Swordmage

TWENTY-NINE

11 Tarsakh, the Year of the Ageless One

Geran loped through the unnatural murk as night seemed to descend over the vale a second time. The eerie fog thickened by the heartbeat, closing in around him like a tomb of cold gray stone. It felt as if he were blundering through a damp gray vault, a spectral dungeon that was slowly becoming more substantial, more threatening, with every passing moment. Soldiers appeared like ghosts in the mist, dark forms that drifted past or simply stood where they were, shivering in terror. He almost ran onto the spearpoint of a shambling skeleton draped in the remains of a lord’s robes, and he retreated quickly from a pair of ancient berserkers whose jawbones hung open in silent howls of battle-madness and rage.

All around him in the mist he heard the battle resume in a dozen places at once, but instead of the bellowing of ogres and the war cries of bloodthirsty orcs, he heard only the whispering of dry dead voices and the shrieks of human pain and terror. In the frost-heavy mists, sounds seemed distant and uncertain; Geran couldn’t really tell if he was moving away from the fight or circling around to stumble into it again. Why didn’t I make sure of Sergen when I had the chance? he berated himself. Perhaps Sergen’s mercenaries would have cut him down if he’d paused for the moment necessary to administer a killing blow, but it might have been worth his life to make sure that the traitor didn’t survive to summon more undead.

Geran came to a low rise and scrambled to the top of a frost-slick knoll, hoping to get above the dense fog. From the top of the little hill, he thought that the fog directly overhead looked noticeably brighter, but he could see little else. He turned in a circle, searching for any sign of his cousin. “Think, Geran, think!” he admonished himself. Sergen was wounded and likely not interested in getting any closer to the fighting against the Bloody Skulls than he had to; he’d be somewhere on the south side of the old dike and well back from the battle-probably somewhere near the Verunas. House Veruna was over on the left flank of the line by Lake Hul, anchoring the western end of Lendon’s Dike.

He caught sight of a war-horse standing over its fallen rider, a young cavalryman of House Sokol. Geran hurried to the animal and caught its reins. The horse whickered and shied away, but Geran patted its muzzle to calm it, whispered a few words in Elvish, and then swung himself up into the saddle. His new mount snorted and pranced nervously, but he set his heels to its flanks and kicked it into a run. Fortunately the horse was well trained and eager for a rider to guide it; its hooves kicked up wet clods of turf as it cantered across the muddy fields.

A skeleton carrying a round bronze shield suddenly lurched into his path, its rusted sword ready to strike. Geran swept out his own blade and parried the ancient iron; a jolt of frozen fire ran up his sword arm from the impact, but he circled his point underneath the skeleton’s blade and rammed it home in the creature’s empty eye socket. Shards of bone burst from the back of the skull, and the thing staggered back. Geran wrenched his sword free and rode past. When he glanced over his shoulder, the skeleton was moving away to find another foe to fight, seemingly untroubled by the horrible wound he’d just dealt it. Necromantic magic knitted its dead sinews and yellowed bones together. What was a sword wound to such a creature?

Geran dodged away from several more encounters with the skeletal warriors. On one occasion he spurred his mount right over a skeleton in front of him. The warhorse knocked the horrid thing to the ground, crushing bones beneath its heavy iron-shod hooves, and that one did not rise again. Then he seemed to break out of the heaviest mist and found himself a few hundred yards west of the Vale Road, a short distance behind the old dike. The supernatural chill of the fog diminished a little, and he could see more of the sky graying overhead-the day would have been clear and cold, though he doubted it would have much power over the fell mists.

