The Sorcerer's Vengeance: Book 4 of the Sorcerer's Path (11 page)

“So you plan to have us take North Haven first thing in the spring, before they can bring in their harvests just in case she proves to be a harder nut to crack.” Kayne mused, stroking the small wedge of hair on his chin with a finger.

“Precisely. I would like you and your cavalry to winter in Southport as my guests. I can integrate you into my own forces and no one will suspect your true identities so long as your men do not bring undo attention to themselves. Then, under the cover of night, I will send you out on small raiding runs just to keep Jarvin on his toes and force him to maintain his patrols. When I decide to crush them, his army will be tired and their moral low. From there we will ride to North Haven and put that frigid bitch and her fiery daughter to heel!” Ulric crowed gleefully.

CHAPTER
5

Brandon heard the unmistakable sound of splintering bone and drew his cutlass, turning slowly in circles. “Carter—Carter are you ok? Damn it man, answer me!”

Brandon saw the dark silhouette approaching through the fog. He knew right away that it was not Carter. The man was easily a head taller and a good deal wider than even the big oarsman was. It was not until the figure was within three or four feet that the guard could make out the man’s features. He was tall, his long blond hair was braided into several unruly ropes down the back of his neck, and he wore nearly no clothing at all. How the man managed to not freeze to death was beyond him.

The big man reached out at Brandon as if to embrace him in a brotherly hug. Brandon swung his cutlass with all his might, discarding any attempt at skilled swordsmanship and severed the giant’s left arm at the elbow. The only thing more disconcerting than watching the pale limb drop nearly bloodlessly to the ground was that the Northman still did not make a sound, did not cry out in pain, shock, or rage. The man did not even change the blank, seemingly unseeing stare on his ashen face.

“Alarm!” Brandon shouted as he tried to reverse his stroke but he had swung with so much force that it carried his blade too far to his left to bring it swiftly back around and the mute creature clubbed him hard in the left side of his head with his remaining arm.

The blow sent Brandon crashing to the ground, his ears ringing like church bells, and his vision full of dizzying, flashing lights. He watched the big Eislander stalk silently towards his prone form and raise a big, fur-lined boot to crush his head like the shell of a snail. Brandon tried to grasp his cutlass in his nerveless hand through the haze of pain and his concussion, but it was so numb it may as well have belonged to someone else.

The long steel head of a pike burst through the shirtless chest of the man that had just killed Carter and nearly himself. The force of the thrust sent the big man toppling to the ground yet he was impossibly trying to regain his feet as John stepped on his back, pulled the big pike out, and thrust it home a second, then a third time as the man refused to die.

Tent flaps were thrown wide as Toron and the rest of southern men bounded out into the frosty night air, fully dressed with weapons in hand. They barely had time to take in the scene when more large forms began scrabbling over the man-high wall of snow. Some moved with a mindless slowness much like the one that had killed Carter, but others moved swiftly, swinging weapons or just using their big fists.

The chaos was compounded as the sailors realized that their weapons were having little effect, and only after inflicting the most horrific of wounds would the attackers fall to ground and lie still. Even worse were the monsters that leapt over the berm with the powerful legs and bodies of huge stags but the torsos of an Eislander or Akkadian jutting up where the thick neck and antlered head should have been.

One of the grotesque stag creatures trampled the tent, toppling the stove inside and setting the oiled canvas aflame. Despite the loss of the tent and bedrolls, the men were grateful for the extra light as they battled the inhuman monsters for their lives. Even the things they first thought had been humans were often parodies of human form. Some men had the arms of ice bears, which they wielded with like speed and power.

“Hack them to pieces with your blades!” Toron shouted as he took the head from a man with the head of a stag and an extra set of arms with which it wielded two swords, an axe, and the femur of a stag, possibly to the same one that its head had once belonged. “Forget the spears, chop them down like trees. Take their arms, legs, and heads if you can!”

