Chapter 1395: Long awaited due(2)

The woods were heavy with whispers and whimpers and above all with the thick stench of impending death, which had a way of arriving well before the dying did.

From deep beneath the dense forest canopy the roar of the assault came filtering down through theoaks, vibrating along the trunks and into the damp black earth until it reached Vilon’s ears through the soles of his boots as much as through the air. It came not as a chaotic mess but as a single low continuous note, rising and falling with the wind like a hymn sung by something with a great many throats and no words to use them on.

The faint clink of iron spearheads, the muffled hiss of mail shifting as men moved, the heavy thud of timber somewhere against timber, all of it clashed against that note without ever quite breaking it.

Yet these sounds were vastly different from the horrors Vilon had endured at the Ford. There the battle had been loud and immediate and vivid, chaos made flesh, forged by human hands and fed by their gruesome ends, so close that a man tasted other men’s blood whether he wished to or not.

Here, miles back from the perimeter, it was no cacophony at all. It was a soft and eerie invitation, patient as a knock at a door in the small hours. It was calm, and in that strange muffled stillness it was more terrifying than anything he had stood in the middle of.

"It shouldn’t be long now," Selm muttered, leaning a shoulder against a moss covered trunk. His helm, crowned with its wolfskin pelt, sat in the grass beside boots that would not keep still, pacing frantic little circles in the dark soil as though the ground had personally offended them.

Owen lifted an eyebrow and tilted his head toward the canopy. "It’s barely been any time at all since the horns called," he whispered, twitching his nose as if he might catch the scent of blood on the breeze and settle the matter that way.

Indeed it felt as though only minutes had passed since the warhorns had blared from the east and from the west both, the two calls screaming for vengeance across the same stretch of trees.

"It’ll hardly be a fight," Mariol chimed in as he tugged at the strap of his vambrace with his teeth. "The moment the First drops the bars and the Fourth gets a single boot over that timber, the bastards will break. Rogue scum only find their courage when they’re cornering unarmed smallfolk and wailing women. Put proper iron in front of their faces and they come up short every damn time, without fail, like a holiday you could set a bell by."

Vilon kept his silence. He found he could not so easily forget the scout reports. The Vulture Lord’s band had fought the Voghondai tribesmen and held off several legion cohorts across the past moon, and men who managed that were not merely lucky, whatever Mariol cared to believe. Granted, it had been done through bloody cowardly ambush rather than any proper line of battle. But desperate men with axes were dangerous all the same, and a man cornered with nothing left to lose fights harder than one with a house and a wife to go home to.

"It’s all fine and dandy to sit back on our arses and watch the smoke rise, boys, and no one in these woods loves a cold drink and an easy watch more than I do," Saron broke in, his milky blind eye fixed blankly upon Vilon while his good one swept the thick underbrush without pause. "But sharpen your ears regardless. If Mariol’s right and that camp breaks, the real work comes with the stragglers. That’s precisely why the Warden posted us along the river tracks, and not because he’s grown fond of our company."

From what little Vilon had gathered of Edric’s grand strategy, having arrived as a battered afterthought to a campaign already well underway, the Hounds had been strung out in a wide ring about the dense woodland to catch the desperate few who managed to slip past the front. It was not the most glorious posting a man might hope for, still Vilon had yet to hear a single Hound complain of it.

The true strength of the company lay in the saddle, and a mounted troop could hardly charge through a forest this thick and tangled, let alone manoeuvre in it. So this one would be done on foot.

It would not be the first time. At the Ford the Hounds had stood in the very first line of the vanguard and taken the full brutal impact of the southern flower of chivalry’s opening charge. They had held that muddy bank, broken the heavy lances against themselves like a shoreline breaks waves, and fed the grandest knights of the South to the worms.

"Do you truly think any of them will reach us?" asked the fourth man in their small circle, a green youth younger even than Mariol, his pale face still innocent of the white scarring that marked the rest of the company like a guild badge.

GreenRider, the older Hounds called him, and would go on calling him until something in these woods earned him another name.

"I mean, we’ve the whole quadrant boxed in between the rivers and the lake," the lad went on nervously. "I can’t see how a single soul gets clear of three cohorts of foot."

"What’s the matter, lad? Frightened of a few kicked dogs crawling through the brush?" Mariol mocked, with a sharp foxlike grin.

"That’s not what I meant at all, and you bloody well know it!" GreenRider snapped, his cheeks flushing red as a slapped arse. "I welcome the scrap!"

"Worms do what worms do. They wriggle," Saron cut in smoothly, shutting the squabble down before Selm or Mariol could stoke it into something that needed fists. "There are always stragglers and deserters on every battlefield ever fought, no matter how tight the trap nor how fierce the slaughter. Now, if the two of you are quite finished tugging at one another’s cock—"

"I hear something." A voice, low. "Iron."

