Shane Porteous - The Battle of Ebulon - A Shared Anthology

“I do not know that I can help you.”

The man stalled, confused.

“What is your name, knight?” Al-Aaron asked.

“Doernyth. First Prince of Haardit. I am the last of my city, the only one to make it here alive.” He shook his head.

“I was sent here by an angel.”

Doernyth shrugged. “Why are you here if not to help us?”

“I am sworn to never shed the blood of man. My sword is only a symbol.”

The cry of the horde broke across the city wall.

“Ladders!” One of the defenders screamed.

“We are a spiritual order.” Al-Aaron continued.

Doernyth shrugged again. “Great for a priest, boy. Pretty bad for a knight.”

Doernyth pulled a medallion from beneath his mail, over his head and placed it on Al-Aaron.

The ghost of Malius, his hands outstretched, his face upturned, passed through them both, through the blood and the war.

“You can man the postern gate,” Doernyth said. “They need you there.” He signaled to the gatehouse. “And besides, you’re in luck. The horde which attacks us isn’t men.”

From the gatehouse, through the narrow door leading to the surround, a cry came from the dark, closer than all the other cries of war. “Let him through. He wears Doernyth’s medallion.”

“One of the hero’s then, are you?” the first voice answered. A broken face, full of scars, some old, some new, peered at him from just beyond the vestige light of burning things.

“My name is Al-Aaron. I am a Servian knight.”

“Follow me then knight.”

The cries of beasts heralded across the surrounds like trumpet calls. Dying sounds. Slaughter sounds. The defenders here sending them back, whatever they were, to wherever they came.

Dark shadows more beast than men with gripping poles with savage sword and splitting axe and snout and beak and fang. Their eyes burned yellow. Their blood flowed black.

The blood of the men on the battlements flowed red.

But the men held.

At least he wasn’t too late.

For whatever reason he was here.

The cries of women and children came from the citadel.

That was if a boy could do anything at all to help them. No. Not a boy, a Servian knight.

Naptha balls of fire streaked overhead. They exploded against the citadel in answer.

He followed the broken face through the narrow door and down sharp winding steps to a small passage the size of a tomb. A dozen faces of boys and old men stared back at him. Bravery was a cloak over the fear in their eyes.

“Here you go, hero.”

The broken faced man stared at him, his eyes rimmed red. He seized his arm. He thrust his mouth against his ear. Sweat and blood and spit and tears. “Please let them die well.”

Cries of beasts, cries of war, trumpeted beyond the small postern gate in answer.

A pallid haired boy who couldn’t have seen more than fourteen summers, no more than he had, drew up to him.

“Are you here to save us?”

“Are you are all that’s left?” Al-Aaron asked.

The boy nodded, then nodded to another, his hair more gray than pale. “I’m Gaydyn, our commander is Samuel, of the watch.”

Samuel nodded back then stared at the gate. “I’ve armed them, more for their courage then for the steel,” he murmured. “Steel won’t stop what’s coming to them.”

The ten others cradled their weapons nervously. Three boys with crossbows bigger than they were, their windlass already cocked for them, because they were too small to have done it for themselves. The other three boys clutched their spears to their breasts. The four men leaned against their own like crutches.

Al-Aaron felt a chill. The ghost of Malius whispered in his ear, “They are but lambs for the slaughter. A pity they would be without you here to save them.”

“Why do they attack you?” Al-Aaron asked.

“Because they’re Orcs,” Samuel replied.

“I do not know them.”

Samuel said nothing, his expression one of disbelief, then understanding. “Do you know evil then?”

The ghost of Malius smiled at him.

“I do,” Al-Aaron replied.

“Then that’s all that you need to know.”

“If not men, then what are these Orcs?”

“Beasts perhaps. But not. For even a beast will cower. Even a beast will stop when it knows it’s going to die. Not even a beast will kill until there is nothing left to kill.”

“No. Only men do that.”

“Until only we, the young and the dying, are left to defend ourselves.”

A shudder wracked the postern gate.

Mortar fell from the stones above.

“They’re coming,” Gaydyn whispered. The bravery in his face fled.

Al-Aaron came beside him.

“Then I shall stand beside you.”

Shards of splintered wood flew from the gate. Ax and spike and spear rammed through. But it was the sound that was the most terrifying. Beneath the breaking wood and bending steel, beneath the cry of death beyond it, was the absence of these things. It was a tired sound of silence.

The first Orc through died before hitting the ground with Samuel’s spear through his neck.

One bolt of the three found its home in the skull of the second Orc. A cruel wrought helm flung from her head as her death squeal fled, a crooked fist clutched to her breast.

Another, larger by two, broke through.

He was an ogre if ever there was such one. One eye gone, his rage blinding, his hammer crumpled Samuel’s chest and sent his corpse across the room.

Gaydyn fumbled with his spear.

Al-Aaron drove baeryth beneath the beast’s plated chest. The beast staggered back, bringing his hammer down in a clumsy fell.

In two strokes, Baeryth severed it from him and then opened his neck up as well.

Black blood like pitch soaked the shredded gossamer that remained upon Baeryth’s steel.

Then the cry of children came.

One of the crossbow boys staggered back, a spear through his frail chest. The small Orc who released it, still bellowing, clearly had never seen death before. He didn’t recognize it when it came for him as three of the men’s spears went through him.

Two more Orcs, children too, leapt forward through the breach.

Gaydyn, now moving, screamed as he thrust into the flesh of the first of them.

Then the cry of men came.

Booted feet descended amidst the clash of steel, the cry of war, and the weeping of the dying.

Al-Aaron fell to his knees upon the black and red blood splattered stones.

The men arriving barred the gate with shield and spear as barricades were called for.

Providence perhaps. But too late for the dead, and the dying.

Gaydyn wept. He clutched his blood soaked abdomen, where one of the young Orcs, now dead, had marked him. It wasn’t a lot of blood, but it was enough, perhaps. Sometimes death can be fickle. Sometimes providence even more so.

Al-Aaron slumped next to him.

The ghost of Malius watched, waiting, smiling from the shadows.

The eyes of the defenders swept past them with no solace but the truth to give them. War and death never lie.

One of the men kicked the corpse of the Orc matron.

Her vestige hand opened.

The small wood carving of an Orc child, a doll, fell away. Something precious, something to defend.

Gaydyn stared at it.

Doernyth drew near.

“They’ve fallen back. For now. How did we fair here?”

“We held, my lord.” Gaydyn answered.

“Strange that something called them back.”

“They’re the only ones left.”

Al-Aaron took Gaydyn in his arms.

Gaydyns eyes fixed their stare as he did. His breath ended.

He closed Gaydyn’s eyes, and wiped away the blood and tears from his face. Then he wiped them from his own.