The Serpent Tower

Chapter Five

Sardec poured a splash of wine on his wound. It burned like hell. Holding one end of the bit of fabric in his teeth, he wrapped the rest of it around the holed area with his good hand, telling himself that it was one of those cuts that looked worse than they were.

Desperate men crouched behind the battlements, ramming powder and ball into muskets, making ready to fire. Sergeant Hef bellowed encouragement. A bold few stood and fired and were rewarded with screams from their foes as their musket balls ploughed into flesh.

Down below, the courtyard was full of bodies. The wounded lay in their blood-stained rags. A few of the older men hacked at wounds with saws and sealed stumps by searing them with flame. The screams echoed in Sardec’s head.

Why had he not surrendered?

The answer was simple, he reminded himself: because it would not do to have this enemy force fall on the unprotected flank of the Talorean Army. If that happened, that might prove to be the end of this campaign and a grievous blow to the whole war in the East.

It was odd how the fates of armies and nations, could sometimes balance on the courage of a few determined soldiers in a god-forsaken flyspeck like this. Or maybe that was simply his vanity. Maybe this was an essentially meaningless skirmish fought because of his foolishness and pride.

More screams sounded outside the walls. The stench of powder and voided bowels filled the air. Had war always been like this, even in the age of dragons and knights? Probably. The aura of chivalry and heroism that clung to the old tales was most likely a product of time and distance. It did not matter if you wore armour and carried a lance, or dressed in broadcloth and fired a musket, in the end, the truths of war would always be the same. Men died. Terrarchs died. The winners made policy. The losers nursed grudges.

A thump and a faint vibration of the wall against which he leaned told Sardec that the attackers were about to try swarming over again. The enemy had not wasted all of their time last night. They had found ladders somewhere. There were ropes too with their ends wrapped round heavy sticks. When thrown through the crenulations they could sometimes find purchase and anchor and provide another means of climbing. These walls were not castle high.

Sergeant Hef crawled over on hands and knees and handed Sardec a loaded pistol. He took it in his left hand, and cursed the fate that had left him a cripple and his father’s sword embedded and ruined in a mad wizard’s body. Once he would have faced the oncoming attackers with Moonshade in his hand, and killed them where they stood. He had been a formidable swordsman and the old magical blade had made him more formidable yet. Now all he had was this accursed hook.

No use crying over spilled wine, he told himself. He would have to make do with what he had. One of the enemy yowled coming up the ladder. Sardec rose. A man’s face stared up at him. He had just time to take in the horror in the man’s eyes then he put his pistol against his target’s forehead and pulled the trigger. The hammer flashed forward. Powder sparked, smoke belched, but nothing else happened.

It was a bloody misfire.

The man on the ladder looked demonic now, his face soot blackened, his teeth showing wild and white. He began to pull himself over the wall. Sardec felt a brief flicker of remorse, that he should do such a thing to one who had just survived certain death, then smashed the man across the face with the barrel of the pistol. Teeth flew out, blood splattered and the attacker fell backwards from the wall. A bullet whizzed past Sardec’s head but he remained upright just long enough to kick the ladder free of the wall and send it tumbling backwards towards the ground.

He squinted through the gloom and saw nothing but more men emerging from the smoke clouds, shrieking with fear and battle madness.

Sardec dropped back down behind the battlements and saw to his horror that a group of the enemy were clambering over the barricade at the manor’s gateway and pouring into the courtyard. Among them were a group of ripjack wyrms, more massive than men, with jaws that could tear off a soldier’s arm at a bite. The very sight of them caused fear among the Foragers. Sardec took the stairs three at a time as he bounded to meet them, praying that someone would follow him.

Where in hell was the relief column, he wondered?

The wyrm crossed the ridge. Rik could see the ford and the fortified mansion, wreathed with smoke and surrounded by men. Those he could see had Blue armbands. A Terrarch officer in a blue frock coat roared orders. Bugles sounded, drums banged loud as demons bashing down the walls of Bedlam. It was chaos.

“This is madness,” he heard Asea say. “What do those men think they are doing?”

Rik wondered if she was going to try any magic, but she sat still and silent. If she had anything like the wand she had used in battle with the hill tribes, she kept it out of sight. Rik saw the rest of the Talorean force top the ridge.

“I think they are attacking the manor, milady,” said Rik.

“They have left no sentries, no rear guard, nothing. Their commander should be shot for incompetence.”

“I will try and arrange it if the opportunity arises.” As soon as the words had left his lips, Rik regretted them. Jesting with a great Terrarch lady was not something humans were supposed to do. To his relief she saw that she was smiling. Even that, lovely as it was, made him deeply uneasy. It was as if she was smiling at some secret joke of her own, not the one he had made at all. Another realisation hit him. He did not like having so much of his hopes for the future pinned on one person. He did not like being bound to her. Part of him resented the loss of freedom deeply.

