tarukaveri.

The impact of the healer, the Dread Spear and the refreshed Krune soldiers was immediate. The Tarukaveri buckled like an old bridge under a freak wave and their shape went, enabling the Tarukataru to pile forward with a gruesome cheer. At this moment, Jolm jinked away from Agryce, once again ducking her swing, and then pushed his sword through her throat where the helm met the body armour. The Tarukaveri lieutenant died without a sound.

Awareness of the duel's outcome filtered quickly through the ranks of the Tarukaveri. They began to throw down their weapons, their spirits crushed. Gauntleted hands were raised in surrender. A few were slain where they stood as overzealous Krune and Dauwarks continued to rampage into the fractured enemy line but after a few moments the Tarukataru lowered their swords and began rounding up the enemy, signalling that the battle was done.

As the Krune began moving apart, finding the space to crouch and mop the blood from their weapons and armour, inspect their wounds and corral groups of kneeling Tarukaveri, Chalos found himself alone, ankle-deep in churned up mud, grinning beatifically. The peace that had descended over the scene seemed oddly out of place, sitting uneasily upon the ruin the warriors had wrought upon each other. Bodies had been crushed into the ground by bootheels and there were piles of corpses – mostly Riln – dotted across the plain. But it was a peace nonetheless and juxtaposed sharply with the clamour of battle that had been almost deafening just a few moments earlier.

He heard Mysa cawing from above and he craned his head back, shielding his eyes from the pale sun. Though relief was flooding his mind, making him feel elated, his body was exhausted. After the torrent of energy that had poured through it,  his soul felt hollowed out and raw as though it had been cored like an apple. He had no idea how many people he had healed but the hairs on his arms stood like fenceposts with the static charge of expended magical energy that clung to him like moss to a rock. He watched the bird circle, her way of celebrating their victory.

Then Mysa seemed to pause, hanging in the air, her curved beak pointing southward to the Dallian Woodland. A moment later she was coursing down to earth before she was inches from the healer's face, beating her wings frantically to halt her descent before hopping onto his outstretched wrist.

'Doom! Doom!' she rasped as she clambered sideways up his arm to rest on his shoulder. 'This was a reprieve, not a victory, Chalos! A mere reprieve!'

'What is it?' he asked, his heart sinking. He couldn't see beyond the ragged ranks of Krune that stood between him and a view of the enormous forest.

'The Duke!' said the bird. 'The Duke emerges!'

The Tarukataru had organised themselves in a wide line two ranks deep. At either end was what of the mounted, and arrayed before them were the Tarukaveri prisoners, slumped on their haunches with their hands behind their heads, stripped of weapons and dignity.

Jolm was mounted on a shadamar in the centre of the line, peering out through his towering demon-faced helm. Samine and Chalos, also mounted, were on his right hand with Dolga on his left. There was no sign of the Corporal. With a sadness that surprised him, Chalos assumed that the officer had died in the battle with Agryce's men.

Ahead, the Dallian Woodland was oozing soldiery. From between every tree came a graceful rider or a striding Black Talon. Pavarine also emerged, tended by sherdlings. Wagons, supply trains and caravans trundled out.

They must have known the good paths to take through the forest,
Chalos realised.
Damn the Duke, he kept it to himself, perhaps hoping that the tough crossing through that awful place would sap us of our will and endurance, and leave us ripe for slaughter – either by Agryce or the Riln.

He saw the Duke's mobile fortress, that hulking wagon with its wooden battlements, pennants and sentries, and had a brief flashback to the relative calm of the enormous camp near Hulker's Crag. Those memories seemed to belong to someone else now.

Memories from before I experienced front-line combat. Before terror and desperation. But also before Samine.

The Dread Spear's shadamar was pressed against his and her long-fingered hand was entwined in the healer's, squeezing tight. Her palm was clammy.

'We can't fight them,' she said. 'By which I mean, we can't win.'

'No,' muttered Dolga under his breath. 'But we can leave a dent on the treacherous bastard.'

Jolm, in the midst of them, said nothing.

It took some time for the Duke's force to fully emerge onto the plain. Eventually it lined up, dwarfing the Tarukataru in almost comical fashion. Chalos could almost sense the spirits of the Krune around him waning at the prospect of another fight against overwhelming odds. They had triumphed against the Riln and the Tarukaveri, thanks to Jolm's expertise as well as his stubborn refusal to lose, but there was no tactic and no show of confidence that could ensure anything but total defeat against the Duke's soldiers.

A horn blew and a rider crossed the space between the two forces. A Krune, dressed in the elegant armour of the Elites. He stopped a few paces from Jolm and saluted.

'Lieutenant Jolm!' he boomed. 'Greetings from Duke Elas! He is delighted to see you alive and regrets deeply the actions of the traitor Agryce.'

Jolm's armour creaked as he leaned his head to one side.

'Tell the Duke we are glad to see him,' he said, without a trace of sarcasm. 'We had thought ourselves abandoned.'

'The Woodland proved a difficult traversal,' the messenger replied. 'Nevertheless, we are here now. Please, ride with me. The Duke wishes to hear your report.'

'Very well,' Jolm said. 'I will bring Captain Dolga, of the Gilt Plates.'

