The Archer From Kipleth (Book 2) (31 page)

Ronenth was prepared might meet and fight any garonds that  thought to flank the human army, as Solienth had counseled him to do. But, the ice was silent and lonely.

Ronenth wasn’t sure if he wasn’t going in a circle. He huffed in pain as he slipped down the side of an iceberg. He tightly clutched the large canvas pack that held his elvish weapon.

The doubt of the last few days played in his mind. Was he worthy of Frea’s love? Had he betrayed his best friend, Arnwylf? Had he cowardly abandoned his mentor and the Master of the Library in New Rogar Li?

He thought of Frea with the flame red hair. He knew she and Arnwylf were meant to be together. But wasn’t he allowed to find happiness? Ronenth grit his teeth. What awful fate had brought him to this frozen death? With the death of Solienth, now there were only two Glafs in all the world. Would he freeze to death out on this forsaken ice and leave Yulenth as the last Glaf in all the world? The world. Who had made this world such a misery for him?

He thought back to the days when his family fled Glafemen. Even though a child, he remembered the garond general who  slew his family and countrymen with such zeal and pleasure. If he had that tall, garond general in his hands, he would pay him back for all of Glafemen.

He couldn’t spend the night out on the icebergs. In the rain, he would freeze to death. Fear began to close his throat with pain.

A large black shape slithered through the crevasses of ice.

“Who’s there?” Ronenth challenged as he unbuckled his canvas pack.

“I a friend,” Baalenruud hissed, his strange snake’s eyes staring through the rising dark.

“I know who you are,” Ronenth said as he pulled out the paricale. “You’re Baalenruud. You are not to be trusted.”

“No, no,” the aesir hissed. “I help you. I guide you. I know the way. Follow me. We go to kill garonds.”

With that the huge viper slithered away through a pass in the ice.

Ronenth shook his head. It was madness. But he was lost, and had nothing to lose. And, their was a payment to be collected... for all of Glafemen.

As Arnwylf reached the far side of the bridge, he found soldiers from his siege of the Ancient Castle of the North waiting for him. An escort of four burly soldiers hustled Arnwylf to a tent specially set aside for his use. All his old comrades were there.

“Where is Geleiden and Husvet?” Arnwylf asked.

“They went west with the wolves to cross at a shallower part of the Bairn River,” a lieutenant answered. “The wolves would not cross the bridges made of boats.”

“I sorely wish I had Conniker with me right now,” Arnwylf said.

Caerlund and several other generals stopped by Arnwylf’s tent.

“Come with us to the front line,” Caerlund said.

“He has not eaten yet,” the lieutenant protested.

“I will eat later,” Arnwylf reassured, and left with Caerlund.

As they sloshed to the front line, Arnwylf walked close to Caerlund.

“I saw Apghilis amongst the troops,” he told him.

“What! And you didn’t kill him then and there?” Caerlund exclaimed.

“There were too many soldiers,” Arnwylf said. “But he thinks I have the Mattear Gram, and he means to kill me for it.”

Caerlund scratched his orange beard.

“You don’t have the sword do you?” He asked Arnwylf with a hopeful squint.

“No, I lost it,” was all Arnwylf quietly said.

As they reached the front line, the rain stopped, but the streams and spillage from the Lake of Ettonne made all of Byland swampy. The clouds in the night sky moved with a strange quickness, almost as if they were being drawn back like a curtain.

Nunee, the Mother Moon was already high in the vault of the night sky. The Wanderer, the second moon, was almost at the apex of it’s erratic orbit. It looked like nothing more than a bright star next to Nunee.

With the flood of moonlight, Caerlund, Arnwylf and the generals could more clearly see the rest of Byland. The eastern half swarmed with the black forms of nearly a million garond soldiers. They out numbered the humans at ten to one.

“At least the Flume will help us hold them back,” a general ruefully mused.

Then, in the distance, a torch amongst the garonds was lit. Then another and another. Eastern Byland became a sea of torches.