They all turned toward the speaker.

Owen.

Vilon closed his eyes, expecting the lad to have mistaken the distant thrumming echo of the main battle for something nearer to hand. Yet as the breath caught in his throat and the wind died away through the pines, he heard it too.

Clink. Shift. Clink.

Something was moving through the brush, and it was moving fast.

"Javelins in hand, boys.If they are bandits we bleed them first, then we charge," Saron ordered in a low, gravelly rasp, his hand already reaching for the leather-wrapped shaft at his saddle. "Step light, and don’t make a godsdamned sound."

He turned his single, dark eye onto Vilon and Owen. "I don’t expect either of you to fight, given the state of your hide, but I don’t suppose you’ll sit on your hands while iron flies?"

Vilon gave a firm nod. Saron let out a low sigh.

"Aye, as I thought. Fall in behind us. We wear the heavy iron, so my boys will take the front of the shock. You and your squire keep to the rear,and don’t go ripping those fresh stitches."

Neither knight nor squire was in a position to argue, so they simply nodded and drew their steel.

With one last shared glance, the small squad began to weave forward through the thick canopy. They picked their footing with practiced caution, stepping around dried twigs and gently parting the low pine branches to prevent them from snapping back with a hiss.

The forest around them felt eerily motionless, bathed in the pale, filtered light of the morning. Every few paces, Saron would raise a hand, and the men would freeze, closing their eyes to listen. The distant roar of the main assault was fading into a dull thrum, while the crisp clink-clink of the approaching steel grew steadily sharper.

Saron slipped behind the wide trunk of a tree, freezing like a stalking cat before flashing his fingers back toward the group.

The Hounds crept into the brush beside him, and through the tangled greenery, they saw them.

Descending a steep, rocky ridge into the ravine below came nine men, picking their way carefully down the loose shale and slick roots. They were a motley, wild-looking band, barely better equipped than common highwaymen. Some carried long hunting spears and heavy woodsmen’s axes; others bore battered round shields and iron maces. Only a few wore helm or mail, but the man leading the party stood out like a wolf among sheep.

He was clad in complete, heavy harness, a dark iron breastplate strapped over a thick coat of mail, complete with steel pauldrons, greaves, and vambraces. His face was entirely hidden behind the grim, slitted visor of a kettle-helm.

His voice, when he spoke, carried the calm, unyielding cadence of a man of power.

"We move south, away from the tree line and off the main roads," the armored commander said, his words echoing hollowly behind his iron grill. "We lay low in the deep brush until the host passes."

"And how in the five hells do we do that?" a brigand just behind him called out, clinging to a low branch as he tested his footing on a mossy boulder. "There isn’t an inch of this province without a bloody falcon boot on it! They’ve already put the torch to the fishing skiffs and thrown up wooden forts at every bridge on both rivers!"

"Then we swim," the leader replied without breaking his stride. "Once we reach the bank, I’ll ditch the plate and cross the current. I have contacts beyond the border who owe me. We bide our time in the south. Yarzat has greater enemies than us to worry about, and their reign won’t last forever. We will live through this. I will get us through this, as I always have."

In the thickets above, the Hounds traded a series of tight, lethal glances. The exact same realization passed through every man’s mind without a single word being uttered: The Vulture Lord.

Saron beat the others to the punch, leaning in close so his whisper barely stirred the leaves. "They outnumber us, but the element of surprise is ours. We wait until half the dogs are down in the ditch and the rest are still stranded on the rocks."

The captain pointed a gloved finger. "Selm, Mariol, take the high ground on the slope and pick off the climbers stuck on the shale. Tarron, you and I take the trees down below and clear the floor." He turned his lone eye squarely onto the young recruit, Tarron. "Do not throw your iron at the armored bastard. You’ll just bounce off his breastplate and waste a good shaft. Aim for the soft ones beside him. The moment all the javelins fly, we draw steel and close the trap.Aim for those with shields first."

’’Ser they are twenty...’’

Saron threw him a gentle but firm look ’’They are twenties twats. We are six warriors. We have more fighter than them. Keep your hearts steady, one way or the other we honor the king!’’

After none said anything else.

Silently, the squad split to take their positions. Selm and Mariol melted up the rocky incline like shadows, while Saron and Tarron flanked the thick pines at the base of the ridge. Vilon and Owen fell in right behind the captain, their fingers tight on their hilts, breathing shallowly through their mouths.

Saron pulled a heavy, broad-headed hunting javelin from his harness, balancing the weight in his palm. He raised his left arm, his hand open, waiting for the leader to step into the clearing below.

The Vulture Lord reached the bottom of the shale, his boots crunching onto the soft pine needles. Above him, three of his men were still picking their way down the treacherous rock.

Saron’s hand snapped into a tight, hard fist.

And chaos then flew in the forest.