Legend of the Swords: War (22 page)

*   *   *

The rest of the trip passed without incident. As the Sun dawned on the third full day of traveling, they found themselves riding in the northern part of the shadow of the mountain.

“Umbra,” Gregory whispered.

Armand snorted. “What’d you say, Gregory?”

“Umbra—it’s just part of the old legend. ‘Umbra’ means shadow, in the language the legend was written in. Only scholars can read it, now, and even most of them struggle.”

“So how do you know it?”

“My father was one of the scholars who translated the original text, when we found it two decades ago.” He smiled. “It wasn’t very helpful. Father thought that the text spoke of the same weapons that we now chase:

“In summer’s heat

The rain will fall

The swords will lie

In mountain’s shadow tall.

Many will ride

Few will see

The swords do lie

In mountain’s shadow tall.

Armies will try

One man succeed

Swordsmen will cry

In mountain’s shadow tall.

The deathbringers—

The Gods’ true sons—

The swords will name

In the mountain’s shadow tall.

Gregory smiled. “A bit of doggerel, but father did say that translating poetry was difficult.

“And it didn’t really say much, although he thought that there might be more to it than was found.” He gestured up to the shadowed mountain, and then to the golden sunlit field a short distance away. “Regardless, we are ‘in mountain’s shadow tall’ right now. The original word for ‘shadow’ was ‘umbra,’ and that’s why I was thinking about it.”

Ryan shuddered, looking up at the mountain. “Hey,” he said, pointing, “What’s that?”

There was a small group of men, perhaps four or five, climbing the side of the mountain. They were too far away to tell if they were friend or foe.

Gregory hushed them with a gesture. He nudged his horse sideways and led them slowly toward the men who were above them. Since the strangers were on foot, and Gregory and the others were mounted, they closed the distance rapidly. It became clear by midmorning that there were five strangers, and all were wearing Triol colors. Gregory doubled their speed in an effort to catch them.

The Triols finally heard the kingdom soldiers and turned around to do battle.

Armand snorted. “Four of us against five of them, Gregory. Maybe I should hang back to make it a fair fight.”

Gregory shook his head. “I’d rather it not be a fair fight. Besides, how do we know they didn’t send their best and brightest, just like we did?”

Ryan frowned.
Surely, that’s what they did, isn’t it?
he thought. Suddenly, he was not so confident. Apparently, Armand wasn’t either, for his expression had become much more serious.

They rode closer to the Triols. They were all big men, and well armed. One of them, probably the leader, carried two swords and no shield. He stepped forward and addressed the knights and their squires with a terrible accent.

“Why here are you?” he demanded.

“To stop you from searching for the swords of legend,” Gregory said. “And to take them for ourselves, if we can find them.”

“Ha … ha!” The man snorted between slow laughter. “Two Swords thinks you are … very funny! Ha … Ha!”

Kevin leaned over. “Doesn’t seem too bright, eh?” Ryan snickered. Armand snapped his head around to glare at him, and he schooled his expression.

“You puny kingdom soldiers search?” Two Swords nudged one of the other Triols, and they all broke into slow laughter

“They must be young giants,” Gregory muttered to Armand, just loud enough for the squires to hear. “It takes them a few hundred years to speed up—but that doesn’t mean they’re stupid, don’t underestimate them!”

“Crush you, we will, have no doubt.” The Triol leader yelled, ripped his tunic off, exposing a perfect physique. Muscles larger than Ryan’s thigh rippled across the large man’s abdomen as he drew both of his swords. The four kingdom warriors drew their swords as one.

The Triols were ponderous, but very strong. Two Swords brought his swords down, wickedly fast, in a one-two arc towards Armand, who caught both blows on his shield, but he was knocked off of his horse by the power of the double blow. Both swords dug more than an inch into the iron shield, and stuck. With a twitch of his shoulders, the small giant pulled his sword free, nearly ripping Armand’s arm off in the process.

Two Swords squinted down at Armand, grinning. He was moving his swords rhythmically back and forth, preparing for another attack, when a sword point blossomed from beneath his rib cage. A moment later, Two Swords seemed to realize that Gregory had sheathed a sword in his body, and he twisted sideways as he howled in pain.

Gregory managed to pull his sword free, but Armand sank his sword into the giant’s flesh, and the giant turned back to face him.