On that end of the line battered Spearmeet companies still held the dike, with a number of Veruna footmen stiffening their lines. More than a few men were gazing nervously toward the middle of the battlefield; Geran glanced back the way he had come and saw that the fog darkened over the center of the field like a stationary storm, weirdly still despite the strong, cold wind that swept the rest of the battlefield. A short distance behind the line on the dike, thirty Veruna horsemen and a handful of Shieldsworn riders formed the left wing’s cavalry reserve. They sat waiting on their mounts. The orc assault seemed to have retreated for now, likely because the Bloody Skulls were waiting to see if the army of Hulburg would still be standing against them once the evil mists lifted. Geran couldn’t fault the orcs’ instincts. If some supernatural horror was cutting its way through your enemy’s ranks, then there was little reason to rush back to close quarters.

He wheeled his mount around, looking for Sergen-and then he found him. His stepcousin and a quartet of Council Watch guards sat on riding horses under a stand of hemlocks perhaps a hundred yards away, partially hidden by the ragged tatters of mist that streamed by. It was difficult for Geran to tell what the traitor was doing given the distance and the poor visibility, but he could see several Veruna officers in their tabards of green and white speaking with him. As the swordmage watched, the Veruna men turned their mounts and cantered away, heading back toward their troops.

“What did you tell them, Sergen?” Geran muttered aloud. “Abandon the field? Turn against the Shieldsworn? Or wait and do nothing until the battle is lost?”

With no firm intentions in mind other than to make sure that Sergen didn’t get away with whatever he hoped to get away with, Geran tapped his heels to his horse’s flanks and broke into a canter, heading for Sergen and his guards. The wet ground and blowing mist muffled the hoofbeats of his mount, and the air grew steadily colder and more still as he drew closer. Sergen wasn’t looking at Geran; he was leaning forward in his saddle, looking out over the battle as scattered bands of desperate soldiers struggled to drive off the deathless warriors of the King in Copper. The fighting was fiercest around the banner of the harmach, where better than a hundred soldiers stood together against a ragged wave of skeletons who rose up out of the ground and attacked just as quickly as they were killed or disabled by the soldiers fighting to protect the ruler of Hulburg. Geran couldn’t see his uncle, not through the chaos and the murk, but he caught a glimpse of Kara on her fine white charger in the thick of the melee.

Sergen was still unaware of Geran’s approach, and now the swordmage was only thirty yards away. Distantly the swordmage noted that the Veruna officers riding back to their troops had caught sight of him. They wheeled and galloped to intercept him, but a desperate plan finally coalesced in Geran’s mind, and he spurred his mount into a headlong charge. He had little magic left after the furious skirmish at the Vale Road’s cut, but he still had a few words he could call upon. It would have to be enough. He stood up in his stirrups, sword bared in his hand.

“Lord Sergen!” the Veruna officers shouted. “Behind you!”

The council guard closest to Geran turned at the warning. The guard snapped down his visor and drew his sword, shouting something to the men around him. Even as Sergen looked around and the other guards began to turn their mounts to meet Geran’s attack, the swordmage raced up alongside the first guard’s mount and lashed out with his backsword. Bright steel glittered in the cold mist, shrilly clanging twice as Geran beat his way through the man’s guard. He disabled the fellow with a backhand flick of the point that creased its way through the guard’s visor. The man cried out and crumpled forward in the saddle, holding his hand to his face; Geran’s horse shouldered the guard’s mount out of the way, and he drove at his treacherous cousin.

“Sergen!” he snarled.

“To me! To me!” Sergen shouted at his mercenaries. Geran ignored them. Sergen reached awkwardly for the sword at his hip with his unwounded arm, but Geran didn’t give him a chance to draw it. With a wordless roar of anger, he hurled himself out of the saddle and tackled Sergen, carrying his stepcousin to the muddy ground underfoot. The impact knocked Geran’s breath away, but Sergen cried out sharply as his damaged arm hit the ground. Their momentum rolled them over and over, Geran holding his stepcousin with a grip of iron.

“You fool!” Sergen hissed between his teeth. “You’ve interfered with my business for the last time, Geran! I swear that I’ll see you dead before this is done!”

“Then you should’ve killed me when you had me helpless in a cell,” Geran answered.