“It seems you have something of the assassin in your blood, Rik,” she said, still smiling at her secret joke. He looked at her. Her words obviously had more meaning to her than to him.

“If you say so, milady,” he said.

“I do.” She gave her attention back to the battle. Most of the battle wyrms were headed towards the ford now. On the backs of the leaders, horns sounded, calling the beasts to war. Behind them, the infantry surged forward. There was no way to keep formation on terrain like this, although their officers did their best to hold them into units. As they advanced into the besiegers, fire and smoke spouted from their muskets. The battlefield became obscured once more in drifting clouds of powder smoke. From inside the billows came all the horrendous sounds of combat.

More horns sounded in the distance. These were of a subtly different tone from the ones the Talorean Regiments used. Someone played a series of martial notes. Rik heard the thunder of hooves from somewhere. Moments later he saw cavalrymen racing down to the banks of the ford, sabres flashing as the hussars cut into the Talorean infantrymen. They were met by a volley of fire from atop the nearest bridgebacks. A long-necked wyrm head snaked down to rip one rider from his saddle.

A chaotic tone entered the sounds of distant bugles. Rik heard the charge of the Talorean cavalry sound off in the distance. That was strange, he thought, how had they got there? Then he remembered they had been dispatched east in the morning. They must have crossed the bridge and turned north and then west. The besiegers were caught in the claws of a pincer.

Surely now, the Taloreans must have overwhelming force, Rik thought. Surely now the battle must be decided. The obscuring smoke made it difficult to tell.

Sardec slashed the screaming soldier across the face with his hook. Only then did he realise it was one of his own men. In the madness of the melee, the wounded Forager had lashed out at him with a bayonet. Maybe it was not an accident, Sardec thought. Maybe he had known all along he was striking an officer, perhaps settling an old score. He was saved from having to decide whether the man should be court-martialled when a bayonet ripped through the human’s chest and he fell to his knees.

A monstrous ripjack wyrm loomed out of the dust and smoke. Its great jaws snapped so close to Sardec’s face that he could smell the rotting meat tang of its breath. Ferocious rage and hatred showed in its tiny mad eyes. Round its neck was a jewelled collar. The gem glowed in such a way that Sardec knew that there was an enemy officer somewhere nearby controlling it with a Leash.

Sardec rammed his hook into the creature’s mouth. The jaws slammed shut. The wyrm hissed in rage at the strange taste of the thing in its mouth. God, but the beast was strong. It moved its head and Sardec’s arm was nearly torn from its socket. Sardec smashed it in the face with his pistol butt. The wyrm let him go. More by accident than design Sardec got the tip of his hook into the creature’s eye. He drove it deeper into the jelly until it pierced the creature’s tiny brain. It died with a hiss, not a whimper.

A man in the furs of a trapper with a blue scarf wrapped around his throat glared at Sardec in triumph. Sardec lunged at him with the butt of the pistol. He held it by the still-warm barrel now, using its weighted grip as a club. The man let go of his rifle and leapt back, whipping out a long skinning knife. His smile widened. Sardec’s heart sank. This man undoubtedly knew how to use this weapon.

He came forward now, poised on the balls of his feet, confident of the kill. Sardec raised his hook and gestured for him to advance. There was still blood on it. The man flinched at the sight, which struck Sardec as unusual, then the trapper stiffened and fell, and the Lieutenant saw the bayonet protruding from his side. Sergeant Hef grinned his monkey grin up at Sardec, removed the bayonet, and then paused.

“Sounds like we’ve got company, sir,” he bellowed. “Steady, lads! Steady! Reinforcements are here!”

There was no way of telling whether what the Sergeant was saying was true but it was the right thing to say at this moment. Their own men took heart and fought with renewed fury. The men who moments ago had been so daringly leaping over the barriers now look scared and panicky.

Sardec listened and heard the blowing of bugles and the sound of wyrms. Perhaps they belonged to Azaar’s army, but at this point he realised that it did not matter. Whether the newcomers were friend or foe, his own men could not hold their embattled position for more than a few more minutes. He came to a decision.

What was important now was what the men believed, not what was true. As far as he was concerned those soldiers out there had to be on their side. He forced a confident smile on to his face, and shouted; “The Sergeant is right lads. Just a few more minutes and we’ll show these traitor bastards what for!”

Almost to his surprise, his words gave the Foragers more heart even than the Sergeant’s. A strange pride filled Sardec that they should have such faith in him. He forced his aching weary body forward, brandishing his pistol like a battle banner.