Armand tried to hang on to his hilt, but it was ripped out of his grasp as the giant’s motion threw him to the side. Two Swords yelled in frustration as he tried to find one of the knights. Finally, he saw Gregory, and threw one of his blades at Gregory, then pulled Armand’s sword out of his chest.

“Hah! This … little pig sticker, my second blade now will be.” He turned towards Armand, the hole in his chest foaming as he exhaled. He swayed a little. “Poetic justice, you with your own sword I will kill.” He lumbered towards Armand, who was now weaponless.

Meanwhile, Gregory had ducked the sword, but was occupied with the other three giants. They were shorter than Two Swords, but still quite strong. They were slower, too, so Gregory was scampering like a rabbit, avoiding them, letting them swing their blades at him and miss.

He was waiting for Armand’s help, Ryan suddenly understood. Divide and conquer. He turned back to Armand, who was crawling backwards on the ground, attempting to avoid Two Swords’ continuous advance.

“C’mon.” He nudged Kevin, and they ran towards Two Swords. They both attacked at once, Kevin from the left, Ryan from the right, swinging at the giant’s bare neck. They cut deeply, and Two Swords lumbered to a stop, blood streaming down his shoulders, chest, and back.

“What this is?” He yelled, turning around…but the two squires moved with him, staying behind him. Blood spattered on the ground. “How come little bees sting Two Swords?” He kept turning, but they stayed behind him for a second longer. “Where did little bees go?”

Ryan gestured at the giant’s feet. Kevin nodded, and went in, trying to hamstring Two Swords. He got the right leg just as Ryan sank his sword into the giant’s kidney.

Two Swords howled again, but kicked out at Kevin’s head, connecting with his hurt foot. He howled again with the doubled pain in his leg as Kevin went flying. Kevin’s unconscious body landed nearly ten feet away as the small giant fell to one knee.

Ryan finished him off, slicing through the sinews of Two Sword’s neck. A veritable fountain of blood washed over the road. The flow of blood pulsed with the Triol’s heart for another moment before he fell over sideways, narrowly missing Armand.

Armand jumped to his feet and turned his icy gaze on Ryan for a moment before grabbing his sword and rushing to Gregory’s aid. Ryan ran over to check on Kevin.

“Kevin, are you ok?” He grabbed Kevin’s shoulder and shook, hard. Kevin groaned and opened his eyes, wincing at the light.

“What happened? Did I get drunk? I’ve got the worst headache…” He groaned again and tried to roll over. “Just let me go back to sleep, Ryan.”

Ryan shook him more. “No! I need your help! Gregory needs your help!” Kevin struggled up to a sitting position, holding his head. He saw the pitched battle and tried to get up, but fell over.

“You’d better go over and help without me," he said to Ryan. “I’ll come as soon as I can stand up.” He turned to the side and threw up. There wasn’t much in his stomach, so he retched for a while before he turned back to sitting. “Go!”

Ryan turned and ran. The two knights had disposed of one of the other giants, but the remaining two had become angered and seemed to be moving a bit faster than before.

Gregory saw him running up and gestured at the giant in front of him.

Actually,
Ryan thought,
he’s gesturing to the ground
behind
the giant.
He nodded to Gregory, and threw himself onto his hands and knees behind the Triol soldier. Gregory pushed his attacks, the Triol backed up, tripped over Ryan, and Gregory thrust his sword through the man’s eye before he could recover.

Gregory grabbed Ryan’s hand pulled him up. They turned to the last Triol, but just as they ran up to him, Armand neatly separated the giant’s head from his shoulders.

As they were cleaning their swords, Kevin came teetering up. He could barely walk.

“Come here, Kevin,” Gregory demanded. He stared at Kevin’s eyes. “Ryan, come here and look at Kevin.” He gestured at Kevin’s face. Ryan looked at him. Something was wrong.

“Something’s odd, but I don’t know what it is," he said, turning to Gregory.

“Look closely at his eyes. One of his pupils is larger than the other.” He shook his head. “He took a pretty bad blow to his head, didn’t he?”

Ryan nodded.

“His head is bruised on the inside.” He grabbed Kevin’s shoulder, squeezing it. “He’ll be ok, but we can’t let him sleep. He might not—”

“Are you done with my squire, Gregory?” Armand interjected. “He needs to be disciplined.”

