Rythe Falls (23 page)

Chapter
Forty-Six

A castle is only as strong as its gate. Naeth was old, ancient, even. The gate was thick, heavy wood, ironwork black against the lighter wood. Fire and weight would do it, but the Draymen were not accustomed to siege warfare. They had no siege engines, no magic, no ballista. They would not think of a ram, they did not use shields to protect themselves from the arrows, raining from the battlements.

             
What they did have, though, was a seemingly endless supply of soldiers to throw at the walls and at the gate.

             
'You think they intend to breach the walls by climbing over their dead?'

             
Typraille spoke within his brother's minds, so that the soldiers watching the six brothers of the Order of Sard could not hear their private council.

             
'I think they could, though you make light, Brother. Yet I do not think they need to do  so. They are not entirely reliant on brawn or numbers.'
Quintal's eyes, like the rest of his brothers', were closed. His face was motionless as he knelt with them. They did not face each other, but the gate. Swords by their hands, the warriors and their priest were utterly still, unmoved, unafraid by the growing clamour at the thick, strong gate.

             
'Your meaning?'
said Typraille.

             
'They have magic, brother. They have not needed it to take the city. Whoever, whatever, made the rent in the sky through which they came remains behind the army. A great power is there.'
Cenphalph voice, even communing with his brothers as they waited for death, was eerily calm.

             
'A power I have felt before,'
said Drun.
'Yet while I have become weaker...this one...this one has reached the zenith. It is...something remarkable, I think, though I do not understand its nature. It is not old, like these Elethyn, nor protocrat as we have faced before. Something new...something fearsome.'

             
'If we assault this...thing...could we snatch victory?'
Quintal's mind-voice was bereft of hope, but it was a question that needed asking.

             
Drun spoke, his words and his heart sad enough to move his brothers.
'No, Quintal. No. We die with honour, here. The castle, the King...these are your concerns. This new threat, it waits. It is not yours to face, brothers. This I feel...this I know.'

             
'Then the gates will fall?'

             
'Yes,'
said Drun.
'Our purpose is to give our lives for the power of good. We do that here today...but I...I, too, die soon. It is the end for us.'

             
A sense of resignation, rather than shock, through the linked minds of the Order of Sard.

             
'The Order...our purpose...we are done?'
Carth, the giant, who rarely spoke. He sounded neither sad nor afraid.

             
'We belong to this day, brothers. Friends. I will follow soon after. This new power is mine to face. The stories? The brothers we lost for whom we mourn...that is the weight behind our blows. The stories, the glory, the sacrifice...these things are ours. We die today. We die for honour and the glory of our Lord the Sun.'

             
As one the brothers bowed their heads.

             
Then, as a single soul, the paladins took up their swords. Drun alone remained kneeling in the courtyard for a moment, simple because he did not want to be seen coughing his blood on this white robes before his brothers, before the terrified men within the courtyard.

             
The gates trembled at the weight of the Draymen behind them. They held. Drun stood, carefully and slowly so not to strain his burbling chest, and walked, slowly still, back into the keep where he would keep what soldier he could from Madal's Gates. He was a priest, not a warrior. His strength was not in destruction or killing, but in healing and wisdom.

             
A moment of simple silence, then. No arrows, no pounding feet.

             
He knew the order would fight well, die well. He would feel his brothers' death keenly.

             
But not for long.

             
Drun closed his eyes a moment, and sent his love to his brothers as the strange, unknown magician blasted the great doors, the iron and the wood, and the iron portcullis apart with a fire hotter, even, than the heart of a volcano, hotter than a thousand fires. The stone around the blast melted, the iron in molten lumps upon the dirt, flaming wood and ash and smoke from the fire flying or drifting into the air.

             
The endless hordes of the Draymen pouring through the mess.

             
His shining, glorious brothers, stepping into the breach.

             
Quintal. Cenphalph. Typraille. Disper. Carth.

             
Peace, brothers, he thought, and went to prepare for his own death.

*

Renir, along with everyone else, stood behind the kneeling Sard and watched their strange, silent ceremony with respect.

             
The man Sutter, from Gern's Crest, spoke to one of his men. 'What are they doing, you think?'