Sergen reached for a dagger with his good hand, but Geran got on top of him and delivered two sharp punches to the jaw before he had to duck under a sword-swing from one of the council guards. He rolled again to put Sergen on top, using the lord as a shield against his own bodyguards, and then their struggle tumbled them both into the shallow ditch beside the Vale Road.

Sergen managed to wrench his jacket free and threw himself away from Geran, gaining an armslength of clear space. He rolled to his knees and floundered up out of the ditch. “I won’t make that mistake again,” he snarled at Geran. He motioned for his guards, who rushed to his aid.

Geran scrambled to his feet and retreated a few steps from the grim mercenaries closing in around him. Then he raised his hand and showed Sergen the amulet of Aesperus, which he’d wrenched away from his cousin during their brief struggle. The old copper amulet glinted in the dim light. “I think you’ve caused enough trouble with this for now, Sergen,” he said.

Sergen’s hand flew to his chest, and he looked down in horror. When he looked up again, his dark eyes blazed in fury. “Kill him!” he shouted to his guards. “Kill him now!”

Geran glanced around and summoned up what little magic he had left unspent. “Seiroch!” he shouted. Sergen’s guards thrust their blades through empty air where he’d been standing an instant before, and the teleport spell whisked him a hundred yards away in the blink of an eye.

He found himself standing close to the harmach’s banner, surrounded by Shieldsworn who fought desperately against the tide of skeletal warriors. Geran thrust his hand into the air, holding the amulet aloft, and shouted, “Warriors of Aesperus, halt! I command you!”

All around him, skeletons abruptly stopped moving. More than a few Hulburgans smashed their axes and swords into skeletal warriors who now stood still. Some of those fell while others suffered the injuries without response, standing motionless. The humans and dwarves out on the field raised a ragged cheer of astonishment and exultation, amazed to find their attackers immobilized.

“I’ll be damned,” Geran said softly. “It worked!” He felt the empty eyes of the dead warriors settling on him, and the cold whispers in the air seemed to grow stronger, more sinister. He shuddered. If he was going to command these fell creatures, better to do it now before he lost his nerve. “Warriors of Aesperus, listen to me! You are to attack and destroy the Bloody Skull orcs and their allies-ignore all who are defending Hulburg! Do you understand me?”

The ranks of skeletal warriors seemed to shiver, and the dead ones backed away from their former adversaries and turned to face north. “Aye, we understand thee,” they answered in their cold, rasping voices. “We go to do thy bidding.” Then they began to march away from the battered bands of humans and dwarves they’d been fighting just a moment ago, old bones clicking like insects, rusted mail squealing and clinking.

The defenders of Hulburg raised a ragged volley of shouts, cries of relief, and calls for help, hundreds of voices babbling once. Several of the men standing near Geran grinned at him and stepped close to slap his back and seize his hand. Then a signal horn blew twice above the din. Geran turned and saw Kara lowering the horn. “Back to the dike-top!” she shouted. “Reform ranks across the road! We aren’t done yet!”

Geran looked back at the stand of trees where he’d met Sergen, just visible through the mists. His cousin climbed up into the saddle of his black destrier and glared in Geran’s direction, though the swordmage doubted that Sergen could actually pick him out in the middle of the warriors around the harmach’s banner. Then Sergen spurred his horse and galloped away to the south, fleeing back toward Hulburg with his guards following. A moment later, the House Veruna soldiers on the left side of the line stepped back from the dike, turned toward the south, and began to march away as well, leaving the battle behind. Geran was sorely tempted to call back some of Aesperus’s skeletons in order to send them after Sergen and the Verunas, but he had no idea how strong a hold he really had over the undead warriors or how much they could hurt the Bloody Skulls.

