Dark Obligations: Book One of the Phantom Badgers (19 page)

“I
s that the lot?” Janna gasped, red-faced and sweating, trying to count the twitching corpses.

“Dead or run off,” Nuilia scrubbed blood from her face.

“Movement to the east, they’re coming,” Robin yelled, backing up with Moonblade at the rest position. The Direbreed on the other side of the bridge had rallied and were coming for the only attackers they could see, the four Badgers of Group Two. “Back up and give Rolf some room to work.” By withdrawing to the west the four put the corpses of the Direbreed between them and their attackers, allowing them to back up in the heat of the fight without the fear of stumbling over a cadaver.

As soon as she had created the ramp the Advocate had stepped across to the other side of the bridge, pointed to a central spot amongst the sleeping beastmen, and murmured a short invocation. Immediately a flow of mist poured out from the floor where she had pointed, the cold air fountaining up in a yard-high mushroom before spreading out across the floor. As the first screams and shouts of Group Two’s attack echoed behind an
d below her and Starr’s bow sang to her right Bridget repeated the spell at another spot and then pulled her staff sling from the back of her belt, planning to save her remaining magical energies for Healing after the battle.

As she slipped a lead ball into her weapon’s pouch, she surveyed the scene below her: in the growing blanket of mist the Direbreed were springing to their feet and snatching up arms, a few of the creatures swiftly shrugging into their armor, ready for battle but somewhat confused over where the battle
was
, their confusion amplified by the steadily-building mist and the fact that Starr, who was mechanically wielding her bow with expert precision, had cut down both section-leaders even as Bridget was finishing her second mist-calling.

In the slave pen
Durek quieted the excited slaves and waited for the right moment; the east side of the bridge was filled with raging howls, screams from victims of Starr’s archery, and the deep bellows of the Champion, who was standing erect on the platform trying to rally his forces. The sound of steel on steel and cries of pain were echoing from the west side of the bridge even as the mist thickened to hide what was transpiring over there. The attack was only a minute underway, but the Captain knew that the Badgers were committed beyond any recall, and all that remained was to launch their last surprise.

The moment came seconds later: the Draktaur, having drowned out his follower’s shrieks and cries in order to get their attention, leapt from the platform and motioned with his axe towards the west slave pen; in the thinning mist, harried by arrows and slung bullets from the bridge, the Direbreed sorted themselves out and began to trot towards the sounds of fighting, which were rapidly dying out.
Durek jerked the chain from the door and kicked it open, which was what Kroh had been watching for; at a soft-voiced command, the Waybrother and eight of the burliest slaves heaved on the rope with all their might and weight.

The slack in the rope tore through the reels of the block and tackle until the line stretched taut and creaking; overhead dust spurted from the unfastened joints, the timbers groaning at the sudden pressure and then howled as the first movement dragged them across the tops of the iron bars, spitting splinters as they went. With a sullen double-jerk the western third of
the platform bucked and then like a fence post being dragged from muddy ground by a team of mules the cross timbers slid screeching and chip-spraying towards the block and tackle, and, as they came off the supporting bars and beams, crashing to the ground in an explosion of planks, support beams, iron bars, chests, bags, packs, armor, weapons, and howling Black Dwarves.

About a dozen feet of the platform at the west end caved in, bringing a half-dozen
Fortren
with it as it collapsed; Durek found himself only three feet from a stunned Black Dwarf who had apparently been in the act of fastening down his chainmail tunic when the floor literally dropped away beneath his feet. Wasting no time, the Badger Captain shot the
Fortren
square in the forehead, discarded his crossbow, and leapt through the sagging doorway followed closely by his four Badgers as the slaves poured out through the collapsed end of the pen.

Kroh
and Trellan fired at the same time, only to see their quarrels shatter harmlessly against the gray-green armor of the Draktaur, the attack only serving to draw the beast’s attention. Durek and Gabriella took advantage of the surprise and confusion their appearance created to charge into the Direbreed; the dark woman stove in the skull of one beast-man with her long war hammer while Durek disemboweled another. Behind them the slaves and the
Fortren
were a howling, fighting mob.

