Exile (Bloodforge Book 1) (43 page)

Like most men his age,
Beccorban’s hearing had worsened to a degree. Birdsong was not so clear as it
once had been, nor was the tinkling of a stream. Yet decades on the battlefield
had attuned his ears to certain sounds, filtered through the ambient noise as
if he was listening out for them. He heard the thrumming of metal splitting air
long before his brain made the leap it needed to and his warrior’s instincts
saved his life. He dropped his weight and rolled just as a huge, razor-sharp
blade cut through where he had been. His roll was clumsy and he fell from the
ruin of the tower on to the floor of the courtyard. Above him stood the
frighteningly tall figure of Antler Helm, sword in hand. Two of his soldiers
jumped to his defence, lunging at the massive Echo, but their blades bounced
off of the dark armour. Antler Helm killed them quickly, hacking left and right
and kicking their broken bodies down into the dust, as though he was irritated
at the momentary distraction.

Beccorban climbed to his
feet and retreated, letting Antler Helm come to him. The huge Echo leapt down
in pursuit, sword held double-handed, cutting down with all of his weight
behind it. Beccorban spun away from the blow and brought Kreyiss up to block
the next attack, which clanged off of the hammer’s head, almost knocking the
weapon from his hands.
Gods, he was
strong
. Several more men had seen his plight and ran to his aid but he
waved them away lest they join their bloody comrades on the ground. There were
few who could stand against such an enemy. He thought of Callistan and wondered
where he was.
Concentrate
. He grinned
at Antler Helm, hoping it would annoy the foul creature.
You’re mine
, he thought.

He jumped forward,
swinging Kreyiss low in the hope of crushing one of those weirdly thin legs,
but Antler Helm had seen it coming and he lifted the long limb over the attack,
spinning and lashing out with his huge blade. Beccorban narrowly avoided being
hewn in two and was forced to throw himself backwards to miss the blade. He
attacked again, ramming the hammer forward to punch Antler Helm in the face,
but the Echo had the advantage of height and he used it, twisting his neck so
that Beccorban could only catch a glancing blow.

Antler Helm began to
speak in his rich, mellifluous tongue, so similar to the wild ranting of the
Stranger in the forest all that time ago.
Had
it really been that long or did it just seem like it?
Though he could not
understand the words, Beccorban recognised them for what they were. The big
Echo was taunting him, trying to drive him to a fury. Beccorban grinned again
and stepped forward to attack, but a conscript darted past him from the right,
trying to stab Antler Helm in the thigh. The tall warrior stepped aside
smoothly and then caught the unfortunate conscript around the neck.

Beccorban could only
watch as Antler Helm ripped out the young man’s throat with barbed fingers and
flung the gore at him. He raised an arm to protect himself and warm blood
splashed into his beard. Antler Helm spread his arms and let the body drop to
join the others. The sun was beginning to peek over the horizon and it made the
blood on the Echo’s armour shine like a ruby. Antler Helm laughed, a deep
booming sound, and it stoked the fires of Beccorban’s anger until they were
glowing.
Kill! Kill! Kill!
sang a
voice in his mind.

Beccorban threw himself
forward, ducking under a wild cut and swinging Kreyiss up and under to catch
Antler Helm on the chin. The Echo staggered backwards but quickly recovered and
closed the ground between them, driving a spiked elbow down into Beccorban’s
back. The Helhammer roared with pain as a white hot lance of agony speared into
the meat of his shoulder. Beccorban wanted to lash out in response, but he was
too close to use Kreyiss, though it meant that Antler Helm could not use his
weapon either.