             
Renir turned to the men and spoke quietly enough, but plenty of men heard. 'They are, I think, saying goodbye. They were born to war, born to die in battle. Today is their day.'

             
The man silenced at that.

             
The men of the Sard rose from their knees with their swords in hand and faced the gates.

             
'They come,' said Renir.

             
'For the King!' bellowed Bourninund. Renir scowled at him.

             
'For Sturma!' Renir shouted instead, but his words were lost as the gate erupted in fire and blew shards and molten iron into the air around them.

             
Deaf, confused and on his knees, Renir didn't realise the battle had begun until he saw the Sard's shining cloaks like a wall, holding the breach with steel and skill.

             
When his hearing, and finally his voice, came back, he stood to rush to stand with the brave paladins...and found Bear's thin, strong hand holding him back.

             
'Not yet,' said Bear. 'Follow my lead.'

             
'And let them just...die for us?'

             
'No. But look...they fight like they understand each movement...we would merely get in the way. Trust me. Wait.'

             
Renir, bowed his head. Like his...people. His friends...helpless.

*

The Order of the Sard fought with such perfection that Renir, Bear, Wen...the entire castle full of men who could see, were shocked to silence for a time. It might have been as short as ten minutes, or as long an hour. The suns above, the light itself, seemed brighter while they fought, like the suns themselves watched.

             
Perhaps they do,
thought Renir.
They are the suns' paladins, after all...and such knights as would fit the light, truly.

             
They were fluid, their blades lashing out, spinning and twirling but never breached. Draymen warriors broke upon their blades and their glittering armour in waves, with no more effect than the tide upon the sandy shore. Where the Draymen pushed, the Sard were waiting. When there was a lull, the Sard pushed forward. When the weight of enemies was too great to bear, their forms shifted, swirling, and somehow found a way to break the fighters. Again and again, the Draymen hacked without skill or artifice with weapons heavy or light, new steel or old, dirty iron. Maces and swords broke on sword or armour, heads and arms rolled. Blood spurted and the Draymen screamed, but through it all the paladins were silent and their cloaks clean, the purity of their spirit evident for all to see.

             
Men watched in awe, itching and aching to aid, to join the battle, this small thing amidst the greater one, a simple battle of five true men holding back the entire might of the largest nation on Rythe with nothing more than skill and passion.

             
Beauty and perfection, though in such a terrible art as war. And then one fell and the entire castle roared as his white cloak darkened with blood and mud and soot...the magic gone.

*

'Typraille, brother...'
Drun's heart hurt as he heard, felt, his brother go down to the inevitable death that waited them all.

             
Beneath Drun's own hands a man's blood leaked, a warrior wounded the night before, only now bleeding from a stitched wound.

             
'Cut must have been deeper than we thought...must've broke something inside,' said Lady Geraline, a lady of the court who was bold and brave and not queasy at the sight of blood.

             
Drun's heart hurt from the loss of Typraille, but he had work to do yet.

             
Typraille's soul sighed and his power, his strength, his passion flowed back into his brothers, bolstering their own energy with his death.

             
'Together again, soon, brother,'
said Drun, but only in his mind.

             
With a sad, resigned look to Lady Geraline he said, 'Open the stitches. I will try to find the deeper cut.'

             
'He will die...' said the Lady.

             
'He will if we don't,' said Drun. He only nodded, then. He feared if he argued again he would be forced to cough, and if he started, he was not so sure he could stop.

*

Carth, the largest of the Sard, that silent and stoic warrior, took a great sword through his chest, pulled the length of the blade down with him and somehow killed his attacker as he died.

             
Carth,
Renir thought.
Never even spoke to the man,
he thought.

             
Then Wen, big and dark and glistening with sweat and soot, was beside he and Bear.

             
'Going to let them sacrifice themselves, Bear?'
said Wen.

             
'Not much on glory,' said Bourninund. 'But it doesn't seem right, does it?'

             
'No.'

             
'You said...wait...' Renir spoke, but he sensed the truth. The time to wait and watch was gone. For the three remaining paladins to fight to their deaths alone would be cowardice, not sense.