About a dozen Direbreed raced out from the mist to make the first assault on Group Two; the four waiting Badgers could hear the Draktaur and the echoed crash of the slave pen collapsing, but could see nothing of it through the swirling fog that now engulfed most of the east side of the cavern. Rolf dropped one attacker as
the Badgers hastily went back-to back and met the charge as best they could. Instantly the western cavern rang with the crash of weapons and the cry of battle.

Slapping a quarrel in place, Rolf threw the weapon to his shoulder and took aim, sending the bolt squarely into the center back of a hulking Direbreed who had had a cow of some sort for a host; the creature thrashed madly about the floor, desperately trying to reach the source of the pain even as the life left its unnatural flesh.
Bridget had joined him in trying to cover the four Badgers while Starr fired in support of Durek and his group, but the Direbreed’s numbers were beginning to tell: the two pairs of Badgers were being forced further and further from each other. Kicking his boot into the stirrup, the half-Orc began to cock the weapon and then hesitated; below, Arian suddenly spun away from the Silver Eagle and crumbled to the dirt, a savage blow having sent him sprawling. Undaunted, Janna parried a sword while planting her partisan’s blade deep into a wolf-faced Direbreed, only to have the dying creature seize the weapon in both clawed hands in what was literally a death-grip. The sword wielder immediately lashed out, smashing the polearm’s shaft as the mace-bearing Direbreed who had downed Arian closed.

Discarding the crossbow
Rolf seized his axe and vaulted the railing-chain to hang from the bottom of the bridge as Janna rammed the jagged point of her partisan-shaft into the mace-armed beast-man’s face and lurched backwards, blocking with her shield and drawing her broadsword. Dropping to the dirt below, Rolf hit and rolled, coming to his feet with a mildly sprained ankle and a very real conviction that he was going to die. He took consolation in the fact that if he did fall here, at least he would not really be dying in
Gradrek Heleth
. Below it, but at least not
in
it.

A Direbreed had caught
Janna’s shield, while another had pinned her broadsword against the children’s pen with both of its hand axes; a third, the one the Silver Eagle had bloodied with her broken shaft, was dancing behind the struggling trio with its mace held at the ready, trying to find an a clear shot at the Badger. It turned to see who was coming up behind it as the edge of Rolf’s axe caught it at the juncture of neck and shoulder, ripping in until the creature’s head hung back against its left shoulder blade by a thick twist of muscle. Ripping his weapon free, the thin half-Orc kicked the dying foe aside and planted his axe in the lower back of the Direbreed who had Janna’s sword-arm pinned; before the beast-man gripping her shield could adapt to the sudden reverse in the fortunes of battle, the Silver Eagle had smashed the pommel of her sword into his left eye socket, crushing the amber orb, and then kicked him squarely in the knee, the savage pain sending the beast-man staggering back, blinded. Free, Janna darted forward and cut him down before he could recover.

His breath was coming in red-hot gasps and his shoulders were beginning to complain from the strain, but Robin was no novice to battle and refused to let the annoyances distract him from the job at hand. There were too many Dire
breed, just as he had predicted: despite the covering fire from the bridge he and Nuilia were forced away from Janna and Arian, and were being pressed ever harder on every side. Slapping aside a spear-point, he lunged in, the superb balance of his great sword catching his foe by surprise, a surprise which ended with its life. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a slung bullet blast into a Direbreed’s skull, splattering Nuilia with the rank green material that filled Direbreed brain pans, a lucky shot by Bridget, a luckier shot for the Badgers on the ground. A few more like that, he hoped as he parried an axe-stroke, and they might actually survive this mess.

Johann Helbrit had never seen anything like the battle he found himself
in, although he had become somewhat inured to radical changes to his world over the last few weeks. A hardy young man in his mid-twenties Johann had completed a full course of schooling and even a year at a University before a lack of funds drove him into the business world. He had secured the position as clerk with a wealthy grain-buyer and had accompanied his employer about the Empire until an opportunity arose to become a buyer for a fur consortium. While making the rounds of the trading posts on the Ward this fall he and his two clerks had been captured by a Dark Star raiding party, and ended up as slaves deep in the earth with grinding labor the basis of their days and a violent death his only future.

