Tales of the Old World (7 page)

“Oh no…” whispered Leofric as he saw scores of armoured skeletons emerge from
the treeline, packs of snapping wolves at their heels.

Standing in the centre of the battle line, dimly illuminated by the
flickering glow of the torches set on the palisade walls of Derrevin Libre, was
the gold and silver armoured champion of the dead and the hooded necromancer.
The champion rode the monstrous carcass of the blackest horse, its eyes afire
with the flames of the damned.

“Run, Havelock!” shouted Leofric. “Get Carlomax! Tell him to get every man
who can hold a sword to the walls. We’re under attack!”

Within moments, a hundred men were at the wall, some armed with longbows, but
most with peasant weapons: axes, spears and scythes.

The army of undead had not moved since Leofric’s warning, their utter
stillness draining the courage of the men at the walls with every passing
second.

“Where have they come from?” asked Carlomax, standing beside Leofric with his
bow at the ready and a quiver full of arrows.

“From deep in the forest,” said Leofric. “They are the heralds of the Red
Duke.”

“The Red Duke!” hissed Carlomax, his handsome features twisted in the fear
that such a name carried for the people of Aquitaine. “He rises again?”

Leofric nodded. “I believe he will soon. Havelock and I were riding for the
duke’s lands bearing warning when we came upon your village.”

“Can we hold them?” asked Carlomax. “There are quite a lot of them…”

“We’ll hold them,” promised Leofric, casting his gaze along the length of the
palisade wall. “By my honour, we will hold them.”

Like a wind driven before a storm, the fear of these dreadful creatures
reached outwards, and Leofric could see that each man’s heart was icy with the
chill of the grave at the very unnaturalness of the risen dead.

Though the men on the walls were clearly brave, Leofric knew that their
courage balanced on a knife-edge and that they needed some fire in their bellies
if they weren’t to flee in terror from the first charge.

Leofric marched along the length of the wall facing the undead, lifting his
white bladed sword high so that every man could see its purity in the face of
such evil.

“Men of Bretonnia!” he shouted. “You will hold these walls!”

“Why should we listen to you?” cried a voice in the darkness.

“If you want to live, you will listen to him!” returned Carlomax.

Leofric nodded his thanks and continued. He had thought to appeal to their
duty to the king, but had thought the better of it when he saw the number of
Herrimault cloaks among the villagers. As much as he had considered them little
more than bandits before today, he was savvy enough to know that their skill
with a bow would be useful in the coming fight.

“You are right to question me, but I say this not as an order, but as a
statement of fact. You
have
to hold these walls, for if you do not, your
families will die and your homes will become your graves. At least until fell
sorcery brings your spirit back to your dead flesh and you are denied eternal
rest.”

He could see the horror of such a thought writ large on every face, knowing
that the fear of such a fate would rouse each man to great deeds.

“Your courage and strength will decide if you live or die tonight, so if you
fight not for the king or your lord, fight for that. No grand gestures or lordly
ambitions will be satisfied by this battle, only survival. I have fought things
like this before and I tell you now they
can
be defeated. Cut them down
as you would an orc or beast, but be wary of them rising again. Destroy the head
if you can or smash the ribcage. Though these things have no hearts that beat as
ours do, a mortal blow will still destroy them. Fight hard and may the Lady
guide your arms!”

“Derrevin!” shouted Carlomax, seeing that Leofric had finished.

“Libre!” cheered the men of the village in response.

“Nice speech, my lord,” said Havelock, nocking an arrow to his bow, “but I
think his was punchier.”

“Evidently,” agreed Leofric as the chant of “Libre! Libre! Libre!” echoed
through the darkness.

Leofric gripped his sword a little tighter as he saw that the time for
speeches and waiting was over as the army of undead began its advance on the
village. Marching in ordered squares a general of the Empire would have been
proud of, the dead warriors tramped in silence towards the walls, the only sound
the clink and scrape of rusted chainmail on bone.

