Battle Mage: Winter's Edge (69 page)

With power and speed, the dark warriors had
quickly dismantled the entire command.

Dante had fought valiantly. Even as the men
around him fell, he had continued to hold his ground.
Dark creatures could be found slain in the midst of the
Certe Guardsmen, and some were the result of his work.
Then the numbers had closed in on him. Their mass
proved too strong for his blade and the shield he had
carried was left in tatters.

This brought him back the question of his
continued existence. "How can I be here?" he questioned
the raven still before him.

Cocking its shiny black head at him curiously,
the bird answered with a softer call. Dante looked at the
creature before him in wonderment that it was still
perched before him. Shaking his head slightly until he
realized that the motion caused him dizziness, Dante
then chose to try and stand. The raven retreated only
slightly as it continued to watch.

The soldier chose to ignore the bird and turned to
the task of finding a suitable sword and shield to replace
those that he had lost. He also found a pair of animal skin
canteens and a couple of travel packs of food. Dante began eating ravenously. He had been famished. The
hunger was greater than any he could ever remember.

He tossed a few scraps towards the raven though
there was more than enough left here to feed it. Its
comrades had already started withdrawing now that even
their great appetites had been sated. His own hunger
was as well now from a less morbid version of dinner.

The task before him had to be a return to Castle
Trea and to find out if any of the others had made it back
to warn the king. Having eaten, the man found his
strength returning quickly. Dante began picking his way
through the masses of dead. It was a disheartening
experience. He found many a friend lying broken and
often picked over by the scavengers. The body of General
Batist was found near the rear of the battle surrounded
by his personal guard.

Dante shook his head. The man had refused to flee though his command was being torn apart before
him. Dante considered such an act foolish. The General
should have retreated to the castle to warn the king.
There was nothing to be gained by losing such an
important man. His pride had caused the superb soldier
to die which was a shame since Batist had been a
renowned strategist and tactician. In the face of such a
loss, Dante guessed that he had been unwilling to admit
defeat.

Picking up his pace as he finally was clear of the
main killing field, Dante rushed as quickly as he could
manage. The castle was nearly twenty miles south. If he
could get there soon enough, the soldier could prepare
the king for what his troops would be facing.

Walking all day, eventually Dante spotted smoke
ahead of him. A dark flash and the soft rustle of wings,
alerted him to the raven's presence again. It had followed him this far oddly enough. Perhaps it was still certain of Dante's death and had chosen him as its future meal, he
thought wryly. But as the bird soared on ahead towards
the smoke, Dante realized that the bird would have
something else to feed on first.

The bird had disappeared long ago, but Dante
knew that the creature would be waiting ahead for him
though he had no reason for such odd behavior. The
warrior followed the road as best he could and before
long he found the source of the smoke.

A small village, through which the
Certen army
had passed only a day ago, was now a smoking ruin. As
he entered the outskirts of the town, Dante could smell
the death before him even as he had on the battlefield.
Animals and scavenger birds were here as well. Most
scattered at the approach of the man. The brazen raven
appeared before him in the road and turned to him with a
cry.

"So nice of you to wait," he mumbled
sarcastically.

As he searched the village for any survivors,
Dante began to wonder about something else. The
invaders’ identity was entirely unknown to him. They had appeared out of virtually nowhere. Those that had alerted
the king had not known from where they had come
either. More than five hundred strong, a true army of odd
creatures the likes of which had never been known to
this region of the Taltan continent, if they had ever
existed anywhere in all of the world of Alus, and they had
just appeared out of nowhere to attack and destroy.

Armies of man they knew. There were even
dwarves rumored to be a true separate race up in the
north, though he had never seen one. The myths of a race
of gargoyles and the existence of dragons had made their
way to Certe from North Continent as well. The source of
old wives' tales to be told to naughty young children or
around the campfire to try and spook the rawest of
recruits, but now these aberrations were here. This
slaughter was no wives’ tale.

Dante could find no survivors left alive and so he
proceeded south to warn the king, even as the man
continued to ask the unanswerable questions.

The raven continued to follow but revealed
nothing to him.

The High King:
A Tale of Alus

Chapter 11- A Berserker Among Us

Gerid wiped the sweat from his dirty brow.
Leaning on his shovel, he turned to survey his progress.
The dark line of the new irrigation channel, which he had
been working on, appeared dark against the summer
sun's bleached earth. The scrawny shoots of the Taltan
continent's main staple, cracker corn sprang up in rows
to either side.