'Excellent,' the messenger said, turning to the hulking Dauwark. 'Captain, the lone furrow ploughed by your warriors does you much honour. Let it be known that the Gilt Plates led the King's army into the Riln Plains.'

Dolga's eyes narrowed and he nodded slowly.

Chalos watched as Jolm and Dolga followed the messenger back to the Duke's force, the Dauwark loping forward in bear-like fashion beside the lieutenant's shadamar.

'What's going on?' he breathed.

'Looks like we're not going to die today after all,' Samine said, leaning close to his ear. The heat of her breath thrilled the healer and he almost didn't catch what she said. 'I think were going to join back up with the Duke.'

'After all that's happened?' Chalos couldn't believe it.

'Think about it,' Samine said, always more astute when it came to warfare and the strange politics that surrounded it. 'The Duke sent Agryce and her Tarukaveri to slay the Tarukataru and she failed. Now, he can elect to slaughter Jolm and his men now, but where will that leave him? Both his lieutenants will be dead, and he'll have lost twice as many Black Talon as he had planned. No, Chalos. He's adapting to the terrain, so to speak.'

'So he's just going to pretend he had nothing to do with it? And what about Dolga, and the way the Duke sent the Gilt Plates out here alone to die?'

'Dolga can't fight the Duke alone,' Samine shrugged. 'He's got no choice but the play the Duke's game. He won't like it, but it's the only way he and his men get to live.'

'Count your blessings,' said Mysa, who was sitting on the healer's shoulder. 'You might yet see the Ruin.'

Grunting non-committally, Chalos turned to Samine.

'Still no sign of Sixt?',

'No,' she sighed. 'Thank you for asking. I can't believe he's gone. I keep expecting him to scurry up to me, flicking his tongue and cracking his jokes.'

'He cracked jokes?'

Samine smiled whimsically.

'All the time. Bad jokes, but nevertheless...'

'He was brave, in the end,' Chalos said. 'If he hadn't smashed that urn, we'd all be dead.'

The Dread Spear looked down at the empty saddlebag hanging from  her shadamar and placed her free hand on it, stroking the fabric.

'I know,' she said softly. 'I was lying in a ditch half-dead and he was crossing the battlefield to save the day. My brave Accomplice.' She shook her head as if to clear it and sniffed sharply, burying her grief. 'So, what was that urn, anyway?'

'Mysa says it was something very old,' Chalos replied with a barely concealed shudder. 'It contained a tiny portal to another world. When opened, it drained magic, feeding it so something on the other side. As Sixt smashed it against that rock, it exploded, hurling out a mass of leeched energy.' He shook his head in awe. 'You should have seen what it did to the Elite who had been holding it. He just... vanished.'

'Like Sixt.'

'Yes,' Chalos said regretfully. 'Like Sixt.'

'I'll see him again,' Samine said boldly. 'Accomplices are tough, especially against their master's magery. And most of what was in that urn was mine.' She took her hand away from the saddle-bag and placed it on the reins of her mount. 'What do you think was on the other side of the portal? What was using the urn to feed?'

Chalos remembered Mysa's hushed words... A Xlun Aeon-cleaver. One of the foulest things in existence. Even the Guardians had been afraid of them.

'I don't know,' he lied. 'Let's hope we never find out.'

The next few hours were full of falsehood and strangeness. Jolm returned full of good humour and told his men to set up camp with the Duke. Dazed by this turn of events but grateful at the prospect of rest, the Tarukataru Black Talon gruffly acquiesced, making their way cautiously towards the Duke's line. Chalos noticed that Dolga and the Gilt Plates had extricated themselves from their Tarukaveri comrades, with whom they had stood so firmly against the Riln and Tarukaveri, and were now setting up camp on the edge of the main force.
A bridge has been burned between Dolga and Jolm,
he knew. This pained him. Did violence not foster camaraderie between allies? Clearly he still had a lot to learn about war.

That night, after dining on rich slivers of pavarine and hearty chunks of grey bread, Chalos and Samine rutted breathlessly in their tent, glad of the privacy. The healer was surprised by the Dread Spear's passion as she climbed onto him and kissed him so hard that the back of his skull was pushed into the ground. When they were both spent, she fell asleep beside him, and although he was exhausted the healer slunk out of the tent and sat looking up at the stars with Mysa nestling in the crook of his neck. After a couple of hours he retreated back inside the tent and sleep claimed him like a black glove closing around his mind.

The dream he had that night would stay with him. He was in a vast garden, but the flowers were crystalline and pulsed with waves of multicoloured light. The sky glowed pink, blue, purple and emerald green. Chalos saw himself standing there, staring back at himself, eyes burning.

When he awoke he felt numb. He ran a hand through his lank black hair and felt nothing. He bit his lip and there was no pain. Rushing out of the tent he grabbed his canteen – refilled along with everyone else's from the Duke's own supplies – and threw the water over his face. The feeling came back to his flesh and he gasped with relief.

The madness. It's the madness. All that healing... I'm losing myself to that other world. The world of magic...

Samine peeped out of the tent, naked from the waist up.

'What's up?'

'Nothing,' Chalos stammered. 'I'm fine.' He turned and offered her a weak smile. 'I think I just had a bad dream.'