Honor among thieves

Chapter One Hundred Eleven

An hour before dawn the snow burned a deep blue. Fires burned low in the barbarian camp, untended now by men who expected to be inside walls and warm in a little space of time. Morget dropped to his knees before the wall of Ness and spread his hands wide, for that was how the men of the East prayed.

O mother, O Death, come today for my enemies, he beseeched silently, for no man of the East prayed aloud when another could hear. O my mother, come for my men, too, my warriors, who I would slay myself to please you, until their blood painted this world. Come for the little people of the West, and conquer their little gods. Come for the innocent. Come for the women. Come for the children, and even the little babes.

Slake this thirst inside me with hot blood.

Or come for me, if that is my doom.

But come, and reap, and take many souls into your arms.

No one was there to ask him what he begged for. Hurlind the scold was passed out drunk in his tent. Balint the dwarf was gone, spirited away in her own tunnels by hands unseen. Morgain was riding for Helstrow, well beyond Morget’s reach. Morg the Wise, Morg the Merciful, Morg the Great Chieftain was dead by his son’s red hand. The chieftains who remained, their reavers and their warriors, their thralls and their berserkers, did not dare approach a man communing with his wyrd.

Morget was alone. No one remained to share in his glory.

Which meant it would all be his.

Everything was in readiness, and everything was planned for. The berserkers would be first and already they danced before the wall of the city, danced wildly, working their blood up, danced and sang with great ululating shrieks and shouts, with atonal, wordless chants to drive themselves mad. When the wall came down they would rush inside and slaughter indiscriminately anyone they found. After them the clans would pour through, a river of iron to wash away any defenders that remained. He would be in among them, with axe and Dawnbringer, and he would reap a great harvest.

Or so it had been planned. Yet destiny, or doom, whichever it might be, was known to laugh at men who schemed, and so it was to be that day.

The sign, the portent of what was truly to come, was a ring of steel against iron, and it was repeated not once but a hundred times even before Morget looked up from his prayer. Behind him at the edge of the camp horses screamed and men cried out in pain. Morget jumped to his feet and grabbed his weapons.

He was not expecting this, but still it brought a smile to his face. He hurried past surprised-looking chieftains standing outside their tents, past thralls holding the ropes that would bring down the wall of Ness. He hurried to where men held weapons in their hands, and pushed into their ranks so he could see what gift his mother had brought him.

An armored man on a horse nearly put a lance-tip through Morget’s chest as he looked around him. Morget was fast enough to spin out of the way and bury his axe deep in the haunch of the horse as it passed. The animal faltered and went down, and the knight on its back had to jump down into the snow.

Morget did not recognize the armor the man wore, nor the way he braided his mustache. This was no man of Skrae. He found this fact deeply intriguing.

The knight got to his feet while Morget waited. The barbarian could have struck his enemy down a dozen times, but he wanted to see what this new foeman would bring to bear. The knight had a long, tapering shield across his left arm, and his right hand came up with a flail, three spiked steel balls whirling over his head. If they found purchase on Morget’s flesh, they would tear away skin and muscle and crush his bones. With an ease and a grace that came from a hundred such encounters, Morget stepped inside the knight’s reach and thrust Dawnbringer into the air. The Ancient Blade burst with light as it fouled the chains holding those deadly orbs, clattered as they wrapped around and around Morget’s foible.

Morget’s axe came around and bit through the wooden shield that came up to meet it. The boards groaned and split and the steel rim of the shield twanged as it snapped away. The shield fell to pieces and the arm underneath it steamed with blood.

The knight let go of his flail-trapped and useless now-and punched Morget hard in the face with a steel gauntlet. Morget’s head spun around to the side and spittle launched from his lips as his entire skull rang with the impact.

He shook off the blow and brought his head back around to see the knight dancing backward, reaching for a long dagger at his waist.

“Very good,” Morget laughed. “You’re very good,” he said, in the same moment that he flicked Dawnbringer to the side to free it of the entwined flail. The knight did not reply as he brought his knife around, the blade held diagonally across his chest to ward off Morget’s next blow.

Morget feinted with his axe, and the knight drove hard with his knife to parry. That left his chest open, so Morget impaled him on Dawnbringer. The blade lit up inside the knight’s body and red light glowed from inside the dying man’s rib cage.

Morget spun around, even as he pulled his sword free of the corpse. All around him more horses were circling, the knights on their backs lashing out left and right with morningstars and cavalry spears, cutting down thralls and warriors.

Who were these knights? From whence had they come? They were nearly as vicious and well-trained as his own warriors, and they knew how to use their horses to their advantage. They were a real threat, for once, and Morget’s blood sang with excitement. A real battle!

Then, behind the horses, he saw a pike square advancing toward him. Each was made of a score of men, each man armed with a ten foot pole with an iron spike at its end. Five men stood shoulder-to-shoulder with no break between them, while another five walked sideways to their right and left, and a final five brought up the rear, walking backward, trusting the men in front to lead them. Simple weapons, simple tactics, but Morget knew how dangerous pike squares could be. The length of the pikes made it impossible to get at the men directly, while they could jab outward with impunity.

Of course, the tactic assumed that when presented with such a wall of spikes, any sane warrior would retreat, knowing he was beaten. In civilized lands pike squares could drive a whole flank back, or break a main charge, or even hold their own against cavalry. But Morget was not civilized. And he was not altogether sane.

Howling a war curse, he ran straight into the midst of the pikes. One spike lodged in his neck but he tore free of it and pushed in closer. His axe swung in a wide vertical arc that sliced through the wooden hafts of the pikes until their severed ends bounced and drummed around his feet.

Dawnbringer took the head of one pikeman, and suddenly there was a gap in the square, and just as suddenly Morget was inside it, looking at the unsuspecting backs of the men in the rear. One of them glanced over his shoulder and dropped his weapon in terror.

The square tried to turn in on itself, but the pikes were useless in close quarters. The pikemen were as likely to stick each other as Morget. The barbarian’s axe and sword flashed left, smashed right, came around, circled, cutting everywhere, slashing and stabbing and thrusting and lunging until twenty dead men fell against Morget and threatened to knock him off his feet. He jumped over the falling bodies before they’d even stopped breathing and looked up to see four more pike squares coming toward him, even as the knights on horseback kept charging through the camp, slaughtering men who were still half asleep.

“Well played,” Morget said, addressing the unseen commander of this ambush.

Yet one quick sortie of overwhelming power did not a rout make. Morget had his own gambit to try. This assault of mixed foot and cavalry was deadly, but only on open ground. If he could get the clans inside the city wall before they were cut to pieces, he could build a defensive barricade and hold off his enemies forever with arrows.

He dashed toward the city wall just as the first limb of the sun crested the horizon, shouting, “The ropes! The ropes! Bring down the wall now!”

O mother, he prayed, O Mother Death you have blessed me this day!