“How goes the battle?” she asked the Kanosee general who approached. Mud smeared his cheek and blood dirtied his gauntlet.
“It doesn’t go anywhere, your Highness,” he said. “For every one of their soldiers who falls, one of ours does, too. We fight to a standstill.”
The woman raised an eyebrow. “But blood is being spilled, is it not?”
“Yes. Much.”
“Then I shall tip the scale in our favor.”
“Your Highness?”
“Never mind.”
She stood in her stirrups, stretching to see as far across the field of battle as she could. From this distance, it appeared a tangled mess of men and horses. She picked out Kanosee banners and Erechanian flags flying amongst it all.
A silly convention of men.
“Where does their general fight? Where is Sir Alton Sienhin?”
The man repositioned his horse beside hers and pointed with his bloodied gauntlet.
“There. To the southwest.”
She squinted the direction he’d indicated and discerned a faint green glow amongst the throngs of men.
He wields the staff. She smiled. Good.
She sat back in the saddle and waved the man away. “Get back down there and kill some of those dogs. We can use their help.”
The man bowed his head, a puzzled expression on his face, and spurred his horse away. The woman paused to pat her horse on the neck before following.
“Much blood,” she said to the horse. It huffed a breath through its nose in response. “Perfect.”
She gave the horse her heels and trotted down from the hill, heading closer to the southwest side of the plains as flakes of snow began to fall.
***
Sienhin grunted with effort as his sword cut deep into the shoulder of another Kanosee soldier. He found it difficult swinging the sword with his left hand, and it caused pain in his right shoulder every time he did, but every blow brought him closer to being accustomed to using his off hand. He jerked the blade out of the man, pulling him from his saddle at the same time, and the Kanosee soldier fell to the mud. The war horse Sienhin had commandeered in the capital reared, its front hooves pawing the air before coming down on the fallen man.
The impact jarred the general and, lacking the use of his right arm, he slipped abruptly to his left. He abandoned his sword in favor of grabbing the horse’s mane and keeping his seat.
“Gods be damned,” he bellowed when he’d regained his seat.
The battle swirled around him. His horse danced to avoid riderless horses bolting from the fight and foot soldiers attempting to bring it down. Sienhin looked left and right. There were too many of the Kanosee pigs at hand to dismount and retrieve his weapon, and too many for him to go without one.
“Well this won’t do, will it?”
He barked a laugh and grabbed the thick staff he’d slung across his back before the fighting began. He didn’t know why he’d kept the thing after relieving Hahn Perdaro of it, but it had felt like he was supposed to have it, and this would be the second time it had saved him. The Gods were on his side.
A Kanosee foot soldier grabbed the cinch strap of the general’s saddle, the studded mace in his other hand cocked to deliver a blow, but Sienhin caught him in the side of the head with the butt end of the staff hard enough to daze him. Before the enemy soldier could recover, he swung it around and cracked him across the bridge of the nose. Blood gushed from the wound, splashing down his face and onto the staff. The man fell and Sienhin’s destrier finished him off.
“Ha,” the general bellowed. “This will work fine.”
He waded back into the fight, the green-glowing end of the staff flickering and reflecting off the falling snow. He knocked one soldier off his horse, skewered another through the eye, and cracked open the skull of a third. Soon, the first two feet of the staff were awash in blood, and bits of flesh stuck to the wood.
Sienhin smiled a devious grin behind his bushy mustache laced with snow, every nerve and sinew in him enjoying the heady feel of the battle. It energized him, made him feel young again; being so close to death brought clearly into focus how good it was to be alive. Since the first time he swung a sword, it had been like this for him-a blood lust that served him well in battle, though he’d never told anyone of it save his closest friends.
The general knocked another enemy to the ground, then brought his horse about to meet the challenge of a war cry from behind him-a desolate, evil sound. The undead creature that howled it was mounted and held a war scythe with both hands, the tip of the blade pointed at the general. Enough blood and gore covered the thing’s cuirass as to render the black and red markings painted upon it indistinguishable.
Sienhin settled his horse and adjusted his grip on the staff, waiting until the monstrosity urged his horse forward before he did the same. Soldiers of both armies dove out of their paths and, a moment later, the two came together.
The Kanosee attacked first, swinging the wicked blade at Sienhin’s neck, but the general ducked and caught the thing in the temple with a jab of the staff. It reeled momentarily, then thrust the scythe’s point toward the general’s gut. Sienhin brushed the blade aside with the butt end of the staff, then whipped the head around and embedded it in the creature’s throat.
His foe made a gurgling sound and Sienhin thrust the staff deeper, its green glow noticeable beneath the dead thing’s pale skin. It thrashed and grabbed at the staff, so the general leaned into it once more until the end protruded through the back of its neck. The Kanosee went slack and the general wrenched his horse around, unseating the undead rider. The thing hung limply from the staff for a second, then slid off and hit the ground to be trampled under the destrier’s mud and blood covered hooves.
“Ha ha.” Sienhin looked around to see how many more were ready to fall before his wrath when a figure caught his attention.
The woman and her horse sat at the edge of the battle, appearing as a statue if not for the breeze fluttering her blond hair and the flakes of snow melting at the touch of her skin. Sienhin’s eyes narrowed, his jaw clenched. His ability to control his emotions was one of the attributes that had allowed him to survive so long as a career soldier, but the woman responsible for the fall of the kingdom he called home deserved his wrath.
With a cry of rage, Sienhin swung the staff around his head and spurred his horse toward the Archon, but a wall of weapons and armor and bodies blocked him, preventing his steed from charging the woman. He continued to whirl the staff in a circle over his head and put his heels to the horse again; it moved forward only a few paces, caught in the congestion of battle.
Faces turned up to Sir Alton Sienhin and, for a fleeting second, he felt pleased at the way they looked at him-with awe, with fear. But his pleasure disappeared when he saw the greenish tint coloring their cheeks, reflected in their eyes, and he knew it wasn’t for him they felt awe; it wasn’t he who caused their fear. He reined his horse in and ceased swinging the staff, lowered it down to see.
The dim glow had become a blinding light, a green eldritch blaze emanating from the staff and washing over everything. It mesmerized the men closest to Sienhin as they stared at it, the battle forgotten. The general blinked hard to pull himself from its spell.
“What deviltry is this?”
He looked past it, searching beyond the battle for the witch, but the place where he’d seen her stood empty, a flattened bit of grass collecting snow.
Gone.
A moment later, the dead began to rise.
***
Therrador reined his horse to a stop and signaled the men with him to do the same. Including himself, only twelve Erechanians warriors had survived the fight in the Isthmus Fortress-twelve more than the number of Kanosee left alive. They all knew that a troop of twelve men wasn’t enough to turn the tide of battle, but to a man, they swore to do their best.