             
'And we did. Now there is room to fight. Wasn't before. Brave men...but plenty of the bastard Draymen to go around,' said Bear. He grinned as he said it. Didn't feel much like grinning, truth be told, but no sense in pissing yourself in fear at the start of a battle. Time for that later. When he was dying.

             
And Bear was in no doubt. He'd die this day. Couldn't be off it.

             
'For the King!' bellowed the old warrior and thrust both his short swords in the air in salute.

             
'For the King!' echoed Wen, his great sword raised to the sky.

             
Men all around the courtyard took up the cry, until their shouts drowned out even the screech of steel at the gates.

             
'For Sturma?' said Renir. Bear laughed.

             
'Stop fighting it, Renir,' said the old mercenary. 'Fight them, instead!'

             
And with that the old man, spry enough, ran into the fray like a man eager to embrace death himself.

             
Wen slapped Renir on the back, rocking him forward, running toward the battle. Renir had a choice - fall to his knees from the power of Wen's slap, or just keep moving forward.              He moved, and found a roar in his throat and Haertjuge in his hand.

*

Chapter Forty-Seven

The blood sang through Renir's limbs. Haertjuge was light in his fists, fast and deadly. At first he was strong and fast and fearless.

             
At first.

             
Warriors by their hundreds fell through the rent in the wall, their weight alone pushing the defenders into the courtyard where they were at an even greater disadvantage. Now they were beset not just from the front, but from the sides, too. The men of Sturma and their allies fought like demons, holding a rough wall of men whenever they could against the might of the Draymen.

             
But the warriors of the plains seemed to be solely intent on killing Renir, and Renir alone. It was quite disconcerting. Warriors would fall to stray thrusts from Sturmen, or the remaining Sard, or the mercenaries, ignoring other threats in a hunger to take Renir's head.

             
It wasn't until maybe the tenth or twentieth snarling Drayman fell at Renir's feets that he remembered he alone was wearing a crown atop his head. He alone was the King of all this...

             
The strength and the passion and the confidence all fell from him in the merest instant. Suddenly, he found his knees weak and he staggered.

             
Bear was right there alongside him. The old man held Renir close.

             
'You hurt?'

             
'They're trying to kill me.'

             
'Don't take it personal,' said the warrior with a grin. Wen's great sword swatted an attacker away, flying, nearly in two halves, away from Bear and Renir. 'They're trying to kill all of us.'

             
'Me, more, though. I'm...I'm King.'

             
Renir whispered the last, lost in the crushing din of war, but Bear got the gist and laughed, there, in the middle of a circle of death. The old mercenary laughed until tears came down his face.

             
'Damn, Renir, you're a good man in a pinch. Funny as hell. I needed that.'

             
'What?'

             
A man burst through the knot of fighting around Renir and fell to a slash from Bourninund's short blade, blood spraying across Renir's face, hot and sticky.

             
'Funny as hell,' said Bear, shaking his head, and turned to find someone else to fight. He didn't have to look far.

             
Renir's legs weren't shaking anymore.

             
In the heat of battle, maybe confusion helps just as well as a stout ale when a man's heart's sore
, he thought.

             
Whatever the reason he found he could swing his axe again, and found, too, that the more he swung, the harder the enemy strove to reach him, the harder his men fought beside him.

             
I'm like the Sard, to them...I'm what they look to...emulate? To please?

             
I'm just a man with a golden hat,
he thought.

             
But then, somewhere deep down, he remembered his own words, long ago. Why he never wore a helm. Because people saw a weakness, they strove to hit that spot. And if they did, they were thinking, stuck, on that one thing.

             
Now, crown on his head, roaring and standing in the middle of battle? The Draymen were solely focused on Renir. Terrifying, yes, but every single man in the courtyard was fighting to keep him alive, too.

             
And that was humbling. It made him realise it wasn't just a crown on his head. He
was
Sturma, now. In a man, yes, in a pretty band of gold, yes...but the men needed something they could see, something to rally to. A man can't rally for a field, or a copse of trees.

             
He laughed, too. Maybe they'd call him the Laughing King. Maybe one day he'd be remembered, like Gek Fathand.

             
He laughed, and swung his double-headed axe, and strode into the heart of the battle with no fear in his heart.

*