“Steady!” shouted Carlomax, nocking an arrow and pulling his bowstring tight.
For a moment Leofric wished he had a bow, but then shook his head at such
foolishness… a knight with a bow! He chuckled at the idea and knew he had spent
too much time in Derrevin Libre if its revolutionary ideals were starting to put
such thoughts in his head.

“Loose!” shouted Carlomax and a flurry of arrows slashed towards the marching
warriors.

As Leofric had said, the undead could indeed be brought down, and a dozen
skeletons collapsed into jumbled piles of bone as the magic binding their form
together was undone. The remainder paid these losses no heed and came on,
uncaring of the volleys of shafts that punched through skulls or severed spines.

Though dozens fell with each volley, there were hundreds more and Leofric
knew that within moments the enemy would be at the walls. Dark fear spread like
a bow wave before the undead and Leofric could see many shafts loosed in haste
from shaking hands thud harmlessly into the ground.

“Bretonnia!” he shouted. “The spirit of Gilles le Breton is in each of you!
Do not give in to the fear! Remember that your loved ones depend on your
courage!”

Further words were wasted as the undead warriors slammed into the wall and
Leofric felt the logs sway as the implacable will of the Necromancer gave the
undead strength. Ancient sword blades hacked into the timbers and skeletal hands
dug into the gnarled bark as dead warriors hauled themselves towards the
parapet.

A leering skull encased in a fluted helmet of bronze appeared before Leofric
and he swept his sword through the neck, sending the body tumbling to the earth.
No sooner had it vanished than yet more appeared. The Blade of Midnight smote
them down, but armoured skeletons clambered over the sharpened logs all along
the length of the wall.

The villagers of Derrevin Libre hacked at them with axes and stabbed them
from the walls with their spears, but for some the horror of the living dead was
too much and they broke and ran from the battle. Havelock sent shaft after shaft
into the horde at the bottom of the wall as they chopped at the logs or
slithered over the bones of the fallen.

Screams of fear and pain filled the air as ancient blades and clawed hands
tore at warm flesh and Leofric hacked his way through the dead to where the
fighting was thickest, bellowing cries to the Lady and the King as he smashed
the undead from the walls.

Carlomax held a section of wall above the gate, his sword battering skeletons
from the walls with every stroke. Leofric could see that the man was reasonably
skilled with a sword, and what he lacked in elegance, he made up for in
ferocity.

The night rang to the clash of iron on bronze, the battle fought in the
flickering glow of torches set on the wall. Leofric heard wailing screams and
turned to see the men on the wall to his right shrieking like banshees and
clawing at their flesh in agony. Age-withered flesh slid from their muscles and
wasted organs blistered as they ruptured and turned to dust.

“No!” shouted Leofric, tasting the rank odour of dark magic on the air. He
risked a glance to the hillside where the undead champion and the necromancer
watched the battle below. Leaping scads of power swirled around the dread
sorcerer.

Even as he returned his gaze to the battle, he saw it was hopeless. Skeletal
warriors had footholds along the wall and the men of Derrevin Libre who had
fallen were even now climbing to their feet to hurl themselves at their former
comrades with monstrous hunger.

“Carlomax! Havelock!” shouted Leofric. “The sorcerer!”

He had no way of knowing whether or not his words had been heard as he fought
his way along the wall, hacking a path through the living dead. He saw Havelock
pinned against the inner face of the wall by a skeleton attempting to throttle
the life from him, while Carlomax battled a trio of armoured skeletons. Leofric
killed the first and kicked the second over the wall as Carlomax despatched the
last.

He hacked his sword through the spine of the skeleton attacking Havelock and,
together with Carlomax, the three of them formed a fighting wedge above the
gate.

“My thanks,” breathed Carlomax. “I don’t think I could have taken them all.”

Leofric nodded and said, “We can’t hold them like this.”

“No,” agreed Carlomax. “What do you suggest?”

“Something more direct,” said Leofric, pointing to the two dark figures that
observed the battle from their vantage point at the treeline. “I need to get
them down here!”

“What?” said Carlomax. “Are you mad?”

A thunderous crash and crack of shorn timbers sounded from below and Havelock
shouted, “The gate!” as a white blur galloped through the village towards the
wall.