Or at least until the voice had called softly from the depths of the barred crevice. Now he found himself charging into the ruins of
the west end of the slave pens armed with a length of iron bar and the hope that he might just have a second chance at life.

They had done well in the first rush, hacking and beating to death the four stunned Dwarves lying in the wreckage while losing only one of their number, a Human whose name Johann had never learned, to a desperate dagger-thrust from a dying Black Dwarf which had opened the great blood-vessel in the man’s leg. Then crossbows had sounded above them and
two of their number dropped, shot clean through, while two armored
Fortren
leapt from the still-standing portion of the platform and waded into them, mattocks flying.

The Dwarves
cut down an Orc and two Humans before a big Orc who called himself Geranneth leapt in and planted a ten-pound sledge in the face of one of the short warriors before dropping with a crossbow quarrel in his chest. Some of the slaves bolted at that point, for Geranneth had been a pen boss of sorts, the fighting will of the slaves as a whole. Johann was too desperate to run, being keenly aware that there was no place to run to; he had no idea where they were or how to get to the sunlight above. Grabbing a sack of cornmeal that was part of the supplies stored on the platform, he swung the bag around his head twice for momentum and let fly, expecting to be shot down at any moment. The other armored Dwarf had just finished killing the only one of Johann’s clerks who had survived the trip into this stone hell when the bag slammed into his mail-covered chest and burst, blinding the
Fortren
.

Snatching up his iron bar, Johann leapt forward, swinging it in a massive overhand stroke that numbed his arms to the elbows and bent the bar into a smooth saber-curve when it impacted with the rounded dome of the Black Dwarf’s iron cap. Slowly the gnarled, clean-shaved Dwarf toppled to the floor, eyes rolled back into his head. Dropping the warped bar, Johann leapt upon the stunned foe and ripped the long dirk from the hated engineer’s hip, plunging the keen blade into the sweaty skin showing between the leather collar of the armored tunic and
the back of the dented metal cap.

Staggering to his feet, Johann looked
around to find the last two Dwarves were out of the fight, cut down by the archer on the bridge. Whispering an incoherent prayer of thanks, the young man began to scramble amongst the wreckage for a weapon. He wasn’t out of this pit yet, but the Void followers weren’t going to put him back into a cage, not alive anyway.

Durek
’s little company had cut off the second wave of Direbreed from following the dozen or so who had charged off towards the fighting, and in seconds the east side of the cavern was engulfed in melee. The press was hot and heavy for a few moments as Kroh and Trellan discarded their crossbows and threw themselves into the fray against the disorganized Direbreed. Then a Orc armed with a war mattock roared in from the flank and cut down two beastmen and badly wounded a third before a mace ended his charge and his life, taking considerable pressure off the Badgers. As he ducked a maul’s swing, however, the Captain could see the Draktaur bearing down on them and knew in his heart that the fight was only beginning.

Spinning her sling,
Bridget studied the swirling remnants of her mists for another safe target. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a figure racing across the dirt from the direction of the north pen and instinctively cast at him. As the lead bullet shattered the runner’s chest, killing him instantly, she realized she had slain a fleeing slave.

Shifting her focus from the north, wrecked, slave pens where
she had silenced the two
Fortren
who had made it to the crossbow rack (and whose mail tunics had cost her seven bodkin-pointed arrows) Starr saw the Champion’s bulk stalking through the fading mist towards Durek’s beleaguered section, swinging its massive axe in one mutated arm, muscles as large as her head flexing across the armored limb. Plucking her enchanted arrow from its separate pocket on the side of her nearly empty quiver, the little Lanthrell nocked it and spit the command word through a stone-dry mouth. She had seen it shrug aside the bolts from Kroh’s and Trellan’s crossbows, but the arrows created by this shaft would be enchanted in their own right. As the arrow leapt from her bow it flashed into six shafts which ripped into the Draktaur’s armored lower flank, the arrows punching through Void-blessed metal and leathery hide to rip into the soft flesh beneath, the force of the impact and the strength of the Void in the mutated flesh destroying the projectiles even as they wounded.