The Echo grabbed him in
a bearhug and tried to lift him from his feet but Beccorban had always been a
heavy man and he hung on his weight, planting his feet firmly on the ground.
Beccorban threw his arms around the Echo’s waist and locked them around
Kreyiss’ haft. His back was wet with blood and he knew that the wound had gone deep.
He did not have long before he would begin to weaken. “Die, you bastard!” he
shouted and the Echo said something back. Antler Helm drove a fist into his
side and he felt his ribs break. His breath was blown from his lungs and he
nearly fell, but he clung on to the Echo with all of his strength. He looked up
and saw that his earlier attack had dented the faceless helm, curling it up at
the edge so that he could see pale, blue-tinged flesh beneath. There was little
he could do with a hammer but an idea came to him. He would probably only get
one chance.

He bunched the great
muscles of his legs beneath him and leapt upwards, dropping Kreyiss and instead
wrapping his hand around one of the strange metal spikes that grew from the
Echo’s helm. To his horror, the spikes were edged like daggers and they bit
deep, but even as he felt the sharp metal squeak against bone, he snapped one
off and fell back down to the floor, landing heavily on his rear and nearly
passing out with the pain from his ribs.

Antler Helm stooped to
say something to him and Beccorban struck like a snake, using the last of his
strength to drive the metal spike up under the damaged helmet into the Echo’s
neck. Antler Helm roared with pain and kicked out, sending Beccorban flying
through the air to crash into a pile of rubble. He cried out as his back
cracked into the stone and his vision began to blur and blacken. He could just
make out the tall figure of Antler Helm approaching him.

He tried to sit up and
coughed and it tasted of blood. He had failed, then.
No more songs for the Helhammer
, he thought.
Where was that damned girl with the horseman?

He pushed himself
upright and fought the nausea as his brain kept moving inside his skull. Antler
Helm towered above him and, though his features were hidden, Beccorban knew he
was grinning.

“I will eat you last,
Hammer,” said Antler Helm, in a rich, bassy voice.

Beccorban spat, making
sure that a glob speckled on to the Echo’s armoured foot. “I hope I make you
choke,” he said.

Loster heard Beccorban
cry out and broke from his place in the battle. There, over the other side of
the ruined tower, he could make out the huge figure of Antler Helm locked in
struggle with Beccorban. The hammerman leapt up to try and grab the Echo’s helm
but he failed and fell back down.

“
He’s going to kill him,
” said Barde in a bored tone.

Loster turned as an Echo
attacked him from the side and brought one of his blades up to parry. He
managed to deflect the cut but it had enough force behind it to send the sword
spinning from his hand. The Echo screamed triumphantly but Loster had already
found the space between breastplate and helmet and he drove the second blade up
into the gap, releasing the handle and spinning away to race after Beccorban.

He leapt over rubble and
brushed past soldiers fighting desperately against the stronger Echoes. None of
it mattered to him now, all that mattered was Beccorban. He could not be
killed, not when they had come so close.

Loster jumped up on to
the remnants of the crooked tower and slid down the other side, ignoring the
pain as the skin of his hands was rubbed away. He came up hard against two dead
soldiers and tried to ignore the shock frozen on their faces. Loster hauled
himself upright and grabbed at one of the fallen men’s weapons. It was a
shortsword, the blade no longer than his forearm. It had been blunted against
something hard and was little better than a club. He tossed it aside with a
curse, his eyes scanning the ground for the other man’s weapon. There, another
shortsword, though this one had been broken in two. Useless. Antler Helm was
standing over Beccorban now and the old warrior tried to sit up but blood
stained his beard and his eyes were unfocused and glassy.

Loster forgot his search
and started forward again but then froze. Kreyiss lay on the ground nearby,
dropped and forgotten by its wielder who now stared Death in the face. Loster
scrambled over to the mighty weapon and wrapped both hands around it. He had
never imagined it would be so heavy.

He raced towards Antler
Helm, dragging Kreyiss behind him.

“
What are you doing? You’ll get us killed!
” Barde’s voice was a
scream inside his head.