“Be ready for my shout!” yelled Leofric as he dropped from the parapet and
onto the back of Aeneor. Leofric yelled an oath to the Lady, and rode into the
gateway, where a dozen skeletons pushed through with spears lowered. He smashed
their blades aside and bludgeoned them to splinters with the weight of his
charge and the brutality of his sword blows.

Aeneor reared in the gateway before the advancing horde of the dead,
Leofric’s Blade of Midnight throwing off loops of white fire that reflected from
the insides of the skulls of the warriors before him.

“Come on then, you dead bastards!” he shouted. “I’ll kill you for good this
time!”

A shadow loomed beyond the gateway and he urged Aeneor onwards, leaping the
splintered ruin of the gate and scattering the skeletal warriors before him. His
sword cut skulls from necks and arms from shoulders as he cut a deadly swathe
through the enemy, but beyond the press of bone and bronze at the gateway, he
saw what he had been hoping for.

Mounted on his dark steed, the undead champion awaited him, the necromancer
hunched in his shadow and dark coils of magic leaping from his wizened fingers.

“Carlomax! Havelock!” called Leofric. “Now! Shoot!”

A pair of arrows leapt from the walls and hammered into the champion’s
breastplate, but the dead warrior appeared not to notice them.

“Not him!” shouted Leofric, but further words were impossible as the champion
charged towards him, the eyes of his terrifying black steed burning with
dreadful malice. Leofric knew his strength was not the equal of this warrior,
but he was no man’s inferior on horseback. He had toppled Chilfroy of Artois and
would be damned if this creature of darkness was going to be the death of him.

The distance between the two warriors closed rapidly and Leofric swayed aside
at the last possible second as the champion’s sword struck to deal him a mortal
blow. The Blade of Midnight turned aside the blow and Leofric lunged, the tip of
the blade spearing the heart of the champion’s obsidian amulet and splitting it
apart with a hideous crack of thunder.

The champion gave a cry of fury as Aeneor turned on the spot and Leofric
swept his sword out in a wide arc as a pair of arrows slashed through the air
above him.

Even amid the clamour of battle and the screams of the dying, Leofric heard
the thud of arrows striking flesh and the hollow clang as his sword smashed the
undead champion’s helmet and skull to shards.

The dark steed rode on for a moment before its substance began to unravel and
it finally collapsed into a clattering pile of dead flesh and bones. The fallen
champion was pitched from the saddle, his own form coming apart as the will that
held him to the mortal world fled his ruined shell.

Leofric lifted his sword in victory as he saw the necromancer struggle to
pull Carlomax and Havelock’s arrows from his chest, but it was a futile gesture
and Leofric watched as dissolution rendered his flesh down to naught but dust.

The sounds of battle began to fade and Leofric saw the undead horde begin to
collapse before the walls of Derrevin Libre as the dark magic that empowered
them faded from their long-dead bones.

He sighed in relief and felt his spirits rise as he realised that the night’s
horror was over.

The Battle for Derrevin Libre had been won.

“So what will you tell the duke of us, Leofric?” asked Carlomax as Leofric
and Havelock prepared to ride from the village the following morning. Havelock’s
horse had been lost in the depths of the forest, but he had been furnished with
one of the previous master of the village’s prize steeds.

With the defeat of the undead, Leofric felt that the sky was clearer and he
could smell the scent of wild flowers carried on the back of a delightfully
crisp breeze.

Leofric considered the question for a moment before answering. “I will tell
him the truth.”

“And what is that?”

“That Derrevin Libre has no lord,” said Leofric. “And that it might be better
were it to be allowed to go on without one for a while.”

Carlomax nodded. “Thank you, that is more than I would have asked for.”

“It won’t change anything though,” warned Leofric. “They
will
come
with bared swords.”

“I know,” agreed Carlomax. “But now we have a few battles under our belts and
even if they do kill us all, what we achieved here will be spoken of for years.
Even the mightiest forest fire begins with but a single spark…”

Leofric shook his head. “Then Derrevin Libre will be freedom’s home or
glory’s grave.”