Wrath Of The Medusa (Book 2) (10 page)

“They are early,” Willem growled from atop his massive horse.

“Orcs is ready,” Barnu
ck snorted.  “Plenty dead men soon. Battle won before sun is high.”

“Only if Nagbadesh follows the plan,” Dema silenced them both.  They stood, an unlikely
quartet of riders and their disparate mounts, atop a low hillock on the Eastern bank of the Saeth.  Kimbolt, kept his counsel in the company of his betters, and contented himself with a quick survey of their surroundings. 

The Saeth at their back was running low.  The moss clad pillars of the bridge were laid bare
, browning in the dry autumn sunshine. A quarter of the bridge’s span at either end traversed nothing wetter than the dried mud of an arid river bed.   The half empty river channel rose sharply at its sides making a raised escarpment of the river bank. It was along the top of this bank that the deployment of Dema’s force began.  The different divisions of her command stretched out in echelon formation from South West by the river towards the Northeast and the Palacinta Hills.   The far right flank, to the South, was held by the nomad cavalry. Then came the infantry a little ahead and to the left of their formidable horse borne brethren.  Further ahead still was the Redfang orcs’ position some hundreds of yard beyond the line of caution.  To the Redfangs’ left the Blackskulls hung back leaving Nagbadesh’s tribe as a tempting orcish bait dangling in the jaws of the Gap of Tandar.

At the foot of their raised command position,
Dema’s elite guard waited as a mobile reserve.  These were the wolf riding Bonegrinders and the pick of the outlander warriors, victors of the battle of Derrach Bridge and of the capture of Listcairn.  Veteran soldiers they sat or lay beside their mounts, snatching a few moments of nerveless rest or sleep, quite unfazed by the carnage which was about to unfold.

Kimbolt strained his eyes towards the hills.  A cloud of dust was descending on the Redfangs as Rugan took the bait.  “They have sixteen thousand, Nagbadesh has barely four,”
Willem remarked as the clash of steel and the cry of distant battle reached their ears, some seconds after they had seen the lines meet.

“Nagbadesh has just to play the part,” Dema reminded him.  “To appear the stupid orc he is, there is no act in that.”

“Orcs not run,” Barnuck said.  “Nagbadesh think he brave. Think he stand and fight.”

“And that’s what’s stupid.”
Dema muttered.  “Orcs can run, a lot faster than humans can.  He just needs to time his disengagement before the Redfangs are all destroyed, then he can pull this whole cursed army out of the hills and onto the plane for us to annihilate them.”

“Nagbadesh not running,” Barnuck pointed out.  True enough, the banners of the Redfangs were unmoving, as the silver pennants of Medyrsalve swirled and merged about them.  “Soon Nagbadesh be overrun.”

“Orcs’ blood,” Dema swore.  “Oh would that I had a fishing line and rod, to pull this disobedient bait back.”

Kimbolt’s stomach muscles tightened at the tens
ion which the Medusa’s displeasure engendered.  Both orc and outlander bit their tongues as Dema walked her horse left then right, always gazing at the distant floundering banners of the Redfangs. 

“They’re retreating now, Lady.”  Willem
said with some relief, as at last they spotted movement in the orcish lines.  The battered Redfangs turned and ran.  To some it might look like a rout, but Kimbolt noted the cohesion as they fled, bunched together in a group at an even but fast pace.  They were running but they were not broken.

“Thank fuck for that,” Dema growled.  “Not before time.”

“Half-breed follows, follows them down.”

The M
edusa’s lips were pursed, her gaze fixed on the approaching battle as clear ground opened between the retreating Redfangs and the pursuing force of Medyrsalve.  “Ogre piss, he’s not breaking his own lines.”

Kimbolt too had noted the measured nature of the half-elf’s pursuit.  They were following the Redfangs yes, but still in their own good order.  The enemy had not been drawn into a strung
out chase with the fleetest of foot way ahead harassing the ankles of the running orcs.

“Horse shit half-elf
. Nagbadesh is flashing his arse cheeks at you and still you fucking walk after him.  What does it take to make you fucking run?” Dema spat out a rhetorical question which Barnuck nonetheless answered.

