Devan Chronicles Series: Books 1-3 (167 page)

*
Might as well,
* she said. *
I’m coming over there but my horse ran off.
*

*
Ours did too, we’ll meet you half way.
*

*
Fine,
* Julia said and began making her way toward Lucius. *
Where is Lorcan?
*

*
He’s all right,
* Mathius said. *
I saw him sneaking around the edges just a while ago.
*

She smiled grimly. Lorcan couldn’t do much with his magic yet, but he had always been good with his daggers. Telling him to stay out of trouble and expecting him to stay in camp was foolish. He would have taken no notice. He would always do what he thought was right regardless of consequences.

Julia reached her two friends without too much trouble. The fighting was fierce now with more than half the men on both sides unhorsed and fighting hand to hand. The Devan guardsmen were still fighting as a unit, but their numbers were dwindling. Of Keverin, there was no sign. She thrust the worry to the back of her mind, but it kept sneaking back in.

Please God, don’t let him be dead!

Lucius looked hurriedly around for the enemy. “We have to drop our wards, Julia. One, two,
three!
”

Julia dropped her ward and linked with Lucius and Mathius. The first thing she did was raise a new ward to cover all three of them. It was much stronger than normal. She could easily see why her earlier strike at the Legion had failed. With that many sorcerers linking their magic, she had no chance of breaching their ward. Thinking to separate friend from foe, she built another ward and tried to thrust it between the combatants.

“Won’t work,” Mathius said. “They’re too closely packed.”

“It has to!” she said, but it was obvious as soon as she tried that it wouldn’t work. “Now what?”

“Attack the sorcerers and hope they run?” Mathius said doubtfully.

“They won’t,” Lucius said. “They won’t pull out without orders unless they’re close to defeat.”

“We need a miracle!” Mathius shouted over the roar of Julia’s fire.

* * *

Lorcan’s dagger punched through the legionnaire’s armour with ease. It was lucky for him that the armour was thinnest at the back. He always preferred attacking from behind. It came of his time on the streets of Devarr. He ducked another man’s swing and came up with a dagger in each fist leading the way. The legionnaire parried one blade, but the other slid home in his armpit with hardly a pause. Lorcan spun aside and kicked another man in the knee before whirling away. An Eagle Clan warrior took advantage of the distraction to gut the outclanner before he too was felled from behind.

All was chaos.

Lorcan had never been afraid like he was afraid today, but his fear was not for himself. Keverin was here somewhere, and Mathius. The Lady was too—lightning stabbing out of a cloudless sky attested to that. He had many friends among the warriors struggling to survive Tobiah’s foolishness. The Lady was right about that. He had known it from the first, but Keverin hadn’t let him do anything. Now things were out of control and it was all Tobiah’s fault.

A riderless horse reared in his path narrowly missing his face with its hooves. He made a grab for the reins and managed to drag himself into the saddle. A man in armour reached for him, but a kick in the face sent him packing. He took a tiny moment to get his bearings before kicking his new horse toward what remained of the Athione cavalry. There weren’t many left, he saw—maybe half were dead or missing. Keverin was whirling his blade in the air trying to extricate his men from the battle. Lorcan tried to charge to his lord’s side, but he had to detour around a large contingent of mounted Hasians. There were too many for him to fight, but he did manage to knock the Hasian captain out of his saddle with a weak blast of magic.

By the time Lorcan had detoured around the enemy, Keverin was again charging to the attack. The crunch of nearly six hundred heavy cavalry hitting twice its number of legionnaires was catastrophic. Men screamed for their mothers as they were hacked from the saddle. Horses screamed as they stumbled over mounds of bodies. Legs snapped and horses screamed. Heads were cleaved from necks in fountains of gore. Arms fell from shoulders…

Lorcan wanted to cry for his mother and be sick at the same time. The only thing he could think of was reaching Keverin. Everything would be all right if he could only reach his lord. He jumped his horse over a mound of corpses. They were nailed to the ground with huge spears. The Hasians were sneaky to think of that. The nearest forest was leagues away. No one had thought to wonder why the Hasians had sat waiting to be attacked. Keverin had been suspicious, he remembered, but even such a great lord had been unable to guess what Navarien had up his sleeve. Now they knew, but the knowing had cost them dear.