“Let them go for now, Geran.” Harmach Grigor limped up and set a hand on Geran’s shoulder, following Geran’s gaze with his own. The old lord looked pale and haggard, but a spark of defiance animated his features. “At the moment I’d just as soon let a potential adversary leave the field if he has a mind to. We must concentrate on repelling the Bloody Skulls before we pick another fight.” Grigor watched the Verunas leave and sighed. “Whatever else happens today, Sergen and House Veruna are finished in Hulburg.”

“I know it, Uncle,” Geran answered. “But I’m afraid of the mischief Sergen might do before he knows it too.”

Grigor nodded. “I am as well, but as Kara said-we aren’t done yet here. How did you gain control over the lich king’s warriors?”

Geran showed him the amulet. “I took this from Sergen. It’s the amulet Aesperus gave to the Verunas in payment for the book he sought.” The mist around him was noticeably lightening now, though he could still hear echoing through the fog the roars of orc warriors, the shrill ring of steel on steel, and the fearful bellows of dimwitted ogres. “I don’t know how many warriors it summons or how long they’ll remain.”

“I suppose we’ll find out.” The old lord smiled. “Well done, Geran.”

The swordmage gripped his uncle’s shoulder then stepped clear. He held out his empty hand and half-closed his eyes, groping through his mind for the arcane symbols he needed for the spell of returning. “Cuilledyrr,” he whispered, and a moment later his Myth Drannan blade came hurtling through the unnatural mist to meet his hand. He’d dropped it when he threw Sergen off his horse, and it was far too valuable a weapon to leave on the battlefield. With his sword in one hand and the amulet in the other, Geran hurried to the old dike and scrambled to the top to see what was going on in the orc ranks.

The cacophony of battle was tremendous, an awful mix of hundreds of savage voices, fell magic, roaring monsters, and more. The eerie fog was too dense for him to see well, but he caught glimpses of fighting a bowshot north of the overgrown dike. The orcs were fierce and brave fighters, but even their most bloodthirsty berserkers had little stomach for a battle against an enemy who shrugged off all but the most powerful of blows and simply climbed back to his feet when he was struck to the ground. All around him the surviving Shieldsworn and Ironhammers peered into the mists, trying to judge for themselves how the fighting went, with a curious mix of relief that they were out of it for the moment and dread of the allies that had turned to their side.

Geran watched for what seemed a long time in the bitter cold. Then he noticed that the amulet in his hand was growing warm. He looked down in surprise and saw that a bright orange gleam had appeared on the ancient copper. “What in the world?” he murmured. The gray mists cloaking the battlefield took on an orange hue and began to thin. The clash of arms from the orc lines faded sharply-and suddenly the morning was full of the Orcish shouts of triumph. As the sun finally climbed above the ragged hills fencing the Winterspear Vale, the ancient amulet quietly crumbled into dust, and the skeletal warriors sank back into the ground.

“Geran! The skeletons!” Kara called.

He looked over at her helplessly. “It’s sunrise,” he told her. “Aesperus must’ve promised them for only one night.”

She nodded once, and her azure eyes flashed in the morning light. “Stand to your arms!” she ordered the Shieldsworn. Then she lowered her helm’s visor, slid down from Dancer’s back, and sent the horse toward the rear with a slap to its rump, taking up her position at the head of the footmen guarding the open spot where the Vale Road pierced the dike. “Stand to!”

The unnatural mists cleared just as quickly as they had come, dissipating like dark dreams forgotten in the morning light. The day brightened swiftly, as if the supernatural fog had never been. Now Geran finally got a good look at the orc horde that faced Hulburg. He could see hundreds of orcs lying dead in the disordered battle lines left behind by the skeletons’ attack; the ancient warriors had dealt a heavy blow to the Bloody Skulls, but hadn’t defeated them. The orcs looked around as well and saw that their supernatural foes were gone, but that the dike was still held against them-and they began to surge forward in wrath, perhaps mistakenly believing that it was some ploy of the harmach’s that had sent the skeletons of the fallen at them.