“It matter not, Lady.  Half-breed come. Come quick, come slow, he going to die just the same.”

“These poor condemned souls,”
Abroath was saying.  “Do we administer the last rites?”

“No,” Niarmit repeated with a distracted air. “
We destroy them.  As I said the blessing of the Goddess turns them to dust.”

“Oh,”
the answer did not quite satisfy the Prior but he sensed the Queen’s irritation enough to moderate his questioning.  For a moment they trotted along in silence, his pony impudently trying to race Niarmit’s mare.  “I am sorry, your Majesty, to be a nuisance with my ignorance, but I have never met these undead you speak of before.”

“I’d seen none before a few weeks ago, Prior Abroath.
But you soon get used to them, to destroying them.”

“And if they are too many,
you said there are twelve thousand ahead of us? We are far fewer.”

“But we are mobile
.  Your hobilers and their ponies are well suited to this task.  Once we have shown ourselves, we lure the enemy after us, back up the valley of Torrockburn. The undead are uncoordinated and slow.  There will be plenty of time for your spearmen to dismount and take up a line across the valley.”

“
But are there not also orcs and humans in this division from Undersalve.  Surely they will not be so slow and ill co-ordinated?”

“We should still outrun them.
We are on horseback and they will want to keep their force together as they chase us.”

“The odds will be great, twelve thousand of theirs to our five.”

“Aye Prior, but remember, it is not our task to defeat them.  We are to hold them.  To hold them here away from Rugan’s battle.  Once he has destroyed the Snake Lady’s army then he will come and take our opponents in the rear. That is when we shall both together destroy them.”

“You trust
that my brother will come?” Quintala rode up beside the Queen and the Prior.  “You have greater faith in him than I.”

“He would not leave us to be overrun,” Niarmit replied.

Kaylan, on the Queen’s other side raised a sceptical eyebrow and muttered something about Bledrag Field.

Niarmit rounded on him. “What other choice have I today, Kaylan.  The past is done, that was then
and there, this is now and here.  Rugan fights for his own province today, not my father’s.  I think we can trust in his self-interest to come to our aid.”

Kaylan dipped his chin in a nod of apology.  “There is another puzzle though, my Lady, more immediate than any questions of the Prince of Medyrsalve’s honour.”
  

“Indeed, what is it?” Niarmit replied, though she guessed what he was about to say for the same thought had been in her mind these past five minutes.  From Tordil’s anxious scanning of the southern horizon, the elf Captain shared the same concern.

“Well, my Lady, we have ridden almost a league due South of the Torrockburn in search of the force we know was approaching Rugan’s left flank.  Yet we have found no sign.  Where are they?”

“Perhaps they marched slower than we thought?” Quintala suggested hopefully.  “They could be beyond the very next rise.”

Niarmit shook her head. “I like this not at all.”

“Hold the line!” Rugan shouted from his great black warhorse.

“Hold the line! By the Prince’s command
, hold the line!” Major Darbon relayed the royal command to his left along the southern flank of Rugan’s army.

It was a disciplined
advance, a thing of drill and beauty.  A hundred yards ahead of them the Redfangs limped and loped, pausing occasionally to loose an arrow or receive one.  In either case the missile was followed by a ribald orcish call impugning the manhood and virility of all the soldiers of Medyrsalve.  But the silver line did not break.  Sixteen thousand men marched as one and the time of reckoning was coming for the Redfangs.

The river was at their back, the core of Rugan’s army at their front and soon the spears of Medyrsalve would complete the task of orcish destruction that they had begun at the battle’s opening in the mouth of the Gap of
Tandar.

The P
rince had packed his centre with the elite spears, full half his army advancing on the doomed orcs.  The right and left wings each held four thousand men, the force carefully matched to their corresponding divisions in the enemy’s force.

Against the nomads to the South, there were archers to drive off the nomad infantry and
spearmen to protect the archers from the nomad cavalry.  Against the Blackskulls to the North, Rugan had placed his own heavy cavalry with lances long enough to skewer two wolves and their orcish riders at one time.