Most of the men followed the experienced minotaur’s words but all were men accustomed to fighting and made improvisations of their own, some simply did not have their cutlasses close to hand. A big man named Tom thrust the heavy spear into a man who looked normal with the exception of the impressive rack of antlers jutting from his head. The monstrosity paid the wound no attention and shoved itself down the length of the spear until the crosspiece stopped it. Tom was sure that the beast would have forced the spear all the way through its body until it could reach its wielder and rip him apart with its bare hands.

With a shout of defiance, Tom set his feet in the packed snow and shoved the creature back onto its heels, forcing it to backpedal until he reached the conflagration that was once the tent and shoved it into the blazing flames. It was the first time that any of the monsters had made a sound. Green flames wreathed the beast as it struggled against the spear that kept it pinned within the dreaded fire. Tom bore his weight down onto the pike haft, pinning the flailing creature down into the flames, ignoring the heat that singed off his own facial hair until its screams died and the beast stopped moving.

Farley cracked his personal hunting spear across the back of the knees of another of the macabre creations then pinned it to the ground when it fell while Derran used an axe to sever the head from its shoulders. More and more of the creatures approached from out of the mists towards the horribly inadequate wall that surrounded the camp. Zeb cursed angrily as he saw the large numbers of creatures approaching the feeble barrier; far more than his men could shove back with the pikes no matter how furiously they tried. Zeb knew it was only a matter of moments until all was lost and they were overrun.

A hard blow from behind sent Zeb crashing onto the icy ground and felt as if he had been trampled by a horse. Ignoring the pain that lanced through his body, the aging captain rolled onto his back, bringing his cutlass across his chest, bracing the back of the blade with his free hand in a guard position. Another of the four-legged stag men had leapt the wall and caught him in the back with its hoofed forelegs. It wielded a spear, and unlike most of the others, had a look of rage and hatred on its once human face.

The monstrosity raised the spear over Zeb’s heart, preparing to launch a thrust that the captain had little hope of dodging or deflecting. He was staring up at the hate-filled eyes when over the beast’s human shoulder he saw the dark silhouette of another, more human form, leap high from atop the low wall with a huge battleaxe, similar in every way to the one Toron favored, raised above its helmed head. Zeb thought that the beast had come to steal the other’s kill until the axe flashed down and split the torso of the stag creature nearly in half, the stroke of the blade not being arrested until it lodged deep into the intersection where the human pelvis joined its stag torso.

The big, blond-haired, shaggy-faced human wrenched his big double-bladed axe out of the body of the creature he had just slain, using his foot to apply leverage as if he were pulling the axe out of a stubborn log except that no log over made the sick squelching sound that followed the weapon’s violent removal from the monstrosity’s carcass.

The mighty Eislander raised his gore-covered axe high over his head and shouted, “Modi!” before racing off and burying this axe into the spine of another of the creatures.

All around, Zeb began hearing shouts of men, real men not that of these foul creations. Shouts of Gullantanni, Magni, Modi, Wuldor and many others echoed through the fog and across the chaotic battlefield. Zeb was certain they were the names of the Eislanders that had appeared out of nowhere, seemingly to their rescue.

Zeb forced himself painfully to his feet. “Ware the Eislanders, my lads! They be friends, at least for now! Check your swings and be sure it’s the monsters ya cut down!”

“Rick, follow me, I got an idea!” Matt shouted and pulled his friend along with him towards the two scorpios.

“What are you doing? These things aren’t going to do much to these beasts!” Rick shouted.

“They will if we hit em with these!” Matt returned with a wicked grin and holding up one of the cloth-wrapped, oil-soaked flares.

Rick laughed and grabbed up one of the flares and lit it with the flames from the burning tent before sticking the butt if the wooden stake into the snow atop the low mound where the scorpio was set up. Both men worked the windlass to draw the thick cord back and bend the powerful arm. Once cocked, Rick touched the oil-saturated canvas of another of the flares to the one stuck into the snow next to him before setting it on the track of the big crossbow.

Matt took aim at one of the creatures. It was huge, with the body of an ice bear and the head of a man. It sent men tumbling with each swipe of its mighty paw. A dozen wounds marred the filthy coat of the creature but it showed no sign that any of them bothered it. The scorpio bucked in the sailor’s hands as he pulled the trigger and released all the pent up energy held in check by the thick cord of the bow.