“Come on! What are you waiting for? Kill me then!”

The voice made him haul hard on the reins. “Darlinia!”

He savagely yanked his horse’s head around and spurred toward his friend. She was hurt! She stood amidst a pile of legion dead waiting to die. All around her were legionnaires. She was completely cut off from her people. Her left arm hung limply at her side pouring blood onto the grass.

“Yeahhhh!” Lorcan screamed. “Yeahhhh!”

The man in his path dove aside at the last moment and Lorcan’s dagger sailed through empty air. He cursed the loss, but he had plenty of daggers. Friends were far more precious. He leaned out for the saddle and took Darlinia’s arm as he galloped by.

“AEiii!” she screamed as she was yanked off her feet and dragged by the side of Lorcan’s horse by her broken arm. She bit through her lip against the pain, but it was far too great and she screamed again. “AEiiiiiiiiii!”

Lorcan blotted the noise from his thoughts as he tried to navigate a way through the knot of struggling and dying men all about him. He held tight and even managed to drag her still screaming in pain over his saddle in front of him. Screams were good. It meant she was still alive to feel the pain.

The Hasians were closing ranks as Keverin’s attack bit hard. Lorcan was fast running out of options. He turned his horse once more and made a run for the last gap as it began to close. He was still too far away when the fireball arrived. He felt the searing heat flash over him as the fireball bounced back into the air and came down somewhere behind him. Another flew over and then another on their way to killing legionnaires or sorcerers. He didn’t care which it was as long as they were not aimed at him.

Suddenly he was airborne.

He flew over his horse’s head with his arms waving vainly in the air like a swimmer desperate to reach shore. He tried to tuck his head and roll with the fall, but there were too many bodies lying strewn over the ground. He crashed face first into the bloody pile. He climbed shakily to his feet when as he realised he was still alive and found Darlinia crawling dazed and bloody back toward the Hasians.

“Not that way!” he hissed and hoisted her back to her feet.

She wobbled as Lorcan half dragged half marched her away from the site of her clan’s defeat. Already it was obvious they had lost this battle. He needed to get her to a shamen. She was losing a lot of blood where the bone of her arm poked through her flesh. Lorcan took a moment to rip a strip from the hem of his tunic and bind the arm above the wound. With satisfaction he watched the blood slow.

“Did we win?” Darlinia mumbled drunkenly.

He looked back to find Keverin fighting for his life. Even as he turned to go back, the lord fell under a tide of legionnaires and with him his banner.

“No,” Lorcan whispered as tears streamed over his cheeks. “We lost.”

* * *

“
What are you waiting for you fool?
” Wotan spat quietly watching the battle in his mirror. “By the God strike her!”

The mirror clearly showed the battle disintegrating into a dangerous mess, but worse than that was Julia. She had picked off two of his sorcerers before they thought to link and ward themselves. That was bad enough, but they hadn’t struck back!

“Get me Odelyn,” he snarled at Magar. Magar understood his anger and did as he was bid without a word. “Sorry. I shouldn’t take it out on you.”

“Odelyn is a dangerous fool, Wotan. You should have killed him aboard ship.”

“I know, but he hadn’t done anything wrong then. He was just annoying. I can’t kill everyone who annoys me. No one would tell me the truth if I did.”

Magar shrugged and handed the mirror over.

“I’m a little busy at the moment, Wotan,” Odelyn said condescendingly. “I have a battle to fight you know.”

Wotan’s lip curled. “Yes I do know, and if you don’t get on with it you’ll wish you were never
born!
”

“Whatever do you mean?”

Wotan calmed and in a deadly voice told Odelyn exactly what he meant and how he would die. “Don’t test me, Odelyn. Just don’t! If you don’t follow my orders to the letter I will kill you an inch at a time. You think me weak?
I will show you what I am!
Kill her now, or I will kill you!”

“I’m lead mage for this battle,” Odelyn said angrily.

Wotan heard the words not said. Odelyn thought he should be lead mage of the entire campaign. The fool had always felt cheated. Being younger and weaker than him, Wotan could hardly blame the man for that feeling, but that didn’t change things. He was lead mage, not Odelyn and whether Odelyn liked it or not he would obey or die!

