Just before noon they spied a gauzy stain in the distance, rising across the brilliant blue sky. There a flimsy smoke rose in no discernable pattern. Largely white, likely with several sources, the smoke acted more lazy than hazardous.
Eurich took note and gently touched heels to Blue, picking up the pace. The heavy war horse obliged but did so with some noise of hoof upon the turf. Though he sensed the subtle change in his companion’s demeanor.
Ava, spurring her paint to a trot pulled up alongside him. “Perhaps a more subtle approach.”
“Perhaps.” He did not slow his steed, but let her spur forward and ride alone across the wide vale. By the time he reached the center of the depression she had rode up its shallow flank, abandoned her horse, and crawled to the top of the rise for vantage.
Folcgard’s pony kept pace with Blue, though with some effort.
As Eurich began crossing up the rise the lazy smoke turned black, rising in sudden violence, fed now by fierce heat and new fuel. Ava rose from where she lay, abandoning stealth, and walked a few steps forward, her short bow in hand. As Eurich passed the paint where it stood expectantly watching, that horse followed, capping the rise next to the ranger.
Eurich stopped. The rise gave way to a cacophony of clamorous violence. The bellow of a flame newly caught, terrified screams of a woman who hope had left but the fight had not, animals braying curses, the shouts of a child, and the resounding thud of iron on bone.
Down the long slope stood a small thorpe of stone and wood houses with sod roofs. Two of them burned, the fire having passed from the roofs to the walls. A third house stood untouched. A low wall lay upon the forest side, holding some sheep, a lone steer, and a milk cow that bellowed its fear. A smattering of men moved about, some bodies lay on the ground, one being cruelly hacked at by its assailant. Some distance from the violence, down on the slope beneath where Eurich stood, were two children. A small girl holding some mewling cat and a boy before her, maybe 10 or 12. The boy held a woodsman’s axe in hand and stood off a tall, gaunt-looking man who with a glaive resting on his shoulder approached them with the grim certitude that only those who murder without compunction carry.
“Do not kill the boy.” Eurich heard Ava say it, though her voice was soft and quiet. Even so, the man’s blade cut the boy down, the child’s axe held futilely in front of him. As he fell the door to the unburnt cabin burst asunder and a woman broke out, bloodied and disheveled, shouting some name the flames consumed. A man pursued her laughing, with wild gestures to the house, and his comrades.
For the fleetest moment Ava saw Eurich’s face. The tensions of the long journey were gone, fear and hope, joy and loss, all left the man astride that steed, replaced now with a serenity one found on the death masks of the ancient Ethrum. But there was no serenity here, for a violence of rage washed over her from him, punctuated by the grating sound of his blade as he freed it from his scabbard.
Blue felt it too, more so than any other creature in all the world. The transformation in his rider’s being was instant and passed through to the horse like a wave of constance. Even before the blade cleared the scabbard Blue’s muscles unwound and the primeval furor of the horse’s lust for dominion over all things was unleashed.
The two launched down the hill before thought was put to deed.
The green turf flew and the ground shook. Such was the horse’s passage that Eurich’s helm, slung as it was on the saddle horn, fell away, thumping and tumbling after the mountain of muscle and steel that bore down upon the man and child.
Ava leapt astride the paint, “Folcgard! Eurich’s to battle!” She tore after them.
The dwarf watched her vanish over the rise and with little thought dropped the mule’s lead and spurred his pony on. Stout and bred of a long line of sure-footed steeds the pony broke into a run faster than one might expect and bore the dwarf over the rise. He rode with hands free to uncase his long-hafted battle axe and opened up with a dirge of war that those folk of Norgorad Kam are like to sing before enjoining battle above ground or below.
Eurich bore down upon man and child, driving a tumult of wind before them. The man tossed the girl hard to the side and braced himself to drive the glaive into the horse’s broad chest. In mere seconds the horse crossed the space and was upon him. Blue lowered his head as if to ram the man and the bandit saw an opening, and lifted the glaive to smite the beast in the neck instead. It proved his undoing for in that moment of shifting hesitation from one obvious target to a smaller one the horse threw its head to the side the metal but grazed its neck and was thrown high. With that the force of the charge carried man and mount past the bandit, but not before Eurich in a cross-body swing decapitated the brigand, sending his head tumbling across the green sward.
Shouts of fear and consternation rose from the village as bandits spilled out of the house and from behind it, a dozen or more. Their easy raid turned foul but the promise of riches the knight bore in saddle and gear offered motivation to join this new fight.
The first of them stood his ground, sword, and shield in hand. The others rushed forward. Blue drove fully into the man, driving the shield upward into his chin, shattering his jaw even as his bones crumbled from the force of several thousand pounds of muscle and bone. The man fell beneath the horse, its charge unbroke as it trampled the man into the turf, driving hooves into the man’s groin, disemboweling him as it thundered into the tumult of the rest of his companions.
Eurich paid no heed to the madness beneath him but leaning forward he let his sword arm drop, the blade’s point nigh touching the ground. Even before they rode into the pack of bandits Ava’s arrows began to fall. One striking a shield, another the ground by the men, a third transfixing a bandit’s calf. She shot wild from horseback.
The knight plowed into the cluster, lifting his blade in a wide arc, he severed the arm of one man at the shoulder and brought the sword down to crash with ruin into another’s skull. Eurich broke through the press and plowed into the village wall knocking stones hither and yon. Turning he saw the bandits in full press rushing him. Turning Blue to the left he brought his sword arm to bear even as the first of them pressed in on him. He clove flesh, rent bone, and showered blood upon wall and yard. But they were hard on him, one upon the wall, another stabbing at Blue who in turn slung his massive blue-black head into the man’s face, breaking bone and rupturing the globe of his eye.
~ Excerpt from Pools of Dunhollow
~ Excerpt from Pools of Dunhollow