Just as surprising was the change that had come over his foes. A few moments ago they had been attacking like rabid wolverines. Now they seemed stunned. A man emerging from the smoke stood like an ox in an abattoir as Sardec pole-axed him with his pistol butt. Others began to throw down their weapons, as the contagion of panic spread. Here and there, Sardec could hear officers and Sergeants shouting and trying to keep their foes steady, but their words had a panicked quality that just added to the confusion. Sardec heard his own voice roaring and shouting mad exhortations, and he was not sure whether it held the exultation of victory or simply the relief of pent up fear of failure.

He stuck the pistol in the waistband of his britches, and stooped to pick up the long sword of a fallen enemy officer. Brandishing it left-handed he roared at his men to stand firm, to hold on, to reach out and seize victory. In his heart, his most fervent wish was that he knew what was really going on out there.

The wyrm’s rolling stride faltered for a minute. Something crunched under its enormous paw. Rik looked down and saw the flattened, broken-backed body of a man flopping behind him. Weasel’s musket banged near his ear. Rik turned and saw the former poacher reloading, calm as a man out pheasant shooting, not standing on the back of a huge beast as it forged its way across a battlefield, crushing their enemies under foot.

From their position on the creature’s back, Rik caught odd glimpses of the battle. He could peer down across some of the ridges, see into the gaps the breeze tore in the smoke clouds. Over to the right a cluster of men tore at each other with bayonets and swords, their faces demon masked by fury and fear, their teeth powder blackened. In front of them a wyrm brushed its way through the heavy cavalry horses like a man pushing through a crowd of beggar children. Behind them, the waters of the ford were stained with the blood of man and beast.

Asea looked around feverishly. Her silver mask mirrored the emotion of her face. There was a contained excitement in her manner that told Rik that in some way she was enjoying this. Perhaps it was the risk, he thought. Perhaps the fact that she might be hit by a stray ball and thus end her immortal life, added a spice that was normally missing from her days. Or perhaps it was something else entirely, some strange alien emotion that she had brought from her far home world, that he would never understand.

On the back of this huge beast, as part of a force that was so obviously overwhelming the enemy, he had no sense of personal risk, although he knew that there must still be some. He could feel the thrill of victory with far less fear than he normally felt. It was somehow less satisfying, but, if truth were told, it was enough for him at the moment.

He could see that everywhere the Taloreans were victorious. There was something about their manner, the way they moved and the way they acted, that said they were men conscious of their superiority, and certain of triumph. They had the confidence to stand their ground in the face of inevitable casualties, a confidence that was swiftly being leeched from their foes.

Rik understood why. In a few minutes the enemy had seen their positions reversed. They had gone from being the encircling army, attacking with overwhelming advantage, to being in the position they had thought their foes were in. It was the sort of psychological change that could spell disaster for an army, unless its commanders were better leaders than their foes appeared to be.

Here and there knots of men had already thrown down weapons. Others were running for the woods, or shouting for help or their mothers.

“It’s over,” said Asea, with utter certainty and not a little spite in her voice. “Let’s hope there’s somebody up there to be relieved.

It was like a dash of ice water in Rik’s face. He wondered if any of his friends were still alive.

Sardec stood atop the wall and surveyed the battlefield. It was not, as he felt it should be, silent. He could hear the bellowing of wyrms, and the frantic neighing of panicked horses, and the screams and cries of the dying alongside the victorious shouts of the Talorean soldiers. But compared to the thunderous roar of battle that had assailed his ears a few minutes ago, it might as well have been silent as the inside of a temple.

Men lay sprawled in the grass, unmoving. They looked as if they were sleeping, but he knew they were not. Dead horses looked like small hummocks. The smoke had started drifting away, to be replaced by clouds of carrion birds. He could see long columns of cavalry approaching from the East, and massive wyrms pulling artillery carriages. It looked like a good part of Azaar’s army had fallen on Esteril’s regiments with the force of a sledgehammer.

An odd sense of futility settled in Sardec. He knew he should have felt triumphant but instead he just felt tired. He had achieved what he set out to do and held the position, but at an awful cost. He told himself those corpses down there were just humans. They would have been dead in a few scant decades anyway, but he could not make himself believe it, not like he once had. He felt an urge to cry, as he had once done as a child, when contemplating the brief lives of butterflies in a poem his mother had read to him. He told himself the feeling was simply trite and cliched sentiment, but he could not even believe that, not in the way he used to.

A bedraggled bunch of Kharadrean officers limped uphill under a white flag. He could see old Esteril leading them, coming in a way to do him honour. He should have been marching to surrender his sword to the chief of the oncoming army. Instead he paused before the walls of the Inn and shouted; “Good sport, youth, bloody good sport. It seems I will not be accepting your surrender after all. Will you accept mine?”

Looking at the old Terrarch’s flushed, smiling face, Sardec felt the urge to shoot him. Instead he forced himself to say; “Of course, sir, it would be an honour.”