Ryan turned towards Armand, mouth open, clearly shocked. “Disciplined, Sir knight?” He asked.

“Yes, disciplined!” Armand yelled at him. “You sat there and watched us fight! You could have been helping from the start, but you stood there, mouths open like goldfish!
No mercy!
” He shrieked.

“I saved your life,” Ryan said, quietly—but with strength.

“It wouldn’t have needed saving, had you done what you should have, you…” he seemed to find the word he was looking for “ungrateful wretch!” His eyes were wide with anger. “I take you out of the back woods of the kingdom, I make you a squire to a knight of the crown, and you challenge me?” He pulled off a gauntlet and threw it at Ryan’s feet. “If you want to
play,
let’s do it, boy. I can end my nightmare! Right now!”

 “Armand.” Gregory’s steady voice seemed to turn off anger in Ryan’s mind. It must have had a similar effect on Armand, whose expression turned neutral as he turned to his superior officer.

“Yes, Commander?” Armand’s voice, while even, was dripping with ice.

“Pick up your glove," he said, in that same calm tone. “We’re all on the same side here.”

Armand bent and picked up the glove.

“What about this …
squire
?” He asked Gregory.

Gregory sighed deeply. “He saved your life, Armand. Don’t punish him.” He turned to Ryan. “Armand is right, though. You could have come to our aid sooner. Perhaps Kevin wouldn’t have been injured.”

Armand nodded, mollified a bit by Gregory’s support.

“Now let’s see what we can do about Kevin.” He grunted a bit as he stood up. “And we should at least cover the Triols’ bodies with stones. It wouldn’t do to have wolves come to pester us in the night.”

*   *   *

The giants had few possessions; what food there was, they put into their own bags—along with all of the long swords—before moving on. They continued climbing the gentle slope of the mountain’s foot for the rest of the day, making sure that Kevin stayed awake, and looking for the cave that was marked on the map.

Gregory kept stopping to look at the map. No sign of a cave appeared, though, and as dusk neared, they found a small, cold brook to camp by.

Since Kevin was still woozy, Ryan had to go out and collect firewood, build the fire, unpack the bedrolls, and cook some food for everyone. Armand simply refused to do ‘squires work,’ and Gregory was too busy trying to help Kevin.

Kevin didn’t seem to know where he was, any more. Gregory kept asking him what day of the week it was, or what the king’s name was, but Kevin kept giving wrong answers. It was after dinner, and after dark, before he could remember the answers for more than a couple of minutes.

“Kevin can sleep, now. We need to set up a watch, and wake Kevin up every time we change.” He looked over at Ryan. “Ryan, why don’t you take first watch. Wake me up when the moon is just past zenith.” Both of the knights rolled into their blankets and were asleep in minutes.

It was a cold night, even on just the shoulder of the mountain. Cold, and clear. The stars were bright pinpricks above his head, and the Moon’s fat smile seemed to reassure him as well as light the surrounding hillside.

Ryan was tired. He got up to walk around the camp to keep himself awake. The Moon crawled across the sky. Animals made noises that made him jump, but the fear helped him stay awake.

Finally, the moon was at the peak of its height. Ryan stared at it.
It seems so much smaller now, than it was when it first rose
. He sighed.
I wonder what magic makes it bigger in the beginning. Or is it closer when it first rises?
He shrugged, and went to wake Gregory.

Gregory rolled out of his blankets into the cold night. “Let’s go check on Kevin.”

A few shakes and Kevin woke. “Why’d you wake me up? I wuz just gettin’ her clothes off…”

Gregory grinned, and left him to go defend their small camp. Ryan finally got some rest. It had been a long journey, so far, and they still didn’t know where they were going.

*   *   *

Armand woke Ryan up at dawn. “Get the fire started and get breakfast together.”

Ryan groaned, but got up to do as he was told. Kevin was awake, and helped Ryan gather some wood.

The giants’ pouches had held some ham, wrapped up in paper. Ryan sniffed it, and put it into Gregory’s travel pot to warm it up. He split some travel biscuits in half and put the hot ham in the middle, and handed them around to the others.

Armand looked up at the peak of the mountain, far above them. “I hope that cave of yours isn’t all the way up there, Gregory.”