Authors: Victor Gischler
Tosh grabbed a torch from one of the other soldiers. He leaned out with the torch, looked down along the side of the stone tower.
A Perranese warrior scaled the wall not ten feet below him. He wore a strange wide helm that flared out from his head and armor of overlapping black, metal discs like the scales of some dark sea creature. The warrior’s head came up suddenly, locked eyes with Tosh.
Tosh screamed—rage, fear, anger—and hurled the torch at the warrior. It hit him square in the face with a sizzle, dislodged him. He tumbled silently back down to the rocks below. As the torch fell, it illuminated a dozen more Perranese warriors clinging to the tower wall, doggedly making their ascent.
Tosh turned to his comrades. “They’re coming!”
The others drew broad-bladed short swords. They looked scared. “Get below, Tosh,” one of them said.
Tosh offered a blank look in reply.
“You’ve got saddle duty. Go!”
Of course! Tosh ran to the trap door, flung it open and nearly fell down the ladder to the floor below. He took the twisting stone stairs three at a time until he hit the bottom floor, a combination of barracks, kitchen, stable. The place was in an uproar—men hastily putting on cheap leather armor, fetching crossbow bolts, making ready to be destroyed. A barely controlled feeling of panic pulsed through the place.
He felt somebody grab his shoulder. “Move your ass. The gray one is already saddled!” He was pushed roughly toward the section that had been blocked off for a stable.
The Captain. He had never liked the man, but suddenly felt sorry for the officer stuck with being in charge of this mess. The man had already turned to shout orders at the others.
Tosh ran for the horses. He was the last to arrive; the other two horses already had riders.
He briefly thanked military discipline, something he’d never done before. In this desolate outpost it would have been easy to let things slip. But they kept up the saddle rotation, drilled, maintained the watch. And Tosh was on saddle rotation. Dumb luck. He would ride away while the others died defending the tower. A stab of guilt vanished rapidly. He wasn’t a hero and didn’t have a death wish.
He mounted, looked at the other two riders. They nodded to each other.
The two soldiers at the thick wooden double doors waved at the riders. “As soon as we lift the bar and open these doors, you men ride like the Snow Devil himself is on your ass, you hear?”
They nodded again. Somehow it had become difficult to speak.
The soldiers lifted the bar and swung the doors open. Snow and bone-freezing wind hit them immediately.
The three riders shot out of the tower. Tosh found himself in the lead, dug his heels in, mentally willed the horse to fly. Flickering points of firelight streamed toward the narrow road from both sides. Torches! Warriors closing fast. The bastards must have landed ships farther up the coast to send troops to secure the tower before the armada arrived. Tosh wasn’t a military strategist, just a grunt. But that’s what he would have done.
No matter. He only had one thing to worry about now: ride fast!
He heard the hiss of an arrow followed by the thud of a body hitting the ground. They’d hit one of the riders behind him. More arrows cut through the air, one so close to his ear he felt the fletching tickle his lobe.
A scream. Tosh risked a look back over his shoulder. He was the only rider left. He hunkered down low and spurred the horse again, snow stinging his face.
He rounded the bend and headed toward the low mountain pass. Tosh looked back again. No sign of torches. He was going to make it. The
only
one to make it. Berrig and two others dead so far. How long would the others last? Or maybe the Perranese would surround the Tower, take then men inside prisoner. But the tales he’d heard about the Perranese didn’t make them seem very merciful.
Never mind.
Tosh’s adrenalin rush began to ebb. The cold seeped in. He realized that in leaving in such a rush he’d forgotten to don the heavy traveling furs. But Klaar was a small duchy. He’d be through the pass quickly and then ride down the other side maybe a dozen miles to the fur trapping village there. There was an outpost behind a palisade where he could change horses and get furs for the rest of the journey. Then another eighty miles of hard riding to the city.
To warn the Duke that war was upon the land.
High atop a castle wall, a giant stood next to a duchess. They watched the approaching army.
