Morgan Rice - A Vow of Glory

Erec grabbed a dagger from the dead man’s waist, spun around, and stabbed another attacker in the side of the throat who had been swinging for him. He then gained his feet, grabbed his sword from the bloody battlefield, and got his third wind.

Erec swung in every direction, invigorated to fight with his friend Brandt at his side again, as they were reinforced by more of the Duke’s men. They soon cleared a path, together, killing the dozen men converging on them.

Erec found a horse and remounted, and was soon up there along with the others. He took stock of the situation: he had been joined by several dozen of the Duke’s men, and together, they faced what remained of the lord’s army, about a hundred men. He immediately searched for Alistair, and found her mounted on her Warkfin on the edge of the battlefield, watching over everything. She was safe from the battle, and Erec was relieved.

Erec breathed hard, Brandt beside him breathing just as hard, also covered in blood.

“I knew I would fight by your side again,” Brandt said. “I just didn’t think it would be so soon.”

Erec smiled.

“It seems I owe you my life once again,” he said.

“No you don’t,” Brandt said. “Remember Artania, ten years ago? Now we’re even.”

As they all prepared to charge against the hundred remaining men, suddenly, another cry arose from the rear of the group, and Erec turned in confusion, trying to process what was happening. He narrowed his eyes and in the distance, he thought he saw a battle occurring at the rear of the lines. He could not understand what was happening. Were the lord’s men fighting each other?

“More of your men?” Erec asked the Duke.

But the Duke shook his head, puzzled, too.

“My men are all with me. I do not know who attacks them.”

Erec was baffled as the army facing them broke out into chaos, and as the men began to turn and flee from the battlefield.

As the turmoil neared, Erec finally saw what it was. He was breathless at the site.

The lord’s army was being attacked from the rear by a huge group of creatures. They were twice as tall as any man, twice as broad, their skin a glowing yellow, each with two heads, and arms eight feet long. Erec recognized them at once. Covenies. They were fabled creatures, known to bear a superhuman strength that could tear a man in half with a single hand. They didn’t carry any weapons—they didn’t need to.

Despite himself, Erec’s heart flooded with fear.

“It’s not possible,” Brandt said. “Covenies only live on the far side of the Canyon. What are they doing here?”

“The only way they could be here is if they found a breach in the Canyon,” the Duke said.

“Or if the Shield is down,” Erec said gravely.

As Erec uttered the words he suddenly felt them to be true, and his heart flooded with true fear. The shield down. The Ring open for attack. It was more than he could process. He did not worry for himself, but for the fate of the Ring. If the shield was down here, it could be down all over the entire Ring. They could be overrun. And worse, the Empire could invade.

The army before Erec disbanded, fleeing for their lives as more and more Covenies appeared, attacking them from behind, picking them up with a single hand and biting off their heads.

“Retreat to Silesia!” the Duke commanded. “We must seal the gates at once!”

As one they all turned and charged from the battlefield; Erec stopped only long enough to ride up beside Alistair, mount Warkfin behind her, and take off with her. He felt her soft hands clutching him tightly from behind, and feeling her hands on him, knowing that they were together, that she was safe, made everything right in the world.

“I owe you my life,” Erec said to her, as they rode with the others.

“And I owe you mine,” she answered.

Kendrick stood before the rebuilt town wall, admiring his handiwork. He, along with a small group of Silver, had been fortifying this wall for days, camped out in this large town on the Eastern borderlands of the Ring, which had been badly damaged by the McCloud raid. As the Legion had been dispatched to repair the smaller villages to the south, Kendrick thought it fitting that the Silver fortify the bigger cities to the east, in the more dangerous territory close to the McClouds. It was the right thing to do, to lead by example.

Their rebuilding efforts had been a success and their time here was almost up. He hadn’t been home in weeks, hadn’t had any news from the world, and he sorely missed King’s Court, missed his sister, his close friend Atme, all of his brothers in the Silver—he even missed his squire, Thor. He wanted to get back to King’s Court as soon as possible, to make sure his sister was safe, and to help her oust Gareth. Having been imprisoned by him, Kendrick, more than most, had felt the touch of his wrath, and he burned to make wrongs right and to put his sister on the throne—for the sake of his dead father, for the sake of King’s Court, and for the sake of the Ring.

The second sun sat long in the sky and it was nearing the end of another back-breaking day of labor, Kendrick supervising a hundred townsfolk as they carried oversized stones and plastered the ancient wall. Kendrick and his men advised them on the best place to fortify and defend, where to build parapets and how to build stone towers that served as lookout points. Before he’d arrived, the openings to this town’s fortifications had all been too wide, there had been no slits in the stone for firing arrows, and the walls were merely a few inches thick. Now, the stone walls stood several feet thick, there was but one entrance in or out of the city, and it was shaped and built in such a way that it could be well-guarded from the inside, held with just a few men. New parapets had been built from which the townsfolk could defend with a few cauldrons of tar and a host of bows.

Kendrick was satisfied. In this new place, but a few hundred well-trained men could fend off a few thousand. These people had desperately needed the eye and labor of professional soldiers and it was now vastly more secure.

As Kendrick stood there, he felt satisfaction from a hard day’s work, from helping his fellow citizens—yet there was something in the back of his mind which troubled him. He wasn’t quite sure what it was. Earlier this morning he could have sworn he spotted Estopheles, circling up high, screeching in a way that disturbed him. It felt like a warning. Worse, the night before he had been up hours with troubled dreams of this town burning, of all his handiwork being toppled to the ground. He had dreamt this dream not once, but three times, the third time waking him for good, too vivid to allow him to return to sleep.

He did not understand what it all meant. He hadn’t had bad dreams since he was a child, since the night before his grandfather died. He hoped it was not a premonition of something evil.

“My lord!” came an urgent voice.

Kendrick turned to see a messenger come running up to him. It was the boy whom he had appointed to the new position of lookout on the newly-built watchtower.

“Come quick! I spot something on the horizon. I do not understand it.”

Kendrick turned and ran off with the messenger, several of his men following. They cut through the winding streets of this town which Kendrick had come to know by heart, and he ran down the narrow path that twisted up a small elevation at the far end of the city, taking him to the top of a hill upon which they had built the new stone tower. It was the highest ground in the city, and the place at which Kendrick had instructed they should keep a twenty four hour watch. This was the first time the lookout had spotted anything, and Kendrick guessed that it was just a false warning from a skittish boy.