“Stand your ground!” Kara shouted, and dozens of captains and sergeants took up the cry and relayed it down the lines. Grim-faced and determined, the defenders of Hulburg set spears in the ground and held blades and bows at the ready. Then, with a wild chorus of roars, battle cries, curses, and shrill war screams, the warriors of Thar hurled themselves upon Hulburg’s defenders once again.

“Mages and archers-fire at will!” Kara shouted. In answer, shrieking missiles of wizard’s fire, dark flights of arrows, and brilliant bolts of lightning burned awful swaths of devastation through the onrushing warriors. Geran saw that Kara had gathered most of the merchant company wands-for-hire at her command around the gap of the Vale Road, and the mercenary mages took a heavy toll of the attacking orcs and ogres. But other spells flew as well: dripping spheres of acid that arced from the back ranks of the orc lines to splatter against the old earthen dike, and black clouds full of whirling red cinders that seared and scoured anything they touched.

Geran shielded himself from a fierce cinder-storm with a word of warding, throwing his arm over his eyes and slashing his sword back and forth to drive away the burning sparks. Searing pinpricks announced places where the burning embers had found their way through his defenses. He hissed and brushed one from his shoulder, nostrils burning with the hot, acrid stink. “Where in the Nine Hells did the orcs find wizards to aid them?” he demanded. No one nearby heard him, for they were swearing or praying or shouting in anger or pain at the same time.

The Bloody Skull horde smashed into the failing line of Hulburg’s defenders like a mighty black-armored fist. Geran fought in a bright frenzy, determined to stand his ground, but the rush was irresistible. He was swept back twenty yards in twenty heartbeats, simply carried along in the orc charge even as he slashed at the warriors streaming toward him. Then the whole roaring wave of savages seemed to shudder and slam to a stop. Across the breach the Ironhammer dwarves and Kara’s Shieldsworn linked their shields together in a fortress of steel and determination, refusing to give any more ground. The Bloody Skull charge became a furious melee that roiled and surged within the breach, a storm tide hammering into a battered coast. Rage though they might, for the moment the orcs and ogres were contained, funneled into the narrow space of the road and its gap.

In the crowded field, human mages and orc shamans did terrible work. Furnace blasts of yellow-glowing sparks and seething clouds of green, poisonous vapor washed back and forth among the combatants. A brilliant sphere of crimson light hurtled at Geran and exploded nearby, sending stabbing bolts of red lightning through a band of Ironhammers and Shieldsworn struggling to hold the gap. The swordmage deflected the vicious spell with his enchanted blade, but dwarves and humans all around him fell writhing to the ground. He whirled from side to side, wildly searching for some glimpse of the enemy spellcasters amid the chaos and confusion of the fight-and then he spotted a tall human in black armor, wearing a horned black helm.

“A Warlock Knight,” Geran said softly. That explained much. Orcs had little talent for sorcery, but the masters of Vaasa were formidable magic-users. Did they incite the Bloody Skulls against us? the swordmage wondered. Or did they come in answer to the Bloody Skulls’ promises of loot? Either way, the Vaasan mage was a dangerous enemy, shielding the Bloody Skulls from the spells of Hulburg’s defenders and burning down soldier after soldier with cold, inhuman efficiency. Several black-armored Vaasan soldiers stood near their master, guarding him against the fray. Geran frowned-the soldiers would be skillful swordsmen, handpicked as bodyguards. He’d have a hard time getting to the Warlock Knight as long as the swordsmen were on their guard, and he simply didn’t have any more spells or arcane words left to him that could overwhelm them quickly.

A bolt of crimson lightning struck the knot of Vaasans from the side, tearing through the swordsmen. The Warlock Knight parried the spell with an arcane defense of his own, but several of his guards were down, smoke rising from their burned armor. Geran glanced to his right and saw the tiefling Sarth leading a counterattack from that side of the line. The sorcerer threw bolts of fire and blasts of thunder with reckless abandon, burning down the Bloody Skulls. “Back to Thar with you, vile ones!” he shouted between spells. “There is no victory here for you today!”

