Jonathan Rogers - The Way of the Wilderking

The Corenwalders made remarkable progress in the initial surprise of their attack. For a minute it appeared as if the two halves of the Corenwalder army would snap shut on the two Pyrthen flanks like the jaws of an alligator.

But the Pyrthens were battle hardened, the veterans of many campaigns in many different settings. They soon regained their composure; though by the time they did, their numerical advantage wasn’t quite so overwhelming. The officers finally got the cannoneers to hold their fire, allowing them to better communicate orders to their men.

The Pyrthen cavalry mounted horses and were quite effective at scattering the foot soldiers until the Corenwalder cavalry collided with them. Otherwise, the combat was strictly hand to hand, carried out with sword, ax, and spear. The Corenwalders fought desperately in defense of their homeland; they had more to fight for than the Pyrthens did, and that was an advantage. However, the skill and strength of the Pyrthens soon began to show against the Corenwalders, most of whom were farmers and laborers instead of career soldiers.

Dobro fought in a manner worthy of the feechiefolk. In close combat like this, he was easily worth five civilizer soldiers. Maynard, too, fought like a man possessed, understanding for the first time what it meant to fight for Corenwald.

In the midst of the melee, the cannoneers and their horses turned the great gun carriages around and rolled them to the base of the peninsula, away from the rim. They aimed the guns in the direction of the skirmishers, against the remote possibility they would need to fire them.

The two lines of Pyrthen fighters were soon gaining back the ground they had lost, pushing the Corenwalders backward and opening the jaws of the alligator. More and more Corenwalders fell beneath the skillful swords of the Pyrthens.

The Corenwalders’ only real hope of victory lay in meeting each other in the middle, forcing the Pyrthens to defend themselves from Corenwalders in front of them and Corenwalders in back of them at the same time. That would have multiplied the Corenwalders’ strength. But the farther apart the two skirmish lines got, the more the Corenwalders’ strength was divided. Not having succeeded in the initial attack, the Corenwalder army was in danger of being flanked itself. Should that happen, all would be lost.

That appeared to be exactly what was happening to Aidan and his men when Aidan looked up and saw a horse sweeping down from the north, ridden by Bayard the Truthspeaker. His white hair was blown back against his head, and in his right hand he raised a sword. Behind him charged a whole army of feechiefolk-thousands of them. Gray-skinned, turtle-helmeted, bedecked in their gator-hide breastplates, wolf-paw necklaces, and spoonbill feathers, they looked like the swamp itself, come to life and ready to sweep the invaders into Sinking Canyons. They raised stone-tipped spears and kept coming, yodeling, barking, and screaming like wildcats: “Haaa-wwwweeeeee!”

The feechies funneled down between the two skirmish lines. Seeing that help had come, the Corenwalders fought with renewed vigor.

The Pyrthens’ hearts melted. Many of these same Pyrthens had been at the Battle of Bonifay Plain, when the feechies had routed them in the Eechihoolee Forest. These feechies inspired the same irrational fear that had overwhelmed the Pyrthens six years earlier.

The feechies destroyed those Pyrthens who did not succeed in running away from them. As Pyrthens fell, feechies picked up their curved, cold-shiny swords to use on the next Pyrthen. Some feechies wielded two Pyrthen swords, one in each hand. They were terrifying, the stuff of Pyrthen nightmares.

All of the vaunted Pyrthen discipline broke down completely in the face of the feechies. A few Pyrthens broke through to the open plain, but the great majority of them were funneled down toward the canyon rim. Corenwalders drove them back, back, back against the mouths of the thunder-tubes.

In their desperate panic, Pyrthen officers ordered their cannoneers to fire into the melee. The first round of cannon fire was devastating. The fleeing Pyrthens absorbed much of the damage, but many Corenwalders-both feechie and civilizer-fell in the blasts. The cannon fire didn’t stop the Pyrthens from retreating, as their officers had hoped it would. They were still more terrified of the feechies than the cannons, and they ran straight into the cannons’ mouths.

The cannon fire did have the effect of slowing the Corenwalder pursuit. The fleeing Pyrthens didn’t even notice, but kept streaming onto that big half-moon of land where the guns were placed. Soon all the Pyrthens who didn’t lie dead or wounded in the field were cowering behind the guns on the peninsula. They were packed shoulder to shoulder, thousands of them, and some of the men on the perimeter were jostled off into the canyon, where they fell to their deaths. But behind the guns, they were safe from the feechies.

The earth was shaking with the force of the cannon fire. The feechies had been put to confusion amid the smoke and the noise, and the civilizers were only a little better able to keep their heads. Aidan understood they would have to take the guns if they were to have any hope of winning the battle. But that would come only with great loss of Corenwalder life. He needed to find Steren, but the field was shrouded in smoke. He couldn’t hear himself think amid the chaos of the cannonade. He had no idea how many of his men were still alive. At any moment the barrage could stop and the Pyrthens could come pouring back over whatever shell-shocked Corenwalders remained.

The cannon fire didn’t stop. The earth continued to shake with the force of it. Aidan blundered through the smoke, trying to gather up men to take those guns.

But then came a cannon blast that set off a thunder and shake such as Aidan had never heard before. When the roar began, the sound of the cannons stopped, as if swallowed up by it. The screams of ten thousand men rose above the roar and then they faded, too, as if carried swiftly away. A great rush of air sucked the cannon smoke into the canyon, then belched it back up into a towering billow of dust and smoke.

The Pyrthens were gone. The cannons were gone. The whole peninsula had shaken loose with the vibrations of the thunder-tubes and fallen into the canyon, carrying the Pyrthen army with it.

A hush fell over the battlefield. The men knew they had witnessed a miracle, and their sense of awe did not allow them to speak. Even Dobro had nothing to say. Many Corenwalders were dead and dying on the field-both civilizer and feechie-but not nearly as many as Aidan had feared from the intensity of the cannon fire. That alone would have been miracle enough to make them all fall silent.

“The living God has delivered us this day,” said Aidan. “Praise be to the living God, who has delivered Corenwald.”

All across the field, men were looking for comrades and brothers. There were many joyful reunions, many tearful good-byes. Aidan rejoiced to find all his brothers safe and sound. Dobro was also unhurt. Aidan’s check on his men was interrupted by the feechies who swarmed around him, eager to greet the civilizer hero and feechiefriend.

A messenger pushed his way through the feechies to tell Aidan that King Steren needed to see him immediately. Aidan followed the boy at a gallop across the area that used to be the Pyrthens’ left flank. Aidan could tell at a glance that Steren’s half of the army had suffered greater losses than his had.

The messenger stopped at a spot where men were kneeling in a circle. Some were sobbing loudly, others were praying. In the center of the circle, King Steren lay broken and bleeding, the casualty of a Pyrthen cannonball.

Aidan leaned down over the fallen king. With great effort, Steren raised a hand and held it in front of Aidan’s face as if giving a benediction. “Aidan, you have fulfilled your duty to the House of Darrow,” he rasped. “Now do your duty to Corenwald. They would have you for their king.” The light was ebbing from his eyes. “The living God has been good to me. I have lived to see Corenwald’s deliverance. Hail.” He gave a dying gasp. “Hail to the Wilderking.” Steren’s hand of blessing dropped to his chest, his eyes closed, and the pain on his face melted into an expression of peaceful rest.