Redemption (Book 6) (7 page)

Lockhart blinked smoke out of his eyes. He glanced back at his men.

The dragoons were retreating into the milefort. So far they were still in good order, but they were about to be overrun by more Jombards than they could possibly battle.

And still no significant reinforcements. Thirty minutes before another squad of dragoons had arrived from the nearest milefort to the north, but that had been nowhere near enough to curtail the barbarian attack.

Hangman’s Hill was lost. If the breakthrough wasn’t contained, it could mean a tidal wave of barbarians flooding through the gap.

Lockhart swung his head back towards the burning palisade.

The Jombards were coming. There seemed to be scores of them left, all with crazed looks in their eyes and wolf skins on their heads.

“Sound the retreat,” Lockhart shouted to Dyke. Sergeant Madison was dead, his body lost amid the flames and smoke of the palisade barrier.

Dyke nodded, one fearful eye on the approaching Jombards.

Lockhart hurried down the steps into the milefort.

The dragoons were piling up a makeshift barrier. With the palisade penetrated, there was now nothing between the steps of the escarpment and the courtyard of the milefort. The Jombards would be on them in seconds.

“Get the mounts,” Lockhart thundered. He waved his sword for emphasis. “Regroup at the Rest.
Go
.”

“Sir!” A dragoon came around an overturned table. “The mounts have bolted, sir.” He pointed around towards the open gates of the milefort, and the empty stables. There were only a few stray nags in the courtyard, their eyes wide with fear at the smell of smoke and blood.

Lockhart stopped short. He swallowed a rising string of curses.

In all the confusion, there had been no one to watch the horses or secure them in the stables. Every hand had been needed on the Wall the moment they arrived at the besieged fort, and the stable boy had long since fled.

“Sir,” Dyke shouted over the wailing cries of the barbarians. “We can make our stand here!” He lifted his sword as if to prove the point.

Lockhart ran a quick eye over his men.

There were about fifteen of them left. Almost all were wounded or burned in some manner. Lockhart himself was bleeding from a nasty gash in his arm that he was trying hard to ignore.

The barbarians were skilled in hand-to-hand combat, and equipped for it. The dragoons would get perhaps one volley, and then it would be sword work against an enemy that outnumbered them several to one.

It was suicide.

“Sir?” said Dyke. Blood ran down his cheek from a nasty cut.

Lockhart tightened his grip on his sword.

They couldn’t go back. There was nowhere to go. They needed to make a stand, here in the milefort. Try to buy as much time as they possibly could.

“Hold,” Lockhart said. “Prepare to fire a volley on my order. Have the men—” he paused mid-sentence, his eyes riveted on the burning remains of the palisade wall.

Something massive was emerging through the smoke and fire.

The barbarians began to chant even louder.

Harnathu...Harnathu...Harnathu....

“Eru save us,” Dyke whispered.

A beast in human shape came through the curling smoke. It was huge, at least eight feet tall, with a massive axe held in each of its clawed hands. Gray and black fur covered its body. Yellow eyes glowed in its wolf-shaped face.

At first Lockhart thought it was another wolf skin helmet, similar to what the other barbarians were wearing. Then he realized the horrible, impossible truth.

It was a werewolf. Eight feet of bristling muscles, claws, and fangs.

“That’s...not possible,” Lockhart stammered.

The barbarians gave a keening cry, stamping their spear shafts against the ground.

The werewolf opened its mouth and howled.

The sound was chilling. Lockhart felt every ounce of courage drain out of him, like water through a hole.

The dragoons began to flee. They ran screaming, throwing down their carbines and covering their ears.

Dyke looked wildly at the fleeing troopers. He grabbed Lockhart by the arm. “
Sir
!”

Lockhart stared at the massive man-beast in terrified fascination. It was an abomination of nature, something so obscene that its very existence seemed to pull apart the threads of his sanity.

Dyke pulled harder. “Sir! The men are running!”

Lockhart couldn’t take his eyes off the monster. His body felt frozen, paralyzed.

