Authors: Garon Whited
Nothing to be done about it, at least by me; people were trying to shovel snow onto the fires to put them out. With the water-wheel no longer supplying them from the river, it wasn’t easy to get water. There weren’t many people even trying.
I worked my way over to another clean place and used a combination of fistfuls of snow and grim determination to clean myself up a bit. That’s something else I don’t want to dwell on. I was chilled to the bone, my stomach was empty, and I was as tired and filthy as a well-used dishrag.
I think I would have killed for a hot shower and a meal. If I could have stood up reliably.
Once I was feeling a bit less like a lump of protoplasm washed up on the shores of life, I ventured to refasten my clothes and stand up. It took more than one try; my hands were shaking. I finally took Firebrand, scabbard and all, off my belt and used it as a cane. Either it didn’t notice or it didn’t care. Maybe it just didn’t mind, circumstances being what they were.
Lightheaded and staggering, I made my way over to the flames. All but one of the barracks buildings was fully aflame; the last one was smoldering along the roof from flaming bits carried by the breeze. Much of the rest of the town was also going well, including the whorehouse. I felt a pang of sorrow. Not for the lost income, but for the people I met who might have been in it.
Hellas, her boy—did I ever get that kid’s name?—Maggie, even the Squire.
A lot of people were simply evacuating. Scrambling to get what goods they might, they loaded up their horses, donkeys, wagons, and carts in a race against the leaping flames. The whole town was going to be a pile of ash before nightfall.
I wondered dully where the soldiers were. Some were still fighting flames, trying to slow the advance by heaving snow against it. It was better discipline than I thought to see. Others were lying in bloody heaps in the aftermath of a skirmish of some sort. But there were many, many more who were rolling on the ground and being as ill as a human can be.
I grabbed a firefighter as he went by. “What’s going on?” I demanded.
“Traitors,” he answered, and hustled on.
Seeing I’d get no answers while they were busy, I gripped Firebrand’s hilt.
“Are you hungry, Firebrand?”
It yawned and stretched in my mind.
What do you want?
“I know you absorb fire. Can you put a whole building out?”
After a fashion.
I drew the blade and staggered up to a burning building. I think it was a house, once. I stabbed Firebrand into the burning wall.
The flames ceased to lick upward and started to lick
sideways
, all toward the sword. It looked like I’d brought a vacuum cleaner close to a campfire, but on a much larger scale. It looked, to me, like the flames had suddenly decided I was a tasty bit! They
swarmed
toward me, only to be drawn into a whirling vortex of fire, the core of which was steel. A tornado of flames reached for me and whirled into the blade.
Firebrand glowed white as great tongues and sheets of fire poured into the metal, yet I felt no heat. The roof of the house fell in, the structure crumbled, and the flames burned yellow-white instead of red and orange. But I did not scorch and blister. It all flowed unnaturally into my sword.
In the space of a minute, the house had burned completely to ash. Well, that
did
put the flames out, sort of.
Firebrand made a satisfied sound. I went on to the next building to make a firebreak of sorts; the town was probably dead, anyway, but at least the ones who were fleeing could take a little more time about it. The next burning building vanished in the same fashion, only faster. Then another, and another, and another.
When it was done, there were still several buildings afire, but they weren’t close to any unburning building. I sheathed a satisfied Firebrand—which was now nothing more than warm—and found a place to sit. I still wasn’t well. I was tired and shaky and my brain felt like it was askew in my skull. At least I wasn’t cold.
Someone crunched through the snow next to me. I looked up and was pleased to see
Hellas survived. She was soot-stained and dirty, which added nothing to her appeal, but she had a double handful of snow for me and the youngster—equally dirty—at her side. I accepted the snow and ate it; it helped a little.
“What will you do now, master wizard?” she asked, while the kid clung to her leg; she kept a hand on his head to soothe him. He didn’t seem to need soothing; he was watching the fires.
“Find my friends,” I said. “See to them. Help what others I can.” I noted a bunch of tired soldiers headed toward me. I blinked up at them.
The sergeant among them saluted. “Sir… Halar, is’t not?”
“That’s right. And you are?”
“Sergeant Brynon of Helvetown, attached to Sir Gyeth. It seems you’re the only knight not tossing his guts, sir.”
“Don’t depend on that,” I cautioned. “I’m only moving because I tossed all my guts at once. I’m exhausted.”
“As you say, sir. We’re all tired.”
I looked around. There were about thirty of them. “Where are the rest?”
He pointed; the soldiers moved out of the way so I could see the smoking ruins of barracks.
“All right,” I said, quietly. “Tell me what happened.”
He gave me his best guess: A party of men prepared the barracks’ roof and walls during the night. When the noblemen were mostly out of the way with the sudden plague, these infiltrators parked carts at the doors of the barracks to trap most of the footmen and archers inside and then lit each building. Then, already armed and armored, they went through the town in groups of three, killing every soldier they could find until enough of the army massed into units to take them down. Unfortunately, a lot of the army was hit with the plague, too. Thirty-one were still standing, and several of those were wounded.
It was a very
convenient
plague. I was willing to bet someone poisoned us—maybe one of the cooks or kitchen helpers.
“All right. I’m deathly tired and still not well, but I think we need to help the survivors. Bring me someone ill and a lot of water. I can fix my problems, but fixing someone else is tricky. I’ll have to experiment.”
“Fyrn, go get one of the dying; one that can get no worse. Harlach, see to—”
We all paused and listened at the sound of a distant horn.
