Robert Adams - The Death of a Legend

Instinctively, he winced and flinched at the memory. “One minute I was hacking my way through that mob of rebels, the next minute it felt as if lightning had struck me in the small of the back. Then that pavement came up and slammed against my visor and it was all I could do to turn my head enough to see that gigantic rebel raising his club to finish me. Thank Sun and Wind that Geros had been hard on my heels through the whole, bloody broil. How did the tale I squeezed out of him go, now?”

Freefighter Color Sergeant Geros Lahvoheetos, well protected by his two Freefighter color guards and the old infantryman, Djim Bohluh—a fearsome and formidable fighter for all his age—had trailed the thoheeks and Captain Raikuh as closely as possible amid the chaos of shove, thrust, slash and hack. Leaden slingshot and various other missiles had holed and rent the Red Eagle Banner during that protracted and ghastly ascent of the hill, but Djim’s big infantry shield had sheltered Geros himself from any harm.

One of his assigned guards—Hahfah, he thought it was— had fallen off the stone wall with a stove-in helmet, so close that his plunging body almost took Geros with it. The other one rolled off the walltop into the paved court, locked in a deadly grapple with a rebel.

Then, down in the swirling battle raging all over that court, both Pawl Raikuh and old Djim were swept out of the narrow view afforded Geros by his closed visor. Nonetheless, he kept doggedly on his lord’s heels, using his fine sword where necessary and taking blows on his armor and helm until his entire being was a single, throbbing ache.

Just ahead of the colors, Bili’s gore-slimy axe downed rebel after rebel—shattering shields, crumpling plate and helms, severing limbs, smashing heads and chests. Behind Geros, wielding sabers and broadswords and a miscellany of pole arms, came two score Freefighters of the Morguhn Company and, after them, the battered remnants of the Confederation infantry, mostly spearless now but proving no less deadly with shortsword and shield.

The rebels fought hard, as vicious as so many cornered rats, holding every bare inch of ground with a suicidal tenacity; but slowly they were driven back and back, their thinning line constricting around a central brick-and-stone platform mounting two large engines. Twice they tried to form a ring of overlapped shields, but each time Bill’s terrible axe lopped off spearheads and beat down shields and the Freefighters poured ravening through the gaps, their blood-dimmed blades sending more and more dozens of rebels down to gasp out their lives on the red-running ground.

Then the main battle was boiling about the platform, under the very arms of the big catapults, and old Djim—bleeding in a dozen places, but grinning broadly—was once more at Geros’ side, only to be swept away and disappear again a moment later. A sustained roar of deep-voiced cheering arose from the rear, loud enough that the color sergeant could hear it even over the incredible din engulfing him. He took a brief glance over his shoulder to see fresh companies of Confederation infantry, wave after wave of them, appear atop the wall and jump down into the court.

He turned back just in time to see Thoheeks Bili beaten to earth by a giant of a man swinging a massive timber like a whole treetrunk and still in the bark. Oblivious of the blades beating upon his cuirass, Geros hurled himself forward, ducked under the swing of the giant’s log and jammed the mostly ornamental brass point of the standard staff deep into the monstrous man’s belly, just below the horn-buckled belt.

With a high, falsetto scream, the stricken rebel dropped his log, grabbed the shaft and pulled it free of his body with an ugly sucking sound. Then, whining, his pasty, beardless face contorted, he lumbered toward the man who had hurt him, his ham-sized hands extended before him.

Instinctively, Geros realized that it would be his very life to chance within reach of those hands. Wedging the ferrule of the standard in a wide crack between the paves, he brought up his sword and danced back out of reach as lightly as his tired, trembling legs would move. Assuming a point fighter’s crouch, he awaited his huge foe’s slow advance, then aimed a powerful thrust at the impossibly broad expanse of unarmored chest… and almost fell into those deadly clutches!

Too late, he noticed that the giant’s arms not only were packed with rolling muscles but were almost as long as the combined lengths of his sword and sword arm. Even though he hurriedly pulled the thrust, the right hand locked about the swordblade and sought to jerk Geros closer, to his death.

Frantically, the sergeant pulled back with all his might. After a heart-stopping moment of resistance, the honed edges sliced through callus and skin and flesh and sinew to grate on massy bone and slide free, the sword’s passage lubricated with hot red blood.

Raising his ruined, useless, spurting hand to eye level, the hulking creature rant the air with another of those shrill, womanish screams, then placed the gory palm and fingers tight against his punctured belly, from which a purplish-pink loop of gut was working. But he did not halt his shuffling advance.

To fall or even stumble would presage a messy death, so Geros backed cautiously, his knees flexed and his booted feet feeling a way across the uneven footing of blood-slick paving, dropped weapons and still or twitching bodies. The young sergeant was suffused with a cold, crawling terror, for he well knew that no sane man would so stalk an armed and armored opponent while lacking any sort of weapons but bare hands… and but the one of those.

His every instinct told him run, turn and runt And he knew that he should, but he could not, for the giant was now between him and Thoheekt Bili, still lying stunned where he had fallen. So, despite it all, despite the fear that was almost unmanning him, Geros could not willingly desert his young lord.

It was the monster, though, who stumbled over a dead body and would have fallen on his face, had he not slammed the wide palm of his only good hand on the slimy ground. And Geros spied his opportunity and danced in, his point quick as a striking viper, sinking deep, deep into the left eye of that upraised face. The shudder that racked the gargantuan body all but wrenched the broadsword from Geros’ grasp. Then the tree-thick left arm flexed and the dead giant’s huge head thumped the paving stones.

I’ve known, lived with, warriors for the best part of my life,” thought Bili, still wakeful in the chill mountain night, “and Sir Geros Lahvoheetos is unquestionably one of the bravest men it has ever been my honor to meet or soldier with. But just try convincing him of the fact! He’s absorbed too many sagas of matchless, unblemished heros and is firmly convinced that because his bladder fails him in action, he must be a coward.

“Yet his second and greatest feat, that day, was the very stuff of sagas. It was an impossibility; only a madman would have believed it could happen. Yet I saw it, and so did at least three dozen other men.”

Old Pyk, the Freefighter weaponmaster, clucked concernedly while he wrapped bandage about Bill’s thigh. “It’s stopped bleeding, my lord. Still, I think it should be properly burnt, else you run the risk of losing the leg to the black stink.” He finished lapping the bandage and neatly tied the ends, adding, “And a wound-burning be much easier, my lord, if you’ve no long time to think on it.” Bili lowered the big canteen of brandy-water from his lips and smiled. “Thank you, Master Pyk, but no. When we be back in camp, I’ll have the Zahrtohgahn physician, Master Ahlee, see to the wound. I’ve had wounds burnt ere this, and I much prefer the soft words of his mode of healing to your old-fashioned red-hot spearhead.”