Chapter 9: Chapter 9

The Archers, the brothers Fletching and Shilling from my own troupe and Black Caleb who rode with Sir Zeklan, were riding hard directly towards us.

After cleaning up the mob of beastial wyldemen that had originally been chasing our party, the Lancers and men-at-arms had decided the most prudent course was to try and find out if the archers were even still alive. So far we had not heard the braying calls of the wyldemen in the direction we had sent our footmen and the horse trains, so the archers were our highest priority.

“I hate working for free,” grunted Ethelmeir, his crested helm pulled back on his head to take a sip of water from his canteen.

“Sometimes the work comes to you whether you want it or not,” Gresham responded with a grin. The old bastard had likely seen more combat in his years than all of the rest of us put together, and still he seemed to relish this part - the lull between fighting.

“Let’s move,” I said, as a new mob of the wyldemen broached out of the heavy copse the archers were fleeing from. Our men were shouting and waving, their voices lost on the wind, as if they weren’t sure we could see the danger behind them.

I lowered the visor of my own helm, locking it into place and pushing Castor forward into a trot. The others slowly followed.

“What’s our plan this time?” Taldrin, the squire of Sir Constance, asked.

“Well boy, the Lancers ain’t got lances this time,” Gresham said. “So’s we could pull the same tactic, but they’re more likely to get grabbed and pulled down from their mounts comin’ in side-on.”

I was busy counting, trying to discern how many of the wyldemen were chasing our archers.

“So what do we do then?” the squire asked the veteran.

“We charge them head on,” Sir Constance said, cutting into the conversation. “We know they bleed, and die, and the horses have their measure now. Without spears they can’t break our charge.”

“Lost Gods, Shilling,” I sighed, which made the other turns to look.

Shilling, the younger of the Grain brothers, had slowed his flight from the mob of wyldemen which had in turn caused his brother to do the same. As we watched, the distance between the mob and the two archers slowly closed, but Shilling was moving in his seat. Slowly, he pulled his feet up and then all at once he was standing in the saddle of his riding horse like an acrobat in a traveling circus.

“I told him this was a stupid idea that would get him killed some day” I said.

Unlimbering his longbow, balancing precariously on the back of his trotting horse, Shilling Grain strung his bow, then lifted it and notched an arrow. There was no way he could aim properly, but realistically he was shooting the equivalent of the broad side of a barn, and when he loosed an arrow it sank into the mass of charging wyldemen and disappeared. He loosed another, with the same result. From our view at the height of a slow rolling hill, we could see a pair of bodies left in the mob’s wake, trampled by their fellows.

At about this point the archers had gotten close enough that we could just hear Fletching yelling at his brother to stop being a fopping imbecile and to sit in his fucking saddle.

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With a whoop, Shilling did just that, dropping down and spurring his horse back to a full gallop, his longbow held aloft.

“If nothing else, the man’s got style,” Ethelmeir laughed.

“Years of boredom on the farm, is what I understand,” I said. “He’ll break his neck doing that.”

Black Caleb, closest to us since he hadn’t slowed with the others, saw our six armored forms riding towards him and swung left to get out of our way. It took the Grain brothers slightly longer to realize it, but they followed him.

“Everyone ready?” I asked, forcing my voice to stay calm when I wanted to be shouting.

A chorus of ‘ayes’ and one soft ‘yes’ from the far end of the line returned to me.

I kicked Castor into a gallop, standing slightly in the saddle and raising my sword. It was about now in the songs when the hero was supposed to say something amazing, or shout some ancient battle cry that would stir the hearts of their comrades.

The pounding of our horses hooves, the braying of the oncoming wyldemen, the beating of our own hearts in our ears. The others wouldn’t hear a damn thing if I bothered to say anything at all.

I screamed, wordless and full throated. The kind of roar that could shake a building if it were from the bellowing chest of a lion or a bear, but coming from a man on an open plain from behind a steel visor it felt somewhat feeble. A cry to the heavens that couldn’t be heard by the birds above us, let alone to wherever the Lost Gods had disappeared to.

I thought maybe someone else in the line did the same, but it was hard to tell.

We hit hard, the front of the mob leaping to meet us and rebounding off of the warhorses and falling back into the mob. The first moment was clear to me as I swung my sword to the left at the face of the wyldeman on the outside of our line, and then I was lost in the fight.

It was a natural thing, really, and was why the training yard of Bloodbraid had been the focus of my youth for so long. Zeigtrygger the Bloodbraid, who named his keep and his land the same thing as his nickname, had refused to grow soft after conquering. He was a king if ever the Free Kingdoms had seen one in the past century - he fought three wars, the first to claim his land and two more to successfully conquer his new neighbours, before the alliances began mounting against him and he was forced from the warpath. But his training yard never saw a day without use. Stab, thrust, block. On foot. On horseback. Dodge, cut, swing. Kick, punch, claw.

The fight lasted perhaps a minute. I watched it as if I were floating, feeling every ache of strike and thrust, pivoting and moving to protect Castor and myself. At a touch Castor spun, striking with both of his back hooves and cracking chests and heads, while I cut off the arm of a wyldeman trying to haul on my leg. Gresham, anchoring the far end of the line, spun his halberd like a whirlwind, first to his left and then his right, cleaving through limbs and pushing back the wild things.

Somewhere in the center of the fight Sir Constance leapt from her horse rather than being pulled down, clearing her mount to allow it the ability to defend itself while she tackled a pair of wyldemen who had her squire half out of his saddle.

And all at once it was done, and there was only the heavy breathing of the horses, and the warriors, and the whimpering of the wounded beasts that were not yet dead.

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