The giant was not technically a giant, not like the shaggy mountain giants that lived high in the mountains or the tree-climbing forest giants in the west. Rather, he was a giant among men, a fraction under seven feet tall, broad shoulders, rippling muscles. Powerful legs with thick thighs and calves. His name was Kork, short for some longer foreign name that nobody in Klaar used anymore. He had dark, olive skin and black coarse hair like all the desert people of Fyria in the far southwest, worn in rows of tight braids close to his scalp. What had brought him across Helva to the frozen reaches of Klaar was a story few knew and even fewer considered important. His beard was braided and forked, clamped at the ends in brass.
Kork had been born into the warriors’ caste in Fyria, had held a sword before he could speak. His armor was traditional: bracers of metal bands affixed with thick leather, a fitted breastplate and a skirt of overlapping metal rectangles. In such climes as Klaar, he wore a heavy, fur-lined cloak which could be cast aside quickly should he need to leap into combat.
His sole reason for existence was to teach and protect the young woman standing next to him.
“That’s more soldiers in one place at one time than I’ve ever seen before,” Rina said coolly. “A pity for them it won’t matter.”
They’d come to the top of the wall to get a look at the enemy camp. Neat rows of round, crimson tents, banners flying in the wind. They completely covered the flat ground beyond the Long Bridge.
Kork grunted, a low guttural sound that could have meant he agreed, disagreed or didn’t care.
Rina smiled. “Thanks for keeping up your end of the conversation, Kork.”
Kork grunted again.
Just as the Fyrian was not technically a giant, Rina was not technically a duchess. Her father, Arlus Veraiin, was Duke of Klaar, and someday Rina would be duchess, but not yet. But in the private family wing of the castle, Arlus still referred to his daughter as “my little duchess,” a habit left over from her childhood.
Rina Veraiin had just turned nineteen, a year from legal adulthood in Klaar and indeed most of Helva. She put the long, tightly rolled chuma stick into her mouth, inhaled, held it, then blew the gray smoke into the wind, watched it float away over the city wall.
“You smoke too much,” Kork said.
She puffed again. Chuma was a habit she’d picked up recently. The low, broad-leafed plant grew in the river valleys of the lush flatlands. It was expensive to transport all the way to Klaar, but, really, what was the point of being the Duke’s daughter if she could not enjoy expensive things?
“I had planned to shop in the town today,” Rina said. “I suppose I’ll just watch the war instead.” She took another long, lazy draw on the chuma stick.
Kork grunted again. “You shop too much.”
Rina grinned. “You think I do
everything
too much.”
“Except practice.”
She laughed and, without hesitating, unbuttoned her own heavy fur cloak at the throat and tossed it aside. She now wore only a wool blouse and a long wool “false skirt” that was really an overly blousy pair of pants. They resembled a skirt but allowed her to move and fight and ride a horse like a man. The cold hit her, exhilarating. Soon it would be numbing, but not yet. She drew the thin rapier from the scabbard at her waist.
Rina was lithe, athletic. Stomach flat and limbs toned from the exercise routine designed for her by Kork. She thought herself a bit too thin and boyish through the hips and occasionally thought it would be nice to have more curves, but she didn’t dwell on this notion. It would be a lie to pretend she wasn’t attractive. The sons of nobles had fallen over themselves to speak to her at court functions, especially the last couple of years. It had been tedious but also … interesting. The braids mingled into her long, glossy black hair were fastened with large sapphires and blue silk ribbons that perfectly complimented her eyes. Her startlingly white skin almost glowed.
She watched Kork draw his sword, readied herself.
In fact, Kork wore two swords. The huge hand-and-a-half sword on his back was a weapon he’d fallen in love with after coming to the northlands. It was nearly as long as Rina was tall and could be wielded one- or two-handed.
But the sword Kork drew was the thin, curved Fyrian scimitar, a more appropriate match for Rina’s plain rapier with its simple knuckle guard and quillon. It was not a jewel-encrusted sword for fancy dress balls. It was a fighting weapon.
“So you think I need practice, do you?” Rina smirked. “The chances of you scoring even one hit are – Hey!”
Kork lunged. No salute, bow or warning.
Rina parried just in time, knocking the tip of the scimitar away and stepping inside Kork’s reach for a counterthrust, but the big man spun, sweeping wide with the scimitar, deflecting the rapier. They backed away from one another, took stock for a split second.
