Richard Baker - Swordmage

11 Tarsakh, the Year of the Ageless One

The hour after moonset was the worst of the night. Somehow in the darkness the small mercenary contingents of House Marstel and the Double Moon Coster became separated from the rapidly diminishing army of Hulburg and simply vanished into the night. Kara sent her best scouts to find the missing detachments and lead them back to the Vale Road, but she dared not wait for their return. The Red Claw wolf riders snarled and darted at her army’s heels at every step, and behind them came the great mass of the Bloody Skull horde. Now that the Bloody Skulls were in the Vale, she had no real hope of stopping them short of Hulburg. All she could do was try to beat the horde to the town and pray that her battered and bloodied soldiers could hold the castles and the fortified merchant compounds. The orcs would tire of their sport and withdraw after a few days, leaving those lucky enough to find shelter behind strong walls and locked gates alive to rebuild… but if she allowed the wolf riders to surround her and bring her to bay, she would not even be able to manage that much. Without her soldiers, Griffonwatch and Daggergard would fall, and then nothing at all would be left of Hulburg.

“Stay together, stay in good order!” she called to the weary companies around her. “If you fall out of ranks, the wolf riders will have you! They can’t drag us down if we stay in ranks and keep to our places as we march!”

So many have fallen already, she thought dully. Kara was exhausted herself, bruised and nicked in a dozen places from the furious cavalry skirmishes of the last few hours, but she couldn’t allow her soldiers to see her flagging or giving in to despair. She wheeled Dancer around and patted the big mare’s neck, studying the dark vale behind her retreating army. Half a dozen fires blazed in the blackness where outlying farms and homesteads had already been overrun by bloodthirsty savages. There will be many more of those before sunrise, she told herself.

Her broken companies filed into a narrow cut where the road passed through a belt of beechwoods. She peered into the gloom, searching for danger. Her spellscar-changed eyes, so brilliant by daylight, shimmered with the greenish-blue radiance of glacier ice in darkness; she could see as well as a cat by night, a small consolation for the havoc the Spellplague had wreaked in her. The woods offered little as a place to make a stand, but she had to do something to keep the wolf riders away from her troops.

Kara tapped her heels to Dancer’s flanks and cantered over to the Icehammer company, her standard-bearer and her adjutants following her. The mercenaries trudged along in grim silence in the middle of her force. Kara reined in to walk alongside the rearmost ranks. “Where’s your captain?” she asked the dwarves there.

“I’m here, Lady Hulmaster.” The black-bearded dwarf Kendurkkel pushed his way through the marching files of his company. He carried a heavy crossbow over his shoulder and a battle axe with its haft thrust through his belt, but still he gripped his pipe between his teeth. “What d’you want?”

“We need to teach the goblins not to follow us too closely,” Kara said. “You’ve got crossbowmen among your company, and most of them are dwarves who can see in the dark better than the rest of us. I want you to set up a skirmish line here in these trees and greet the goblins with a volley or two when they follow us in here.”

“You’re wantin’ me lads t’take a turn at rearguard, you mean.” Kendurkkel frowned. “If those wolf riders go ’round the woods, they’ll catch us here neat as you please, and me poor mother won’t ever lay eyes on her foolish son agin’.”

“I’ll be waiting with all the riders we have left just on the other side of the woods,” Kara answered. “If the goblins go around you, we’ll hold them off and give you a chance to get clear.”

Kendurkkel looked up at her, taking her measure. “I don’t doubt you’ll do as you say, but this sort o’ extra work ain’t in me contract, Lady Hulmaster.”

Kara restrained a sudden impulse to simply ride the Icehammer captain down under her hooves and leaned over her pommel to fix her eyes on the dwarf’s face. She lowered her voice even further. “You may not have noticed, Captain, but this is now a question of survival, not contracts. If our hodgepodge army breaks apart in the next mile because the wolf riders cut us apart from behind, there’s an excellent chance that none of us will reach Hulburg alive. It’s in your own best interest to give the goblins a bloody nose or at least make them ride around the woods.”

The dwarf chewed on the stem of his pipe, staring coldly up at her. Then he sighed and said, “All right, Lady Hulmaster. We’ll do as you ask. This whole business is sourin’ fast anyway, so I s’pose we ain’t got much t’lose.” The dwarf turned away and shouted to his mercenaries. “Icehammers, off the road! We’re t’lay a little ambush right here for any goblins or worgs stupid ’nough t’ stick their heads in a noose.”

“Three good volleys are all we need,” Kara told him. She watched the Icehammers scramble into the woods on each side of the road and left Kendurkkel pointing with the stem of his pipe and barking orders to his men.

She cantered a couple of hundred yards farther on to the place where the road broke out into open fields again, and collected all the cavalry she had left-twoscore Shieldsworn and about twice that number of men and women called out from the various merchant contingents. She sent pickets out to each side to watch for wolf riders coming around the small belt of woods then settled down to wait. She would have preferred to stay close to the Icehammers, but it was simply too important to make sure that the hundred riders she had at this spot went in the right direction when the enemy appeared. She was afraid that the merchant armsmen would simply ride off for home if she didn’t remain to hold them in place.

One of the young Shieldsworn waiting next to her-Sarise, her standard-bearer-leaned close and asked softly, “M’lady, what’s going to become of us? What’ll be left of Hulburg when this’s all over?”

Kara felt the stillness of other riders nearby. They were listening for her answer too. She considered her words before answering. “Sarise, I don’t know,” she said. “But I know that our castles can shelter hundreds of people for a long time. Many others will escape by ship or by the coastal trails. I don’t think the orcs can take Griffonwatch without a long siege, and I doubt that they’ll have the patience for it. In time they’ll leave, and the town will be ours again. But for now, the longer we hold off the Bloody Skulls, the more of our people will live. It’s not what I would’ve hoped for, but it’s the best we can do.”

Sarise frowned, but she nodded. “Thank you, Lady Kara,” she said softly.

Kara started to say more, but the snarls and howls of wolves came to her ears from the dark woods behind her. Dancer snorted and shifted nervously as did the other horses; they knew that sound, and they didn’t like it. The ranger turned her mount and peered into the gloomy shadows beneath the trees. The woods weren’t thick, and she could glimpse a handful of the dwarves as they crouched and waited. “They’re coming through the woods,” she breathed. It was up to the Icehammers now.

She heard the snap and thrum of crossbows, then scores of them firing almost as one, followed an instant later by a great chorus of goblin shrieks and wolves yipping in pain. “Steady,” she told the riders around her. “We’ve got to cover the Icehammers when they break off their fight. Steady, everyone.”

More crossbows sang in the night, and the chorus of pained cries changed into the ugly, incoherent roar of battle-hundreds of voices shouting and screaming, some in pain, some in fear, some in anger, some in victory. The deep voices of dwarves, the high harsh cries of goblins, and the fury of worgs all blended in a long, rolling battle-thunder that seemed to echo from the steep hillsides cupping the Winterspear Vale. It went on and on, much longer than Kara would have imagined, until she found herself leaning forward in her saddle and peering into the woods to see if she could see anything of the fighting a short distance off. But after a time the shouts and ring of steel on steel faded again, and Icehammers began to trot out of the woods-human mercenaries groping through the darkness, dwarves jogging along with slower strides but a much better sense of where they were headed.