The arm of the crossbow snapped forward with incredible force, launching the flaming brand at fantastic speed. The scorpio, a weapon designed to fire a small spear more than four hundred yards, struck the brute in the chest just a scant number of yards away. Matt half expected the brand to be extinguished by the monster’s own innards and blood, but whatever foul magic or technique had been used to create it made it exceptionally vulnerable to fire. Instead of being drowned by the creature’s blood, the oily flame caused whatever was inside the beast to flare violently into green flames. The monstrosity howled in anguish as its animated form was rapidly and painfully consumed from the inside out.

“Wahoo!” Rick and Matt shouted at their handy work. “C’mon, crank it back again!”

The two men worked the windless as fast as they could. Their former grimaces turned into evil grins as Rick set another brand onto the scorpio and sent it flying into another of the creatures that was trying to clamber over the wall, sending it toppling backwards in a flash of green flame.

The battle was dying down, the numbers of the foul horrors finally dwindling until Zeb’s men and the unexpected arrival of the Eislanders had them outnumbered. The swifter creatures began fleeing southward, possibly towards the distant forests. When there was no longer a common foe, Valarian and Eislander eyed each other warily. The Eislanders had the southern men outnumbered by a good handful of men and the smallest of them was equal to any of the burly oarsmen, most far larger, and many nearly matching Toron in height, discounting the horns.

Zeb broke the standoff by seeking out the man that had made the amazing leap from the top of the wall, cleaving the body of one of the creatures nearly in twain and saving his life. Zeb spotted him standing amidst several bodies of the dead creatures and one of his own fallen Eislanders near the dying flames of the tent remains where most had made their stand.

Zeb had nearly reached the big man when several of them spotted flash of movement nearby. Hands gripped weapons tighter as men from both lands spun to face the mound where Rick and Matt had used the scorpio to good effect. One of the stag-men appeared through the fog, leapt over the wall, and bounded atop the mound. The foul beast knocked Rick down one side of the mound with its forelegs, clubbed Matt senseless with a blow to the head from one of its powerful fists, before throwing the unconscious sailor over its broad shoulders and dashing off into the night.

Zeb and every one of his men still ambulatory made to run after the creature, but the big Eislander grabbed the captain’s shoulder in a vice-like grip and shouted, “No, you will not catch the creature and would only die upon the frozen tundra if you tried!”

“Damn it, man, I can’t just let that thing take one of my men away and just let it go!”

“Then you must wait until morning and track it. It is tireless and can run for days. With luck, we can track it to its lair and to its master and end his vile sorceries,” the Eislander replied forcefully then softened his tone. “They have taken many of my own men, Utgardr. Trust that I will not rest until every one of these abominations are destroyed and the vile witch’s skull that has created them adorns my lodge.”

Zeb was so furious he spat on the ground, not knowing what else to do. “Toron, Derran, get me a head count and tell me how many dead, wounded, and missing we got!”

The captain then turned back to big Eislander that had spoken. “I’m Zeb, currently captain of the
Iron Shark
and I lead these men. I thank ya on behalf of us all for your intervention,” the captain proclaimed sincerely, extending his hand as he looked up into the vibrant blue eyes of the seven-foot-tall northman.

The Eislander paused before grasping the smaller man’s hand in his own, fully engulfing it. “I am Modi, meaning courage, leader of this war band.”

“Why don’t ya have yer boys gather round our fire. It’s big enough for all of us now,” Zeb offered, glancing over his shoulder at the flaming remains of the tent and its contents.

Modi’s face split into grin before he barked a deep, heartfelt laugh. The big Eislander raised his hand into the air and made a rapid circling gesture with it. His men began crowding around him and the fire, taking a seat on the frozen ground, some using their fallen, deformed foes as a stool.

“We have been watching you since you set anchor in the bay,” Modi said as they all took a seat.

Zeb nodded his head. “We figured as much. Toron smelled you close by a couple times but we never saw you.”