Kork moved in fast, the scimitar a blur. Rina blocked every thrust and swipe. The metallic
clang
of their blades rang up and down the battlements. The guards along the wall turned to watch, soldiers and officers alike crowding around, some gawking wide-eyed, most grinning at the display. This was a show many of them had seen before.
Kork pressed and Rina fell back; their blades clashed. Rina had always been fast, and Kork had trained her to use that ability. Heavy battle axes and two-handed swords could deliver devastating blows but they weren’t
fast
. Speed had always been Rina’s gift.
The onlookers had formed a wide circle, and Rina allowed the huge Fyrian to chase her around as she deflected every thrust, all of her swordplay completely defensive. She’d sparred with Kork for years, knew his penchant for overwhelming skillful fencing with brute force, so she let him come on, drawing him in.
She was waiting for him to lunge, a big one he’d think would suddenly end the match. Two seconds later, he tried it, overreaching, trying to get the scimitar past her defenses. She dropped to the stone floor of the battlement, brought her foot around in a leg sweep. This was something they’d practiced only in the last few months, integrating weaponless hand fighting with fencing skills.
He jumped, easily avoiding the sweep, but his sword went wide as he spread his arms to balance himself. Rina was already leaping to her feet, thrusting the rapier. The tip
tinged
off Kork’s breastplate.
Rina’s point.
The gathering soldiers laughed and applauded.
She bowed, panting. “Thank you, thank you! For your further entertainment, the mighty Rina Veraiin will slay another giant after the lunch hour! Bring your friends to see the show.”
Another small smattering of applause as the group of soldiers dissipated back to their posts.
“Still think I don’t practice enough?”
Kork shrugged.
“Oh, now don’t tell me you’re
pouting
,” Rina said.
“What is it you think you’ve accomplished?” Kork asked.
“Victory, obviously,” Rina said.
Kork sighed, the sound of a bull ox snorting. “I have been … training you all wrong.”
What?
“Did I not just score that point? I think somebody is being a bad sport.”
Kork scowled at her, and Rina knew she was close to stepping over a line.
She cleared her throat. “What do you mean?”
“I have been teaching you skills,” Kork said, “instead of combat.”
Rina blinked, confused. “What’s the difference?”
Kork lifted his chin in the direction of the encamped army on the other side of the Long Bridge. “That.”
Rina shook her head. “Wait, I don’t understand why that should matter. I still
beat
you. I think you’re sour because you lost.”
She regretted saying it immediately. Kork had taught her everything. Her words were the words of a bratty, spoiled duke’s daughter. And yet she couldn’t make herself take them back. Some stubbornness had seized her and refused to let go. It was a stubbornness that had infuriated her father on more than one occasion.
Kork wasn’t fazed. He’d seen her this way many times. Up until about age eleven, the stubbornness was usually accompanied by the stomping of a little foot and a pouty lip.
“And if you’d touched the tip of your little sword against my breastplate on the battlefield? What would that mean?”
“It would mean—” She stopped.
What would it mean?
Kork drew the enormous hand-and-a-half sword from the sheath on his back, held it out to her with one hand. With the other, he rapped a knuckle on his breastplate. A deep metallic ring. “You want to get through
this
armor, then you need a weapon with heft. Take it.”
She took the hilt in both hands.
When Kork let go, the sword dropped, dragging her arms along with it. The tip hit the stone floor.
“You are soooo funny,” she said. “You know I can’t lift this ridiculous thing.”
Kork sheathed his scimitar. “I’ll even the odds for you.” He drew a small knife from a hidden pocket sewn inside his cloak. It was what they called a gentleman’s knife. The small four-inch blade folded into and out of a carved wooden handle. This one had a simple carving of a swan on a calm lake. It was a knife old men used to whittle while they sat around and gossiped about affairs of state and hunting and women.
Kork opened the blade, held it loosely in his right hand. “Come at me.”
“Obviously, I can’t—”
“This isn’t a sporting duel,” Kork snapped. “You do not get your choice of weapons. You do not get to rest and regroup between points. You get to live or die.”