“I am ordering you to strike Julia now! You all know my orders concerning her. If you don’t do it and survive her wrath, I swear by the God you won’t survive
mine!
” he roared and broke the connection.

Magar silently picked up the mirror and handed it back to its owner who quickly contacted his opposite number at the battle.

Wotan pulled his own mirror close and studied the battlefield. Nothing had changed. Julia had joined her two friends now and seemed to be discussing what to do. What could they do? Nothing Wotan was sure—almost sure. Julia had a way of upsetting plans without half trying, but when she did try… he couldn’t afford to lose eighty sorcerers! He only had two hundred altogether. She didn’t have anything close to the power needed to win against that many of his people. He didn’t think she did. No, it wasn’t possible. Only the God could have that kind of power. She could be beaten and would be when Odelyn got off his backside and acted.

* * *

“We need a chief,” Julia said. “We need a chief to order a retreat. This battle will see the end of us all if we don’t back off!”

Mathius nodded. “What’s to stop them advancing as we flee?”

“I’ll think of something.”

Mathius and Lucius were sceptical but they had nothing better to offer.

“I saw Kornel go down,” she continued. “Tobiah is dead. What of Mavra and Allard?”

“Haven’t seen them since this started,” Mathius said. “We could walk in there and tell them to retreat.”

“Will they listen?”

“I doubt it, but what else is there?”

What else indeed? Julia nodded and they began walking into the chaos of sword wielding men. This was almost like old times for her and Mathius. They had walked into danger like this once before. Of course the gap had kept the Hasians away from them, but it felt similar.

“I was on the receiving end that time,” Lucius mused as he blasted the legionnaires with fire.

Julia kept up a constant attack as did Mathius but the damage they did was minuscule in the grand scheme of things. “This must be hard on you Lucius,” she said as she killed a sergeant in the legions who had attempted to breach the ward.

“You might say so,” Lucius agreed with a grimace, but he did not stop his attacks. “These are my people. They follow Mortain because that is the way things are. None of these men deserves death, but then neither do the clan warriors. Ironic is it not?”

Ironic? Sickening more like. They found Mavra of Bear Clan first. He was very dead. They moved on and found Kornel and Haldis next. Haldis was dead with a dagger in the back, but Kornel was alive—barely. Julia quickly lifted the ward and dropped it over the chief so she might try to heal him. She grimaced at the white of bone showing where a sword cut had all but severed his leg. How he had survived such an injury she did not know or care. All that mattered now was that he live to order the retreat. She healed what she could but the leg was almost severed. Would it be best to sever it all the way or try to heal the damage? She questioned Lucius but he didn’t know and was too busy killing legionnaires to think about it. She pushed the limb into place grimacing at the dead feel of it. She made sure the ends of the bone were touching and that the leather of his leggings was clear. She prayed that it would work then set about healing the limb. Straight away there was resistance. The leg was not completely dead yet, but it had been well on its way. No blood to the cells meant death and decay, but at least it wasn’t completely severed. She tried harder and it responded slowly, she watched in excitement as the wound healed and the bone knit.

“Done,” Julia said and tried to wake Kornel.

“It worked?” Lucius said in surprise.

“Whether he’ll be able to use it I don’t know. It resisted the healing, but it’s still alive—we’ll see.”

Kornel opened his eyes and cried out. He had seen his son’s dead eyes looking at him.

“Kornel!” Julia shouted over his keening. “For the love of God man there’s no time for that!”

“Oh my boy, my boy!”

“I know, but more boys are dying. Get up and do something. Tobiah is dead, so are the other chiefs. You have to call retreat before we lose everything!”

“Retreat…” he glared around at the piles of dead. “Never! I’ll kill them all!”

Julia couldn’t help herself. She punched him as hard as she could. The pain in her hand was excruciating, but her fury overrode it a moment later. Kornel was holding his jaw in shock. Julia shook her hand; it was already swelling and she thought one of the knuckles was broken. It hurt like crazy.

“Look around you fool! We are
losing!
Look at what your precious Tobiah has done, just look!” she screamed into his face and pointed at Haldis and then at another clansmen then another and another.