“They are attacking,” Arnwylf breathed, “now.”

“Tákkeg Daniei,” Caerlund whispered. “You are right.”

Caerlund lifted his battle axe.

“Alarm! Alarm!” Caerlund bellowed. “The enemy is attacking!”

The panic and clatter only made the torch bearing garonds, barely a league away, break into a sprint.

In the middle of the advancing garond army, a battered captain reported to Ravensdred.

“What of my flanking soldiers moving out onto the ice?” Ravensdred demanded.

“A boy,” the garond captain stammered, “a human boy kills everyone. He has a strange weapon. And a large snake helps him!”

Ravensdred clamped his heavy paw around his captain’s neck.

“I want more soldiers out on the ice,” Ravensdred bellowed as he strangled his defeated captain. “You, you,” he pointed at two other captains, “take a thousand soldiers and kill this boy and his pet snake!”

Out on the ice clogging the southern shore of the Great Lake of Ettonne, Baalenruud looked back.

“Yes, yes,” the large black adder hissed, “you use the elvish weapon as if you were born in Lanis Rhyl Landemiriam. But we must hurry and join the human army on the land!”

Ronenth paused to wipe away the garond blood splattered across his grim smile. He scurried over the uneven chunks of ice, following Baalenruud.

The Kaprk-Uusshu hurdled over tents in the human camps in Harvestley. It threw Stavolebe off its back with one flinch. Then, the beast headed south to the cliffs facing the Bight of Lanis. The beast could be seen making a grand splash in the surf.

Stavolebe picked himself up from the dirt of Harvestley. Only an old man had seen him thrown from the creature’s back, all other eyes were on the Kaprk-Uusshu swimming out to sea, or the  advancing armies out on Byland.

Stavolebe knew he had only a brief lead on the Archer and the elf, but he still had to shoulder his way past the crush of soldiers trying to cross the Flume of Gawry to join the battle just begun. He just didn’t know what to do once he had crossed the flume.

Deifol Hroth was standing next to Stavolebe.

“Find the garond general called Ravensdred,” the Dark Lord said. “Give him the magic objects.” Then Deifol Hroth was gone.

Stavolebe, clutching the disguised rucksack, pushed his way to the closest bridge over the Flume of Gawry.

The Archer and the elf charged their horses into the camps of Harvestley.

“The strange beast,” the Archer cried, “which way did it go!?”

“It went over the cliff and out to sea,” a young woman said.

“Did anyone see the man on it’s back?” The elf asked.

“He went to the battle,” the old man who saw Stavolebe said.

“Why would he-?” The elf started to ask.

“Let us find him and ask him,” the Archer said through gritted teeth, and the two sprinted for the bridges over the flume.

The front lines of humans and garonds met with a resounding clash. Arrows flew from both sides. The melee seemed maddening and undirected. The humans had no time to plan, and the garonds were simply using their superior numbers to crush the enemy. The moment they joined in battle, the garonds carrying torches dropped them to hiss out in the standing water that both sides sloshed through.

The full light of Nunee, Mother Moon, helped, but the darkness of the night meant that many soldiers on both sides unintentionally wounded their own comrades.

The Wanderer, the second moon, was growing brighter as it grew in size, as it approached the earth on it’s odd orbital path.

Arnwylf hacked and slashed with all his might. His soldiers fought well, fought as a unit, having spent nearly a year together in the northern wastes, but they lacked the advantage of their wolves.

As well as the humans fought, there were just too many garonds, and they kept pushing and pushing the humans back.

“Fall back to the Flume of Gawry!” Caerlund ordered. “We can defend from the far side of the flume!”

The retreat only emboldened the garonds and the human army began to crumble.

“Now is the time to show the sword and lead the army to victory,” Apghilis said behind Arnwylf.