Summer was half over now. Nearly two months of
slavery showed themselves in the hard calluses that were
even rougher than from working in his family holdings.
His upper body and face were dark brown from exposure
to the sun, a stark contrast to his silvery, white hair. The
youth still had to smile in satisfaction at his progress.
The herculean feats that he had performed had begun to
get Holtein's notice by now. New plans to impress the
slave holders and ways of finally winning his freedom
continually played in his mind. This channel, for instance,
would normally take five men to complete in the same
amount of time his pace would complete it, if he could keep it up. The smile played about his lips still as he
returned to the hard labor.

"Gerid!"

He looked up to see Mateil coming through the
path between patches of growth. The shovel was
powerfully driven into the earth one more time and he left
it to stand by itself. "What can I do for you, Mateil?"

"
Leoltus wants you to come to the soldiers'
barracks immediately along with most of the servants. He
wouldn't say why, but that it was extremely urgent."

Gerid tugged the tool free of the earth and followed. On their arrival at the barracks, they found
nearly every male slave that the Holteins owned gathered
around the foreman. The men stood in various states of
anxiousness awaiting Leoltus' news, but, when Gerid was
entering the building, he had spied three men that he had

seen very seldom in his stay at the farm. Karma, the only
son of Master Carter Holtein, a dark haired, handsome
young man, stood with two of his bodyguards wearing
their light armor. Upon seeing the master’s son in his
armor, the men all began whispering to each other in
their surprise and a new wave of questions were
whispered about.

"Quiet! Quiet, all of you,"
Leoltus ordered. "Master Karma has come to deliver some important news, so be quiet."

The slaves quieted as the young man moved to
the center of those gathered there. "I'll get straight to the
point. We've had word that there are bandits in the area
headed here from the southern hills. We don't know if they're Tolmonan soldiers or simply bandits, but until
King Colona can recall a brigade to deal with them, the
farms to the south of the capitol are on their own.

"My father cannot come here now, so I will lead
you in the defense of our home in his absence."

"And what do we fight with, our hands?" Gerid
asked casually.

Karma's eyes narrowed from annoyance. The
guardsmen tensed towards their weapons in slight
surprise at the rare questioning of the master's authority.
Seeing that it was the rather intimidating giant, Gerid
who had spoken, Karma held up a restraining hand to his
men. Gerid thought that he saw relief in their eyes
despite the weapons in their hands. He was nearly a head taller than even the tallest man here and holding a shovel
that could be used as a weapon gave him a strong
presence within the room. On top of that, they all knew
the feats of strength that he had performed in the past
months even within the main house as well. "That's why I
had you all called here. Though you are all only slaves

and untrained in battle, we still have weapons and
shields. There is even leather armor here, such as it is. My men and I can try and show you what we can before the bandits arrive. They may not even arrive here, since the reports are not completely clear, but we must still
prepare for the worst."

Gerid didn't bother to reply to what he thought of that type of thinking. There was little that untrained men could learn if they faced real swordsmen, but instead of
worrying over that point, the nearly two score slaves
spent the next half an hour finding weapons that the
mercenaries who had been trained at the Holtein's
facilities had left behind. He had taken a stout club
studded with nails and a foot and a half long knife for his
own. Gerid figured that, if the bandits were well armed,
as was probable, then he could steal a proper sword from
one of the fallen enemies. If they weren't well armed, of
course, the club would suffice in his strong hands.

Leoltus
moved over to him clad in mail. Karma
had apparently decided that his overseer deserved better
than the leathers which would do little more than the
clothes that Gerid wore. "Aren't you going to put on some
armor, boy? At least grab a shield."

A wry smile crossed his face as he looked up from his seat on a bale of hay. "I'm too big to wear
anything in there and a shield just isn't my style. I prefer
two weapons. They're a lot quicker and less clumsy. If
they use arrows, then I'll worry. Maybe I can hide behind
you instead," he suggested with a grin.

The older man laughed, "I'll lend you my shield
and hide behind you more likely, thank you." His face
began to change as he seemed to reappraise Gerid
again. "You seem awfully confident. Were you a soldier
already back in your old home despite your young age,
boy?"

"I've had some training though not in battle. A
few duels that I found myself in with Lord Merrick's
soldiers caused most of the circumstances which have
brought me here. It was because I won them all,
however."