Brynon proceeded to swear in an efficient and effective fashion. I paid close attention and was impressed at his command of eloquent profanity. I made note of some of the more colorful of his epithets, just in case I needed something impressively blasphemous.
“What is it now?” I asked.
“The viksagi,” he replied. “They come at last.”
It doesn’t take a lot of men to defend a bridge. Horatius did it with two friends. I had about twenty healthy men, ten walking wounded, and a small-but-helpful woman. Hellas kept me upright, found my staff, and was basically my gofer. I don’t know how it looked and I didn’t care; I wasn’t going to turn away any help. I did send her kid to a back room of the keep, well away from the gates and hopefully out of harm’s way.
Where was everyone else? Sick or fleeing. Can’t say I really blamed either; the civilians would have evacuated when the fighting started anyway; this just meant running instead of walking.
The only good news was we heard the horns while they were still a long way off. It was nearly an hour before we could hear the enemy singing. And what singing! Bellowing, deep-voiced men clad in furs and leather, all hammering out the tune and some beating time on their shields with short axes. It was nothing more than a distant swell of sound, like surf, but it grew louder and I started to pick out voices.
When I asked about it, I was told they always sing before battle. It pleases their gods and attracts the attention of angels, or something to that effect. The word was
arhelu,
loosely meaning
bright warriors
—I don’t think they meant what I think of as angels.
We had time to brace the gate with timbers—the water-wheel-whatever was on hold, so we had plenty. We got up on the wall and into position. Everybody had a crossbow, except for Verril, our only archer. We improved our numbers by using the walking wounded who could shoot a crossbow, but not cock it; we teamed them up with the able-bodied to increase the rate of fire.
I found myself wishing for a machine gun. And field glasses. And artillery.
They advanced almost into bowshot. They didn’t march so much as walk in time with their singing, and there wasn’t even a hint of ranks or files. Instead, they were strung out along a couple of miles of their route; more people and wagons and such kept moving into their forming camp. I worried about the largest; it was obviously a heavy ram. The keep’s gates are old, much-dented bronze, but a ram is eventually a problem for any gate. The second largest wagon was, in its way, even more worrisome; it was easily big enough to house a partially-assembled trebuchet. Each was big. It took six hairy oxen to haul either.
They didn’t start doing anything immediately upon arrival. Instead, they made merry and camped cheerfully—and with a lot of clear space left around the second wagon.
“Sir?”
Sergeant Brynon stood next to me on the wall. I leaned heavily on the battlements, watching the oncoming army. I never realized how impressive it would look. A couple thousand people, all here to kill us.
“Yes, sergeant?”
“What are your orders, sir?”
I shook my head. How did I get stuck with this job?
“I have no idea,” I confessed. “Hold the bridge, I suppose.”
Brynon looked around sharply; we were relatively alone. He leaned close to me and whispered in my ear.
“Sir? Permission to speak freely, sir?”
I leaned back a little to look at him. “Granted.”
“If you say that in the hearing of the men, I’ll feed you your own guts, sir,” he replied, softly.
I blinked at him. “What?”
“If you want to take the heart out of every last one of your men, sir, tell them you have no plan,” he hissed. “You’ll give over the keep to the viksagi faster’n the bowels of the other officers pass gas. You have to know what to do. You can be wrong, but
you’re in charge.
You do something besides stand there and dither or, with respect, sir, I’ll kill you.”
I felt a coldness in my belly.
I was in charge.
People were depending on me. Not just the soldiers, but also the sick people, the fleeing people—everyone they could potentially catch. I doubted the viksagi force could take the whole kingdom, but it would be a real pain once it got across the river. If it got across the river.
I fell back on delegation.
“Right. Sergeant, ready the men to defend the bridge.”
Brynon looked relieved. “Yes, sir!”
I watched the army assemble as he jogged off, bellowing orders. I don’t know enough about defending a castle! It looked like it was time for some on-the-job training. Now, if I were going to assault this gate, how would I go about it? And how would I
stop
it?
I noticed several unusual individuals grouped together, looking the keep over from a safe distance. My eyes are excellent these days, and I could see they wore odd markings, tattoos or inked scars, all over their forearms. Each one wore an odd hat, each in the shape of some sort of animal—birds, bears, or wolves. There were nine of them.
A slow chant reached my ears, mainly because I was listening for it; I saw their lips moving.
I felt the slow approach of a spell, a vision spell. They were moving it forward like a periscope, peering at the keep, to see how things were inside. Since we couldn’t let them get away with that, I drew my dagger and called up the spark of power in it. I lashed at their floating vision spell and it came apart like an egg in a blender. The backlash of the broken spell made them all flinch.
That ended attempts to spy magically. But I was quite aware that animals might be used to peer in at us, so I kept an eye out for them. Birds at this time of year would be unlikely; they’re smarter than us and go south where it’s warm.
“Verril?”
“Yes, my lord?”
“If you see a bird heading our way, do you think you can shoot it down?”
“If it’s not too high, my lord, aye.”
“Keep your eyes open and an arrow on the string. If you do see one, sing out and we’ll go after it with arrow and spell.”
“Yes, lord!”
A spare set of eyes—especially a professional archer’s eyes—is never a bad thing.
I went back to thinking about this army on the doorstep and the magical artillery they might have. And how to tell them all to go away.
“Sergeant!” I shouted. He came hustling up.
“Sir!”
“I see you’re readying the oil cauldrons.”
“Yessir.”
“Send someone to fetch us all the lamp oil in the keep, as well as a lot of torches. Bring all the jars, jugs, and bottles we have, too, and a double armload of clothes, cloaks, or blankets.”