Arnwylf didn’t hesitate, or wait for his father’s murderer to cowardly strike from behind. Arnwylf spun and brought his sword up, slicing off a third of Apghilis’ head on the right side. Arnwylf paused at the height of his swing. Apghilis was frozen with the quickness of Arnwylf’s attack. Then, Arnwylf brought his sword down, slashing off a third of Apghilis’ head on the left side. All that was left of Apghilis was his nose and a thin bloody section of his head. His fat, disgusting body slumped to splash in the water now pouring over Byland.

“Get every soldier back across!” Arnwylf said, then he turned to stand next to Caerlund and protect the soldiers who now scrambled back over the bridges that spanned the flume.

The Archer and the elf shouldered their way past the retreating human soldiers, and made their way up to Caerlund and Arnwylf.

“Have you seen Lord Stavolebe!?” The Archer asked.

“No,” Caerlund said. “But, you should have stayed on the other side. I fear you have rushed to your doom.”

The Archer fought with the elvish sword Bravilc, and the elf wielded the Moon Sword with deadly effectiveness.

However, the garonds pressed their advantage and pushed their own soldiers onto the spears and swords of the humans. Every  garond killed was replaced by three more. Ravensdred was nearby. He barked out orders that energized his troops. The garond general smashed human after human with his massive club. Ravensdred spotted Arnwylf, roared, and pushed towards him.

Then a clanking, grinding, clashing sound made every warrior, human and garond, pause.

“The paricale,” the elf whispered.

A large black adder whipped past Iounelle, sinking its fangs in a garond ready to club her.

“We come to save you,” Baalenruud lisped to the elf, and then turned to strike at the garonds again and again with obvious delight in the violence he wrought.

Iounelle turned to see Ronenth advancing like an undeniable engine of destruction, his face a blank mask of pain, desiring justice and revenge. Ronenth kept the sixteen, silvery segments in constant motion. It was mesmerizing.

Ronenth moved the paricale back and forth like a long saw. He walked sideways to get to Caerlund and Arnwylf. The garond line in front of Ronenth was cut to pieces, arms and torsos cut off as though they were made of paper.

The garonds rushed Ronenth, but he brought the paricale around into a circle around his body, spinning, spinning, cutting and slicing.

In a move similar to the action that beheaded the garond in Lanis, a curling loop swept up behind Ronenth. Iounelle gasped. Ronenth expertly bent forward completely at the waist as the paricale whipped over his back to decimate four garonds before him.

Several garond archers were brought up to kill Ronenth, but as soon as they loosed their arrows, Ronenth brought the paricale in with a snap of his wrist, and the sixteen segments locked into a shield, as he gathered each segment. The garond arrows harmless deflected with resounding clangs.

Ronenth whipped the paricale out to its full length and decapitated the garond archers with a flick of his wrist.

Ronenth spun the paricale in a figure eight in front of himself and pushed the garond line back. Garond hands and arms were hacked off with vicious, unrelenting precision.

Ravensdred bellowed in rage and shoved his own soldiers aside to get to Ronenth. Ravensdred hefted his titanic club and swung at Ronenth.

The Glaf boy brought the paricale back into two, conical clusters of six segments on either hand, and he punched and deflected Ravensdred’s blows as effortlessly as though swatting at an annoying fly.

“I know you,” Ronenth coldly said to Ravensdred. “You. You were the one who destroyed all my people.”

Ravensdred growled in anger and fought harder, despite the humiliation he was suffering at Ronenth’s hands. When the supporting garonds got too close to the showdown between Ravensdred and Ronenth, the Glaf boy shot the paricale out to it full length, gutting every garond within ten paces. Then he quickly snapped the paricale back into close fighting formation against Ravensdred.

Iounelle suddenly winced in intense pain and clutched her arm. She ripped open her sleeve to discover that there was still a splinter from the fight against Deifol Hroth in the Weald embedded in her arm. The wound was very red and weeping with puss. The end of the splinter was just above her skin and she plucked at it. But, she couldn’t get a good grip on the slippery sliver.