It was over. There was no way that mortal men could fight a thing like that. The Jombards had breached the Wall. They would pour through the gap, burn Redemption to the ground, slaughter the people—

The werewolf stepped forward. It growled, quickening its pace as it raised the axes in both claws.

Lockhart ran.

He stumbled down the last few steps of the escarpment, filled with a blind, unreasoning terror. Even as he ran his mind screamed at himself to stop, to hold his ground and die like a soldier of Arbela.

But with the smell of smoke, the roar of the flames and chanting of the Jombards in his ears, and the knowledge that the
werewolf
was behind him...he couldn’t stop, couldn’t turn to face his doom.

Lockhart ran out of the southern gate of the milefort. He had lost his pistol somewhere along the way, though his sword was somehow still in his hand. In front of him he spotted the fleeing dragoons. Most had thrown away their weapons and were running for their very lives.

Long grass whipped by Lockhart’s knees. The cold morning air was heavy with the smell of burning wood. He continued to run, not caring what was in front of him. He glanced back over his shoulder.

Jombards poured out of the southern gate, hollering and shrieking in victory. The milefort was already beginning to burn.

Lost. All was lost.

Then a bugle sounded.

Lockhart slowed, his mind slowly coming back to its senses. The bugle call was sharp and clear, sounding over the rolling drums and wails of the barbarians women.

The bugle sounded again.

Lockhart swung his head around to the south.

The hill before him sloped gradually downwards. On either side of Military Way the countryside was clear and covered with grass, broken only by the occasional rock and stray tree. In the growing light of dawn, Lockhart could see the grass waving gently in the morning breeze.

And there were figures below, about two hundred yards away. It was a line of horsemen, stretched out across the road and on either side of it.

Lockhart squinted, trying to see by the first light of the rising sun.

A banner snapped and crackled above the heads of the rider in the wind. The riders themselves wore steel cuirasses and open-face helmets, as well as the tough leather buff coats that Lockhart’s dragoons wore. The rising sun glinted and shone off their armor. There looked to be at least a hundred of them. A full troop.

The rider at the head of the formation raised a sword in the air. The bugle sounded again.

The horsemen began to move forward at a trot.

Reinforcements. At last. Lockhart felt the first glimmer of hope again.

Then he remembered the werewolf.

The dragoons had halted, staring through sleep-starved eyes at the advancing line of cavalry.

Lockhart looked back behind him.

The barbarians had halted, too. They were staring at the oncoming troopers.

The werewolf-chieftain gave a bone-rattling roar.

The barbarian warriors began to organize themselves, forming into a ragged line. Wicker shields were raised, and spears were readied.

The cavalry continued to trot forward. The pace of the horses quickened slightly. The slanting rays of the rising sun gleamed off drawn sabers and rapiers.

“Hold up!” Captain Lockhart shouted. His head was clearing, and the terror he had felt just moments before was evaporating. He raised his sword. “Dragoons, reform!”

His dragoons turned and looked around at him. They had stopped running, even though most of them had no weapons.

The cavalry merged into a gallop. The thunder of their hooves pounding on the grassy turf of the hill reverberated through Lockhart’s body.

The bugle sounded again.

The werewolf-chieftain bellowed in anger. He raised both axes over his head, as if daring the riders to attack.

Lockhart’s dragoons cowered in the grass. They were caught between the pounding approach of the cavalry troopers and the Jombards.

Captain Lockhart lifted his sword. He raised his voice to be heard over the tumult. “When the riders pass, assault the enemy with whatever weapon you have at hand. Sergeant Dyke, take the right. I’ll take the left.”

“Yes, sir,” Dyke said as he reloaded his pistol. His face was still pale with fear.

Lockhart looked up again.

The approaching riders were nearly on top of them. The horses were going at full gallop. Their approach was fearsome, and even though Lockhart knew he was not their intended target, he felt his heart drop as the line of cavalry drew closer by the second.

The werewolf roared. It beat the blades of the axes together above its head.

The other Jombards did not look so confident. The line of barbarians seemed to waver. Some of the woad-covered warriors cast anxious glances back and forth amongst themselves. Some began to shift ever so slightly back in the direction of the milefort.