It was just the opportunity he was looking for. While the Vaasans turned their attention to Sarth and his barrage of spells, Geran scrambled across the blackened overgrowth and embers of the dike’s face, dodging past battling orcs and Hulburgans. He reached the Vaasans and cut down one of the mage’s bodyguards with a single thrust between the shoulder blades. His old mentor, Daried, would not have approved, but this was no contest of skill and honor; this was a fight for survival.

The Vaasan mage blasted Sarth off his feet with a spell that made the ground under the tiefling’s feet slam upward as if struck from below by the hammer of some subterranean titan. Then he glanced over his shoulder and saw Geran lunging at him. The Warlock Knight snarled an arcane word and threw up a shield of dazzling blue light that stopped Geran’s point as firmly as if he’d tried to drive his sword into a granite wall. Then he leveled his staff at Geran and hurled an unseen thunderclap back at the swordmage, but Geran deflected the blast with a word in Elvish and a flick of his swordpoint.

“You follow the elven ways!” the mage snarled in frustration.

Geran did not reply, but instead attacked again, trying to find his way around the Vaasan’s magical defense. His enchanted blade rang and shivered as he struck at the edges of the glowing blue haze protecting the Warlock Knight. He managed to slip the point around the edge and give the Vaasan a nasty cut to the meat of his left arm; the mage cursed in pain and jumped back a step, but he missed his footing and tumbled down the earthwork, rolling to the foot of the hill. Geran started after him, but several rampaging ogres suddenly swarmed up the embankment in front of him, momentarily hiding the Vaasan mage from him. Geran evaded them, but when he looked again the Vaasan was gone. He’d fled the scene or simply been swept away in the tide of battle.

The orcs around him raised a ferocious cheer, and Geran looked up. A large banner waved in the air nearby, a square of mustard yellow marked with the image of a crimson, dripping skull. Below the banner he saw a knot of big orc warriors dressed in fine black mail, each with a painted skull over the heart… and in the center, an orc who wore armor of black plate. That must be Mhurren, Geran realized. The chief of the Bloody Skulls must have tired of watching his assaults stall on the tangled embankment of Lendon’s Dike. He meant to lead his warriors to victory.

The swordmage ran over to the human soldiers nearest him, a number of battered and exhausted Shieldsworn. The soldiers of Hulburg had nothing left to give, but he had to ask it of them anyway. “The banner!” he shouted to them. “We’re going to take the banner! Follow me, lads!”

The Shieldsworn soldiers raised a strong cry and surged toward the orc banner, sliding down the embankment after Geran. A huge, grossly fat ogre strode up to meet him and smashed a hammer with a head the size of an ale barrel down at him, but Geran leaped aside. The monster raised its mighty weapon for another swing, but the swordmage darted in close to its crooked legs and sliced out its hamstring with one long cut. The creature bellowed and fell, its arms flailing, but Geran pressed forward. “To me!” he shouted.

A few yards away he heard another rallying cry-Kara darted into the fray from the other side, cutting her way closer to the banner at the head of another small band of Hulburgans. She had her bow in hand, and its deadly song floated over the roars and shouts of the fighting. She shot down two of the warlord’s Skull Guards, each with an arrow in the heart, and then retreated before a sudden rush from the others, allowing her soldiers to meet them blade to blade. A moment later she threaded her way back into the fight and shot again, killing the orc who carried the standard. The banner wavered and began to fall before another of the Skull Guards seized it from its dying bearer and raised it aloft again.

“Hulburg is mine, you spellscarred slut!” Mhurren roared. “You defy me for the last time!” He leaped for Kara with a heavy fighting spear in hand. She calmly nocked her arrow and drew, taking aim at the eye-slit of his visor-only to be roughly jostled aside at the last moment by one of the Skull Guards, who smashed his Shieldsworn foe out of the way and nearly took her arm off at the shoulder with his whistling axe. Kara jumped back and stumbled to the ground.