There was a large block
of fallen stone a few paces behind the great Echo and his prey. Once, perhaps,
it had sat high on the ruined watchtower, in a time when the land it overlooked
had belonged to a mighty nation. It had known wind and rain and salt-air from
the sea, ever secure in its mortar, fixed in position to guard the world of men
and watch for the coming of a terrible enemy. Now the enemy had returned and
stood not six feet away, and the stone had been cast from its righteous perch
to the damp ground where it would lay and endure little other than time itself,
another untold story in a broken landscape. But Loster was not a stone. Loster
could not simply endure.

Time seemed to slow as
he approached the leader of the Echoes. He veered towards the fallen masonry.
With two great leaps Loster jumped on to the block of stone and then threw
himself off the top, swinging the hammer from the waist as he fell so that it
carried all of his paltry weight behind it. He was keening his hatred in a
terrible cry of agony and Antler Helm turned to look upon him.

Kreyiss smashed into the
side of the Echo’s head, ripping the helmet free to clatter on the ground, and
turning the top half of the Echo leader’s skull into pulp. Antler Helm fell to
the stone floor with an almighty crash and Loster flew into his body, grunting
as the wind was forced from his lungs, and then rolling away to lie in the dust
looking up at a brightening sky.

The silence of the
moment struck him as odd and he raised his head from the ground. Beccorban was
staring at him with mouth agape and he was so still that Loster feared that he
had died after all. Then the big man blinked and forced himself to his feet,
wincing with pain and clutching his stomach with a hand drenched in blood. The
man they called the Helhammer reached out with his good hand and hauled Loster
to his feet, brushing the dust from the young acolyte’s crimson armour like a
fussy parent.

Loster looked around to
see that a crowd had gathered. None were left fighting now. Over the tops of
their heads he could see the last few Echoes running pell-mell into the
wilderness. They had won.

“By the gods, lad,
Droswain was right,” said Beccorban softly, and then he did something that
Loster thought was wholly odd.

He knelt.

Loster stood still,
unsure of how to react, but then the other soldiers nearby began to kneel as
well until every man, though injured and exhausted, was kneeling on the ground,
kneeling for him.

“Victory!” someone
cried, and Loster began to laugh, because even now Barde had nothing to say.

Beccorban ordered the
Echo dead — Antler Helm among them — to be stripped of their armour
and left for the birds. “Let eaters be eaten,” he said grimly. It was one of
the few duties that Droswain volunteered for. He seemed oddly fascinated by the
dead Echoes, ordering some of their cadavers to be stored on the wagon and
arguing against Beccorban’s protests until the big warrior relented.

When the men had
finished cheering his name, Loster was awarded with Antler Helm’s strange
namesake, though it was far too large for him to wear. Droswain took centre
stage, placing the ruined helmet awkwardly atop the youth’s head and declaring
him the Hammer’s Son. Beccorban looked on proudly. He was ashamed to admit
— and would never do so — that he had not thought Loster would be
able to do it. He had been proven wrong and he hoped that all of his misgivings
would be similarly cast aside in the days ahead. After all, this was only the
beginning. Veria was still lost. Now they would have to take it back.

Callistan was long gone.
Sometime during the battle he had broken out of his cell, murdered one of his
guardsmen and escaped on his horse, leaving only the grisly display of Illis’
slipskin as a remembrance. Droswain had declared him outlaw. Anyone who saw him
was to treat him as a foe.

Beccorban noticed that
Riella was absent during Loster’s mock coronation. As Droswain recounted
Callistan’s crimes to the gathered men, he went to find her. She was sitting
some distance from the fortress, next to the makeshift pen where the horses had
been corralled. He approached her from the front so that she could see him
coming and sat down beside her on a mound of grass, grunting as his broken body
protested. She said nothing, instead twirling a thick green blade in her
fingers.

“Droswain tells me that
the horseman murdered young Tellisk,” he said softly, probing her.

She answered quickly. “I
don’t believe it. He’s not a murderer.”

“And last night Loster
was not a warrior. People change, Riella.”

She winced. “You always
call me that when you’re trying to be serious.”

“I didn’t realise I was
trying…” he began but she assumed a po-faced expression and lowered her voice
to sound like him.