With a sound like a roaring river, the line of cavalry swept past Lockhart and his men. Dirt and grass were kicked up into the air by the horses’ hooves. The riders passed so close that Lockhart could see their faces and the wheelock pistols that were tucked into the holsters at their belts. The banner snapped and furled in the wind. It bore the device of a black raven on a white field.

The lead rider galloped right past Lockhart. His armor shone bright like a mirror, and several flintlock pistols were tucked within easy reach around his belt. But it was his rapier that caught Lockhart’s eye. The weapon’s hilt flashed golden in the morning sun, and blue and green jewels sparkled and blazed where they were set around the hilt. The blade itself was tapered and long, gleaming like a shaft of moonlight.

And then the line of cavalry was gone, charging directly towards the line of barbarians.

Lockhart lifted his sword. “At them, boys!” He charged forward in the wake of the horses, not looking to see whether Dyke and the others were following him or not. But the ragged cheer that he heard behind him gave him some hope that they were.

The werewolf threw back its bestial head and howled angrily. Then it threw aside its axes and leapt forward, bounding along on all fours as it bared its fangs.

The lead rider maneuvered his horse. He headed straight for the oncoming monster.

Lockhart felt his heart jump with a sudden, inexplicable thrill. It was like watching a vaunted knight of legend jousting with a dragon. The lead rider was bearing right at the abomination, the same werewolf that had struck unreasoning fear in both Lockhart and his men.

It was then, in that moment, that Lockhart knew who the horseman was.

The barbarians began to chant, but their voices were lost in the pounding of the horses’ hooves.

A roaring cheer sounded from the line of the oncoming cavalry. They slammed at full gallop into the uneven line of barbarian warriors.

The scene quickly became one of blood, chaos, and screaming. Rapiers flashed in the sunlight and whistled through the air as they chopped and stabbed. Horses screamed and kicked with hooves. Pistol shots went off one after the other, spitting smoke and death at point blank range into the barbarians. The grass was quickly filled with blood and the mutilated bodies of the Jombard warriors.

But Lockhart’s attention was only briefly distracted by the sheer ferocity of the slaughter that the cavalrymen were inflicting on the Jombards. In front of him, the lead rider and the werewolf met in an open space of grass in front of the gates of the milefort.

The rider did not slow his mount. He galloped forward as straight as an arrow, his rapier lowered and pointed to strike.

The werewolf barreled forward with an unearthly howl. It looked even more now like a demon from the Void itself, its fur dark against the green grass, its eyes burning like torches.

At the last moment possible, the rider whipped out a pistol in his free hand.

The werewolf launched himself forward into the air, claws and fangs poised to strike.

The rider’s pistol cracked out in the morning air.

The shot struck the werewolf square in the chest. The force of the hit knocked the beast back into the ground. It rolled twice in the grass, and gave a fearsome bellow of rage.

The rider reined in his horse. He tossed the spent pistol to the ground and reached for another.

The werewolf was on its feet again in a flash. It pounced with an earth-shaking roar.

Lockhart could only watch, stunned into inaction.

A second pistol appeared in the rider’s hand.

The werewolf crashed into the panicked horse.

The pistol sounded off just as the horse and rider slammed to the ground in an eruption of dirt, grass, and hooves.

The werewolf brought both its clawed paws down on the struggling, kicking mass of horse and rider.

The horse gave a hideous scream. Steaming blood spurted upwards into the air.

Lockhart felt his heart hammer into his chest. Without thinking he raised his own sword, ready to charge forward and avenge the fallen rider.

But then, impossibly, the rider was standing beside the werewolf, seemingly unharmed.

Lockhart blinked, not believing his own eyes. For anyone to move that fast, especially laden down with armor—

The werewolf was fast, too. It spun to meet the new threat.

The rider’s blade flashed forward in a humming arc of steel.

Lockhart watched, spellbound.

The rapier sliced through the werewolf’s arm at the elbow, cutting through it as if it had been made of soft butter.

The beast lurched back. It gave another howl, this time filled with as much pain as anger. The stump of its arm fountained blood.