Darbon smiled with grim satisfaction.  The wings of the enemy’s army would be powerless to prevent the centre’s destruction.  Then, when the Redfangs had been driven tumbling into the River Saeth the concentrated force
of Rugan’s centre would roll up the bisected remnants of the enemy’s army in a victory of unparalleled completeness.

They did
not need the hobilers of Oostsalve.   They had never needed the assistance of Oostsalve.  That had only ever been the Prince’s caution.  Sixteen thousand silver warriors from Medyrsalve was always enough to destroy twelve thousand barbarous orcs and primitive nomads.

“Hold the line!” Darbon shouted as the Redfang orcs began to slow and turn to face th
eir imminent destruction.  The Major smiled.  Everything was going as had been planned.

“This is not going as we planned!” Niarmit cried.  The Queen and her guard were at the top of the gentle rise staring south at another empty valley and a bare ridge beyond. “Where are they?”

Tordil frowned.  “Sure
when we scouted their camp, they were finding their zombies hard to manage, but I would not have thought them so slow that they could not have at least reached the channel of the Forburn.  Where are they indeed your Majesty?”

Quintala was staring at the far ridge with narrowed eyes.  Jolander
followed her gaze, concentrating hard as he squinted against the still rising Sun.  “Your Majesty, there,” the sergeant called. “I see something.”

“By the
Goddess Sergeant, your eyes out match mine again” the half-elf chided him.  “What is it you see?”

“Something moving, not n
aturally though. See, my Lady, a figure!”

He pointed and Quintala followed his outstretched finger to t
he horizon. “Aye, I see it now. Can you your Majesty?”

They were all straining to spot the sergeant’s quarry. “I see it plain,” Tordil announced.  “There are four of t
hem, staggering and stumbling, not in the manner of living soldiers.”

“The undead, Captain?” Abroath enquired with trepidation.  He was trying to decipher the distant specks and see them as cleanly as the sharp eyed elf. 

“No less, our quarry is in sight.”

Tordil gathered himself to spur his horse onwards, but Niarmit waved him back.  “Wait.”

“Your Majesty, the force from Undersalve may be beyond that rise.”

“
Another league, another league, Captain Tordil, always taking us South,” Niarmit mused aloud.

“T
hat is where we saw the foe, that is whence they are coming,” Quintala observed reasonably.

“Tordil, look caref
ully at those creatures.  Thom, you too, is there not some enchantment by which you can enhance your sight?”

Elf and illusionist vied with each other to descry the most detail in the distant enemy.

“They are certainly zombies, your majesty,” Tordil declared.  “Four of them, by their gait and pallor they are most certainly the restless dead.”

“But they are not led,”
Thom chipped in as his swift spell took hold.  “See how there is no purpose to their wondering, look one spies a rabbit and lunges for it.  There are at the bidding of no necromancers.”

“What of it?” Tordil snapped.  “They may have w
ondered far from the main body. We know they struggled to shepherd their abominations.  Even if these are stragglers the rest of their evil creations and their marshals cannot be far behind!”

“Behind Captain?” Niarmit interrupted.  “Since when did stragglers lead an army?”

“We should ride South and West, your Majesty.” Jolander said.  “The lancers can set a scouting screen to cover more ground and faster than these ponied foot soldiers.”

“No, no,” Niarmit said.  “Our premise was
that there was a foe close enough at hand that we needed to keep it from interfering in Rugan’s battle.  If they lie further south than this, then our strategy is proven wrong.  They would be too far away to offer any present threat to Rugan.  Our place is at his side to add the force to make certain of his swift and overwhelming victory.  We have been misled.”  She wheeled her horse round.

“You fear, Majes
ty that we have been deceived into chasing an enemy too slow and tardy to be a threat,” Abroath pieced together his understanding.

“
No, Prior, that is what I hope. What I fear is something much worse.”  With that she spurred her horse North, followed in dutiful confusion by her little army.

Behind them, o
n the distant escarpment two zombies fought over a shredded rabbit.