Mhurren roared in triumph and raised his spear for the killing thrust, but then Geran shouldered his way past the Skull Guard in his way and leaped at the warlord. Mhurren whirled with catlike speed to meet Geran’s attack, catching the swordstroke on his shield and responding with a furious fusillade of overhand spear-thrusts, stabbing again and again for Geran’s heart. The swordmage parried the first, twisted away from the second, parried the third, but then Mhurren stepped close and slammed his shield into Geran’s right side. The warlord had a small spike on the boss of the shield, and it punched a deep wound in Geran’s shoulder. Geran staggered back, losing his blade from fingers that suddenly went weak as water, and he gasped desperately for breath. “So much for Hulburg’s champions!” the warlord gloated.

He lunged for Geran’s belly, and the swordmage twisted aside once more and caught the spear-shaft just behind the head with his left hand. Mhurren bared his fangs and tried to wrench his weapon back, but Geran kept on his feet and followed Mhurren around, staying away from the shield-spike and the spearhead both. The orc warlord was as strong as an ox, and he was much fresher than Geran; he was going to get his weapon back, and soon. In desperation, Geran released the spearhead and used the heel of his left hand to strike a sudden blow up at the bottom of the half-orc’s helm. The visor jammed up a couple of inches and momentarily covered Mhurren’s eyes, blinding him so that Geran could leap free, but not before a wild slash with the heavy war spear laid open his right thigh.

“Damn you!” Mhurren snarled in rage. He reached up to pull his visor back into place-

— and Kara’s bow sang again.

The visor Geran had knocked two inches out of place had given her the mark she needed. Her arrow took Mhurren just under the line of his jaw, plunging through his throat to pierce the back of his neck. The warlord gaped silently, dark blood foaming over his chin. He fumbled at the arrow, and then he sank to the ground and fell still.

“The warlord has fallen!” one of the Skull Guards cried out in Orcish. “Mhurren is dead!”

The orcs nearby turned to look, disengaging from scores of personal duels, and an eerie hush descended over the battlefield around the fallen warchief-a hush that slowly spread as news of Mhurren’s death spread through the horde. All along the dike, the orcs and their allies slowed their surge, looking uncertainly toward the center where their king’s banner no longer flew. Two of the remaining Skull Guards stooped by Mhurren’s body and hoisted the fallen chief up on their shoulders; more orcs came to help carry him, and the small knot of warriors retreated from the breach. Geran, Kara, and the Shieldsworn standing close backed off slowly and let the orcs carry away their chief. More of the Bloody Skulls to each side began to disengage, glaring at the defenders of Hulburg and shaking their spears in anger.

Hundreds of Bloody Skull warriors lay at the foot of the dike or strewn through the gap of the Vale Road, far more than Geran had thought. Between the first attempt to storm the dike, the assault of the undead warriors, and the second attack against the dike, the Bloody Skulls had paid a terrible cost in blood. In the distance, behind the orc lines, he saw a dozen black-clad horsemen clambering into their saddles-more of the Vaasans. They surveyed the field for a short time, and then turned and rode off to the north.

He realized that he was still standing unarmed and retrieved his sword, picking it up with his left hand. He could still fight if he had to, but not very well. He took a deep breath and glanced over at Kara. “Should we attack the orcs while they’re leaderless?”

“With what?” she replied. “If we have a third of our strength left, I’d be surprised. No, I think it best to hold our ground for a while and see what the Bloody Skulls do. If Mhurren doesn’t have a clear successor, they’ll be fighting each other soon enough.”

Geran shook his head, suddenly amazed to find himself alive and still on his feet. Blood streamed down his right arm from his wounded shoulder, and he realized that the slash across his thigh was bleeding as well. “Then I guess the battle is over,” he said.